view for an
instant to exhort me. "Don't 'e be 'fraid, Essie, me knock 'e pie out
o' 'at bad tow if her touches 'oo!" Then he shrank back, creeping
under the friendly shelter of the blackberry canes until he was, as I
afterward found, quite lost to view. It all took place so quickly that
I had scarcely time to realize the danger before I was called upon to
act. If I had turned to run, in the first instance, the great beast
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.