Now Len was a man of few words but prompt action. As quick as a flash his gun was at his shoulder, and bang, bang, it went in less time than I can write it. The Bostonian jumped about three feet high as each barrel was discharged, and yelled, as soon as he could get breath, "Why, confound you! what the d—l are you doing? You have peppered me all over with shot, and hang me if I don't believe you meant it! If I had some buckshot here, blame me if I wouldn't give you a dose, if that is your little game!" Len's reply came quick from between teeth set hard on a wire cartridge, the mate to which he was jamming down into the gun, which he held upright between his knees, having but one hand to work with. "Well, d—n you, that is my game, and if you are on it, the quicker you get about it the better! I'm loading with buckshot cartridges already!" The timely arrival of a mutual friend saved the Bostonian from a dose of "BB"; but Len had enough of that chicken-pie, and went home at once full of wrath and small shot, the most disgusted man on the continent of America. To this day—if Len is still in the land of the living—you have but to ask Len to go out with a green Bostonian on a chicken-hunt, to get up a first-class fight on the instant. Len was three weeks at work with his fingers, a jack-knife, and a pair of tweezers digging out those shot, swearing a blue streak all the time, and the Bostonian went home with his body so full of lead that he never dared take a swimming bath from that day forth.
It is a painful fact, but a fact nevertheless, that
