I put a bottle on a box against the side of the barn and aimed as careful as all-git-out. My idea was to bust it right at the neck. Well, I jerked on the trigger and the gun went off and I looked at the bottle. It was still there, neck and all.

After the aim I took it didn’t seem possible, so I walked up close to find out if maybe I hadn’t slammed a hole right through it that couldn’t be seen—but there wasn’t any hole. I knew right off there must be something wrong with that gun. It was the very first time I’d ever shot it, and if a gun don’t shoot straight the first time, when it’s spang-whang new, what kind of shooting will it do when it gets to be old and worn? I was dog-gone disappointed.

Dad gave me that rifle for my birthday and I’d come hustling out right after breakfast to give it a try—and it wasn’t any good! I put in another cartridge and got some closer to the bottle and tried again. The bottle never wiggled. I came some closer and shot again, and then I came still closer and shot again. Six times I shot before I hit the danged thing and then I was so close I could have knocked it over with the rifle-barrel.

“Pretty middlin’ shootin’,” says somebody behind me, and I turned around quick. There was a kid I’d never seen. He was kind of small, with bare feet and clothes that looked as if he’d found them in an ash-barrel and then slept in them. His hair was kind of bristly, and he didn’t have on any hat. He wasn’t smiling or making fun of me as far as I could see, for his face was as sober as a houseful of deacons. It was a kind of a thin face with a sharp chin and a straight nose and funny crinkles around the eyes. But the eyes were gray and kind of sparkly. I looked at him a minute, wondering who he was, before I said anything. Then I says:

“Calc’late this gun ain’t much good.”

“Is it a reg’lar gun,” says he, “or jest a kind of a cap pistol?”

That made me mad, so I says, sarcastic: “Naw, this ain’t a gun. This is a pan of mush and milk.”

“Maybe,” says he, kind of slow and solemn, like he was thinking it over mighty careful—“maybe you could hit things better with it if it was mush and milk. It would spatter more.”

“Say,” says I, “who are you, anyhow?”

“I wa’n’t brung up to give anythin’ away free,” says he, “but I’ll trade you—my name for yourn.”

“It’s a trade,” says I. “Mine’s Moore. Mostly the kids call me Wee-wee.”

“Mine’s Atkins,” says he, “and folks call me Catty because I can climb like one.”

“One what?” says I.

“Mud turtle,” says he; “that’s plain. C-a-t-t-y—mud turtle. Spells it every time where I come from.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“Different places.”

“Goin’ to live here?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Hain’t thought about it much.”

“If you’re not goin’ to live here, what made you come here?”

“A body’s got to go some place,” says he, very solemn. “Dad and me wasn’t p’tic’lar. We didn’t start out to come here, we just got here, and here we be!”

“What’s your Dad do?”

“Dad don’t do much. He calc’lates to be shiftless.”

“Don’t he work?”

“I’ve seen him,” says Catty, “but it hain’t usual.”

“Are you rich?”

“Well—we got our health and these here clothes is mine, free and clear. No mortgages on ’em nor nothin’. Dad’s clothes is his’n, too, but they hain’t so gaudy as mine.”

“Kind of tramps?” says I, getting interested.

“Not tramps—j’st shiftless. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Where you sleepin’?”

“If you ain’t careful,” he says, as solemn as an owl, “you’ll ketch yourself askin’ a question. We been livin’,” says he, “in a little house down by the bayou.”

“That tumble-down shanty not far from the waterworks?”

“That’s the one.”

“There isn’t any furniture in it,” says I. “Movin’ about like Dad and me, furniture would be a nuisance.”

“There’s no glass in the windows.”

“We’re partial to fresh air.”

“Huh!” says I. “You’re dog-gone easy suited. If your Dad doesn’t work, how do you get to eat?”

“Well, there’s times when we have more mealtimes than we do meals, but Dad he gits an odd job, and I git an odd job and mostly we do pretty well, thank you kindly.” Just then Dad came out through the back gate, and right here I want to say something about my Dad. I heard a couple of women say one day that they guessed he was a little crazy, but I want to let you know that he ain’t crazy a bit, and I can lick any feller that says he is. Dad ain’t old, either. He ain’t forty yet. Only thing I got to complain about is the way he cusses over my grammar. He always talks as correct as Mother does, only more so, and he’s got manners. Not the kind of manners folks put on at a party or in church, but the kind you have always and use always and that look to people as if you didn’t really try to have ’em, but as if they came natural.

The reason those women said he was kind of crazy is because he don’t act just like everybody else in town. He’s polite even to the man that comes to get our garbage, and he treats boys as if they were just as old as he is, and don’t call them “My boy” and “Bub” and such like names. And he fusses around with me just like he was a kid. Why, he can do more things than any kid I ever saw!

“How’s the gun?” says he.

“Somethin’ seems to be wrong with it,” I says. “It don’t hit things.”

“Let me see,” he says, and just then a big rat went running along the alley. Well, sir, quick as a wink Dad snapped the gun to his shoulder, and off it went, and the rat went end over end. I ran over and picked it up by the tail. It was shot right plumb through the head.

“Huh!” says I.

“Maybe,” says Dad, “something was wrong with the way you aimed it.”

“Maybe,” says I.

Dad looked over at Catty and smiled. “Good morning,” says he.

“Good morning,” says Catty.

“Don’t believe I know you,” says Dad.

