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“The horse screa Woods, with the panther riding on his back and ripping his back with its claws But Grandpa grabbed his gun froot to the , just in time to shoot the panther dead

“Grandpa said he would never again go into the Big Woods without his gun”

When Pa told this story, Laura and Mary shivered and snuggled closer to hi arms around them

They liked to be there, before the war Jack stretched out beside her When they heard a wolf howl, Jack’s head lifted and the hairs rose stiff along his back But Laura and Mary listened to that lonely sound in the dark and the cold of the Big Woods, and they were not afraid

They were cosy and cos, with the snow drifted around it and the wind crying because it could not get in by the fire

Chapter 3

The Long Rifle

Every evening before he began to tell stories, PaLaura and Mary helped hi-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 hespoon 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 ht new bullet onto the hearth

The bullet was too hot to touch, but it shone so te it Then they burned their fingers But they did not say anything, because Pa had told theers, that was their own fault; they should have ers 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 jack-knife he triathered up the tiny shavings of lead and saved theain the next time 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 un down from the wall and clean it Out in the snooods all day, it m

ight have gathered a little dampness, and the inside of the barrel was sure to be dirty from powder smoke

So Pa would take the raun barrel, and fasten a piece of clean cloth on its end He stood the butt of the gun in a pan on the hearth and poured boiling water froun barrel Then quickly he dropped the ramrod in and rubbed it up and down, up and dohile the hot water blackened with powder sh the little hole on which the cap was placed when the gun was loaded