would have been upon me, and, in less time than it takes to tell it, I should have been ground and trampled out of human semblance. As I stood my ground he hesitated, challenged again, and, as others of the herd started toward him, charged. In spite of the signal service that it rendered me, I cannot conscientiously recommend a twelve-quart tin bucket, filled with blackberries, as a reliable weapon of defense. There would be only about one chance in a hundred, I should think, of its proving useful in just the way that mine did. When the steer charged I was, in fact, quite wild with terror; it was instinct alone that prompted me to attempt a defensive use of any article in my hands, and if that article had been a feather duster I should have made the same use of it. The lowered head and sweeping horns were within six feet of me when I threw blackberries, pail and all, full in the creature's face, at the same time giving frantic voice to the wild, high-pitched, long-drawn cry that the cow-boys use in rounding up their cattle. The blackberries did not trouble him; what did trouble him was that, by one chance in a hundred, the handle or bail of the bucket caught on the tip of one horn, and, as feeling it and, perhaps, bewildered by the rattle of tinware, the steer threw up his head, the bucket slid down the horn, lodging against the skull, and wholly obscuring one eye. Undaunted by this mishap the steer backed off, lifting his head high, shaking it and bellowing; then suddenly he lowered it, grinding head and horns into the ground, with the evident intention of pulverizing the strange contrivance rattling about his forehead. The attempt resulted in his getting his nose into the trap where only a horn had been before. Maddened with fright he took to his heels, careering down the hillside, and through the fields at top speed, followed by all the herd. I had retreated, of course, the instant that I had discharged the bucket at my foe, and was cowering under the canes beside Ralph when the finale came. CHAPTER XI THE CATTLE BRAND We were saved, but my heart swelled with grief and anger, as, creeping out from our shelter, I stood up and looked down on what had so lately been a field of waving grain, ripe for the harvest. Torn, trampled, beaten into the earth, scarcely a stalk was left standing, and the corn field was in no better shape. Poor little Ralph, with a dim, childish comprehension of the calamity that had befallen us, was crying bitterly. Lifting him to my shoulder I started toward the house, the desolated fields were out of sight behind us, when Jessie came hurrying up the trail. "What has happened?" she inquired anxiously. "I thought I heard Ralph scream, and I am sure I heard you giving the round-up call; I thought I heard cattle, too." She took Ralph, who was still crying, from my shoulder and carried him in her arms. "Don't cry, precious," she said. "Tell sister what has frightened you?"