leaped high into the air and came down, dead. Indian three.

"Crack! Crackity crack!" and "Spat, spat, spattity spat!" Tichenor retired precipitately. A bullet had creased each temple. Wounds two and three.

The Indians were shooting very well, even too well.

"I had a bum head, sure," says Tichenor, and shows the scars.

Back in his corner he crouched again; a badger effectually driven to earth, but at bay. The Indians continued their bombardment, to avenge the third brave. But the fire finally slackened, and ceased. "Now for that rush," thought Tichenor; and set his teeth hard. They would not get him easy. He listened.

Outside an Indian called to him. "Hey. Come out. No hurt." Tichenor did not answer.

"No hurt. Little eat, then go," alleged the Indian.

But Tichenor had been educated in Indian strategy, and he well knew that this promise, "no hurt" was a fake, pure and simple. To an Indian after scalps everything is fair.

'If you want me, come and get me," retorted Tichenor. "There are three of us in here and we're all fighting!"

Suddenly Tichenor smelled smokeacrid and strong. It drifted in through the perforated canvas, and through the other crevices thereabouts. He interpreted. While the one Indian had been attracting his attention, another Indian had stolen noiselessly up and fired the store of buffalo chips. From the beleaguers a shout of shrill exultation rose and fell. They were to smoke him out, or burn him out, whichever happened.

Tichenor hesitated only a minute. Then he made up his mind. He might as well be shot as be smothered. At least, he would die in the open, and fighting. Hastily he put a cartridge in his mouth and another between his fingers, wiped the blood from his eyes, seized his bucket of water, and burst from the doorway. the moment of surprise occasioned by his unexpected and most bloody appearance he had kicked the fire in all directions and had dashed his water upon it. Then he began to shoot. So did the Indians.

An Indian standing just in advance of

the semicircle he conjectured to be the spokesman-and him he shot with the .45 ball through the body. The Indian tumbled backwards. An Indian (Tichenor loves to think that it was the one who lighted the fire) noting the deadly muzzle swung in his direction, started to run; holding eager bead upon his head Tichenor bowled him over flat. He was shooting, that day, was Tichenor.

Now a bullet struck him in the ribs and passed clear through. A bullet struck him in the leg between thigh and knee and passed clear through. Wounds four and five. Indians also four and five. He could do no more, and reserving his third cartridge he sprang back, and went diving, reeling, to his corner.

He prepared for the rush. He removed the broken head from a cask of powder, and placed the cask handy. The cask was a comforting thought-a friend in need. When the savages had crowded in-boom!

The rush did not come. While waiting, Tichenor crawled stealthily about, and into the bullet holes in the clay walls stuffed little rolls of paper, telling of the day. People might want to know what had happened, and to whom it had happened. But he never strayed long from his powder cask. The crawling was painful, to a man shot through leg, body and three times in the head. Exhausted, he remained in his

corner.

The time passed, but he kept no track of time. He was an animal, backed into the depths of its last refuge, pang-racked, despairing, utterly reckless, ready to strike, and die. A splendid example of atavism for the scientist was Dr. Tichenor at this hour. Blood was calling for blood, and all his ancestry of the Stone Age was rife within him.

The rush did not come. In his corner of the dugout the doctor crouched and suffered and waited. His dream recurred to him. If his mother had known, she must be knowing now-and in his half swoons he could imagine that she was bending pityingly over him. Would she be present at the end-and did she approve of it, in the emergency? He could not decide; but from every faintness he resolutely rallied himself.

The rush did not come. For an hourtwo hours, it seemed to him, and maybe

more, the besiegers had not made a sound. Quiet reigned. He waited. What new deviltry was hatching?

He heard a scratching upon the buffalohide roof, a pattering of dirt. Yes; the Indians were above, to fire down through! He had apprehended this; they had been remiss not to do it before. But it complicated his situation considerably.

"Bang! Bang!" and "Bang!" again, and again, and again. Shoot, you red devils; you have a white man against you. Their bullets searched out all the corners, now. He would crouch in vain. He grimaced for a .44, glancing from the floor, had lodged in the calf of his leg. It did not go through; it went half way! Oo-00000! He winced. Wound six.

The buffalo-hide roof looked like a pepper box cover. One considerable hole had been made, where balls had concentrated; peering up through his matted hair and bloody lids, with pain-dimmed eyes Tichenor saw just beyond this hole an Indian face.

The faithful old Sharpe's spoke; the face vanished and a heavy weight plumped upon the hides. A dragging sound, shuffle of moccasins, and silence. The weight was gone. They had carried it away.

Wound six-but Indian six, also. And he was not dead yet, was Tichenor. He had demonstrated.

The firing through the roof ceased, and almost perfect silence ensued. In his corner Tichenor crouched, waiting.

His hot fierceness was ebbing; he was as determined as ever, but he was tired. He had been unable to eat or drink, and he had six flowing wounds-eight, indeed, for two of the wounds were double. The water bucket was empty. He was in shirt and trousers, barefooted and without fire.

Thus in his corner he now reminds me of a wretched dog (you have seen such), pursued and driven to cover by a mob, huddled away underneath a porch, or in a drain, meeting every symptom of intrusion with bristling and snarl afresh, but gradually sinking lower and lower with exhaustion. And thus fighting against weakness and nature, by the powder cask Tichenor, rifle in hand, under his porch, in his dark drain, huddled, glaring yet drowsy, the world apparently his foe.

The rush did not come. The Indians

(he had thought them Cheyennes, but he was to learn that they were Ogallalah Sioux) now knew what manner of man they had unwittingly arrayed against them. He was all man-and white man at that; and he shot with the viciousness of a striking snake. Ugh! They would wait, also, crafty and persistent as gray wolves surrounding a dying buffalo bull.

