That was a stunning blow to me. Even Uncle Abner Dorset’s hickory had never inspired in me the desire to shoot straight so much as had the wish presently to impress Chris Hudson. I felt the hot blood pumping in my temples. Chris Hudson simply called out: “Look out, youngster! Don’t handle that gun so careless. It’s got a mighty light trigger. But dog-gone me if that wasn’t a lucky accident. The bullet mighty near hit the glass.”
I saw that he thought the Colt had exploded by accident, and I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling. Shooting from the hip had not yet been invented in the West.
“I won’t miss this time,” I said.
I called into my mind, in place of that bit of glass, the head of a squirrel darting about behind the leaves of a tree with just a glint of the sun in its bright eye. Then I tipped the muzzle of the revolver again and fired a second time. The glass crashed into nothing.
“That’s a beauty, that gun,” I said, as I handed the Colt back to Chris Hudson.
He brushed straight past me without any attention to the butt of the gun as I offered it. He hurried over to the post and leaned down at the base of it. He stayed there for a long moment, fumbling in the dust and staring at the hole which the bullet had clipped through the post. Then he came back to me with his hat pushed back, scratching his head.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, very much worried.
“The devil,” he said, and kicked at a little stone that was in his way.
I felt that I had done something terribly wrong, and I searched my mind to find out what it might be.
“Well,” he said at last, “you better come along with me.”
I was sick, I was so worried by his frown. I said: “If it’s the cost of that post, I’ll be glad to pay for it. I’ve got money. I’ve got thirty-two.. .1 mean fifty-two dollars.”
I was pretty proud of having such a lot of coin, but he only turned his head a bit and glinted at me out of those long-distance eyes of his.
“Post be damned,” he said. “By the way… you better keep that gun.”
It stopped me in my stride like a blow. It was as if he had offered me a palace in fairyland. I ran after him and touched his arm.
“Look here, Mister Hudson, of course, you’re joking. You don’t mean that I can have this?”
“Don’t I? You can, though.”
“Why, it must be worth a mighty lot of money. I’d be glad to buy it. I got this fifty-two dollars for a part….”
“Humph,” said Chris Hudson. “I don’t suppose that you ever seen a gun like that before?”
“Never. Except on the boat coming up the river.”
“Maybe you hit that glass by accident, then?” he asked. He began to laugh. “Before you tell a lie like that, Lew, you want to think first. But that gun is yours. It ain’t any good to me no more.”
“Have I spoiled it?”
“You’ve spoiled it for me,” he answered. “I don’t know enough to handle a gun like that. I’m gonna stick to a rifle from now on, you can bet your last dollar right on that.”
I went on holding that gun in both hands. It was bright, well polished, and also bright with its newness.
CHUCK MORRIS
The place to which Chris Hudson led me was on the edge of Boonville. It was a great circle of huge covered wagons. There must have been twenty-five or thirty of them. All around them were horses past counting, tied to the wheels.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” he asked.
I told him that I hadn’t, and he said that it was a trappers’ caravan, and they were bound due west for the prairies the very next day. While he was telling me this, we entered the circle of the wagons. All that inner circle was tossing and swaying with light and life from a big fire in the center of the enclosure. On the edges of that fire two or three men had raked out coals and were cooking. One was frying meat, and another was making coffee, for it was the dusk of the day, and they were getting ready for supper. There seemed quite a crowd of other men - at least thirty were in sight at that moment, and I felt this caravan was like a whole village ready to roll away on wheels. Except that there were no women and no children, although I did notice a number of youngsters who could not have been much older than I was.
Hudson took me up to a big wagon on the far side of the circle and called out: “Gregory!”
A big-shouldered man came, lumbering out of the wagon with a pipe in his mouth and some playing cards in his hand.
“I’ll be back in a minute, boys,” he was saying, as he jumped down to us.
“Gregory,” said Chris Hudson, “this is Lew Dorset. He has fifty-two dollars and a new Colt. He wants to join our crowd.”
“A Colt,” said Gregory, “is mostly good for making trouble in camp, and fifty-two dollars ain’t enough to turn around with. What can he do?”
“Ask him,” said Hudson.
“Can you use a lariat?” asked Gregory.
“No,” I said. I hardly knew what a lariat was.
“Can you ride a horse?”
I thought of the bony nags my uncle kept. They could hardly be called horses. “Not very well,” I replied.
“Have you got a rifle?”
“No.”
“Can you talk Sioux?”
“No,” I said, never having heard that word before.
“What the devil can you do?” asked Gregory.
I was stumped. “I don’t know. But I’m tough, and I’m willing to work.”
“Humph! We’ve already got all the kids in camp we need for the odds and ends.”
“Wait a minute,” said Hudson, and took Gregory aside.
He began to talk quietly to him, and after a time Gregory grunted and looked back at me. I can understand now what Hudson must have been saying, but at the time it seemed very mysterious to me.
After a moment Gregory turned and walked up to me, looking me up and down. “I understand,” he said, “that you’re looking for your father out here.” He waved his hand to the darkening western skies. “And if you come across sign of him, you’re due to quit the party at any time.” He grinned a little as he said this.
“I’d have to leave if I got track of him,” I affirmed.
“Well, maybe you can do enough hunting for the party to be worth your keep. Do you think you can?”
“I have hunted a little,” I admitted. “But it’s rather hard to shoot far with a pistol.”
He looked at me a minute. “Maybe we can fix you up with a rifle. As for a horse, Hudson has more than anybody else in the camp. Might be that he has one worth less than fifty dollars. I dunno.”
He hurried back into the wagon without saying good bye. I asked Hudson what it meant, and he declared I was now a member of the party if I cared to join. He took me to his wagon, showed me some blankets I could use, and declared that he would sell me a horse for twenty dollars the very next morning when the caravan started. As for the rest of my money I could turn it into ammunition, or do what I pleased with it. But he advised me to get a hunting knife and a hatchet together with plenty of matches and a couple of pots for cooking.
I thanked him with all my heart. “Mister Hudson,” I said, finishing up, “the Dorsets never forget good turns or bad ones.”
“The devil,” he said. “I’ve heard folks talk like that before, but words don’t mean nothing… not out on the prairie. Now you cut loose from all this gratitude and mix around among the boys and try to pick yourself out a friend or two. Lemme tell you this.. .a friend on the prairie is worth more than his statue done in gold and set off with diamonds.”
This was a manner of talk that made me very much at home. It was so much like Uncle Abner. So I went off to stir about among the other young people. I could see at a glance that they were not like the boys, black or white, that I had known in Virginia. These fellows were as brown as paint. They were all quite straight, and they seemed to be whittled down rather lean - dried out, I might better call it. They were drawn out altogether longer and finer than the people of the Eastern coast. I could see that they were tough and lasting rather than strong. When they stepped, they stepped like young horses - ready to jump out of their skins for fun or fighting at any minute. They didn’t have eyes like boys I had known - that is, they didn’t have a dull, tired look - but they stared around as the men did, except that they were wilder. I knew before I had seen them so much as lift a hand that they were as fast as lightning. But it seemed to me they lacked the shoulder bulk and the width of back which is only put on a youngster by hard work or a great deal of athletics. Here were boys who could ride all day on a tough mustang or run all day over the prairie, but on the whole their legs were more exercised than their arms.