Chapter 6

"Look out, youngsters, you don't fall in," said he.

Bobby still exalted with the favour he had been vouchsafed, looked up with dignity.

"_I_ am taking care of this little girl," he said deliberately, and turned his back.

The man chuckled and passed on.

For a long time they sat side by side looking straight out before them.

"Celia," said Bobby without turning his head, "I love you. Do you love me?"

"Yes," said Celia steadily.

Neither stirred by so much as a hair's breadth. After a little they arose and returned to the hotel. Neither spoke again.

Strangely enough the subject was not again referred to, although of course the children continued to play together and the excursions were not intermitted. There seemed to be nothing to say. They loved each other, and they were glad of each other's nearness. It sufficed.

Each morning Bobby awoke with a great uplift of the spirit, and a great longing, which was completely appeased when he had come into Celia's presence. Each evening he retired filled with an impatience for the coming day, and with divine rapture of little memories of what had that day passed. It seemed to him that hour by hour he and Celia drew closer in a sweet secret, intimacy that nevertheless demanded no outer symbol. When he spoke to her of the simplest things, or she to him, he experienced a warm, cosy drawing near, as though beneath the commonplace remark lay something hidden and subtle to which each must bend the ear of the spirit gently. This was the soul of it, a supreme inner gentleness one to the other, no matter how boisterous, how laughing, how brusque might be the spoken word. And in correspondence all the beautiful sunlit summer world took on a new softness and splendour and glory in which they walked, but whose source they did not understand.

This much for the essence of it. But of course, Bobby, being masculine must give presents after his own notion, and being a small boy must give them according to his age. The quarter he had earned from his father he invested in a pack of cards on the upper left-hand corner of which were embossed marvellous doves, wonderful flowers and miraculous tangles of scroll-work in colour. These he printed with Celia's name and address. Near the wharf and railroad station stood a small booth from which a discouraged-looking individual tried to sell curios. Bobby's eye fell on a cheap bracelet of silver wire from which dangled half a dozen moonstones. It caught his eye; day by day his desire for it grew; finally he asked advice on the subject.

"No, Bobby," replied his mother, "I don't think Celia would care for it. It is cheap-looking. She has several very pretty bangles already; and this is not a good one."

Nevertheless, Bobby, being as we have said thoroughly masculine, deliberated some days further, and bought it. The price was two dollars--an almost fabulous sum. Most men give their wives or sweethearts what they think they would like themselves were they women, and were a man to offer a gift. That is one reason why in so many bureau drawers are tucked away unused presents. Young as she was, Celia had the taste not to care for the moonstone bangle, but, like all the rest, she accepted it with genuine delight because Bobby gave it. She even wore it. These were the principal transactions of the kind; but anything Bobby particularly fancied he brought her. Shortly she became possessed of a bewildering collection consisting variously of large glass marbles with a twist of coloured glass inside; two or three lichi nuts, then a curiosity; a dried gull's wing; several exploded shotgun shells; and a "real," though broken-pointed chisel. Celia gave Bobby her tiny narrow gold ring with two little turquoises. He could just get it on his little finger, and wore it proudly, in spite of jeers. Being teased about Celia was embarrassing to the point of pain; but in the last analysis it was not unpleasant.

So matters slipped by. Abruptly the end of August came. One day Bobby found Celia much perturbed.

"I can't go out long," she said, "I've got to help mamma."

"What doing?" asked Bobby.

But Celia shook her head dolefully.

"Come, let's go walk somewhere and I'll tell you," said she.

They crossed Main Street to the shaded street on which lived Georgie Cathcart.

"What is it?" demanded Bobby again.

"We are going home to-morrow," Celia announced mournfully. "Mamma has a letter."

Bobby stopped short.

"Going home!" he echoed.

"Yes," said Celia.

"Then we won't see each other till next summer!" he cried.

"No," said she.

"And we can't walk any more or--or----" Bobby felt the lump rising in his throat.

