Feb OO SS 5 pa ehh Ceiba: 

BRADLEY, FROM BAGGS 237 
o’clock and I'll tend to yore case in the 
back room after I close up. I know what’s 
the matter with you.” 
Of course I was at the store at the ap- 
pointed time, and I had not been so happy 
in months as I was when Bradley locked 
the front door and switched off the electric 
lights and we retired to the back room. 
“So you’re from Ioway?” said Bradley, 
resuming the conversation which had been 
interrupted by the closing up of the store. 
“Well, when I was a camp-mover for 
the Standard Meat and Live Stock Com- 
pany, the only white herder I had come 
from Clinton. I used to spend a good night 
when I got around to Blackman. He was 
a hunter for you. He never did get done 
blowing about the chicken-shooting he 
used to have back in Ioway. Down here they 
put the accent on the second syllable, and 
ask you is it a big place! Get a chair. 
“Now, young man,” he resumed; “‘you 
asked me can I walk, can I shoot, have I 
got a good dog, would I like to flock with a 
man from the West? You just set still in 
that there chair and smoke yore pipe and 
spit in that ash-pail and I’ll shore enlighten 
you. You got half an hour ?” 
“Four or five of ’em,’’ I told him, smiling 
my extreme satisfaction. 
“Well, sir, the last man I got acquainted 
with here that said he come from the West 
required them same things of me. I guess 
the only trouble was he come from Ohio! 
And before I got through with him I shore 
did want to give him a touch of the old 
Livereater’s discipline. 
“When we organized the gun club here, 
shortly after I come to town and started in 
business, along comes this here Dr. Gilder, 
from Ohio, and as breezy an old, gray- 
whiskered gazabo as I ever stood up and 
shot with. He’d been a trap-shooter before, 
he had, and he had money, too. Didn’t 
seem to do anything but bum around and 
enjoy himself and tune up his chin. 
“After we had done a little preliminary 
practice one Saturday afternoon, in Septem- 
ber, this Dr. Gilder, from the West, up 
and challenged me to a match. Hollered 
it out loud so everybody could hear. 
§ “Well, I never let my stomach affect my 
manners, if I can help it, and so I just 
swallowed my disgust at his patronizing 
way and said, ‘All right, sir. Loser pays 
for the targets, eh?’ But not for him. 
He’d been watching me, I guess, and was 
out to make a gallery play. He made a 
regular little speech and said that him and 
me having had considerable trap-shooting 
in the West, should show the crowd what 
we was made of and how much real sport 
there was in it. We’d have to shoot for 
something worth while, said he. And he 
wound up by challenging me to shoot at 
100 targets, unknown angles, him to get 
all the ammunition from me he could shoot 
away in a week if he won, and me to be his 
guest on a shooting trip for a week if I 
won. Now, what do you think of that? 
Say, he thought he had a cinch for about 
twenty-five dollars’ worth of shells. 
“T won. I just had to; I was doing 
business on small capital. 
“Time went on and I began to think our 
celebrated sportsman from Ohio was not 
as game as he had seemed. And then, one 
Monday, the first of November, when 
I was as busy as a cranberry merchant, 
he telephoned me that he was all ready 
to go grouse-shooting on the two o’clock 
train, and for me to meet him at the 
station! What do you think of that? 
“He had to show me, and though it 
cost me good money to go and neglect my 
business, I was Johnny-on-the-spot at the 
depot when the train pulled in. We went 
to a place up in Sullivan County, and it 
looked good to me going up on the train. 
I had never shot a partridge in my life, 
but I figured from what I had read of them 
and what I’d been told, we was going to 
have some good shooting. But wait! 
“Mr. Windbag from Ohio had put up 
another game on me. He was as nice as 
a new yellowback in yore vest pocket going 
up, but when he got in among the five or 
six other shooters at the little hotel he 
turned loose on me again—made another 
speech at the supper table. Said I was a 
world-beater at the traps and he was now 
going to show me some shooting that was 
shooting. 
“Mr. Bradley,’ he orated at me, ‘you 
are my guest, and I am bound you shall 
have the time of yore life. But there is a 
little favor I must ask of you, sir. All my 
life I have made it a practice to hunt quite 
