The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound

TARGET PRACTICE

The two boys spent most of the following week rolling logs and they were busy among them one hot afternoon when Mr. Oliver walked out of the bush nearby. As they did not immediately see him, he stopped and stood watching them in the shadow for a few minutes. Frank was feeling more cheerful by this time, though his hands were still very sore and, as a good many of the logs were burned on the outside, he was more or less blackened all over. He was getting used to the work, and Jake, who had arrived with the sloop in the meanwhile, relieved him and his companion of the heaviest part of it. Turning around presently at a sound, Frank saw Mr. Oliver smiling at him.

"If I were as grimy as you I think I'd go in for a swim," he said. "It's hot enough, and there's a nice beach not far away. I dare say Harry will go along with you while Jake and I put up these logs."

Harry lost no time in throwing down his handspike, and they set out together down a narrow trail through the woods, which led them out by and by upon a head above the cove in which the sloop lay moored. Standing on the edge of the crag, Frank looked down upon the clear, green water which lapped smooth as oil upon a belt of milk-white shingle and broke into little wisps of foam beneath the gray rocks at the mouth of the cove. Beyond this the sea flashed silver in the sunlight like a great mirror, except where a faint, fitful breeze traced dark blue streaks across it. Dim smudges of islands and headlands broke the gleaming surface here and there, and high above it all was a cold white gleam of eternal snow.

In a few minutes they had scrambled down a winding path, and Frank, stripping off his clothes, waded into the water abreast of the sloop which lay swinging gently about a dozen yards from the beach.

"Can you swim off to her?" shouted Harry.

Frank said that he thought he could, and set about it with a jerky breast stroke, for he was not very proficient in the art. The water was decidedly cold and he was glad when he reached the sloop. Clutching her rail where it was lowest amidships he endeavored to pull himself out. To his disgust he found that his feet would shoot forward under the bottom of her, with the result that he sank back to the neck after each effort. When he had made two or three attempts he heard a shout:

"Hold on! You'll never do it that way."

Harry shot toward him, his limbs gleaming curiously white through the shining green water, though his face and neck showed a coffee-brown, as did his lower arms, which he swung out above his head, rolling from side to side at every stroke. He grasped Frank's shoulder and pushed him toward the stern of the sloop.

"Now," he said when he clutched it, "there are just two ways of getting out of the water into a boat. If she has a flat stern you make for there and get your hands on the top of it spread a little apart. Then you heave yourself up by a handspring – though that isn't very easy."

Frank smiled at these instructions, but said nothing. It was easy for him, because he had learned the trick in a gymnasium. Suddenly jerking down his elbows, which ever since he had grasped the stern were as high as his head, he shot his body up until his hands were down at his hips. Then, as his waist was level with the sloop's transom, he quietly crawled on board. Harry, however, had to make two or three attempts before he succeeded, and then he looked at his companion with undisguised astonishment.

"I've never done it right away yet," he said admiringly. "Say, do you know how to dive?"

"No," replied Frank; "that is, I've scarcely tried."

Harry led him forward where the boat's sheer was higher and he could stand a couple of feet or so above the water.

"You only get half the fun out of swimming unless you can dive," he said. "Let's see what kind of a show you make."

Frank stiffened himself and jumped. At least, that was what he meant to do, but as it happened, he merely threw himself flat upon the water, and the result was rather disconcerting. He felt as though all the breath had been knocked out of him, and in addition to this all the front of his body was smarting. He was about to swim toward the stern again when Harry stopped him.

"Hold on!" he called. "You may as well learn the other way of getting out, and if she's a sailing craft with a bowsprit it's much the easiest one. Swim forward to the bow."

Frank did so and saw that a wire ran from the end of the bowsprit, dipping a little below the water where it was attached to the boat. He had no difficulty in getting his foot upon it, and after that it was a simple matter to crawl on board. His chest and limbs were still smarting and were very red when he joined Harry. The latter regarded him with a look of amusement.

"You'll get hurt every time, if you dive like that," he said. "Look here," and he stood up on the boat's deck. "You want to get your weight on the fore part of your feet all ready to shove off before you go. Then you must shoot as far forward as you can – falling on it won't do – and hollow your back and stiffen yourself once you're under. That is, when you want to skim along just below the surface. Watch me."

Leaning forward a little he sprang out from the boat, a lithe, tense figure, with hands flung straight forward over his head. They struck the water first, and he went in with an impetus which swept him along scarcely a foot beneath the top. Then his speed slowly slackened and he had stopped altogether about a length of the boat away when he raised his head and swam back to her.

"You don't want to try that in less than four feet until you're sure you can do it right," he said when he had climbed on board. "The other kind of diving's different." Then, taking up a galvanized pin, he threw it in. "See whether you can fetch it. There's about eight or nine feet of water here. You can open your eyes as soon as your head's in, and you won't have any trouble in coming up again. Jump, and throw your legs straight up as you go."

