CATTY ATKINS

CHAPTER I

I put a bottle on a box against the side of the barn and aimed as careful as all-git-out. My idea was to bust it right at the neck. Well, I jerked on the trigger and the gun went off and I looked at the bottle. It was still there, neck and all.

After the aim I took it didn’t seem possible, so I walked up close to find out if maybe I hadn’t slammed a hole right through it that couldn’t be seen—but there wasn’t any hole. I knew right off there must be something wrong with that gun. It was the very first time I’d ever shot it, and if a gun don’t shoot straight the first time, when it’s spang-whang new, what kind of shooting will it do when it gets to be old and worn? I was dog-gone disappointed.

Dad gave me that rifle for my birthday and I’d come hustling out right after breakfast to give it a try—and it wasn’t any good! I put in another cartridge and got some closer to the bottle and tried again. The bottle never wiggled. I came some closer and shot again, and then I came still closer and shot again. Six times I shot before I hit the danged thing and then I was so close I could have knocked it over with the rifle-barrel.

“Pretty middlin’ shootin’,” says somebody behind me, and I turned around quick. There was a kid I’d never seen. He was kind of small, with bare feet and clothes that looked as if he’d found them in an ash-barrel and then slept in them. His hair was kind of bristly, and he didn’t have on any hat. He wasn’t smiling or making fun of me as far as I could see, for his face was as sober as a houseful of deacons. It was a kind of a thin face with a sharp chin and a straight nose and funny crinkles around the eyes. But the eyes were gray and kind of sparkly. I looked at him a minute, wondering who he was, before I said anything. Then I says: