"You can bring yours along, Harry," he said, and then turned to Frank. "In a general way, a rancher doesn't get much time for hunting, and he seldom goes out for the fun of the thing, but an odd deer or grouse comes in handy now and then. Anyway, before you can hunt at all you must learn to shoot and you may as well begin." "Dad's a pot-hunter," chuckled Harry. "At least, that's what the two smart sports we had round here last fall said he was." A gleam of amusement crept into his aunt's eyes, but Mr. Oliver's face contracted into a slight frown. "Harry knows my views, but you had better hear them, too," he said to Frank. "I'm certainly what those fellows called a pot-hunter, though they very foolishly seemed to think that one ought to be ashamed of it. Most of the ranchers in this district take down the rifle only when they want something to eat, and that's the best excuse there is for shooting. Is it a desirable thing to destroy a dozen harmless beasts for the mere pleasure of killing, and leave them in the bush for the wolves and eagles?" "Don't the game laws prevent that, sir?" Frank asked. "They limit a man to so many head of this and that, and in a general way he brings no more out with him, but it doesn't by any means follow that he hasn't killed a bear or a deer that he doesn't mention in some lonely ravine. The sport who hasn't a conscience is as big a pest in a game country as the horn and hide hunter used to be, and we have to thank him for practically exterminating several of the finest beasts in North America." "Wouldn't the clearing of virgin country and the way the farms and ranches spring up account for it?" "Only to some extent. It's my opinion that there are more deer and bears about the smaller ranches than you could find anywhere else. All this is no reason why you shouldn't learn to shoot; that is, to hit your game just where you want to and kill it there and then." He walked out with his rifle and the boys followed him across the clearing. Here Harry fixed a piece of white paper about two feet square with a black dab in the middle of it on the trunk of a big fir, after which he came back to where the others were standing. "How far do you make it?" his father asked. "About a hundred yards." Mr. Oliver now turned to Frank. "As I think you told me you couldn't shoot, I'll give you a short lecture on the principles of the thing. When they're after birds most men use a scatter gun. It will spread an ounce of shot--several hundred pellets--over a six-foot circle at a distance of about forty yards; but the rifle is the great weapon of western America. Take this one and open the breach--now look up the barrel." "I can see little grooves twisting round it like a screw," said Frank.