I stared at him for a second and then raised both hands. “I’m not going to be responsible if that thing blows up.”
He turned toward Vic. “You?”
She shrugged and looked at me and then back to him. “Fuck it, why not?”
Shooting a black-powder pistol is a process that can’t be rushed, which is why a lot of the old hands in the day carried five or six cap-and-ball revolvers so that as soon as they emptied one they could grab another or another in the face of a couple thousand Indians.
We watched as Bret dumped three nozzles’ worth of powder into the cylinders and then stuffed each with a .457 round ball, before adjusting each cylinder to use the loading ram and pressing each round home. He thumbed off the tiny ring of lead from each chamber, indicating an airtight seal, and then applied some lubricant to each round to grease it up but also, he said, to guard against a chain fire.
“What’s a chain fire?”
I continued to watch the young man work. “A loose spark that causes all six rounds to go off at once.”
“I bet that’s exciting.” She watched as he picked up some of the smaller pieces of antler. “What the hell is that for?”
“Using it to press the percussion caps onto the nipples.”
“I am all about nipples.”
“If you don’t get them seated tight, you get that chain fire.”
“I am all about getting the nipples seated right.” She pivoted toward me. “These chain fires, they happen a lot?”
I shrugged. “Not only will you have crippled your shooting hand, but you’ll also have blown up an eleven-thousand-dollar piece of frontier history.”
She spoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Bill me, chicken shit.”
Bret held out the Walker to her again, handle first. “You ready?”
About fifty yards away was a standard 7-8-9-X silhouette target hanging from a guide wire and anchored at the bottom with clip-on fishing weights. Holding the revolver with the barrel in the air, she sidled into the stall, raised it, and held it up close to her face. “Born ready.”
I mumbled to myself. “Boy howdy.”
Bret and I, keeping a watchful distance, looked on as she reached down and moved the ear protection headset on the counter away. The mountain man called out to her. “You sure you don’t want to use those?”
I had to smile, being familiar with my undersheriff’s shooting tendencies.
She shook her head and called out over her shoulder. “I always like to hear the first one.”
It was like thunder—very long, loud thunder. Black-powder guns don’t tend to snap or jerk like modern weapons, but rather they give a strong and sustained push that resonates from your shoulders down through your spine and into your solid organs like a mortar.
I leaned forward enough to spot a rupture in the black silhouette of the paper target at the center of the forehead, and it didn’t take much imagination for me to know that her target was Tomás Bidarte.
My undersheriff turned in the halo of white smoke with an undimmed and dazzling smile, almost as if she’d just arrived as a Faustian apparition—the kind you’d gladly trade your soul to. “Shoots about two inches high; I was going for the mouth.”
—
I carried the Colt back into the gun shop proper, the cross-draw holster hanging from my shoulder. Jim was seated behind the main counter at the leatherworking bench and held out a beautifully crafted badge wallet when he saw me coming.
Vic stood at my side as I examined the workmanship, opening it up to see my star mounted in the basketweave setting. “It’s beautiful.”
He nodded. “Thank you.”
I slipped the holster from my shoulder and handed it out to him. “Bret said to bring this in and give it to you.”
“Where’s he?”
“He’s out there sitting on one of the benches. He said he wanted a little time to himself.”
Bussell didn’t take the holstered weapon, so I laid it on the counter. He removed his glasses and rubbed the spots where the pads rested on his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “I was afraid of that.” He replaced the glasses and reached out to move the weapon. “You shoot it?”
I glanced down at Vic. “She did.”
He smiled at her. “How’d you like it?”
“A lot.” She looked behind us out the swinging doors that led to the range. “He gonna be okay?”
The leathersmith thumbed the loop off from the hammer and slipped the elegant-looking revolver from the holster. “You don’t clean these things after you shoot ’em, they start corroding and pretty soon they’re useless—I’ve told him that a thousand times.” He disassembled the Walker and began cleaning the weapon very carefully, as befit the museum piece. “Loaned him the money for this thing, and you’d think it was his kid or something . . .”
“It’s quite a weapon.”
“Bret fell in love with it at first sight—kind of like he did with Robby.”
I looked down at Vic as she leaned against the counter and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.
“He’s never been the same since she’s been gone.” He looked up at us, and it was one of those moments where you wished you did anything else but this for a living, like wash cars maybe. Bussell gestured toward the swinging doors as he cleaned out the barrel of the Colt. “I found him out there about a month ago with this gun in his hands; he’d been drinking . . . He said that he just couldn’t put up with it anymore and that the pain was about to kill him and he’d rather do it himself.” The gunsmith quietly reassembled the revolver, the barely audible clicks of the metal justifying the workmanship of its original manufacture. “He said that if he was going to do it, he might as well do it with the best gun he had . . .”
Neither Vic nor I said anything.
Bussell finished fitting the Walker together, loaded it, and then set after it with a polishing cloth so as to remove every fingerprint from the metal surfaces—almost as if he wanted to remove any traces of a human hand ever touching it. “Gave it back to him this week, and then you two walk in the door; I swear to God the thing is cursed.” He slid it back into the holster, relooped the rawhide hammer retainer, and looked up at me. “Would you do me a favor, Sheriff?”
“Anything.”
He glanced at the big pistol. “Take it.”
I stood there staring at him but thinking about another vintage weapon, another suicide, and another lost and confused soul. Finally, with nothing to say, I laughed, but it was hollow and I desperately strung two words together. “I can’t—”
“A loan; I just want to get it out of the shop and out of his life for a few weeks.”
I glanced at Vic and then back to him. “Look, Mr. Bussell, I can understand your reasoning—”
His head jogged toward the shooting range. “He knows every hiding place, every combination to every safe, and has since he was eleven years old—do me a favor and just take it with you for a few weeks.”
I sighed. “What if I lose it?”
“It’s insured; anyway, you won’t. I didn’t say you had to use it—just lock it away for a while so that he can’t.”
Vic, her hand having slipped from his shoulder, slid the holstered weapon toward me. “That won’t stop him.” She glanced around. “There’s always another way.”
The gunsmith nodded. “Maybe, but it’ll save him from using this one.”
I raised my hand slowly and placed it over the weapon, careful not to touch the spotless metal. “What was the man’s name?”
He looked up at me through the reflection in the tops of the lenses that covered his eyes. “What man is that?”
“The one who sold you this antique?”
He smiled for the first time in the conversation. “I figured you’d put two and two together faster than Noah—his name was Vanskike, Sheriff Longmire. Hershel Vanskike.”
—
Outside High Mountain Shooters under the shadow of Jeremiah, Vic pulled at my arm. “So, Hershel Vanskike?”