"Pretty digging!" said he. "I find you're not the fool I took you to be; so here's to a better acquaintance with you."
"With all my heart," returned I; "but you must be as clever as I've been, and give me your name."
"To be sure I will, my old coon; take it, take it, and welcome. Anything else about me you'd like to have?"
"No," said I, "there's nothing else about you worth having."
"Oh, yes there is, stranger! Do you see this?" holding up his ponderous rifle with an ease that astonished me. "If you will go with me to the shooting-match, and see me knock out the bull's-eye with her a few times, you'll agree the old Soap-stick's worth something when Billy Curlew puts his shoulder to her."
This short sentence was replete with information to me. It taught me that my companion was Billy Curlew; that he was going to a shooting-match; that he called his rifle the Soap-stick, and that he was very confident of winning beef with her; or, which is nearly, but not quite the same thing, driving the cross with her.
"Well," said I, "if the shooting-match is not too far out of my way, I'll go to it with pleasure."
"Unless your way lies through the woods from here," said Billy, "it'll not be much out of your way; for it's only a mile ahead of us, and there is no other road for you to take till you get there; and as that thing you're riding in ain't well suited to fast traveling among brushy knobs, I reckon you won't lose much by going by. I reckon you hardly ever was at a shooting-match, stranger, from the cut of your coat?"
"Oh, yes," returned I, "many a time. I won beef at one when I was hardly old enough to hold a shot-gun off-hand."
"Children don't go to shooting-matches about here," said he, with a smile of incredulity. "I never heard of but one that did, and he was a little swinge cat. He was born a shooting, and killed squirrels before he was weaned."