“Why, Billy,” said I, “you little mortal, you! what do you use such a gun as this, for?”
“Look at the bull’s-eye, yonder,” said he.
“True,” said I; “but I can’t shoot her—it is impossible.”
“Go ’long, you old coon,” said Billy; “I see what you’re at.” (Intimating that all this was merely to make the coming shot the more remarkable.) “Daddy’s little boy don’t shoot anything but the old soap-stick, here, to-day, I know.”
The judges, I knew, were becoming impatient, and, withal, my situation was growing more embarrassing every second; so I e’en resolved to try the soap-stick, without farther parley.
I stept out, and the most intense interest was excited all around me, and it flashed like electricity round the target, as I judged from the anxious gaze of all in that direction.
Policy dictated that I should fire with a falling rifle, and I adopted this mode, determining to fire as soon as the sights came on a line with the diamond, bead or no bead. Accordingly, I commenced lowering old soap-stick; but, in spite of all my muscular powers, she was strictly obedient to the laws of gravitation, and came down with an uniformly accelerated velocity. Before I could arrest her downward flight, she had not only passed the target, but was making rapid encroachments on my own toes.
“Why, he’s the weakest man in the arms I ever seed,” said one, in a half whisper.
“It’s only his fun,” said Billy; “I know him.”
“It may be fun,” said the other, “but it looks mightily like yearnest to a man up a tree.”