The Boy Ranger; or, The Heiress of the Golden Horn — John Shaqi
The Boy Ranger; or, The Heiress of the Golden HornCoomes, Oll
General
The Boy Ranger; or, The Heiress of the Golden Horn
Coomes, Oll
Adventure stories; Arapaho Indians -- Fiction; Dakota Indians -- Fiction; Dime novels; Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction
The armed guards came running in from the woods, and joined their
friends in the conflict; and presently another voice was added to
those of the combatants, but his was a voice resembling the roar
of a maddened bull more than a human voice, and a tall, bony and
muscular-looking man, with long, shaggy eyebrows, from beneath which
two orbs of fire, a shock of grizzly gray hair, and a mouth so
“extensive,” that the upper part of his head seemed set on hinges at
the back--made his appearance in behalf of the settlers.
This man of giant frame and cavernous mouth, was Old Tumult, the
hunter and scout.
He came like a whirlwind among the savages, his rifle grasped in one
hand--a heavy club in the other.
The savages recoiled before him. They had felt the power of the giant
hunter’s iron arm before.
The dull thud, of the hunter’s club, accompanied with a yell, told
how fearful and deadly was his work.
“Away, demons o’ fury, away!” he shouted; “down to the brimstone
pit--the sulphurious region!”
The savages wavered, rallied again and strove hard to beat down Old
Tumult, but in vain. He seemed to bear a charmed life.
Finally the savages gave way, and took to the cover of the forest,
leaving a number of dead and dying comrades behind.
The settlers did not pursue the fleeing enemy. They were glad enough
to get rid of them, and at once turned their attention to their own
dead and dying comrades.
A frightful spectacle was now presented to the gaze of the settlers.
A score of savages lay killed and wounded upon the grassy lawn, and
among them, with their heads cloven, lay several of the settlers
dead, and several wounded. The women and children, with a few
exceptions, had fled into the forest at the commencement of the
attack. Thus, a new fear for their safety now preyed upon the minds
of the settlers.
When the battle was over, Old Tumult, to whom the settlers gave the
credit of defeating the red-skins, leaned his tall, gaunt form upon
his heavy rifle, and gazed silently over the scene before him, with a
sad look upon his hard, stony features.
“Ah, me! ah, me!” he sighed, heavily, “if I’d ’a’ known all, this
’ere would never ’a’ been, friends.”
“Yes, if any of us had dreamed of such an attack being planned, we
might have prevented it,” said the Reverend Paul Earnshaw.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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