“What be you awantin’ of a gun, Mrs. Gammit?” inquired the backwoodsman, looking up without surprise. He had not seen Mrs. Gammit, to be sure, for three months; but he had known all the time that she was there, on the other side of the ridge, one of his nearest neighbours, and not more than seven or eight miles away as the crow flies.
“It’s the bears!” she explained. “They do be gittin’ jest a leetle mite too sassy, down to my place. There ain’t no livin’ with ’em. They come rootin’ round in the garden, nights. An’ they’ve et up the white top-knot hen, with the whole settin’ of eggs, that was to hev’ hatched out next Monday. An’ 151 they’ve took the duck. An’ last night they come after the pig.”
“They didn’t git him, did they?” inquired Joe Barron sympathetically.
“No, siree!” responded Mrs. Gammit with decision. “An’ they ain’t agoin’ to! They scairt him though, snuffin’ round outside the pen, trying to find the way in.––I’ve hearn tell they was powerful fond of pork.––He set up sich a squealin’ it woke me; an’ I yelled at ’em out of the winder. I seen one big black chap lopin’ off behind the barn. I hadn’t nothin’ but the broom fer a weapon, so he got away from me. I’ll git him to-night, though, I reckon, if I kin have the loan of your gun.”
“Sartain,” assented the woodsman, laying down the breech-strap he was mending. “Did you ever fire a gun?” he inquired suddenly, as he was starting across the yard to fetch the weapon from his cabin.
“I can’t rightly say I hev’,” answered Mrs. Gammit, with a slight note of scorn in her voice. “But from the kind of men I’ve seen as kin, I reckon it ain’t no great trick to larn.”
Joe Barron laughed, and went for the weapon. He had plenty of confidence in his visitor’s ability to look out for herself, and felt reasonably sure that the bears would be sorry for having presumed upon her unprotected state. When he returned with the gun––an old, muzzle-loading duck-gun, with a huge 152 bore––she accepted it with careless ease and held it as if it were a broom. But when he offered her the powder-horn and a little bag of buckshot, she hesitated.
“What be them for?” she inquired.
Joe Barren looked serious.
“Mrs. Gammit,” said he, “I know you kin do most anything a man kin do––an’ do it better, maybe! A woman like you don’t have to apologize for nothin’. But you was not brung up in the woods, an’ you can’t expect to know all about a gun jest by heftin’ it. Folks that’s been brung up in town, like you, have to be told how to handle a gun. This here gun ain’t loaded. And them ’ere’s the powder an’ buckshot to load her with. An’ here’s caps,” he added, producing a small, brown tin box of percussion caps from his trousers pocket.