Rayton laughed with a note of astonishment and relief. "Did you come all the way out to ask about my shoulder and my cold?" he cried. "Well, you are a considerate chap, I must say! But it was foolish of you, Dick. I'm right as wheat; but it is mighty good of you to feel so anxious, my dear old chap—and you may be sure I'll never forget it."
Still the trapper smiled, and still the moisture gleamed in his dark eyes.
"I—I felt anxious—oh, yes," he said slowly. "I couldn't think o' nothin' else all the time I was trailin' along through the woods an' all last night in camp. That's right. So I just up an' lit out to tell you—to tell you the truth. I was a fool an' a coward not to tell it before. I'm the man who shot you!"
"What?" cried Rayton, staring. "You? For Heaven's sake, Dick, don't be a fool! Have you been hitting the jug again?"
"It's the truth," said the trapper quietly. "I shot you—an' I was scart to own up to it. I didn't know it was you until—until I guessed it. I thought I had come pretty near hittin' somebody—but not you. I didn't know who. I heard the yells—an' they sounded strong enough. I'll tell you just how it was, Reginald."
He paused, breathing quickly, and brushed his hand across his face. Rayton went to the door and turned the key.
"Buck up, Dick," he said. "If you shot me—well, that's all right. No harm done; but tell me all about it if it will make you feel any better."
"It was this way," began the trapper. "I was trailin' 'round, lookin' for a buck deer or anything that might happen along—and after a while I seen what I took to be the neck an' shoulders of a buck. The light was bad, you know. The thing moved a little. I was sure I could see its horns. So I let fly. Down he went—an' then I heard the durndest hollerin' an' cussin'—an' I knew I'd made a mistake. But the cussin' was that strong I thought I'd missed. I cal'lated the best thing I could do was just to get away quietly an' keep my mouth shut; and just then came a bang like a cannon an' half a peck of pa'tridge shot peppered the bushes all round me. Then I was more'n sure I didn't hit the man, whoever he was, so I just lit out fer home, runnin' as quiet as I could.
"I got home all right, thinkin' it was all a mighty good joke on me, an' turned in soon after supper. But I couldn't get to sleep. I began to wonder if I'd missed the mark, after all. The light was bad, of course; but I don't often miss a shot like that at two hundred yards. I commenced workin' it out in my mind, an' thinkin' it over an' over every way.
"Moose an' caribou, an' even deer, run miles with these here nickled bullets in them—aye, an' right through 'em; an' I've read about soldiers fightin' for five or ten minutes after they was hit. Then why shouldn't the man I fired at by mistake holler an' cuss an' let fly at me, even if he was plugged? That's the way I figgered it out—an' pretty soon I began to think I had hit him.