One constant satisfaction had Tichenor. The corpse of the Indian whom the Sharpe's had cut almost in twain, just without the doorway, still lay there, reddening the canvas. Nobody ventured to remove it. Yet it must have been a great temptationcurbed, moreover, that temptation, by how great a fear? Rarely will the Indian leave the body of his slain thus exposed.

The rush did not come. Such quiet maintained for so long a time that Tichenor, daring to hope, managed to drag himself toward the door and at an angle cautiously to stir the flap with a stick. 'Twas well. Promptly poured those bullets again, riddling the already riddled canvas, gouging the already much gouged floor and walls.

"Thanks, you devils," thought Tichenor grimly, dragging himself back to his corner. "You're there." His heart sank; he resumed his crouch, his cask, and his waiting. And soon he swooned.

He must have been unconscious for some time; when he opened his eyes the inside world (the hut) was oddly dark and warm, the outside world was eerie in its soundlessness. And he was alive. Slowly he revolved ideas-clutching, grasping, accepting and rejecting; and then the peculiarity of the atmosphere began to appeal to his instincts of plainsman. Almost he shouted. Stillness-warmth-dark-immunity: SNOW! Gracious God-snow! The buffalo-hide roof was dense; no stars peeped through the bullet holes. He managed to reach the doorway, and he peeped out. Snow! A foot deep and more fast coming down.

He realized that the Indians must be gone. The siege was lifted. They never would endure the open in a snowstorm. At its approach they had fled, utterly were they gone, even to the corpse at the threshold.

By infinite labor Tichenor made a fire; he melted snow; he drank, and he ate a

few mouthfuls, and went to bed. But not to rest-not yet. The mangled calf nagged, nagged, and demanded immediate attention. The simpler wounds he must stand; the hole with the jagged .44 bullet at the bottom of it he could not stand.

So he digged, and pried, and worked; perspiring, sick, but persistent; and finally out from amidst that swollen flesh the bullet came.

He does not know how long he slept, nor how many hours, or days, he spent in the dugout after the siege. However, it was his Christmastide.

No rescue arrived. For him it was starve, die from his wounds, have the Indians return upon him—or make his way to that succor which would not make its way to him. He crawled (he could not walk) through the snow thirty miles to the nearest cattle ranch. He says that when he arrived nobody recognized him except as something that once had been human.

It was spring when Tichenor revisited the dugout. He extracted from the walls over one hundred bullets-.44 and 45. The pools of blood where Indians had fallen still were plain after the melting

snows.

Over thirty years have passed. The West has changed; the grim old plains have become gentled; they speak but rarely of their wild days; only occasionally a scar indicates a story.

"You used to live in Western Kansas?" queried a stranger whom Dr. Tichenor met, not long ago, in a hotel. "I've just bought a farm there, in Scott county, with an old dugout on it, in the side of a hill. I hear that once, away back, a man was corralled in that dugout by Injuns, and pretty nearly killed. Did you ever hear about it?”

Said the doctor with a shudder and a smile:

"I am the man."

HESE are the two distinctive fruits of July, following close after the cherry and the strawberry of June. The currant is not appreciated in literature, in fact it is looked down upon as a rather plebian fruit; yet in the small fruit garden it is a good long ways more important than the strawberry, taking the country through. It can be raised with less trouble, almost everywhere, and the market demand is on the increase. The old-fashioned sorts were a part of our pioneering, and went, first, from Holland to New England, and then kept pace with those who pushed their way from point to point across the continent. These old Dutch currants were small and sour, but they were prolific and pretty, deserving the place that they got by the asparagus bed near the back door. They helped mightily to ease up on the pork-pie and the pork-pudding diet of the wilder

ness.

There were even then both white and red currants, and I have no doubt that seedlings started up in New England gardens of an improved style, only it was not the fashion then to look out for all these progressive thoughts of Nature. The craze was to clear the way, to cut and to burn; and it was done. It belongs to us to discover new things, to create and to propagate better fruits and plants, and that we are doing remarkably well. The currant has in these days an added mission for those who are crowding out of the cities and making country homes. It bears the next summer after planting, and there is nothing else in the fruit garden that will do thisthe strawberry only excepted. One may have his strawberry bed for June and his

currant patch for July the very first year that he homes it with the robins and bluebirds.

As a rule we begin picking currants about July fifth, but in 1908 we took our stools to the bushes June twenty-fifth. It is not at all an unpleasant task to pick currants. We can sit down all the time, and we can chatter with our companions without disturbing the work. As the baskets are filled-ten-pound baskets are bestthey are set out of the rows into the alleys, where they remain until the sorters and packers are ready to shift them into berry boxes and pack them in crates. This work is done in a cool room or in a light cellar. At all events there must be care about heating the packages or leaving them in the sun. The first crates that go to market are hardly fully ripe, for many customers demand for jelly-making a currant that is about half colored. This is nonsense, for a dead-ripe basket of fruit will make more and better jelly than those half ripe. However, we must meet the demands of the market. These housekeeper notions are strangely persistent, having come down all the way from Holland, where the Puritans lived for awhile and learned all they knew about gardening before they came to this country.

The white currant is really the best in flavor, sweetest, with more sugar than the red, and makes more jelly-curiously the jelly is red. If you will scald them skins and all, the result is a very handsome lightred product. Better, however, take about three parts of red and one of white, and you will get a color that will delight the eye. People are being slowly educated in this regard, and orders nowadays compel us to grow about one acre of whites to four of reds.