"No," said Celia.

Bobby swallowed hard.

"Are--are you sorry?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Celia quietly. "Are you?"

"I don't know what I'm going to do!" cried Bobby desperately.

After a little, the main fact of the catastrophe being accepted, they talked of the winter to come.

"You'll write me some letters, won't you?" pleaded Bobby.

"If you write to me."

"Of course I will write to you. And you'll send me your picture, won't you? You said you would."

"I don't believe I have any," demurred Celia; "and mamma has them all; and they're very comspensive."

"I'll give you one of mine," offered Bobby, "if I have to get it from the album. Please, Celia."

"I'll see," said she.

They were moving again slowly beneath the trees.

Bobby looked up the street; he looked back. He turned swiftly to her.

"Celia," he asked, "may I kiss you?"

"Yes," said Celia steadily.

She stopped short, looking straight ahead. Bobby leaned over and his lips just touched her cool smooth cheek. They walked on in silence. The next day Celia was gone.

VII

UNTIL THE LAST SHOT

There remained as consolation after this heartbreaking defection but two interesting things in life--the printing press and the Flobert Rifle. Somehow the week dragged through until Sunday, when Bobby duly scrubbed and dressed, had to go to church with his father and mother. Bobby, to tell the truth, did not care very much for church. Always his glance was straying to a single upper-section of one of the windows, which, being tipped inward at the bottom, permitted him a glimpse of green leaves flushed with sunlight. A very joyous bird emphasized the difference between the bright world and this dim, decorous interior with its faint church aroma compounded of morocco leather, flowers, and the odour of Sunday garments. Only when the four ushers tiptoed about with the collection boxes on the end of handles, like exaggerated corn-poppers, did the lethargy into which he had fallen break for a moment. The irregular passage of the receptacle from one to another was at least a motion not ordered in the deliberate rhythm of decorum; and the clink of the money was pleasantly removed from the soporific. Bobby gazed with awe at the coins as they passed beneath his little nose. He supposed there must be enough of them to buy the Flobert Rifle.

The thought gave him a pleasant little shock. It had never occurred to him that probably the Flobert Rifle had a price. It had seemed so passionately to be desired as to belong to the category of the inaccessible--like Mr. Orde's revolver on the top shelf of the closet, or unlimited ice cream, or the curios locked behind the glass in Auntie Kate's cabinet. Now the revelation almost stopped his heart.

"Perhaps it doesn't cost more'n a thousand dollars!" he said to himself. And he had already made up his mind to save a thousand dollars for the purpose of getting a boat. The boat idea lost attraction. His papa had agreed to give half. Bobby lost himself in an exciting daydream involving actual possession of the Flobert Rifle. He resolved that, on the way home, if the curtains were not down, he would take another look at the weapon.

The curtains were not down; but now, attached to the Flobert Rifle, was a stencilled card. Bobby set himself to reading it.

"First Prize," he deciphered, "An-nual Trap Shoot, Monrovia Sportsman's Club, Sep. 10, 1879."

For some moments the significance of this did not reach him. Then all at once a sob caught in his throat. It had never occurred to poor little Bobby that there might be other Flobert rifles in the world; and here this one was withdrawn from circulation, as it were, to be won as prize at the trap shooting.

Bobby did not recover from this shock until the following morning. Then a bright idea struck him, an idea filled with comfort. The Rifle was not necessarily lost, after all. He trudged down to the store, entered boldly, and asked to examine the weapon.

"My papa's going to win it and give it to me," he announced.

A very brown-faced man with twinkling gray eyes turned from buying black powder and felt wads to look at him amusedly.

"Hullo, Bobby," said he, "so your father's going to win the rifle and give it to you, is he? Are you sure?"

"Of course," replied Bobby simply; "my papa can do anything he wants to."

The man laughed.

"What do you know about rifles, and what would you do with one?" he asked.

