“Two,” she repeated briskly.
“Three.”
“Thr-ee.” She turned the shells over in her hand slowly.
“Four.”
“Four’s ’nough to shoot a b’ar, ain’t it, Pop?”
“Five,” continued Avery, disregarding her question.
Swickey counted on her fingers. “One he guv me; two he guv me; then he guv me ’nother. Them’s two and them’s two and thet’s four, and this one makes five—is thet the name fur it?”
“Yes, five,” he replied.
“Yes, five,” replied Swickey. “Ain’t five ’nough?”
The old man paused in his task and ran his blunt fingers through the mass of glittering shells that sparkled in the box. The glint of the cartridges dazzled him for a moment. He closed his eyes and saw a great gray horse standing in the snow beneath the pines, blood trickling from a wounded forward shoulder, and then a huddled shape lying beneath the horse. Presently Nanette, Swickey’s mother, seemed to be speaking to him from that Somewhere away off over the tree-tops. “Take care of her, Bud,” the voice seemed to say, as it trailed off in the hum of a noonday locust overhead. The counting of the shells continued. Painfully they mounted to the grand total of ten, when Swickey jumped to her feet, scattering the cartridges in the grass.