His progress was suddenly arrested, however, by the appearance of a very sedate-looking bird, as large as a good-sized fowl, with a thick muffler of feathers around its throat and shoulders, that sat perched on a dead limb before him. The bird was facing him, and when he stopped it stretched its neck downward, and turned its head to one side as if to listen or observe his movements. Ephraim wondered why it did not fly away, but presently it occurred to him that it was an owl, and could not see him.
“Ah!” thought he, “you are just the fellow I’m looking for! Now just stay where you are a minute, and I’ll fix you!”
He had to find a rest before he could hold his gun steady, and then he was sure to take good aim. But he had to draw so hard on the trigger that he closed his eyes, just as the gun went off; and when he opened them again he was looking another way.
The action of his piece seemed unaccountable. It had started backward so suddenly as to throw him over, and there was a pain in his shoulder as if it had been hit. But he was sure he had killed the owl, and, looking for it, he was again surprised to see it sailing noiselessly away. It seemed in no great haste, and evidently had not started without due reflection. It stopped, before going out of sight, and remained perched on another dry limb, as if waiting for Ephraim to come and shoot it again.
Without reflecting at all as to whether he would be any better off after shooting that owl, or whether it had not just as good a right to live as he, Ephraim sprang up, seeing that there was a chance for another shot, and made all haste to reload his piece.
He put the powder and shot in without any wad between, as before—though not quite so much as at first,—for he thought he had loaded a little too heavy. There was a pain in his shoulder yet, and he did not care to be hit that way again. He rammed the charge down in a great hurry, looked in the pan to see if the priming was all right, and then went softly towards the owl.
When Ephraim got near the owl turned his head first to one side and then to the other, as if he suspected there was a boy in the woods, somewhere; but he did not fly, and, nervous with haste, Ephraim found another rest, and again took good aim.
Strange to say that gun hit him again. He even rolled upon the ground, feeling as if he had got a double allowance of pain. Just as soon as he could think at all, he decided that he wouldn’t fire that gun again. Of course he had killed the owl (a very reasonable supposition, considering how hard the gun had hit him), and he guessed he wouldn’t hunt any more that time.
But when he looked for the owl he didn’t see him anywhere. Could it be that there hadn’t been any owl there? An optical illusion, he might have thought, had he ever heard of such a thing. At any rate there was no owl there. But he noticed something sticking in the limb where he thought the owl had been—and he kept his eyes on it for some time. It looked like the ramrod that belonged to his gun; but how in the world could that be?
He looked at his gun, which was lying on the soft bed of leaves where it had fallen, and then he felt sure it was the ramrod, for it was gone. But how in the world?—He couldn’t understand it—till he happened to think that perhaps he didn’t take the ramrod out after loading.