"I know all about them," replied Bobby with great positiveness, "and I know where there's lots of squirrels."

The storekeeper had by now taken the Flobert from the show window. The other man reached out his hand for it.

"Well, tell me about this one," he challenged.

"It's a Flobert," said Bobby without hesitation, "and it weighs five and a half pounds; and its ri-fling has one turn in twenty-eight inches; and it has a knife-blade front sight, and a bar rear sight; and it shoots 22 longs, 22 shorts, C B caps, and B B caps. Only B B caps aren't very good for it," he added.

"Whew!" cried the man. "Here, take it!"

Bobby looked it over with delight and reverence. This was the first time he had enjoyed it at close hand. The blue of the octagon barrel was like satin; the polish of the stock like a mirror; the gold plating of the most fancy lock and guards like the sheen of silk. Bobby loved, too, the indescribable _gun_ smell of it--compounded probably of the odours of steel, wood and oil. With some difficulty he lifted it to his face and looked through the rather wobbly sights. Reluctantly he gave it back into the storekeeper's hands.

"Would you mind, please," he asked, a little awed, "would you mind letting me see a box of cartridges?"

Stafford smiled and reached to the shelf behind, from which he took a small, square, delightful, red box. It had reading on it, and a portrait of the little cartridges it contained. Bobby feasted his eyes in silence.

"I--I know it's a prize," said he at last. "But--how much _was_ it?"

"Fifteen dollars," replied Mr. Bishop.

Bobby's eyes widened to their utmost capacity.

"Why--why--why!" he gasped; "I thought it must be a thousand."

Both men exploded in laughter, in the confusion of which, stunned, surprised, delighted and excited with the thought of eventual ownership, Bobby marched out the door, where he was joined gravely by Duke, his beautiful feather tail waving slowly to and fro as he walked.

Later in the day Kincaid, the spare, brown man with the twinkling gray eyes, met Mr. Orde on the street.

"Hullo, Orde!" he greeted. "Hear you have a sure win of the tournament."

"Sure win!" said Orde, puzzled, "What you talking about? You know I couldn't shoot against you fellows."

"Well, your small boy told me you were going to win that rifle down at Bishop's, and give it to him."

Orde's face clouded.

"He's been talking nothing but rifle for a month," said he. "I'm going West in September. Wouldn't have any show against you fellows, anyway."

When Bobby heard this paralyzing piece of news, his entire scheme of things seemed shattered. For a long time he sat staring with death in his heart. Then he arose silently and disappeared.

In the Proper Place, among Bobby's other possessions, was a small toy gun. Its stock was of pine, its lock of polished cast iron, and its barrel of tin. The pulling of the trigger released a spring in the barrel, which in turn projected a pebble or other missile a short and harmless distance. Then a ramrod re-set the spring. When, the previous Christmas, Bobby had acquired this weapon, he had been very proud of it. Latterly, however, it had fallen into disfavour as offering too painful a contrast to the real thing as exemplified by the Flobert Rifle.

Bobby rummaged the darkness of the Proper Place until he found this toy gun. From the sack in his father's closet--forbidden--he deliberately abstracted a handful of bird-shot. Retiring to the woodshed, he set the spring in the gun, poured in what he considered to be about the proper quantity of shot, and solemnly discharged it at the high fence. The leaden pellets sprayed out and spattered harmlessly against the boards. Thrice Bobby repeated this. Then, quite without heat or rancour, he threw the toy gun and what remained of the shot over the fence into the vacant lot behind it. His common sense had foretold just this result to his experiment, so he was not in the least disappointed; but he had considered it his duty to try the only expedient his ingenuity could invent. For if--by a miracle--the little gun had discharged the shot with force; Bobby might--by a miracle--be permitted to participate with it in the Shoot; and might--by a miracle--win the Flobert himself. Bobby was no fool. He marked the necessity of three miracles; and he did not in the least expect them. Merely he wished to fulfill his entire duty to the situation.

