I'd hate to face Fred without my rifle, and have to tell him the enemy is laying for him with it through my carelessness." It was my first experience of Will with hysteria, for it amounted to that.

I remembered that to cure a bevy of school-girls of it one should rap out something sharply, with a cane if need be.

Yet Will was not like a school-girl, and his hysteria took the pseudo-manly form of refusal to retreat.

I yearned for Fred's camp-fires, and Fred's laugh, hot supper, or breakfast, or whatever the meal would be, and blankets.
Will, with a ruthless murderer stalking him in the dark, yearned only for self-contentment.

All at once I saw the thing to do, and thrust my rifle in his hands.
"Take it," I said.