Over every cabin door hung a well-made rifle, correctly sighted and bright with

[Unbridled Liberty]

Found this passage in a free ebook:
"Those pioneer rustic militia at headquarters were trained from the age of twelve years to rifle shooting and the use of the musket on their farms in the woods and plantations. "Over every cabin door," says Trevelyan, in his history of the American Revolution, "hung a well-made rifle, correctly sighted and bright with use. Beside it was a tomahawk and knife, a horn of good powder, and a pouch containing bullets, spaches and flints and steel tinders and whitestones, with oil and tow for cleansing the muzzle and barrel.  "The support of the family depended in great part on their existence. Straight shooting was a necessity. The deer and turkey and goose and at an earlier date on the east coast the buffalo were taken down by the rifle ball." It is not to be wondered if the American militia were expert marksmen. It is said that the sharpshooters or picked rifle corps could at quick march kill a man at a few hundred yards distance, and it was one of the characteristics of those colonists never to waste their powder." 

From the Life of George Washington, the father of modern democracy, by James O'Boyle

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Bright with use.