So, I guess it was a lot worse for me when the thing happened that I'm going to tell you, because I had religion and Swatty hadn't.
Well, the way it happened was this way: I'm awfully croupy. I don't know anybody that's as croupy as I am, so they rub hot goose grease on me when I get to honking and then make me swallow a lot out of a spoon, and that was all right when I was little enough so they could hold my nose, but after I got big Mother said she wouldn't struggle with me another time, and she changed and gave me a dime a spoonful. So I took the old stuff because if I hadn't took it Father would have licked me, and I'd have had to take it anyway. So I got a dime a spoonful. So I bought a target rifle with the money, when I had enough, and then the rifle got broke and I couldn't get it fixed until my mother gave me three dollars because I had been such a good boy when the new baby came.
So then all the kids were coming over to my yard to shoot all the time--Swatty and Bony and the whole lot of them--and we shot at tin cans and things against the barn, but we weren't any of us very good shooters. I guess Swatty was the best. Or maybe I was about as good as he was.
That was all right, and I guess nobody cared anything, only Mother was always putting her head out of the window and saying, “Boys, do be careful with that gun!” So one day Swatty come over, like he always does, and he says, “Say! we can't shoot the rifle any more!” And I says, “Why can't we?” And Swatty says, “They made a law that we can't.” And I says, “Who made a law that we can't?” And Swatty says, “The city council made a law that nobody can shoot inside the city limits.”
So I guessed they had, because that winter they had made a law we couldn't slide down Third Street hill, and if they made a law like that they might make almost any kind of a law. So Swatty says, “If we want to shoot we've got to go outside the city limits.” And I said--I don't know what I said but I guess I said that was so.
So, anyway, we didn't shoot in my yard any more, and that wasn't our fault but the fault of the city council. So that was one of the things we thought of after we killed the man; but it didn't seem to make us feel much better, like you'd think it would. I guess there wasn't anything could make us feel better. Nobody wants to be hanged unless he has to be, I guess.