| OCR Text |
Show A TALE OF HORROR. 41 allow Adams to win the race. They surrounded Kend-ricks with drawn revolvers and told him to win or die. It was a race for life then, and he moved his legs with a concentrated and desperate energy. The result was, all who bet on Adams lost. " The next time I saw the Doctor he was sitting on a bench in front of his cabin, spoiled of his jewels, stirring butter in a tin cup with a spoon. He said,' I'll be tetot-ally cosmographied if that foot-race wasn't a hyperbolical swindle.'" CHAPTER VIII. A TALE OF HORROR. "I was in the first coach of the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company," said Mr. Barney. "It arrived in Denver on the 7th of May, 1859. The supply wagons were sent on ahead, locating the stations, and every twenty-five miles, they would drop a tent, a stove, and a cook. At that season of the year the twilight is short, so when we drew up at this station for supper it was quite dark. When I entered the tent I saw the most soul-sickening sight that my eyes ever rested upon, and the flickering light of the candle added intensity to the horror. At first I thought it was a 'spirit from the vasty deep'-a ghost or hobgoblin from the great unknown. I felt sick-it is real weakening to feel one's self in the presence of the-departed-no, the returned dead. " The poor man, from starvation, was reduced to a living skeleton. Rip'Van Winkle Jiimself could not have looked more ghastly. " He was in the last stages of exhaustion when an Indian found him and brought him to the tent. After he |
