The Rifle

The Rifle



The sun beat down on the saguaro where a lone turkey vulture sat in silence surveying the scene with ill concealed interest.

I squinted at the three brothers who stood not ten feet away, hands reaching slowly towards holstered six shooters. The Grubb’s had been the scourge of the Badlands for several years and I had warrants for each of them inside my inner vest pocket.

I regarded them with icy calm as they twitched nervously and eyed each other trying to decide what to do next. I spit a blob of Black Kentucky Twist into the air between us. It hovered, airborne,  all eyes locked on it in anticipation. As it fell, slowly plopping into the dust, six quivering hands and two steady ones snatched guns from leather and the air erupted in a blaze of gunfire and acrid smoke.



It was over in seconds and three bodies lay rolling in the dust each with one of my bullets dead center in its chest. I shouldered my lever action Winchester and spun my Colt into its holster. Squinting at the sun, I spit another stream of tobacco juice onto the earth.

It was then that I noticed the abrasive squalling, like a duck quacking in a pond it reverbated uselessly through my eardrums and echoed off the sides of my skull.



“Scott!” it continued, “Quit spitting in the house and give Willy back his cap guns!”



Reluctantly, I handed them over. It was Christmas morning and Willy had just received the nicest set of Americana Cowboy cap guns that I had ever seen. I'd  had to break them in for him.



His mother, the Heathen, evidently didn’t approve.

“Heathen,” I said, sidling up to her from behind and hugging her around the waist. “I think I know what I want for Christmas.”

“You are not getting cap guns, No!”

“Of course not!” I said, “That’s ridiculous!”



The Heathen rolled her eyes.



“Alright…What?”



“I think that I’ll go buy myself a Winchester model 94 lever action rifle.”



“Another gun?” She wailed, sliding smoothly into her whining mode, “What do you need another gun for? You already have so mannnyy!!!”



“ I don’t have that many.” I replied, “And I sure don’t have a lever action. I used to have one when I was a kid but something happened and I had to sell it.”



“Well, I don’t know.” She continued, totally ignoring my explanation, “That’s something that we’ll have to talk about. You have a rifle and a muzzle loading thingy and that long shootgun.”



“Shotgun.” I interrupted.



“What?”



“Shotgun., It’s called a shotgun, not a shootgun. Anyway I need the lever action to replace the one I had when I was younger. Its loss has left a ragged hole in my life that I didn’t realize was there until just recently.”



“Why did you get rid of the one you had?” The Heathen pressed.



“It’s a long story and I don’t want to get into it right now.” I said, but I knew that wasn’t going to work as the Heathen settled into her reclining chair and pulled her comforter onto her lap.



“I’ve got all day!” She chirped.



“It was a little misunderstanding that I had with Wild Bill Walker.” I explained.



“Who is he?” The Heathen asked.



“He was the proprietor of Wild Bill’s gun shop. He opened the first gun shop in Camden ever; it was in the building that used to be a movie theater. He had a gun shop on one side, an antique shop on the other side, and a tanning salon in the back.”



“You’re kidding!” The Heathen said.



“No, I’m not. It was a real stylish joint, Wild Bill even had a big sign made that said ‘This is a high class place…act respectable’. The sign hung right by the door, so that it was the first thing you saw when you came in.”



“I’m sorry I missed it.” The heathen replied laconically



“Yeah, it was great.” I said, reminiscing.



“So! Tell me about this rifle.” The Heathen chirped again, plucking a cherry cordial from a dish and popping it into her mouth. Women are nefariously focused when they are on the verge of discovery, I new I had no choice but to tell it like it happened.



As I told the Heathen, Wild Bill’s Gun Shop was the first of its kind ever in the little town of Camden; at least it was the first that I ever had the honor of patronizing. Looking more like a swap meet or a flea market, Wild Bill’s was stacked wall to wall with old used military equipment, fishing tackle, gun accessories and surplus. Leather and web gear hung from every available corner, display racks graced every surface and everywhere you looked there were outdoor items of every degree of age and use.

On the South wall, as soon as you walked in the front door, was the archery section. Here one could find everything that one had ever wanted in the way of archery. That is, as long as what one wanted was an old recurve bow two old crossbows and some smoothed out arrows with ratty fletching.



The middle rack held Wild Bill’s trapping selection, the entire contents of which consisted of several old rusty traps - priced only slightly higher than new ones - some fox urine and a dozen raccoon tails with leather loops tied to the ends. Not all of the items in Wild Bill’s store were rugged, well used items like the afore mentioned… he had a lot of junk too.



It was at Wild Bill’s that I first learned of the phenomena  of depreciation. Simply put, depreciation is the fact that any gun I owned was damaged, scratched or flawed up until the time that I traded or sold it to Wild Bill. As soon as he gained possession of the rusty old relics, as he liked to call them, they would immediately depreciate in blemish until they were priceless collector’s pieces; showroom quality items. Often this transmogrification would take place right before my very eyes.



Wild Bill had the reputation of being a shrewd business man and an astute horse trader. Standing no more than five foot five on a good day, he made up for his lack of stature with pure attitude.  He was very frugal too, he wasted nothing. Wild Bill got more use out of a tobacco twist than anyone else. He would chew his tobacco twice. After the second chewing he would take the wad out of his mouth and dry it on the space heater. Once dry the tobacco was smoked in his pipe. The ashes were beat out of the pipe and used as snuff, then he would blow his nose and shine his shoes with it. The man was frugal!



Wild Bill was one of those nervous, jittery types that always want to know what you are doing. He wasn’t always like that and I can only assume that he became that way because of the stress of the cold war. This happened in the eighties, and the cold war was in full swing.



One day I came into his gun shop and found a new rifle in the rack. Wild Bill was busy with a customer, so I slid the Winchester lever action out of its place and hefted its weight admirably.  It was then that I noticed that it was a John Wayne Commemorative rifle with gold inlays and custom engraving. The loop of the lever was oversized to accommodate more of the hand; so that with a quick flip, the rifle could be rolled with one hand, thereby working the action, while the other hand was engaged with more important things like operating a six shooter. I had seen the Duke perform this maneuver in the movie “True Grit” and had always wanted to try it.

Looking around, I noticed that Wild Bill was still busy with his customer, and with a quick flip of my wrist, I spun the rifle in a tight circle exactly like I had seen The Duke do it.



“Jiminy Christmas!” Wild Bill cried, as the rifle clattered to the floor about ten feet behind me.  I saw that he had slapped both hands to his face.



“What the hell did you just do?”



That irritated me a bit, because it was obvious what I had done; the real question wasn’t what I had done but why had I done it. I tried to explain his error to him, but he was doing his impression of a dog chewing a hornet’s nest, and I knew from experience that there was no talking to him when he was acting like that; I left the store in a huff.



We made up later, after I had sold my beloved Winchester Model 94 and paid for the damages to his raggedy old commemorative one. I tried to explain to him that it increased the value of a fancy rifle to have the front sight bent over like that, but he was having none of it. The loss of that Winchester has haunted me ever since, and…



It was at this point in my story that I noticed the Heathen had drifted off, her mouth open wide and a slight trickle of saliva oozing out of the corner of her chocolate stained lips.  I toyed with the idea of lifting her credit card only briefly, and, popping a cherry cordial in my mouth, walked off into the living room.

“Hey Willy!” I called. “Bring those cap guns over here again.”