"Ever handle the long rifle?" asked Lynn, after a silence.
"Yes," answered Joe, simply.
"Ever shoot anythin'?" the frontiersman questioned, when he had
taken four or five puffs at his pipe.
"Squirrels."
"Good practice, shootin' squirrels," observed Jeff, after another
silence, long enough to allow Joe to talk if he was so inclined.
"Kin ye hit one--say, a hundred yards?"
"Yes, but not every time in the head," returned Joe. There was an
apologetic tone in his answer.
Another interval followed in which neither spoke. Jeff was slowly
pursuing his line of thought. After Joe's last remark he returned
his pipe to his pocket and brought out a tobacco-pouch. He tore off
a large portion of the weed and thrust it into his mouth. Then he
held out the little buckskin sack to Joe.
"Hev' a chaw," he said.
To offer tobacco to anyone was absolutely a borderman's guarantee of
friendliness toward that person.
Jeff expectorated half a dozen times, each time coming a little
nearer the stone he was aiming at, some five yards distant. Possibly
this was the borderman's way of oiling up his conversational
machinery. At all events, he commenced to talk.
"Yer brother's goin' to preach out here, ain't he? Preachin' is all
right, I'll allow; but I'm kinder doubtful about preachin' to
redskins.
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