“He’s Catty Atkins,” says I. “He and his Dad just came to town. They’re shiftless.” Dad looked quick at Catty to see if I’d said something that hurt his feelings, but Catty only nodded that I was right.

“Do you find it hard work, being shiftless?” says Dad.

“We make out to enjoy it,” says Catty. “It must be pleasant,” says Dad. “I’ve often wished I was fixed so I could be shiftless. But when you’ve a family—”

Catty nodded. “There’s just Dad and me. He didn’t used to be shiftless till Ma died, so he says.”

“Are you going to make a profession of it,” Dad says, “or do you plan to do something else when you grow up?”

“Hain’t thought about it,” says Catty. “It must be fine,” says Dad, “to start off in the morning and not know where you are going, and not to care, and not to feel that you’ve ever got to come back. It must be splendid to go fishing when you want to, or to lie on your back in the sun when you want to, and to know that there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. Somehow it seems to me that if I could be shiftless I’d rather work at it in the country, in the woods or mountains, than around towns.” He nodded his head and so did Catty. “I’d rather be shiftless like a squirrel than like an alley cat,” Dad says.

“The bear’s the feller,” says Catty. “He pokes around and does what he wants to all summer when it’s fine, and then he goes to sleep warm and comfortable all winter, with no bother about grub or fuel. I wisht I was a bear.”

“Do you like corners?” says Dad, and I didn’t know what he meant, but Catty did.

“Dad and me talk a lot about corners,” says he. “Seems like corners is the most int’restin’ things in the world. Country roads is full of ’em. Heaps of times Dad and me will set down when we’re comin’ to a corner and argue about it for half an hour—about what we’ll see when we come to turn it. It’s a funny thing, but there’s a different thing around every corner you turn. No two of ’em’s alike.”

“And brooks,” said Dad, “especially mountain brooks.”

“They’re jest like stories,” says Catty. “Like them intrestin’ stories that you can’t git to sleep till you finish. I’d rather foller down a brook than anything.”

“Shoot?” says Dad.

“Never shot a gun.”

“Try it.”

Catty aimed at my bottle and missed it as far as I did. He sort of wrinkled his nose and says something to himself and waggled his head. You could see he didn’t like missing. When I got to know him better I found out that he was always like that. He didn’t like not being able to do things, and if he found out he couldn’t do something, he wouldn’t rest till he could do it. He went over and snooped around the ground till he had picked up six cartridges that had been shot, and sat them in a row on top of the fence. Then he walked off a ways and took a piece of rubber band out of his pocket. There was a leather pocket on it.

“What’s that?” says I.

“A beanie,” says he.

I’d never seen one. In our part of the country we used a sling-shot made of two rubber bands and a crotch.

Catty fingered in his pocket and piffled out a round pebble and fixed it in the leather. Then he drew back the rubber over the first finger of his left hand and shot quick. The pebble knocked off the first cartridge. And then, almost quicker than I can say it, he shot five more times, and every pebble knocked off a cartridge. I never saw such shooting.

“There!” says he.

“Fine shooting,” says Dad, and Dad’s eyes were shining like they always do when he’s pleased. “I’m glad I saw that.”

Then Dad put in about half an hour showing Catty and me how to shoot a gun, and we got so we could do a little better.

“The only way to get to be a marksman,” he says, “is to stick to it and shoot and shoot. Isn’t that so, Catty?”

“Yes,” says Catty.

Then Dad went away after telling Catty to come around often. “Tell your father I’ll drop in to see him—and talk about roads and brooks and the pleasures of shiftlessness,” he said, as he went through the gate.

I heard somebody whistle, and knew it was either Banty Gage or Skoodles Gordon. I whistled back.

“Here come the fellers,” says I. “Now we kin have a reg’lar shootin’-match.”

“Guess I’ll be moggin’ along,” says Catty.

“Why?”

“Oh, I dunno. Just guess I’ll be goin’.”

“I wisht you’d show those kids how you can shoot that beanie.”

“I ain’t much for kids. Don’t have much to do with ’em.”

“Why not? You stopped and talked with me.”

“I was sort of int’rested in the way you was missin’ that bottle. Glad I stopped, too. I got to see your Dad. He’s mighty near as good a Dad as mine.”

“Aw, rats!” says I. “Banty and Skoodles is heaps of fun.”

“I don’t git along with kids,” he says, stubborn. “Got so’s I never have anythin’ to do with ’em. Mostly I never have anythin’ to do with anybody but Dad.”

“Why?”

“We jest don’t git along. It’s on account of our bein’ shiftless. I’ve had to lick a sight of kids on account of callin’ me or Dad names. And then their Mas see ’em playin’ with me and makes ’em stop—and I have to lick ’em on that account.”

“Why don’t their Mas want them to play with you?”

“’Cause we’re shiftless.”

“My mother wouldn’t care.”

“Bet she would.”

“Anyhow, Dad wouldn’t. You seen him. He told you to come around, didn’t he?”

“I hain’t never seen anybody jest like your Dad before,” says Catty. “Mostly I get told to clear out.”

“Aw, shucks!” says I.

“Good-by,” says he. “Hope you git to shoot that gun like a champeen. Maybe I’ll see you ag’in some day.”

“Come around any time,” says I; “and, if you hain’t got any objection, I’ll drop around your place.”

“Come ahead,” says he. “Maybe we’ll still be there, and I guess I kin stand it if you kin.” He started off, but he stopped and says: “Your Dad—die’s all right. I like your Dad.”