"I've come to borry yer gun!" said Mrs. Gammit, appearing suddenly, a self-reliant figure, at the open door of the barn where Joe Barron sat mending his harness. She wore a short cotton homespun petticoat and a dingy waist; while a limp pink cotton sunbonnet, pushed far back from her perspiring forehead, released unmanageable tufts of her stiff, iron-grey hair.
"What be _you_ awantin' of a gun, Mrs. Gammit?" inquired the backwoodsman, looking up without surprise. He had not seen Mrs. Gammit, to be sure, for three months; but he had known all the time that she was there, on the other side of the ridge, one of his nearest neighbours, and not more than seven or eight miles away as the crow flies.
"It's the bears!" she explained. "They do be gittin' jest a leetle mite _too_ sassy, down to my place. There ain't no livin' with 'em. They come rootin' round in the garden, nights. An' they've et up the white top-knot hen, with the whole settin' of eggs, that was to hev' hatched out next Monday. An' they've took the duck. An' last night they come after the pig."
"They didn't git _him_, did they?" inquired Joe Barron sympathetically.
"No, siree!" responded Mrs. Gammit with decision. "An' they ain't agoin' to! They scairt him though, snuffin' round outside the pen, trying to find the way in.--I've hearn tell they was powerful fond of pork.--He set up sich a squealin' it woke me; an' I yelled at 'em out of the winder. I seen one big black chap lopin' off behind the barn. I hadn't nothin' but the broom fer a weapon, so he got away from me. I'll git him to-night, though, I reckon, if I kin have the loan of your gun."
"Sartain," assented the woodsman, laying down the breech-strap he was mending. "Did you ever fire a gun?" he inquired suddenly, as he was starting across the yard to fetch the weapon from his cabin.
"I can't rightly say I hev'," answered Mrs. Gammit, with a slight note of scorn in her voice. "But from the kind of men I've seen as _kin_, I reckon it ain't no great trick to larn."
Joe Barron laughed, and went for the weapon. He had plenty of confidence in his visitor's ability to look out for herself, and felt reasonably sure that the bears would be sorry for having presumed upon her unprotected state. When he returned with the gun--an old, muzzle-loading duck-gun, with a huge bore--she accepted it with careless ease and held it as if it were a broom. But when he offered her the powder-horn and a little bag of buckshot, she hesitated.