THE old muzzle-loader was so much the taller that when you stood opposed to it, only by a series of hitches, a few inches at a time, could you extract the ramrod from the slot. In your aiming exercises you leaned so far backward that you formed almost a half circle. The stock was scarred, the hammer was loose, the barrel was rusted and the sight awry, but it was a fine gun; yes, a fine gun, fit for a boy to worship.

And when, with father coaching you, its barrel firmly supported in the crotch of the apple tree and its butt pressed against your throbbing chest, you shut your eyes and jerked the trigger, as you picked yourself up while invidious spectators gamboled and cheered, with what gusto did you assert that “it didn’t hurt a bit,” and avowed that you wanted to do it again.

How it happened that here you were, headed for the open country with the old muzzle-loader hoisted athwart your shoulder, probably no one alive remembers, but you—and Hen Schmidt, your aider and abettor as accessory after the fact. Dangling against your right knee was the powder flask, dangling against your left knee was the shot flask, and the two banged and rattled as you walked. In one trousers pocket were wads, in the other caps.

“Lemme carry it?” pleaded Hen.

You refused.

“Naw, sir!” you rebuked. “You don’t know how.”

“Just to that big tree,” persisted Hen.

You relented; and under your watchful eye Hen proudly bore the ennobling piece to the tree adown the dusty roadside. Exactly at the tree you claimed possession again.

To-day, looking back, can you not see yourself, a sturdy little figure trudging valorously onward, with the two flasks swaying and jiggling and the old gun cutting like sin into your uncomplaining flesh, and with heart so buoyed by the glorious present that it refused to think on the dubious future; and Hen, scarcely less elate, solicitous to relieve you of your burden, keeping pace, step for step?

The birds, flitting over or hopping upon either hand along your route, witnessed and gaily laughed. Well might they laugh, because with impunity. Your death-dealing weapon was not loaded; not yet. But presently you halt and in an angle of the rail fence you load, do the two of you, yourself operating, while Hen, keenly critical, at each movement declaims and suggests.

“Aw, gee! That ain’t enough powder!” scoffs Hen. “What you ’fraid of? If it was mine, you bet I’d put in twice as much!”

“I guess I know,” you retort. “Guess I’ve seen my father load more times ’n you ever have! What you want to do, bust it?”

The powder is dumped into the muzzle, the gun being propped slantwise so that you may work conveniently. The invincible grains fall in a tinkling shower through the black cylinder. You stuff in a wad.

“Here—” says Hen. “Lemme do it.”

You ram it down, and Hen rams it down. In goes the shot, No. 4, nice and large. You insert the final wad. You ram, and Hen rams.

“Look out!” you warn Hen, who edges so close as to joggle you; and with breathless care you press upon the nipple a cap, the way you have seen your father do, and you lower the protecting hammer over it, also the way you have seen your father do. Assisted by Hen you restore the ramrod to its groove. You straighten up. You are ready. You shoulder arms.

You and Hen climb the fence and scale the hill, upon whose slope begins your favorite patch of timber. Making sport of your backs, along the fence that you have just quitted scampers a chipmunk, but you do not know. Your thoughts are ahead.

The consciousness that your gun is charged imbues you with a strange thrill of importance. You are deadly. Come what may, lion, bear, wildcat, squirrel, rabbit, eagle, owl, partridge, you are prepared, so let them one and all beware.

You and Hen talk in guarded tones, whilst your four eyes rove hither and thither, greedy to sight prey. But under-foot, stealthy though you fancy your advance, rustle the dried leaves, spreading afar the news of your passage; and hushed though you consider your voices, they penetrate into sharp ears attuned to catch the slightest alien sound. Eyes, sharper than yours, widen and wait.

You would give the world to see a rabbit or a squirrel. You have just as much chance of seeing a rabbit or a squirrel as you have of seeing a hippopotamus. However, it doesn’t matter.

Hist! On before something twitters.

“There’s a bird!”

“Sh, can’t you! I hear him!”

Cautiously you and Hen steal forward, tip-toeing over crackling leaf and twig, your gaze riveted on the distance.

“I see him!” announces Hen, excitedly.

“Where?” you whisper.

“There—in that tree! Now he’s runnin’ ’round the trunk! He’s a woodpecker.” (Naturalists might cavil and term him a “warbler,” but just the same he acts like a woodpecker!) “Can’t you see him?”

Alas, you can’t—at least, you don’t. Hen cannot abide such stupidity. Besides, the thing is liable to make off.

“Ain’t you got any eyes? Gee whizz! Gimme the gun. I can pop him from here.”

Give Hen the gun? Well, hardly! You clutch it the tighter, and strain and peer. Now you glimpse him—a tiny chap in a pepper-and-salt suit, busily engaged in pecking at the bark beneath his toes.

“I see him!” you mutter exultantly.

You stoop; Hen stoops. You glide up, making service of covert afforded by tree and bush, and your flasks catch, and sometimes you step on them. Hen, too, glides, just behind, imitating your every movement.

