"Pshaw! Nobody wouldn't pick me up, just for totin' a gun," the old man declared. With practiced fingers he extracted the shells, one by one. "I feel right naked without a six-shooter. I feel like I'd cast a shoe, or something."
"I wish you'd give up carrying it."
"Lessee you do a few tricks,'Bob'. Do the roll. Remember she don't stand cocked."
Miss Parker rose to her feet and took the weapon. She balanced it in her hand, then she spun it, rolled it, fanned it, went through a routine of lightninglike sleight-of-hand that Tom had taught her long before.
"Lessee you do a few shots," her father urged, when she handed it back to him.
"In here?"
"Sure! It's our shanty. Drive a few nails or—I'll tell you; kill that bear and save that tenderfoot's life." Tom pointed to a Winchester calendar on the rear wall, which bore the lithographic likeness of an enraged grizzly upon the point of helping himself to a hunter.
"Why, we'd have the whole town running in."
"Go on, son. Make it speak. Bears is easy killed."
"Nonsense."