After a moment she began again: “I don’t mind loading a dozen shells, dad.”
“What for?” he said. “It’s my fault I ain’t ready. I didn’t want you foolin’ with candles around powder and shot.”
“But I want you to have a good time to-morrow,” she urged, with teeth chattering. “You know,” and she laughed a mirthless laugh, “it’s Thanksgiving Day, and two woodcock are as good as a turkey.”
What he said was, “Turkey be darned!” but, nevertheless, she knew he was pleased, so she said no more.
There was a candle on her bureau; she lighted it with stiff fingers, then trotted about over the carpetless floor, gathering up the loading-tools and flimsy paper shells, the latter carefully hoarded after having already served.
Sitting there at the bedside, bare feet wrapped in a ragged quilt, and a shawl around her shoulders, she picked out the first shell and placed it in the block. With one tap she forced out the old primer, inserted a new one, and drove it in. Next she plunged the rusty measuring-cup into the black powder and poured the glistening grains into the shell, three drams and a half. On this she drove in two wads. Now the shell was ready for an ounce and an eighth of number nine shot, and she measured it and poured it in with practised hand. Then came the last wad, a quick twirl of the crimper, and the first shell lay loaded on the pillow.
Before she finished her hands were numb and her little feet like frozen marble. But at last two dozen cartridges were ready, and she gathered them up in the skirt of her night-gown and carried them to her father’s door.
“Here they are,” she said, rolling them in a heap on the floor; and, happy at his sleepy protest, she crept back to bed again, chilled to the knees.
At dawn the cold was intense, but old man Jocelyn, descending the dark stairway gun in hand, found his daughter lifting the coffee-pot from the stove.
“You’re a good girl, Jess,” he said. Then he began to unwind the flannel cover from his gun. In the frosty twilight outside a raccoon whistled from the alders.