follow these Indians
away into the Far West, where they were going, and be barbarians for the
rest of their days; and the wonder is that some of the fellows did not
try it.

GUNS

After the red men had flitted away like red leaves, their memory
remained with the boys, and a plague of bows and arrows raged among
them, and it was a good while before they calmed down to their old
desire of having a gun. But they came back to that at last, for that was
the normal desire of every boy in the Boy's Town who was not a girl-boy,
and there were mighty few girl-boys there. Up to a certain point a
pistol would do, especially if you had bullet-moulds, and could run
bullets to shoot out of it; only your mother would be sure to see you
running them, and just as likely as not would be so scared that she
would say you must not shoot bullets. Then you would have to use
buckshot, if you could get them anywhere near the right size, or small
marbles; but a pistol was always a makeshift, and you never could hit
anything with it, not even a board fence; it always kicked, or burst, or
something.

Very few boys ever came to have a gun, though they all expected to have
one. But seven or eight boys would go hunting with one shot-gun, and
take turn-about shooting; some of the little fellows never got to shoot
at all, but they could run and see whether the big boys had hit anything
when they fired, and that was something. This was my boy's privilege for
a long time before he had a gun of his own, and he went patiently with
his elder brother, and never expected to fire the gun, except, perhaps,
to shoot the load off before they got back to town; they were not
allowed to bring the gun home loaded. It was a gun that was pretty safe
for anything in front of it, but you never could tell what it was going
to do. It began by being simply an old gun-barrel, which my boy's
brother bought of another boy who was sick of it for a fip, as the
half-real piece was called, and it went on till it got a lock from one
gunsmith and a stock from another, and was a complete gun. But this took
time; perhaps a month; for the gunsmiths would only work at it in their
leisure; they were delinquent subscribers, and they did it in part pay
for their papers. When they got through with it my boy's brother made
himself a ramrod out of a straight piece of hickory, or at least as
straight as the gun-barrel, which was rather sway-backed, and had a
little twist to one si