“You sent for me, ma’am.”
It was the employee speaking to his “boss.” He was not using the incident of a few nights before to establish familiarity between them; his voice was low, deferential. But Willard Masten’s voice had never made her feel quite as she felt at this moment.
“Yes, I sent for you,” she said, smiling calmly—trying to seem the employer but getting something into her voice which would not properly belong there under those circumstances. She told herself it was not pleasure—but she saw his eyes flash. “I have found some cartridges, and I want you to teach me how to shoot.”
He looked at her with eyes that narrowed with amusement, after a quick glint of surprise.
“I reckon I c’n teach you. Are you figurin’ that there’s some one in this country that you don’t want here any more?”
“No,” she said; “I don’t expect to shoot anybody. But I have decided that as long as I have made up my mind to stay here and run the Flying W, I may as well learn to be able to protect myself—if occasion arises.”
“That’s a heap sensible. You c’n never tell when you’ll have to do some shootin’ out here. Not at men, especial,” he grinned, “but you’ll run across things—a wolf, mebbe, that’ll get fresh with you, or a sneakin’ coyote that’ll kind of make the hair raise on the back of your neck, not because you’re scared of him, but because you know his mean tricks an’ don’t admire them, or a wildcat, or a hydrophobia polecat, ma’am,” he said, with slightly reddening cheeks; “but mostly, ma’am, I reckon you’ll like shootin’ at side-winders best. Sometimes they get mighty full of fight, ma’am—when it’s pretty hot.”
“How long will it take you to teach me to shoot?” she asked.
“That depends, ma’am. I reckon I could show you how to pull the trigger in a jiffy. That would be a certain kind of shootin’. But as for showin’ you how to hit somethin’ you shoot at, why, that’s a little different. I’ve knowed men that practiced shootin’ for years, ma’am, an’ they couldn’t hit a barn if they was inside of it. There’s others that can hit most anything, right handy. They say it’s all in the eye an’ the nerves, ma’am—whatever nerves are.”
“You haven’t any nerves, I suppose, or you wouldn’t speak of them that way.”