gardless: how could Father be cross with that pretty green wreath around his face?

Gordon Clark had breakfast ready. What was the magic in the tin coffee pot? The Master of the House drank two cups. At home they had tried many makes of pot from French biggin to patent percolator; aluminum, brass, silver; nearly always there was something wrong with the coffee. The cook wept-said she "neber seen no one man so hard to please with his eatin's." Out here precisely the same mocha was used-the magic was in the pot.

Then the corn bread, just plain, coarse meal mixed with water, but the flavor of it! And back in town people were eating breakfast food-the seven pitied them.

The Master of the House safely in the boat for the long row to town, the women folk set about house-cleaning. The tin plates and cups were washed in the river; a handful of white sand rubbed over them and they were silver-bright. The sand floor was swept with a rake.

The camp outfit consisted of a twelve by fourteen, "fifteen-ounce" duck tent with a fly adjusted as a front porch that sheltered two hammocks for those who preferred sleeping in the open. A piece of sailcloth tied to two trees made a shelter for food stores. There was no habitation

in sight, but, on the other side of the river were railroad tracks with a diminutive station-house hiding around the bend a mile downstream. The passenger schedule included an afternoon train.

Unbelievably short were the hours, and it was soon time for Gordon Clark to cross the river with the boat to meet The Master of the House. As the returning skiff hove in sight The Captain stood at the landing expecting to hear the fiat:

"We go home to-morrow; I've had enough of this."

Instead she saw The Master of the House seated in the stern almost hidden by packages.

"Thought we'd stay awhile to please the children," he explained as the cargo was unshipped.

The days went by, The Captain happily hoping, the children begging with shining eyes, to stay" two weeks." Saturday afternoon, The Master of the House looked a veritable Santa Claus with his pack when he landed at camp. He was soon busily at work, burying ice, hanging leg of lamb for to-morrow's barbecuing, while the Captain arranged extra bedding in the tent. At dusk she walked shoreward. Could she believe the evidence of her eyes? Yes, it was true: The Master of the House was

barefooted! Pipe in mouth, he moved about cheerfully busy; the tense lines were gone.

After supper, while Gordon Clark told the children hair-raising tales of a "varmint" he had heard in the woods, The Master of the House and The Captain sat alone on the shore.

"Let's stay here till September," he said. "Well, I'll think about it," answered the wise little Captain with shameless diplomacy.

They stayed. The month stretched itself to six weeks, seven weeks. Each day was sufficient unto itself.

For ten days no rain fell, and The Captain, still ignorant of the real joy of the open, rendered secret thanks unto a kind

She,

weather-man. Friends came to see her; friends in dainty summer apparel. clad in camp-stained capki, received them and bored them with eulogies of camp life until they said:

"Oh, it is fine-so long as it doesn't rain."

At last the bugbear appeared. From the beginning it fell heavily; and everybody was excited, everybody but Gordon Clark, who, without apparent hurry, got perishables under cover and soon all were snug in blankets. Lullaby of lullabies is rain on a tent! Though, to be sure, the seven were, by this time, far beyond the need of any lullaby: they awoke at dawn, at dusk were ready for supper and bed.

Yet there were the long rainy days to be

got through, The Captain remembered. The long rainy days were delightful! With the fly in front, the tent door could be left open in all weathers.

The seven feared no wild creature. Nearly every day the girls had a lesson in natural history. What man can name a sight prettier than a mother thrush teaching her brood to fly? Early one August morning she began just outside of the tent. Such fluttering, calling, and answering! One little fellow perched on a limb about two feet above the ground lost his nerve and would not try his wings for all mother's coaxing. Every trembling "peep" of his brought a tender response from her. Sometimes, when a few seconds elapsed between his call and her answer, his eyes wore a frightened look, but never once did he call a second time before her reply. One must lie covered with sand to photograph this timid mite.

HE name of the man really matters not at all. It chances to be Tichenor -but it might have been Smith, or Jones, or McGraw. He was white, and that took him through.

By 1876 the buffalo already had become scarce upon the Western plains. Of the great southern herd almost 4,000,000 were killed in the three years, '72, 73, '74; in '75 large bands were few; in '76 the buffalo hunter was working hard for an income from his profession, and the Indian was furious and aghast. For him the buffalo had been a reliance. The three railroads -Union Pacific, Kansas Pacific, Santa Fé -stretched out across the buffalo's domain, and spelled doom to it and to the Indian together.

Tichenor, the hero of my tale, and a companion who is no hero at all, left Hays City, Kansas, in November, '76, with their buffalo outfit of guns, provisions and team and wagon for a final hunt. Western Kansas still had a sprinkling of humps worth the getting, and in the hearts of the two men the wanderlust was again strong. Cheyenne and Sioux, Arapahoe and Kiowa, were uneasy and abroad-but in the Seventies men of the West had grown so accustomed to the Indian on murder bent that he was accepted as an evil which must be met and could not be shunned. Kansas was fighting her own battles.

Sixty miles west and slightly south of Ellis, Tichenor and partner went into camp. Their habitation was a dugout. At the base of a clay hill had been chiseled into the slope a room; the ends and the two sides were of dirt, poles were laid across and buffalo hides were placed thereon for ceiling or roof, and a canvas flap flanked by buffalo hides formed the

door. In such a nook two hunters might be very comfortable. Fuel was plentiful, for buffalo chips were everywhere; a creek flowed but a short distance away.

