Mr. Heinzman was already at the mark; and young Wellman arose and began to break open a box of shells. Mr. Newmark thrust his gun barrels into one of the pails and with the hickory wiper pumped the water up and down.
"He's a good snap-shot," Bobby heard a man tell a stranger, in a half-voice.
"Has a brilliant style," commented the other.
They fell into a low-toned conversation on the partridge season, and the ducks, to which Bobby listened with all his ears, the while his eyes missed nothing of what took place before him. Nobody now spoke aloud. The chaffing had ceased. Shooter's etiquette prohibited anything that even by remote possibility might "rattle" the contestants. Only the voices of the men at mark and the referee were heard, and the heavy bang of the black powder. Bobby liked to listen to the referee. Reporting, as he did, hundreds of results in the course of the afternoon, his intonation became mechanical.
"Dead!" he snapped in the crispest, shortest syllable, when the glass ball was broken by the charge.
"Law-s-s-t!" he drawled when the little sphere sailed away unharmed.
Each shooter on finishing his first string of five, swabbed out his gun, leaned it against the rack, and went to squat in the group where he commented to his friends on his own or others' luck, but always quietly. An air of the strictest business held the entire assembly.
This broke slightly when Mr. Kincaid's name was called. A stir went through the crowd; and some one called out,
"Go it, Old Reliable. Have you had any hoops put around her lately?"
Mr. Kincaid grinned good-naturedly, but made no reply. He had discarded his coat; and now wore a brown cardigan jacket. He took his place with the greatest deliberation, consuming twice as much time as any one else.