Mr. Sadler sat up very straight in his chair and stared at the guide. “Phil Matlack,” he shouted, “what do you take me for? I hired that gun to that young man. Don’t you suppose I know what I’m about?”
“That’s all right,” said Matlack, “but the trouble is he don’t know what he’s about.”
“Get away man,” said Peter, with a contemptuous sniff, “he’ll never hurt anybody. What do you take me for? When he came to me and wanted a gun, I handed him two or three, so that he might choose one that suited him, and by the way he handled them I could see that most likely he’d never handled one before, and so I set him up all right. He’s got a good gun, and all the cartridges he’ll be likely to want; and the cartridges are all like this. They’re a new kind I heard of last winter, and I got a case from Boston last week. I don’t see how I ever managed to run my camps without them. Do you see that shot?” said he, opening one end of a cartridge. “Well, take one in your hand and pinch it.”
Phil did so, and it crumbled to dust in his hand.
“When that load’s fired,” said Peter, “all the shot will crumble into dust. It wouldn’t do to give raw hands blank-cartridges, because they’d find that out; but with this kind they might sit all day and fire at a baby asleep in its cradle and never disturb it, provided the baby was deaf. And he can’t use his pardner’s cartridges, for I gave that fellow a twelve-bore gun and his is a ten-bore.”
Phil grinned. “Well, then,” said he, “I suppose I might as well make my mind easy, but if that bicycle man hunts much he’ll get the conviction borne in on him that he’s a dreadful bad shot.”
“Then he’ll give up shooting, which is what is wanted,” said Sadler. “What’s your third bother?”
“That young woman has made up her mind to go out in the boat by herself the very fust time she feels like it,” said Matlack; “she didn’t say so with her mouth, but she said it with the back of her head and her shoulders, and I want to know if that rule of yours is going to hold good this summer. Women is gettin’ to do so many things they didn’t use to that I didn’t know but what you’d consider they’d got far enough to take themselves out on the lake, and if you do think so, I don’t want to get myself in hot water with those people and then find you don’t back me up.”
“If you don’t want to get yourself into hot water with me, Phil Matlack, you’d better get it into your head just as soon as you can that when I make a rule it’s a rule, and I don’t want people comin’ to me and talkin’ about changes. Women in my camp don’t go out in boats by themselves, and it’s easy enough to have that rule kept if you’ve got backbone enough to do it. Keep the boat locked to the shore when it ain’t in use, and put the key in your pocket, and if anybody gets it that ’ain’t any right to it, that’s your lookout. Now that’s the end of your troubles, I hope. How’s things goin’ on generally in the camp?”
“Oh, well enough,” said Matlack. “I thought at fust the old lady’d give out in a day or two, but I’ve taught her parlor-fishin’, which she’s took to quite lively, and she’s got used to the woods. The boss, he sticks to fishin’, as if it was office-work, and as for the rest of them, I guess they’re all gettin’ more and more willin’ to stay.”