“Ah, them 's real chaps,—the true 'tin jackets,' as we used to say at St. Louis!” cried he, his tongue seeming wonderfully loosened by the theme. “Now, lad, let's see if one of your bullets fit this bore; she's a heavy one, and carries twenty to the pound; and I 've nothing in her now but some loose chips of iron for the bears.”
Loose chips of iron for the bears! thought I; did ever mortal hear such a barbarian! “You don't fancy, friend, I came here to supply you with lead and powder, to be used upon myself, too! I supposed, when you asked me to come out into the bush, that you had everything a gentleman ought to have for such a purpose.”
“Well, I never seed the like of that!” exclaimed he, striking the ground with the butt end of his piece. “If we don't stand at four guns' length—”
“We 'll do no such thing, friend,” said I, shouldering my piece, and advancing towards him. “I never meant to offend you; nor have you any object in wounding, mayhap killing, me. Let me have something to eat; I 'll pay for it freely, and go my ways.”
“What on airth is it, eh?” said he, looking puzzled. “Why, that's one of Colt's rifles! you'd have picked me down at two hundred yards, sure as my name is Gabriel.”
“I know it,” said I, coolly; “and how much the better or the happier should I have been, had I done so?” I watched the fellow's pasty countenance as though I could read what passed in the muddy bottom of his mind.
“If it were not for something of this kind,” added I, sorrowfully, “I should not be here to-day. You know New Orleans?” He nodded. “Well, perhaps you know Ebenezer York?”
“The senator?”
“The same!” I made the pantomime of presenting a pistol, and then of a man falling. “Just so. His brothers have taken up the pursuit, and so I came down into this quarter till the smoke cleared off!”
“He was a plumper at a hundred and twenty yards. I seen him double up Gideon Millis, of Ohio.”