The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-10-17


 The bullet emitted a sharp shriek as it ricochetted into space. The metal block rattled back and forth. Again and again she fired, till the clip was emptied of its eight cartridges. Six of them were hits. The block still swayed at the gaff end, but it was battered out of all usefulness. Shel- don was astonished. It was better than he or even Hughie Drummond could have done.
 That's really good shooting-for a woman," he said. You only missed it twice, and it was a strange weap- 2n'' ,s
 ! 'But I can't make out the two misses," she complained. "The gun worked beautifully too. Give me an- other clip and I'll hit it eight times for anything you wish
 q don't doubt. it. Now I'll have to get new block. Viaburi! Here, you fella, catch one fella block along store room."
 "Pn wager you can't do it eight out of eight-anything you wish," she challenged.
 No fear of my taking it on," was his answer. .Who taught you to shoot?'
 "Oh, my father at first and then Won and his cowboys. He was a shot-dad, mean, though Won was splendid too"
 Sheldon wondered secretly who Won was, and he speculated as to whether it was Von who two years previously had led her to believe that nothing re- mained for her but matrimony.
 'ssWhat part of the United States is your home," he asked-''Chicago or Wyoming or somewhere out thereT' is a beautiful land. My, Pm almost homesick for it already. Not that I haven't been away. I was in New York when the crash came. But I do think it is the sweetest spot on earth-Hawaii, mean. T might as we'll begin at the begin ning." She lifted her head with a proud air of dismissing sadness after the manner of a woman qualified to wear Baden-Powell and long bar reled Colts. '1 was born at Hilo. That's on the island of Hawaii, the big gest and best in the group. can't re- member when first got on a horse nor when I learned to swim. That came before my A B C's. Dad owned cattle ranches on Hawaii and Maui big ones for the islands. Hokuna had 10000 acres alone. It extended in between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, and it was there l learned to shoot goats and wild cattle.
 "Von had been in the army, and dad was an old seadog, and they were both stern disciplinarians-only Von's girls had no mother, and neither had I, and they were two men, after all. They spoiled us terribly. You see, they didn't have any wives, and they made chums out of us-when our tasks were done. We had to learn ito do every thing about the house twice as well as the native servants did it-that was so that we should know how to manage some day.
 "More than once one or the oth- CT of us had our rifles taken away for a week just because of a tiny speck of rust. We had to know how to build fires in the driving rain, too, out of wet wood when we camped out, which was the hardest thing of all- except grammar, I do believe. We learned more from dad and Von than from the governesses; dad taught us French and Von German. We learned both languages passably we'll, and we learned them wholly in the saddle or in camp. When I was sixteen we three girls were all sent up to California to Mills seminary, which was quite fash ionable and stifling. How we used to long for hors<e! We didn't chum with the other girls. who called us little cannibals, just because we came from the Sandwich Islands and who made invidious remarks about our ancestors banqueting on Captain Cook-wh1ch was historically untrue, and, besides, our ancestors hadn't lived in Hawaii.
 'I was three years at Mills sem mary, with trips home, of course, and two years in New York, and then dad went smash in a sugar plantation on Maui. Dad had nothing left, and