“Of course it did,” angrily; “and it’ll be the dearest bullet you ever bought! I tell you, I’m sick of having city chaps tearing through our woods, and scaring the deer and things, and if they keep it up much longer, the whole population’ll be shot off. Oh, cracky, but my finger smarts! I was never shot before.”
“Let me see your wound,” Will said.
But the “child of nature” showed no disposition to let Will examine his injured member, and Will was both amused and relieved to hear him make the following observation: “No, it ain’t so much the finger that troubles me; it’ll soon heal; but I had a bully good silver ring on it, that I found in an old dust-heap, and that there bullet has busted it.”
Then the shooter stepped up to the rustic, saying: “Come, I must see your finger. If it is badly hurt I will bind it up for you; I have the materials all ready in my pockets.”
“Well, you are quite right in carrying rags, and salve, and thread, and pins, and soft cotton, and strings, and such trash, always stuffed in your pockets, for you look like as if you might blow your head off any minute,” the wounded man insultingly said, as he got a nearer view of Will.
Without further delay he submitted his finger to Will’s examination. Will presently observed: “I think your strong silver ring saved the finger, if not the entire hand, from a severe wound, as the bullet struck its ornamental carvings and then glanced. In a day or so your finger will be as sound as ever. Well, I’m sorry I hurt you, but I must be off. Good-day.”
“Now, just wait a minute,” said the man with the silver ring. “You don’t know how much I think of a good ring. I’m a very affectionate feller, and as there’s nothing else for me to take to, I think a heap of a good ring. And this one’s ruined and busted now. It may be ever so long before I can get as good a one—and you made fun of it, too! I say, what did you say about ‘carvings.’”
“But the ring saved your hand,” Will persisted.
“I don’t say nothing about that; but your bullet has spoilt my ring, and I mean to have the worth of it. Do you understand that? I ask for the worth of it.”
“Certainly; how much is your ring worth?”