Naming a baby in those old days was just as hard as it is in these. Each person had a particular name to fasten upon the new arrival. Peeler wanted to name him Wolfe, after a famous general he had heard of, but his wife protested on the grounds that the Government was offering a bounty for wolves and somebody might get mixed up and “kill him off.”
Mrs. Declute wanted to call the boy after some Bible hero. Moses, she thought, would be a good name. He looked just like Moses must have looked at his age, she said.
“I’ll tell you how we’ll decide,” said Ander Declute, after the debate had lasted some three hours. “We all of us have a different name we want to hitch to the youngster. I move that we let Mac here write out them names on a piece of paper and we’ll pin it to a tree and let the little chap decide for himself.”
“How?” asked the others.
“Well, after we’ve tacked up the paper somebody’ll hold a rifle and we’ll let the baby pull the trigger. The name the ball comes nearest to we’ll choose. What do you say?”
Everybody thought it a capital plan. The names were written on the sheet of paper and it was pinned to a tree. The baby’s mother held the light rifle and pressed the baby’s finger on the trigger. The little Bushwhacker did not so much as blink at the report.
The bullet bored one of the names through the letter O, and the name was B-O-Y.
“That’s the one I picked on,” grinned Declute, “an’ it’s a good one.”
So the baby was called Boy.
Others came to Bushwhackers’ Place and took up homesteads.