The hour is portentous, but the dare-devil bird braves it and maintains his post at table. Possibly, deceived by your woodcraft (as you fondly suppose), he is oblivious to the fact that yard by yard two boys are drawing closer and closer. You are breathing hard, and to your rear pants Hen, for the advance has been onerous.

“G’wan and shoot! He’ll fly away,” urges Hen, hoarsely.

Yes, you are near enough. No. 4 shot at fifteen yards ought to do the business for that chap. You slowly settle upon your knees, behind the tree trunk which is your shelter, and cock your piece. At the click the “woodpecker” for an instant ceases operations, and flirts his tail inquisitively.

“Darn it—you’ve scared him!” you accuse Hen, who shifts and squirms at your back, in attempts to secure a better view. Hen holds himself in suspense, apparently well-nigh suffocating with the effort. You bring your piece to bear, but it is so long and awkward that you are being worsted in the struggle, when Hen eagerly proposes:

“Lay it on my shoulder!”

You recede a little, and Hen wriggles forward, the transfer being accomplished with mingled fear and haste.

Hen’s shoulder is rather low for an ideal rest, but you may not complain. You sink as far as possible, and aim. The muzzle projects beyond the tree trunk, and wavers in space. Beyond the space is your suspicious woodpecker, a creature of the most unexpected and eccentric movements imaginable. He never stays “put.” Just as the sight approaches him, he changes position; and just as he approaches the sight, it changes. A conjunction of the two seems hopeless.

“Why don’t you shoot? What’s the matter with you?” gasps Hen.

You shut both eyes. Boom!

Backward you keel, head down, heels up, and the gun, jumping from Hen’s shoulder, rasps along the tree to the ground.

“Did I hit him? Where’d he go?” you cry frantically, staggering to your feet.

Hen is bounding toward the tree whereon the impudent bird had been foraging. You wonder that the tree yet remains, but there it is, to all appearances as hale as ever.

“Did I hit him?” you repeat, seizing the gun and following.

“I dunno. But he flew off kind of funny,” reports Hen.

“Find any blood? I bet I wounded him like everything, anyhow!” you assert. The woodpecker must have bled internally, for, search as you two might, no tell-tale splashes of gore could be discovered. There were even no feathers. You scanned the tree, but upon close inspection it still persisted in acknowledging no damage, despite the frightful leaden deluge to which you had subjected it.

“Aw, you missed him! Aw, gee!” suddenly bemoans Hen, overcome by disappointment.

“Didn’t neither. He flew just when I shot, and I couldn’t stop!” you reply, defensively—unmindful of the discrepancy evident between your denial and your excuse.

“If you’d let me shoot I’d have got him,” declares Hen, unplacated.

You proceed to load. Hen moodily holds aloof from helping you ram, and you regain in some measure your lost caste only when you offer him the privilege of the ammunition flasks. These he dons, and by this little touch of diplomacy you smooth over his ill humor.

Together you and he scout along the crispy ridge, ever on the qui vive for another mark, beast or bird. Crows scold. Ah, if you could but bag a crow! But they always flap off too soon. Bluejays jeer. You would stop that mighty quick if they would give you a chance. But they don’t. Even woodpeckers fight shy of that inimical, albeit not unerring, gun.

The gun aforesaid is now growing so heavy that the fact cannot be ignored. You balance it on one portion of your anatomy, and on another; yet the more it weighs and the sharper wax its angles, and you can secure no lasting ease.

“I’ll carry it,” volunteers Hen, prompt to take advantage of your significant maneuvers.

“Uh-uh,” you decline stanchly. You compromise by suggesting, in a moment, with off-hand bluffness: “Say, let’s sit down a while. There’s nothin’ up here to shoot.”

“Naw,” responds Hen, “I’ll tell you—let’s shoot woodchucks!”

The idea appeals. After “shooting” woodpeckers, “shooting” woodchucks ought to prove a pleasing diversion.

With the gun as angular as ever, but with your hunting instincts piqued anew, you followed while Hen led to the nearest woodchuck hole: that burrow under the stump on the side of the hill, across from Squire Lucas’s pasture; a matchless lair for an old ’chuck such as was the occupant, whence he could sally forth and wallow in the squire’s clover to his heart’s and stomach’s content.

Many a covetous glance had the boys of town and country cast toward this burrow; many a fruitless attack had silly dogs made upon its unresponsive portals; from time to time fresh earth about the entrance popularly indicated that the ’chuck was enlarging and remodeling his apartments, and it was commonly believed that he had tunneled clear through the hill: laughing to scorn the foes that vainly compassed him about, he lived and fattened, and spoiled as much clover as he could.

With bated breath and gingerly tread, you and Hen sneaked to ambush under cover of the zigzag rail fence that diagonally skirted the foot of the hill, before the woodchuck’s dwelling. Ah, how many other boys had lurked there, for hope springs eternal.

You trained your grim weapon upon the region of the hole. You allowed Hen to have a squint adown the trusty, and rusty, barrel.

“Gee! I bet that’ll pepper him!” commended Hen; and laying aside his flasks he equipped himself with a rock in each hand, for aiding in the proposed job.

