It was a well-lit, tile-floor sort of place done up in weenie-wood, which for the uninitiated is the bark-covered cast-off slabs from local, rough-cut sawmills. There were glass cases of pistols and revolving racks of modern rifles, but it was easy to see that High Mountain Shooters’ heart lay in supporting the habit of reenactors; there were numerous assorted black-powder rifles on the walls, along with period clothing and accessories including a lot of coonskin and other assorted fur hats that mountain men might, or might not, have worn.
Vic plucked a fur hat from a mannequin head on the nearest counter and plopped it on her own, the fluffy tail and forearms draping onto her shoulders. “How do I look?”
“Cute.”
She glanced around, finally locating a full-length mirror between the counters. “I look like a badger is humping my head.”
“Umm, can I help you?”
We turned to find a middle-aged man in spectacles and a gray cowboy hat squeezing his way down behind the counters. “I’m looking for Bret Bussell?”
“Concerning?”
Vic took the hat off and placed it back on the mannequin backward. “We’d rather discuss that with Mr. Bussell.”
The pleasant man adjusted his glasses and smiled. “Well, you are; I’m his father, Jim.”
I went to badge him, but my new wallet flipped from my grasp and once again fell on my boots as he and Vic watched. I bent over, picked it up, and stood, stretching my star out for him to read. “Absaroka—”
He finished the introduction without looking at the wallet. “County Sheriff’s Department.” He gestured toward some monitors in the back corner. “Saw your truck when you pulled up in front of Jeremiah.”
“Jeremiah?”
“The giant out front.” He squinted his eyes at me. “Are you Walt Longmire?”
“I am.”
“Saw you on the television last month, K2 out of Casper.”
I shrugged. “You want to look at my badge, since I went to all the trouble of pulling it out?”
He nodded. “We’ve got a mirror over there if you want to try your quick draw; looks like you could use some practice.”
“New wallet.”
He gestured toward a leatherworking bench in the next room. “Want me to loosen it up for you?”
I removed the badge and handed it to him. “I’d appreciate that.”
He flipped the piece of leather back and forth. “Cardboard.”
I made a face. “It’s supposed to be leather.”
He held the edges up for me to see. “On the outside, but inside is cardboard; cheap Chinese shit. It’ll fall apart before it breaks in.” He dropped it on the counter. “I can make you a new one, but I’ll need the badge.”
“I’m afraid I’m working and need it.”
He folded his arms and looked at me. “Working on what?”
“Roberta Payne.”
He nodded to himself and then raised his face to look at the two of us. “You find her?”
I studied him back. “No.”
He waited a moment and then responded, sort of. “Twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes?”
He smiled. “I’ll make you another badge wallet in twenty minutes, thirty if you want basketweave. I’ve got dark brown leather on the bench right now that’ll match that holster you’ve got high on that right hip.”
I smiled back at him and handed him my badge, something I rarely did with anybody. “Basketweave.”
He nodded and looked at my star as if he were memorizing it. “Bret’s in the back putting the finishing touches on a holster for a genuine Colt Walker—you can go back there if you want.” As we followed him through the swinging saloon doors in the rear, he called after us, “I can make one to match that Glock that you’ve got, too, young lady.”
—
Texas Ranger and then captain of the United States Mounted Rifles Samuel Hamilton Walker wanted a handgun for the war with Mexico, a weapon that would kill both man and horse at a hundred yards, and as the story goes supposedly sent the specs for just such a pistol to Sam Colt.
He made roughly 1,100 of the famed Colt Walker .44s, which in many ways turned out to be a touch too big, even for the great Captain Walker. End to end it is fifteen and a half inches long and weighs just less than five pounds, smokes a lot when fired, and was even known to blow out the chamber walls when loaded with sixty grains of black powder. The much-vaunted Sharps .45-70, with which I had a long and storied past, has a .45 round loaded with seventy grains of black powder; the Colt Walker has a .44 caliber round holding sixty, and the Walker held six of them.
Full discharge of a round usually resulted in the loading lever dropping and effectively jamming the gun by sending the ram into a chamber’s mouth. You had to check the lever every time you fired the thing, which proved more than cumbersome, but old-timers learned to loop a piece of rawhide around the rod and the barrel to hold it in place.
Later, the pistols were downsized and there were dozens of reproductions, but the one in Bret Bussell’s hand when he turned to meet us was the genuine, unadulterated Shooting Iron.
“Howdy.”
Bret was a small man, kind of a miniature Grizzly Adams, which did nothing but make the big Walker in the custom, four-point shoulder holster look even larger; the fact that he was dressed in buckskins from head to moccasined toe completed the incongruousness. “Can I help you?”
“Bret Bussell?”
He pulled some blond hair from his face and glanced at Vic. “Yes?”
“Undersheriff Victoria Moretti.” She gestured toward me, and I was just glad she’d correctly and legally identified herself this time. “And this is—”
He slowly extended his hand. “Walt Long-Arm-of-the-Law Longmire.”
I shook the hand as I looked through the wooden stands at the walls of stacked tires that protected the tin building’s shooting area. “Have we met?”
“Nope, I saw you shoot once, though. I’ve got an uncle who’s with the Highway Patrol and got to see you qualify for your certification down in Douglas when I was twelve.”
I suddenly felt very old. “How did I do?”
He smiled a sad smile through the fur on his face. “Passable.” With a quick spin, he twirled the big Colt like the protagonist of some Saturday gunslinger serial and slipped it into the patterned holster, complete with matching powder flask and a possibles box.
“Ahh.” I pointed at the Colt Walker. “Is that thing real?”
He slipped it back out and held it toward me, handle first. “The genuine article; had a guy on the Internet offer me $11,400 for it about a month ago.”
“I’m not touching it then.”
He shifted toward Vic and held the big revolver out to her. “Go ahead, it doesn’t bite.”
“Loaded?”
He gestured toward the lubricants, percussion caps, box of lead balls, and bits of deer antler lying on the surface of the shooting bench, comprised mostly of the same weenie-wood as inside. “No, I was just getting ready to run a few rounds through it, but you can have a look first.”
She took the magnificent weapon and held it up, marveling at the patina on the thing. Hog Leg, Horse Pistol, and Smoke Wagon are some of the names coined for the 1847 Colt Walker, the first commercially produced large-caliber revolver that then gave birth to the Colt Dragoon, named for the famed French dragon guns, and the 1873 Peacemaker—a couple of relatives of the semiautomatic I had high and tight on my right side.
Mexican soldiers, mistranslating the meaning of the word revolver, believed that the rounds fired from the weapon could actually turn corners and change directions, following the intended target as he ran.
“You actually fire this fucking thing?”