The Claim Jumpers

"I thought I might see a deer."

"Deer! hoh!" she cried in lofty scorn, reassuming her nasal tone. "You

is shore a tenderfoot! Don' you-all know that blastin' scares all th'

deer away from a minin' camp?"

Bennington looked confused. "No, I hadn't thought of that," he

confessed stoutly enough.

"I kind of like to shoot!" said she, a little wistfully. "What sort of

a gun is it?"

"A Savage smokeless," answered Bennington perfunctorily.

"One of the thirty-calibres?" inquired the sunbonnet with new interest.

"Yes," gasped Bennington, astonished at so much feminine knowledge of

firearms.

"Oh! I'd like to see it. I never saw any of those. May I shoot it, just

once?"

"Of course you may. More than once. Shall I come up?"

"No. I'll come down. You sit right still on that rock."

The sunbonnet disappeared, and there ensued a momentary commotion on

the other side of the dike. In an instant the girl came around the

corner, picking her way over the loose blocks of stone. With the

finger-tips of either hand she held the pink starched skirt up,

displaying a neat little foot in a heavy little shoe. Diagonally across

the skirt ran two irregular brown stains. She caught him looking at

them.

"Naughty, naughty!" said she, glancing down at them with a grimace.

She dropped her skirt, and stood up beside him with a pretty shake of

the shoulders.

"Now let's see it," she begged.

She examined the weapon with much interest, throwing down and back the

lever in a manner that showed she was accustomed at least to the

old-style arm.

"How light it is!" she commented, squinting through the sights.

"Doesn't it kick awfully?"

"Not a bit. Smokeless powder, you know."

"Of course. What'll we shoot at?"

Bennington fumbled in his pockets and produced an envelope.

"How's this?" he asked.

She seized it and ran like an antelope--with the same gliding

motion--to a tree about thirty paces distant, on which she pinned the

bit of paper. They shot. Bennington hit the paper every time. The girl

missed it once. At this she looked a little vexed.

"You are either very rude or very sincere," was her comment.

"You're the best shot I ever saw----"

"Now don't dare say 'for a girl!'" she interrupted quickly. "What's the

prize?"

"Was this a match?"

"Of course it was, and I insist on paying up."

Bennington considered.

"I think I would like to go to the top of the rock there, and see the

pines, and the skull-stones, and the prairies."

She glanced toward him, knitting her brows. "It is my very own," she

said doubtfully. "I've never let anybody go up there before."

One of the diminutive chipmunks of the hills scampered out from a cleft

in the rocks and perched on a moss-covered log, chattering eagerly and

jerking his tail in the well-known manner of chipmunks.