Frank managed this time not to drop in a heap as he had done before. He also opened his eyes under water for the first time and found it perfectly easy to see. It was like looking through green glass. He could make out the pin lying a long way down beneath him. It was, however, impossible to reach it. The water seemed determined on forcing him back to the top, and when he abandoned the struggle to get down he seemed to reach the surface with a bound.

"How far did I go?" he gasped.

"About six feet. It's quite as far as I expected."

Harry plunged, and Frank, who had climbed out in the meanwhile, saw him striking upward with his feet until he turned and came up with a rush, holding the pin in one hand. Flinging it on board he headed for the beach and was standing on the shingle rubbing himself with his hands when Frank joined him.

"I guess you had two towels when you went swimming back East?" he laughed.

Frank looked up inquiringly, acknowledging that he usually had taken one.

"Well," said Harry, "we have them at the homestead, but there are ranches in this country where you wouldn't get even one."

"No towels!" exclaimed Frank in some astonishment. "What do they use instead?"

"Some of them cut a very little bit off of a cotton flour bag. Those bags are valuable because they keep them to mend their shirts with. I've a notion that the other fellows sit in the sun."

Frank laughed and scrambled into his clothes after rubbing himself with his hands. He was commencing to realize that whether Harry was joking with him or not it was unavoidable that they should have different ways in different parts of so big a country. Indeed, now that he was some four thousand miles from Boston, he felt that instead of its being curious that the people were slightly different it was wonderful that they were so much the same. If one measured four thousand miles across Europe and Asia one would get Frenchmen at the one end and wild Cossacks or nomad Tartars at the other, with perhaps a score of wholly different nations, speaking different languages, between.

They had an excellent appetite for supper when they went back to the ranch, and after the meal was over, Mr. Oliver took down a rifle from the wall.

"You can bring yours along, Harry," he said, and then turned to Frank. "In a general way, a rancher doesn't get much time for hunting, and he seldom goes out for the fun of the thing, but an odd deer or grouse comes in handy now and then. Anyway, before you can hunt at all you must learn to shoot and you may as well begin."

"Dad's a pot-hunter," chuckled Harry. "At least, that's what the two smart sports we had round here last fall said he was."

A gleam of amusement crept into his aunt's eyes, but Mr. Oliver's face contracted into a slight frown.

"Harry knows my views, but you had better hear them, too," he said to Frank. "I'm certainly what those fellows called a pot-hunter, though they very foolishly seemed to think that one ought to be ashamed of it. Most of the ranchers in this district take down the rifle only when they want something to eat, and that's the best excuse there is for shooting. Is it a desirable thing to destroy a dozen harmless beasts for the mere pleasure of killing, and leave them in the bush for the wolves and eagles?"

"Don't the game laws prevent that, sir?" Frank asked.

"They limit a man to so many head of this and that, and in a general way he brings no more out with him, but it doesn't by any means follow that he hasn't killed a bear or a deer that he doesn't mention in some lonely ravine. The sport who hasn't a conscience is as big a pest in a game country as the horn and hide hunter used to be, and we have to thank him for practically exterminating several of the finest beasts in North America."

"Wouldn't the clearing of virgin country and the way the farms and ranches spring up account for it?"

"Only to some extent. It's my opinion that there are more deer and bears about the smaller ranches than you could find anywhere else. All this is no reason why you shouldn't learn to shoot; that is, to hit your game just where you want to and kill it there and then."

He walked out with his rifle and the boys followed him across the clearing. Here Harry fixed a piece of white paper about two feet square with a black dab in the middle of it on the trunk of a big fir, after which he came back to where the others were standing.

"How far do you make it?" his father asked.

"About a hundred yards."

Mr. Oliver now turned to Frank.

"As I think you told me you couldn't shoot, I'll give you a short lecture on the principles of the thing. When they're after birds most men use a scatter gun. It will spread an ounce of shot – several hundred pellets – over a six-foot circle at a distance of about forty yards; but the rifle is the great weapon of western America. Take this one and open the breach – now look up the barrel."

"I can see little grooves twisting round it like a screw," said Frank.

"That's the rifling. It serves two purposes. The bullet – you use only one – has to screw round and round to get out, and that gives the explosion time to act upon it. It increases the muzzle velocity. Then it gives the bullet a rotary motion, and anything spinning on its axis travels very much straighter than it would do otherwise. It's the twisting motion that keeps a top from falling over."

Frank could readily understand this, and he remembered what he had read about the gyroscope.

"Now," continued Mr. Oliver, "we have to consider the pull of the earth upon the bullet, which would bring it down, and to counteract this you have to direct it rather upward. The slight curve it makes before it reaches its mark is called the trajectory, and it naturally varies with the distance. You arrange it by the sights. There are two of them, one on the muzzle and one near the breach. The last one slides up and down like this. The farther off the mark is the higher it must go. As you have to get them both in line, it's evident that pushing the back one up will raise the muzzle. You can understand that?"

Frank said that he could, and Mr. Oliver pushed the rearsight down and snapped a lever.