Very peaceful and cozy was it there, against the fence, with Indian Summer (in retrospect, those falls were all Indian Summer) around you, the warm sun shining upon you, and the warm grass and pungent weeds an elastic cushion underneath. It was an agreeable change, to surrender your gun to the fence, and relax.

“Sh!” whispered Hen, angrily, when you sought to straighten a leg.

“I don’t believe he’s comin’ out,” you whispered back.

“Yes, he will,” averred Hen.

“Maybe he doesn’t stay there any more,” you hazarded anxiously.

“Course he does!”

“Maybe he’s gone to sleep for the winter, though.”

“Sh! Shut up! He won’t come out as long as you’re talkin’!”

You subsided, and with cheekbone glued to the gunstock, and eyes ferociously glaring along the barrel, at the hole beyond, you expectantly bided the first rash movement on the part of Mr. ’Chuck.

In the meantime, what of that woodchuck? Lured afield by the pleasant weather, from his predatory tour he was leisurely returning—halting now to nuzzle amidst the stubble, now to scratch—for a mid-day nap within his subterrene retreat. He waddled into a dried ditch and out again, slipped through his private wicket in a boundary hedge, and gradually working up the slope was approaching his home, on the side opposite to your rail fence, when Hen, suddenly espying him, was astounded into the yelp: “There he is! Shoot! Shoot!”

Startled into immobility, the woodchuck stared about with quivering whiskers and bulging eyes. Boys!

As in a dream, you vaguely saw a squat, furry shape, a cleft, vibrant nose and two broad, yellow teeth; and with the remembrance that your gun was pointing in the general direction of this combination, you desperately tugged at the trigger. Your sole thought was to “shoot, shoot,” the quicker the better. The report was the thing.

But no report came. The trigger would not budge.

“Darn it! You old fool, you! You ain’t got it cocked!” shrieked Hen, grabbing at your weapon.

With a whistle of decision the woodchuck bolted for sanctuary. He clawed, he slid, he sprawled, all at once. Hen frenziedly delivered both rocks. The ’chuck, at the mouth of his burrow, in a second more would have swung on the pivot of his four short, stout little legs and have whisked in like a brindled streak, when, having succeeded in cocking your piece, you blindly let go—bang!

The butt slammed you under the chin, knocking your teeth together upon your lower lip. You noted it not.

“We got him! We got him!”

Thus Hen, tumbling over the rail fence, was wildly bellowing—with a pardonable extension of the subject pronoun.

“Hurrah!”

You were on your feet in a twinkling, and were dashing in the wake of Hen, up the incline, midway of which, just below the stump, on his side lay the woodchuck, limp and still.

Hen circumspectly reached and stirred him with the tip of a toe; then, emboldened into the attitude of Victor, recklessly kicked him.

“He’s dead!”

“Je-rusalem! I should say he was!” you agreed, poking the inert mass. “Wasn’t that a dandy shot, though?”

“You bet!” praised Hen.

And so it was—considering the attendant circumstances.

Gloatingly you and Hen examined your prize, inch by inch, investigating him from his two front teeth to his scraggly tail. Most of all did you gloat upon the blood, striking proof of your valor, and ere you had finished you well-nigh could have drawn a diagram of the shot holes.

’Twas established that the aim had been perfect (yourself demonstrating to Hen precisely what had been your course of action), that the gun had shot tremendously, and that the woodchuck was a very prodigy of size and strength.

Poor ’chuck! He had made his last foray, long enough had he dared to live, and now, despite his cunning, he had fallen to a boy who shut both eyes before firing.

Homeward, is it? Certainly! Nothing is left to be gained on the trail. With the stride of conquerors, you and Hen march through the village—you with gun and ammunition flasks, Hen with the woodchuck, which he has appropriated, dangling by the tail.

“Well, well! Where did you get that fellow?” query the men.

“Oh, John and me shot him,” explains Hen.

“Crickety, but ain’t he a big one! How’d you get him?” query the boys.

“We shot him! And he was runnin’, too!” boasts Hen.

“Aw, you found him!”

“Didn’t neither—did we, John? You come here and I’ll show you the shot holes in him!”

So, side by side, you and Hen gallantly stepped, with the visible tokens of your calling, homeward bound. At the entrance to your alley, however, Hen inclined to lag; and as the back yard was being traversed he fell further behind. Your own pace was slower and less confident, now.

Hen flung you the woodchuck.

“I’ve got to go,” he maintained. “You can take him.”

The back door opened, and mother stood and gazed upon you, even as Hen was discreetly retiring.

“John!” she said. “What have you been doing?”

Beneath its powder grime your face paled. At once you began to realize how your lip was puffing, and how your shoulder was aching.

“We were huntin’ woodchucks,” you quavered.

“The idea!” said mother.

“We got one, too,” you offered, in piteous defense.

“Mercy!” exclaimed mother, at the sight. “Leave it right there, and come straight into the house!”

“Ya-a-a!” bantered Hen, gleefully, from the other side of the fence. “You’re goin’ to ketch it!”

Here the door closed behind you, shutting you in with your shame.