Supper over, the two men helped Augusta with the dishes while the big Irishman dealt out sage counsels to provide for every emergency that might confront the two people who were to stay on here. He seemed to leave no room at all for doubt that they would stay. He refused to hear that they had no right to stay here and use Mr. McQuade's property. In the first place, he argued that McQuade was a rich old curmudgeon who would never know how much or how little of his property they might use. And in the next breath he represented McQuade to be a man of a heart of gold who would gladly move out of his own house and home to leave it to some one who had more need of it.
Jimmie reflected that the arguments were hopelessly contradictory, but as the whole manner of their evening's entertainment had been fantastic and more or less unbelievable he decided to leave study and decision over until the morning.
Augusta was not looking for logic. She had fallen under the spell of the big man's promises for Jimmie's health and she was willing to take Mr. McQuade's complacence for granted.
When they had settled down about the fire and the early evening noises of the woods were dying down to the occasional, lonely cheepings of a restless bird or the far distant, creepy baying of a hound somewhere in the hills, the talk became fitful and desultory.
Jimmie was keenly sorry for the big breezy man who was so cheerfully proposing to leave this place which apparently had been a safe haven and take the lonely, hopeless trail of a hunted man. And Augusta, always sensitive to Jimmie's moods and thoughts, was depressed and nervous with him. Every happy start of conversation which they tried to make seemed inevitably to turn back to something which must be avoided. They could not ask where "Mr. Smith" intended going, or hope that they might see him soon again, or even offer him provisions out of their own store, without bringing themselves upon the dismal question of what he had done and why he was "wanted."
"Can you shoot?" the big man asked in one of the pauses.
"I can hit things in a gallery, but I never hunted much," Jimmie explained.
"It's not the same thing at all. But if you've the eyes and the nerve you'll very soon learn. And you'll be wanting fresh meat. There'll be plenty of it hereabout in another month, birds and rabbits and later on deer. Get a good rifle and learn the times for shooting. Have your license right and see that you keep the law. You might think you wouldn't be bothered here. But the game people would spot you out in no time, and you being a stranger with a gypsy wagon you'd get no shrift at all." Jimmie commented to himself on the stranger's respect for what he himself in common with most people had always thought of as merely a formal law.
"You'll want to hunt, to kill things," the big man stated. "I don't know why it is, but it's a fact. No sooner does a man feel his own life and strength swellin' up in him than rightabout he wants to kill things. And, would you believe it, he thrives on it. Killing, do you know, is one of the healthiest occupations—"
A startling, ear-splitting noise broke out of the silence of the night and moved towards them with frightening rapidity.