The twain had hunted with fair success for some weeks, and had been unmolested, when the partner proposed that one of them should go into Ellis for supplies. To this Dr. Tichenor agreed, and the lot fell upon the other. And now, after the decision, a strange thing occurred, for which I will vouch, upon Dr. Tichenor's word. Three nights in succession appeared to him in his slumber his mother (dead, she, through fifteen years), and told him not to remain behind.

"Do not stay here alone," she said.
"Do not stay here alone."
"Do not stay here alone."

But Tichenor had been o'er-long on the frontier to be swayed by anything of the occult. Such men wax severely practical. Besides, he was brave, and somewhat stubborn; much oppressed, then, all in all, to being bluffed by what might have been accepted as a reflection of his own thoughts. With a laugh he mentioned to his partner the dream; and in a laugh he rejected his partner's overtures, warnings, protestations. The partner was of disposition more malleable. Him the dream frightened. But the fright was only transient; it did not last to Ellis, a mere two days and sixty miles.

So, the die being cast, the partner rode away, with wagon and team-and we will dismiss him, for by all account he never came back, nor tried to come back, nor sent any one back, but went dead drunk.

Tichenor was left alone to his dugout, to his resources of buffalo chips, buffalo meat, buffalo gun-the old-time, trusty Sharpe's single-shot 45-120, the most powerful black-powder gun ever furnished to the frontier. Left alone, to these resources

and the resources of white man's pluck (best of all), with winter due, in the midst of that vast expanse of rolling fenceless plains, naked and dun, crossed and recrossed by the avid hostile.

Yet such a matter was all in the year's work. As the doctor says to-day: "I didn't mind. I felt that I could take care of myself. I knew that nothing could get near me if I saw it first-and I was a light sleeper."

Luckily so. Just at dusk on the evening of December 21st, while he was getting a pail of water from the creek, he distinguished what he supposed was a bunch of buffalo filing along the far crest of the hill behind the dugout, and dimly lined. against the darkening sky. He smiled with satisfaction.

"There are some humps coming down to water," he said. "Early in the morning I'll turn out and get them."

Fortune thus appearing so to favor him, he ate with gusto his supper, contentedly smoked a pipe, and stowed himself under his blankets upon the piles of robes against the rear wall to sleep. As a protection from varmint invaders, and more securely to hold the canvas flap door, across the doorway he had drawn as usual the messbox.

Light sleeper he was; but light as he was I like to think that the spirit of his dream hovered over him, yearning to save him yet-for was he not her boy? Something awakened him, to catch the slightest of rattling in the vicinity of the mess-box. Morning was near-this he knew intuitively with the plainsman's instinct, although darkness still reigned. He ascribed the rattling to a skunk (the camp having been bothered by such pests), and hastily arising he went to the box and drove the unseen creature away.

He returned to bed. He was again awakened, to hear the rattle renewed. Morning surely was at hand, for the darkness had grayed, and objects within the dugout were visible. Breathing vengeance upon the intruding animal, he hastily donned his trousers, slipped a cartridge into his pocket, and grabbing his loaded. gun shoved the mess-box a bit one side and in his bare feet stepped out.

Amidst the misty gray a figure of a man was running up the hill-slope. Tichenor

instantly hailed him-"Stop, you; or I'll shoot!" He hailed again-"Hey, you; halt!" The figure whirled, and fired at him. 'Twas an Indian. Tichenor's gun leaped to his cheek, spoke with belch and bang, and the fugitive fell in a heap. At this time, and for some years afterward, Tichenor was one of the best quick shots in the West.

Immediately, he says, a perfect shower of bullets, from all directions, thudded and hissed about him, but touched him not. Turning, he bolted, loading as he went, for the dugout and shelter. Buffalo-chips, his fuel, had been stacked in a double row beside the doorway, and now in the niche formed by them and the corner of the dugout stood already an Indian. Without slackening Tichenor dropped; the Indian's bullet caught him half way and plowed. a furrow straight through the middle of his scalp; Tichenor lunged onward, to dive through the doorway; twisting he reached out, thrust the muzzle of his heavy Sharpe's against the Indian's body and pulled the trigger.

Blood and flesh, he says, spurted through the air and the savage collapsed, to lie at the doorway all the long day.

"Spat! Spattity! Spattity! Spat! Spat!" A score of bullets ripped through the canvas, following him inside. But he dodged to a far corner and crouched there, out of the line of fire.

"Spattity! Spat, spat, spat!" Thick and fast entered the lead-sounding upon the canvas flap like hail. The buffalo hides were riddled; the mess box splintered— and, incidentally, the contents spoiled. But a set of leaky pots and pans was of small moment in that crisis.

A lull ensued. Tichenor had collected his ammunition around him, and was prepared for a rush. That the Indians should not think they had drawn his teeth he took advantage of the lull, and crept to the door. The blood was streaming down over his face, but through one of the many holes in the canvas he peeped out. A semicircle of savages, prone and kneeling, was ranged before the dugout, only thirty yards distant, ready and watching.

The sun was almost up. The light was pretty good. Tichenor stuck his Sharpe's through the hole, sighted an instant, and pulled. The Indian selected for the honor