Behind his back Ben Bates heard a shoe ring against the stake; then he heard it spin off, and he grinned at Owen Urey's bullfrog cussing. Tom Pace was saying urgently, "Look--look, Jim, damn it, you didn't no more shoot down that plane singlehanded than I did. We was all shooting. Godamighty--where you get off claiming _you_ brung it down?" Ben turned and sat down at the table next to the checker game, and stretched his legs in the sunlight. He raised thick brows like clumps of steel-wool at Tom and at old Jim Liddel, who sat in his pillowed armchair like a thin, scowling, bald, mansized spider. "You keep talking so high and mighty," Tom said, "we'll carry you out o' here and take you and dump you in the creek. You can tell the fish about who got the plane." "Still arguing over who planted the shot, huh," Ben grinned. "Regular feud, you two." "Well, hell, Ben," Tom said, and bit down on his gums so his whiskers almost hid the end of his nose. "I just get filled up on this old windbag hollering how he--" "You go call me a windbag once more, Tom Pace," Jim Liddel said, and he stirred his all but helpless body in the armchair, "you're gonna have a sore eye, you seventy year old whippersnapper. _I_ brung it down." "In a hog's behind, you brung it down, Mister Dan'l Boone!" "It 'us just after I let loose it started smoking," old Jim snarled, "and nobody else was shooting right then! You're gonna get a sore eye, I swear--tobacco in it. I can spit to where you sit, and I can spit faster'n you can move, I bet, unless you're faster'n a fly, and you ain't. You just ask anybody who was there ... it 'us just after I shot it started--" Tom Pace thumped the table. "_I_ was there, you old ... now, now, Jim, don't spit, for Godsake! Hold on. What I mean, I was there too, and maybe somebody's shot from a second or two before was what done the trick. Maybe even my shot! Takes a plane a while to know it's hurt, don't it? Ever think o' that?" "Maybe," Ben Bates said. "Maybe, maybe. And maybe. Let it go, you two. It ain't important who done it; we oughta just be grateful we got it." "Grateful _I_ got it," Jim Liddel grunted. Tom Pace said, "Now, looky here, Jim--" Ben Bates nudged Tom's leg under the table; and then slowly, fingering his jaw he said, "Well, now, Jim ... I figure maybe you did, at that. Like you say, it smoked and crashed right after you shot, so I always kind o' figured it _was_ you brought it down. But that's a hard thing to prove." Jim snorted. "Can't prove it! But I got it, all right. A man knows when he sunk a shot." "In a varmint, maybe," Tom Pace objected, "or a man. But you claiming to know where to hit a plane the worst?" "We was _all_ shooting at the front, up where they put the motor," Jim said nastily. "Don't know about planes, but I know my aim. I got it square-on."