"You're off hunting?"
"Goin' to shoot Jesse, thet's all."
"I'm sure," I said, "he cleaned it yesterday. Look here," and I took the rifle to show him it was clean. "See." I put my little finger nail in the breech while he looked down the barrel. "Come," said I, and told him that in my sewing-machine there was a bottle of gun oil. The rifle was in my possession, safe.
Then he heard Jesse coming. "Whist! Hide the gun!" he said, and as though we were fellow conspirators, I placed it behind a tree, so that my man saw nothing to cause alarm.
Jesse came, it seemed, in search of Billy.
"Hello, Kate," he said in greeting. "Say, youngster, when you sawed off that table leg to make your mother's limb, what did you do with the caster?"
CHAPTER XII
EXPOUNDING THE SCRIPTURES
I wonder how many persons live in Jesse's body? On the surface he is the rugged whimsical stockman, lazy, with such powers in reserve as would equip a first-class volcano. Sing to him and another Jesse emerges, an inarticulate poet, a craftless artist, an illiterate writer, passionate lover of all things beautiful in art and nature. And beneath all that is Jesse of the Sabbath, in bleak righteousness and harsh respectability, scion of many Smiths, the God-fearing head of his house, who reads and expounds the Scriptures on Sunday evenings to sullen Billy, the morose widow, and my unworthy self. Hear him expound in the vindictive mood:—