“Fair to middling, sonny—fair to middling—but with a handful o’ shot an’ a light gun what can yer expect but to hit. Now, ef you’d bagged ’em with one ball outer an ole muzzle-loader, why I’d up an’ admit it was praisable.”
“Why Uncle, where’s the man who would knock over two birds with a ball? It couldn’t be done.”
“Is that so? Well, now yer s’prise me.”
“You’re not going to tell me you have seen that done!”
“Something better. That’s small potatoes.”
He rose up, went indoors, and returned with an ancient single muzzle-loader, the stock bound round with snake skin. “Jes’ yer handle that wepin.”
I handled it, and returned it without a word. It was ill-balanced, and came up awkwardly to the shoulder.
“That wepin saved my life.”
“In the war?”
“In the big drought. You remember the time. The country was that dry, you could hear the grass crackle like tinder when the wind moved, an’ every breath stirred up columns of sand which went cavorting over the veld round and round, their tops bending over to each other an’ the bottoms stirring up everything movable, and the whole length of the funells dotted about with snakes, an’ lizards, an’ bits of wood. Why, I see one o’ em whip up a dead sheep, an’ shed the wool off o’ the carcase as it went twisting round an’ round.”