EVERY evening before he began to tell stories, Pa made the bullets for or his days hunting. Laura and Mary helped him. They brought and the box full of the big, long-handled spoon, and the box full of bits of lead, and the bullet-mold. Then while he squatted on the hearth and made the bullets, they sat one on each side of him, and watched.
First he melted the bits of lead in the big spoon held in the coals. When the lead was melted, he poured it carefully from the spoon into the little hole in the bullet-mold. He waited a mihen he opehe mold, and out dropped a bright new bullet onto the hearth.
The bullet was too hot to touch, but it shone so temptingly that sometimes Laura or Mary could not help toug it. Then they burheir fingers. But they did not say anything, because Pa had told them o touch a new bullet. If they burheir fingers, that was their own fault; they should have minded him. So they put their fingers in their mouths to cool them, and watched Pa make more bullets.
There would be a shining pile of them on the hearth before Pa stopped. He let them cool, then with his jaife he trimmed off the little lumps left by the hole in the mold. He gathered up the tiny shavings of lead and saved them carefully, to melt again the ime he made bullets.
The finished bullets he put into his bullet pouch. This was a little bag which Ma had made beautifully of buckskin, from a buck Pa had shot.
After the bullets were made, Pa would take his gun down from the wall and it. Out in the snowy woods all day, it might have gathered a little dampness, and the inside of the barrel was sure to be dirty from powder smoke.
So Pa would take the ramrod from its plader the gun barrel, and fasten a piece of cloth on its end. He stood the butt of the gun in a pan on the hearth and poured boiling water from the tea kettle into the gun barrel. Then quickly he dropped the ramrod in and rubbed it up and down, up and down, while the hot water blaed with powder smoke spurted out through the little hole on which the cap laced when the gun was loaded.
Pa: kept p in more water and washing the gun barrel with the cloth on the ramrod until the water ran out clear. Then the gun was . The water must always be boiling, so that the heated steel would dry instantly.
Then Pa put a , greased rag on the ramrod, and while the gun barrel was still hot, he greased it well on the inside. With another greased cloth he rubbed it all over, outside, until every bit of it was oiled and sleek. After that he rubbed and polished the gunstotil the wood of it was bright and shining, too.
Now he was ready to load the gun again, and Laura and Mary must help him. Standing straight and tall, holding the long gun upright on its butt, while Laura and Mary stood oher side of him, Pa said:
"You watch me, now, and tell me if I make a mistake. 「
So they watched very carefully, but he never made a mistake.
Laura handed him the smooth, polished cow horn full of gunpowder. The top of the horn was a metal cap.
Pa filled this cap full of the gunpowder and poured the powder down the barrel of the gun. Then he shook the gun a little and tapped the barrel, to be sure that all the powder was together itom. Wheres my patch box?" he asked then, and Mary gave him the little tin box full of little pieces of greased cloth. Pa laid one of these bits of greasy cloth over the muzzle of the gun, put one of the shiny new bullets on it, and