"Deer! hoh!" she cried in lofty scorn, reassuming her nasal tone. "You is shore a tenderfoot! Don' you-all know that blastin' scares all th' deer away from a minin' camp?"
Bennington looked confused. "No, I hadn't thought of that," he confessed stoutly enough.
"I kind of like to shoot!" said she, a little wistfully. "What sort of a gun is it?"
"A Savage smokeless," answered Bennington perfunctorily.
"One of the thirty-calibres?" inquired the sunbonnet with new interest.
"Yes," gasped Bennington, astonished at so much feminine knowledge of firearms.
"Oh! I'd like to see it. I never saw any of those. May I shoot it, just once?"
"Of course you may. More than once. Shall I come up?"
"No. I'll come down. You sit right still on that rock."
The sunbonnet disappeared, and there ensued a momentary commotion on the other side of the dike. In an instant the girl came around the corner, picking her way over the loose blocks of stone. With the finger-tips of either hand she held the pink starched skirt up, displaying a neat little foot in a heavy little shoe. Diagonally across the skirt ran two irregular brown stains. She caught him looking at them.