“Wasted powder enough,” they grumbled.
“Ever see me shoot?” He was eager. “I’ll show ye somethin’. I don’t take back seat for ary man. Yu set me up a can. That thar one wouldn’t jump to a bullet.”
In sullen obedience a can was produced.
“How fur?”
“Fur as yu like.”
It was tossed contemptuously out; and watching it, to catch its last roll, I heard Daniel gleefully yelp “Out o’ my way, yu-all!”—half saw his hand dart down and up again, felt the jar of a shot, witnessed the can jump like a live thing; and away it went, with spasm after spasm, to explosion after explosion, tortured by him into fruitless capers until with the final ball peace came to it, and it lay dead, afar across the twilight sand.
Verily, by his cries and the utter savagery and 213 malevolence of his bombardment, one would have thought that he took actual lust in fancied cruelty.
“I ’laow thar’s not another man hyar kin do that,” he vaunted.
There was not, judging by the silence again ensuing. Only—
“A can’s a different proposition from a man, as I said afore,” Jenks coolly remarked. “A can don’t shoot back.”