Saturday morning--the very day of the Shoot--Mr. Orde left for California.

After lunch Bobby trudged to Main Street, turned to the right, away from town, and set himself in patient motion toward the shooting grounds.

These were situated some two miles out along the county road. Bobby had driven to them many times, but had never attempted to cover the distance afoot. The sun was hot, and the way dusty. Many buggies and one large carry-all passed him, each full of the participants in the contest. No one thought of giving Bobby a lift, in fact no one noticed him at all. He could not help thinking how different it would be if only his father had not gone West.

"Hello!" called a hearty voice behind him.

He turned to see a yellow two-wheeled cart drawn by a gaunt white horse. On the seat close to the horse's tail sat Mr. Kincaid.

"Going to the Shoot?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said Bobby.

"Well, jump in."

Mr. Kincaid moved one side, and lifted half the seat so Bobby could climb in from the rear. Then he let the seat down again and clucked to the horse.

Mr. Kincaid wore an ancient gray slouch hat pulled low over his eyes; and a very old suit of gray clothes, wrinkled and baggy. Somehow, in contrast, his skin showed browner than ever. He looked down at Bobby, the fine good-humour lines about his eyes deepening.

"Well youngster," said he, "where's your father?"

Bobby's eyes fell; he kicked his feet back and forth. Beneath them lay Mr. Kincaid's worn leather gun-case, and an oblong japanned box which Bobby knew contained shells. For an instant he struggled with himself.

"He--he had to go to California," he choked; and looked away quickly to hide the tears that sprang to his eyes.

Mr. Kincaid whistled and raised his hand so abruptly that the old white horse, mistaking the movement for a signal, stopped dead, and instantly went to sleep.

"Get ap, Bucephalus!" cried Mr. Kincaid indignantly.

Bucephalus deliberately awoke, and after a moment's pause moved on. To Bobby's relief Mr. Kincaid said nothing further, but humped over the reins, and looked ahead steadily across the horse's back. He stole a glance at the older man; and suddenly without reason a great wave of affection swept over him. He liked his companion's clear brown skin, and the close clipped gray of his hair, and his big gray moustache beneath which the corners of his mouth quirked faintly up, and the network of fine crow's feet at his temples, and the clear steady steel-colour of his eyes beneath the bushy brows. On the spot Bobby enshrined a hero.

But now they turned off the main road through a gap in the snake-fence, and followed many wheel tracks to the farther confines of the field where, under a huge tree they could see a group of men. These hailed Mr. Kincaid with joy.

"Hello, Kin, old man," they roared. "Got here, did you? What day did you start? The old thing must be about dead. Lean him up against a tree, and come tell us about the voyage."

"The cannon-ball express is strictly on schedule time, boys," replied Mr. Kincaid, looking solemnly at his watch.

He drove to the fence, where he tied Bucephalus. The other rigs were hitched here and there at distances that varied as the gun-shyness of the horses. Bobby proudly bore the gun-case. Mr. Kincaid lifted out the heavy box of shells.

Bobby took in the details of the scene with a delight that even his just cause for depression could not quench.

The men, some twenty in number, sprawled on the ground or sat on boxes. Before them stood a wooden rack with sockets, in which already were stacked a number of shotguns. Two pails of water flanked this rack, in each of which had been thrust a slotted hickory "wiper" threaded with a square of cloth. A fairly large empty wooden box, for the reception of exploded shells, marked the spot on which the shooters would stand. The rotary trap lay in plain sight eighteen yards away. That completed the list of arrangements, which were, in the light of modern methods, as every trap shooter of to-day will recognize, exceedingly crude.

The men, however, supplied the interest which the equipment might lack. At that time every trap-shot was also a field shot. The class which confines itself to targets had not even been thought of. And good picked-shots have in common everywhere certain qualities, probably developed by the life in the open, and the unique influences of woodland and upland hunting. They are generous, and large in spirit, and absolutely democratic--the millionaire and the mechanic meet on equal ground--and deliberate in humour, and dry of wit. The quiet chaffing, tolerant, good-humoured, genuine intercourse of hunters cannot be matched in any other class.

