A heavy rifle of antiquated pattern was suspended from a couple of hooks above the bunks, but the old man explained that this piece of ordnance was “no good,” as he “couldn’t git no catritches that ’ud fit it, an’ it ’ad a busted trigger an’ a bum lock.” He had traded some skins for it years ago, and “the feller that ’ad it didn’t ’ave no catritches neither. I was stung in that trade, but them skins wasn’t worth nothin’ neither. Some day I’ll trade it off to some feller that wants a good rifle.”
On the shelf was a sinister looking firearm, which had once been a smooth-bore army musket. The barrel had been sawed off to within a foot of the breech. This he called his “scatter gun.” It was kept loaded with about six ounces of black powder, and wadded on top of this was a handful of pellets which he had made out of flour dough, mixed with red pepper, and dried in the sun. He explained that, at three rods, such a charge would go just under the skin. “It wouldn’t kill nothin’, but it ’ud be hot stuff.” He was keeping it “fer a certain purpose,” the nature of which he refused to divulge.
The intended destiny of the “hot stuff” was suggested by a story I afterwards heard from “Catfish John.” It seems that an eccentric character occasionally roamed along the beach who was a theological fanatic. He had tried to convert Sipes, and had often left tracts around the shanty when the owner was absent. He was intensely Calvinistic and utterly uncompromising in his beliefs. John did not consider that he was “quite all thar.” This unkempt individual projected his red bushy whiskers and wild eyes through Sipes’ open window one night.
“Do you believe in infant damnation?” he roared.
“’Cause if ye don’t yer jest as sure to go to hell as the sun is to rise tomorrer mornin’,” the intruder continued. He then left as suddenly as he had come. “Sipes sailed a pufectly good egg after ’im, but it didn’t stick,” remarked John.
It was Sipes’s custom to take the old shot gun over into the marshes of the back country, and shoot ducks in the fall and spring. His ideas of killing ducks were worthy of the Stone Age, for it was meat that he sought, and not sport. He always “killed ’em settin’,” and would “lay fer ’em ’till fifteen er twenty got in a bunch, an’ then let ’em ’ave both bar’ls.