He told his
friends that he simply could not help it, which shameless confession
brought a hearty laugh from August and beaming smiles from his
women-folk.
For several days Hare was remarkably well, for an invalid. He won golden
praise from August at the rifle practice, and he began to take lessons in
the quick drawing and rapid firing of a Colt revolver. Naab was
wonderfully proficient in the use of both firearms; and his skill in
drawing the smaller weapon, in which his movement was quicker than the
eye, astonished Hare. "My lad," said August, "it doesn't follow because
I'm a Christian that I don't know how to handle a gun. Besides, I like
to shoot."
In these few days Hare learned what conquering the desert made of a man.
August Naab was close to threescore years; his chest was wide as a door,
his arm like the branch of an oak. He was a blacksmith, a mechanic, a
carpenter, a cooper, a potter. At his forge and in his shop, everywhere,
were crude tools, wagons, farming implements, sets of buckskin harness,
odds and ends of nameless things, eloquent and pregnant proof of the fact
that necessity is the mother of invention.
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