The components of this group had each served his apprenticeship in the blinds or the cover. They knew each other in the freemasonry of the Field; and when they met together, as now, they spoke from the gentle magic of the open heart.

One exception must be made to this statement, however. Joseph Newmark, in advance of his time, shot methodically and well at the trap, never went afield, and maintained toward his neighbours an habitual dry attitude of politeness.

Bobby seated himself on the ground and prepared to listen with the completest enjoyment. These men were to him great or little according as they shot well or ill. That was to him the sole criterion. It did not matter to him that Mr. Heinzman controlled the largest interests in the western part of the state--he "couldn't hit a balloon"; nor that young Wellman was looked upon as worthless and a loafer--he was well up among the first five.

Nearly everybody smoked something. The tobacco smelled good in the open air.

"Well," remarked Kincaid, "if that Stafford party doesn't show up before long, I'm going home. I can't stand you fellows without some excitement for a counter-irritant."

"That's right, Kin," called somebody, "Better start that old Buzzard toward town pretty soon, if you want to get in for breakfast--there's a good moon!"

But at this moment a delivery wagon turned into the field, and drove briskly to the spot. From it Mr. Stafford descended spryly.

"Sorry to be a little late, boys; just couldn't help it," he apologized.

His arrival galvanized the crowd into activity. From the delivery wagon they unloaded boxes of shells, two camp stools and a number of barrels. The driver then hitched his horses to the fence, and returned to act as trap-puller.

One of the barrels was rolled out to the trap, opened, and its contents carefully spilled on the ground. It contained a quantity of sawdust and brown glass balls. These were about the size of a base-ball, had an opening at the top, and were filled with feathers. John, the driver of the delivery wagon, climbed down into a pit below the trap. He set the spring of the trap and placed a glass ball in its receptacle at the end of one of the two projecting arms. A long cord ran from the trap back to the shooting stand.

Mr. Stafford opened a camp stool, sat down, and produced a long blank book. In this he inscribed the men's names. Each gave him two dollars and a half as an entrance fee. A referee and scorer were appointed from among the half-dozen non-shooting spectators.

"Newmark to shoot; Heinzman on deck!" called the scorer in a business-like voice.

The trapper ducked into his hole. Mr. Newmark thrust five loaded shells into his side pocket, picked his gun from the rack and stepped forward to the mark. Then he loaded one barrel of the gun and stood at ready. In those days nobody thought of standing gun to shoulder, as is the present custom. The rule was, "stock below elbow."

"Ready," said he in his dry incisive voice.

"Ready," repeated the trap puller at his elbow.

"Pull!" commanded Mr. Newmark abruptly.

Immediately the trap began to revolve rapidly; after a moment or so it sprung, and the glass ball, projected violently upward, sailed away through the air. The mechanism of the trap was such that no one could tell precisely how long it would revolve before springing; nor in what direction it would throw the target. Nevertheless the mark offered would now, in comparison with our saucer-shaped target, be considered easy. Mr. Newmark brought his gun to his shoulder and discharged it apparently with one motion, before the ball had more than begun its flight. A roar of the noisy black powder shook the air. The glass sphere seemed actually to puff out in fine smoke. Only the feathers it had contained floated down wind.

"Dead!" announced the referee in a brisk business-like voice.

Mr. Newmark broke his gun and flipped the empty yellow shell into the box next him. A cloud of white powder smoke drifted down over the group. Bobby snuffed it eagerly. He thought it the most delicious smell in the world; and so continued to think it for many years until the nitros displaced the old-fashioned compounds. Four times Mr. Newmark repeated his initial performance; then stepped aside.

"Heinzman to shoot; Wellman on deck!" announced the scorer.

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,