“Then, why ain’t you a-shootin’ of him?”
The old lumberman rubbed his hand across his eyes, or rather his eye, for the other was nothing more than a puckered scar, and his broad shoulders drooped sheepishly. Then he laughed, flinging his hand out as though it contained an unpleasant thought which he tossed away.
“Gol-bling it, Swickey, seems to me as lately every time I drawed a bead on a deer, they was three front sights on the gun, and as many as three deer where they oughter been one. ’Sides,” he continued, “I ain’t ketched sight of him so fur. Now, mebby if you seen him you could shoot—”
Swickey grabbed the astonished Beelzebub to her breast and did a wild and exceedingly primitive dance before the cabin door.
“Be-el-zebub!” she cried, “Be-el-zebub! he’s a-goin’ to leave me shoot a b’ar—me! I ain’t shot nothin’ but deer so fur and he’s shot more ’n a million b’ars, ain’t you, Pop?”
“Wa-al, mebby a hun’red.”
“Is thet more ’n a million, Pop?”
The smile faded from Avery’s face. Huge, gray-bearded, pensive, he stood for a moment, as inscrutable as the front of a midnight forest.
Swickey eyed him with awe, but Swickey at fourteen could not be suppressed long.
“Pop, one of your buttins is busted.”