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I have known an old Indian, with only two old flintlock guns, kill seventy-five large grey geese in one day. That was however an exceptional case. The hunters considered themselves fortunate if each night they returned with from seven to twelve of these birds.
Soon the bullets began to whistle around him, and these added to his trouble. A bear swims very low in the water, and so, unless in anger he inflates his lungs and raises himself up to growl, there is very little to fire at. The result was, in this case, the flintlock guns did not seem to be able to pierce his skull.
When you hunt for treasure, it's work, work, work! And a big disappointment in the end," advised Kit Patten. "I've always had a yearning to dig for something. Once when I was a little girl, Uncle Nat was digging in our garden and he found an old rusty cannon ball and a piece of a flintlock, and ever since that I've always wanted to get a shovel and dig."
To-day, however, there was to be a new weapon tried against them, and, alas for them, they were sadly worsted. Kennedy first loaded his old flintlock shotgun and blazed away, but, as usual, they were out of sight under the water before the shot struck the place where the loons had been. For a time the loons were shy, and swam quite a distance away.
But there he stood, and mounted guard over the old flintlock that was so powerful a magnet to us in those days. Though to go up there alone was no slight trial of moral courage after listening to the horrible tales of the carters in the stable, or the old women who used to sit under the hedge in the shade, on an armful of hay, munching their crusts at luncheon time.
Rand and McKenna followed, with Mrs. Gwinnett bringing up the rear. During the search of the attic, she stood to one side, watching the ex-butler dig into a pile of pistols. "This is one, gentlemen," Walters said, producing a Springfield 1818 Model flintlock. "And here is the Walker Colt, and the .40-caliber Colt Paterson, and the Hall...."
Soon a light breeze came, and they unfurled the sail and laid away their oars and began, as usual in such free times, to put their goods in order, unpacking and sunning provisions, guns, ropes, clothing, etc. Joe has an old flintlock musket suggestive of Hudson's Bay times, which he wished to discharge and reload.
The ashes of ancient fires were scattered about, and in cleaning them off his new-found hearth the man discovered a potsherd, apparently of a native olla or water-jar, and a chipped fragment of flint, too small to indicate whether it had formed part of an Indian arrowhead or had dropped from an old flintlock musket. "Lucky strike!" observed the prospector. "I was down to my last match."
In Claude Duval's time he had a brace of flintlock pistols, which he had to examine the priming every time a victim showed up, and while he was polite when he robbed a duchess, he used to kill people all right, though if they had had cameras at that time the flash from the priming pan would have taken a flash-light picture of the robber, so he could have been identified when he rode off in the night to a roadside inn and filled up on beer, while he counted the ten shillings he had taken from the silk purse of the victim.
It is said that M. Stolypin, the late premier of Russia, once half apologized In the Duma for the slowness of his reforms, saying that he Was like a man shooting with a flintlock musket; to which one of the Liberal members replied that it was not a question of weapons, but of aim, and that if his Excellency was to go on shooting at the people, it would be better if he went on using flintlocks.
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