e is said to have carried are
as plentiful as Ole Bull's violins. The frontiersmen of British
origins always named their favorite rifles "My Friend," "My Brother,"
"Sure Shot," "Confidence," "Never Fail," "Carry My Wish," "Kill Deer,"
and "Kill Buck," and cherished them almost as living things. Many of
them camped out at the wayside gunshops until a specially ordered
weapon was begun and finished, so as to supervise every detail of its
fabrication. Quaint and full of historic lore were these mystic
wayside shrines of arms, which are alas with a few exceptions no more.
Billy de Shera's on Larry's Creek near Jersey Shore instilled the love
of arms in several generations of mountain boys, and the last gunshops
in existence, those of Seth Nelson, Jr., near Round Island, Clinton
County, and David C. Busler, near Collomsville, Lycoming County, have
had arms loving pilgrims of note from all over the State to learn the
last dying secrets of the Kentucky rifles, which, despite their name,
were mostly made in Pennsylvania. Often the backwoods arms enthusiast
would insist that the shutters be closed and the smith's work carried
on by candle-light, lest a passing hechs cast a glance upon the
barrel, which would ever afterward be deprived of the power to kill.
The proud owner of a cherished gun would never leave it near a hechs,
lest she run her cold trembling hand along the barrel and forever
destroy its accuracy. There were also spells or pow-wowing to make a
gun shoot perfectly, and these were put on before a foe was to be
removed, and more especially with the heavy rifles used at shooting
matches. Needles and papers written full of incantations were slipped
under the barrels where they joined the stocks to keep away the
witches. The writer has seen Robert Covenhoven's rifle with thirteen
notches on the under side of the stock. His scalping-knife has seven
notches, where this merciless scalp-hunter enumerated his red victims
prior to collecting the scalp bounty at Harris' Ferry. The Covenhoven
rifle was latterly owned by the old deer-hunter Miller Day, of English
Centre, Lycoming County, but is now in Philadelphia, while the knife
is at the James V. Brown Library, Williamsport, together with his
Ketland pistol. As symbols of a bolder and broader day the firearms of
backwoods Pennsylvania will always exercise a peculiar charm,
typifying as they do the period of trackless forests, Indians,
panthers, wolves, unbridled romance. Also,