“I am sure I cannot tell.”
“Nothing less than a big moccasin track. And what was more, it hadn’t been made there a week before! I stood and looked at it a good while, cogitating some wonderful things. At last I stooped and went to measuring it. I was just going to rise, when I heard a grunt right by me. I jumped up so quick—to be ready, you know—that I floundered backward into the water. And I may be shot if there wasn’t a big painted Injin standing not ten feet off. He didn’t say a word, but just stood and looked at me with them awful eyes of his. As soon as I could think, I raised my gun, took a quick aim, and pulled the trigger; but the infernal gun snapped. I pulled it again, but it wouldn’t go, and I just happened to think the thing wasn’t loaded. All this time the painted imp stood grinning at me, without saying a word, except to kinder grunt. He had a big shining gun in one hand, and I was dreadful afraid he would shoot it. I told him not to stir, but to stand still till I got mine loaded, and he waited. But somehow or other, I s’pose I was in such a hurry that things wouldn’t go right. Instead of putting the powder in the gun-barrel, I crammed it in my pocket, and jammed the ramrod into my shoe. I told the Injin to have patience and I’d get it loaded in a minute. I got it fixed somehow at last and hauled it up to my shoulder, when, no Injin was there! I looked behind, all about me, and up into the trees but he’d been spirited away somewhere. However, I made up my mind to shoot at the spot where he had stood, and I up and blazed away. That is, I blazed away without the gun going off. I believe he spirited that too.”
“Let me examine it. Perhaps you made some blunder.”
“No, I’m sure I didn’t.”
I took the rifle, with a smile of certainty that I should find something the matter with it. Sure enough the muzzle was crammed with paper, and upon removing it, a pipestem, broken in pieces, rolled out, while there was not a grain of powder in the barrel.
“I declare, I forgot about the powder!” exclaimed Nat, opening his eyes in wonder.
“But not about the bullet,” I laughed, pointing to the fragments of his pipe.
“How’d that get there?” he angrily asked.
“That’s the question.”
“I didn’t put it there.”