“This is the way,” said Hiram, pointing forward and quickening his step, as if apprehensive that Kirby would desert, “and Bumppo is the man.”
Kirby stopped short, and looked from one of his companions to the other in astonishment. He then burst into a loud laugh, and cried:
“Who? Leather-Stocking! He may brag of his aim and his rifle, for he has the best of both, as I will own myself, for sin' he shot the pigeon I knock under to him; but for a wrestle! why, I would take the creatur' between my finger and thumb, and tie him in a bow-knot around my neck for a Barcelony. The man is seventy, and was never anything particular for strength.”
“He's a deceiving man,” said Hiram, “like all the hunters; he is stronger than he seems; besides, he has his rifle.”
“That for his rifle!” cried Billy; “he'd no more hurt me with his rifle than he'd fly. He's a harmless creatur', and I must say that I think he has as good right to kill deer as any man on the Patent. It's his main support, and this is a free country, where a man is privileged to follow any calling he likes.”
“According to that doctrine,” said Jotham, “anybody may shoot a deer.”
“This is the man's calling, I tell you,” returned Kirby, “and the law was never made for such as he.”
“The law was made for all,” observed Hiram, who began to think that the danger was likely to fall to his own share, notwithstanding his management; “and the law is particular in noticing parjury.”
“See here, Squire Doolittle,” said the reckless woodchopper; “I don't care the valie of a beetlering for you and your parjury too. But as I have come so far, I'll go down and have a talk with the old man, and maybe we'll fry a steak of the deer together.”
“Well, if you can get in peaceably, so much the better,” said the magistrate. “To my notion, strife is very unpopular; I prefar, at all times, clever conduct to an ugly temper.”