“I’m going to live so that youngster will never regret what he’s done.  That’s about the only reward I can give him.”

The nurse looked up gravely.  “If I have estimated that boy right,” she said, “I think that’s about the only reward he would care to have.”

That was a great night at the ranch.  Most delicious things to eat and drink awaited Con after his long isolation, and Mr. and Mrs. Clark welcomed him as if he had been a son instead of a nephew.  The range riders came in, each one getting him to tell of his antics with the sulphur and shovel of coals, over which they roared with laughter.  Banty’s delight at having his comrade back from danger knew no bounds, and when The Eena appeared Banty flung an arm about Con’s shoulders, exclaiming:  “Isn’t this old chap a splendid King Georgeman, Eena?”

The old hunter replied with much self-satisfaction:  “Maybe now you not think old Indian saying so queer.  Did I not say, me, that narrow, thin—­what you name it,—­nostril, shows man that is brave, man that has no fear?  Me sabe now.  He not ‘bally.’”

Gun-Shy Billy

“No, sir!  Not for me,” Bert Hooper was saying.  “I won’t join the crowd if Billy is going.  Do you fellows suppose I’m going to have my holiday all spoiled, and not get any game, all because you want Billy? He’s no good on a hunting trip.  I tell you he’s gun-shy.”

“That’s so,” said another boy.  “I’ve seen him stop his ears with his fingers when Bert shot his gun off—­more than once, too.”

“Ought to be named ‘Gussie,’” said Bert.  “A great big fellow like Billy, scared of a gun!  He must be sixteen, and large for his age at that.  He’s worse than that dog I had last year—­don’t you remember, boys?  He’d follow us for miles through the bush, raise game, point a partridge all right, and the second we shot a gun off—­no more dog.  All you’d see was a white-and-tan streak with its tail curled under it, making for home.”

“Well,” said Tommy McLean, a boy who never spoke until all the rest had thrashed a subject out, “I’d rather see a fellow gun-shy than see him a bally idiot with fire-arms.  I know when I got my gun, I got a lesson with it.  Father gave it to me himself, when I was fourteen, last year.  I never saw him look so serious as when he put it in my hands and said, ‘Tom,’ (he always calls me Tom, not Tommy, when he’s in earnest)—­’Tom,’ he said, ’a gun is a good thing in the right hands, a bad thing in the wrong.  A boy that is careless with a gun is worse than a born idiot; a boy that in play points a gun, loaded or unloaded, at any person, place, or thing, should be, and often does, land in prison.  A gun is made for three things only:  the first, to shoot animals and birds for food alone, not for sport; the second, to defend one’s life from the attack of wild beasts; the third, to shoot the tar out of the enemy when you are fighting as a soldier for your sovereign and your flag.’”