Charley was trying to watch Enos out of one eye and the pronghorns out of the other. “Which one are you fixin’ to shoot?”
“The one on the far right.”
It was a big doe. Charley could see her lips move when she dipped her head to nip grass. Raising it again, she stared in their direction. Standing side-on, she was as perfect a target as a man could ask for. He braced for the shot.
When it came, it was thunder unleashed. The loudest Charley had ever heard. At the boom, the pack animals whinnied, and one tried to rear, but Tony, thinking fast, gripped the lead rope with both hands and held on.
Charley had a problem of his own. His bay shied, and to maintain control he had to lower the telescope and tighten his hold on the reins. “There, there,” he soothed. “Take it easy.”
The blast rolled off across the prairie. Charley figured the rest of the pronghorns would be in full flight, but when he raised the spyglass, they were all right where they had been. Including the big doe, contentedly chewing grass. “I think you missed, Enos.”
Howard was squinting at the antelope in disbelief. “It’s been a spell. I must be more out of practice than I reckoned.” He went through the motions of loading and setting the hair trigger.
This time only one of the pack animals acted up.
Charley never took the telescope off the big doe. She was staring at them all the while, as calm as could be. “I think you missed again.”
Enos held Clarabelle at arm’s length and looked at her like she had betrayed him. “This just can’t be.” He examined the sights, then muttered and marched to the pack horses. From one he took a metal tripod, which he unfolded and set up. On the top was a notch or groove into which he slid Clarabelle’s barrel.
Melissa asked, “Does that help your aim much?”
“I’ve never missed when usin’ it.”
Charley glanced at Tony, who was as puzzled as he was, then out at the pronghorns. There had to be a logical explanation. For all his boasting, Enos’s reputation as a marksman was well established. Thousands of buffalo had fallen to his Sharps, to say nothing of the target matches he had won before that fateful day he lost to Jesse Comstock.
“Shootin’ is like anything else,” Enos was saying while reloading. “If’n a man doesn’t keep his hand in, he’s apt to become a mite rusty.” He squinted at the pronghorns. “Damned peculiar how they’re just standin’ there. But they’ll do that sometimes.”
Charley held his breath when Enos took aim, but he had to let it out again after a couple of minutes passed and no shot rang out. Enos was being absolutely certain. Under no conceivable circumstances could the next shot miss.
Yet it did.
Enos slowly lowered Clarabelle. He shut his eyes, took a step, and plunked down on his backside as if his legs had been knocked out from under him. “God, no. I thought it was all in my head, but it wasn’t!”
Charley didn’t like the sound of that. Dismounting, he hunkered beside the distraught frontiersman. “Thought what was all in your head?”
“The fuzziness.” Enos placed Clarabelle in his lap. “For the last six months or so, things at a distance tend to get fuzzy on me. I first noticed it when I couldn’t read the Rocky Mountain News sign from my shack like I always could.”
“Your eyes are going out on you?” Charley could have slugged him. “Why didn’t you mention it sooner?” Their whole manhunting scheme depended on Enos’s ability to drop the Hoodoos from a safe distance.
Enos shrugged. “I figured it was all that city air gettin’ to me. All that wood and coal smoke. Or maybe all the bug juice I was guzzlin’. Or both.” He gazed at the clear sky. “Out here I thought it would be different. I thought I would be my old self again.”
Tony climbed down but held on to the lead rope. “This changes everything,” he told Charley. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Let’s not be hasty.” This from Melissa, who joined them. “We’ve invested too much to turn back now.”
“What will we do when we catch up to the Hoodoos? Beat them with sticks?” Tony brushed his hand across the revolver at his waist, a Massachusetts Arms Company .31 caliber patterned after a British version. “I haven’t even shot this yet.”
Charley looked down at his own holster. He had chosen a nickel-plated Allen & Wheelock Army .44 revolver. It was big and cumbersome, but it could knock a man down at fifty feet. “All we need is a little practice.”
Melissa drew her pistol, a .31 caliber T. W. Cofer model. She had chosen it because it was “pretty”; it had walnut grips, and the barrel, cylinder, trigger, and hammer were nickel-plated, while the side plates, as well as the back strap and the top strap, were bronzed. “Now is as good a time as any to start. Charley, fetch some rocks.”
Charley hopped to obey. He gathered up four about the size of his fist and deposited them in a row twenty paces out. “Who wants to go first?”
“I will,” Melissa volunteered. Adopting a two-handed grip, she took aim, her left eye closed, the tip of her tongue sticking between her lips. Her trigger finger tightened, but the pistol didn’t go off.
“Remember,” Charley said. “It’s single-action. You have to cock the hammer before you can shoot.”
“I know that!” Her cheeks red, Melissa pulled the hammer back and set herself. When she fired, her arms jerked, and she turned her face away.
Five yards past the rocks, dirt spewed in a geyser.
“Permit me.” Tony drew his pistol. He kept both eyes open when he shot, but he fared no better.
Charley looked at Enos, hoping the hunter would share some tips on how to shoot, but Howard was mired in self-pity. Unlimbering the .44, Charley tried to twirl it as he had seen some do. It slipped from his finger and fell on his foot. Snatching it up, he smiled sheepishly at Melissa and extended his right arm. Only then did he realize the pistol lacked sights. It had no front bead, no rear sight, nothing. He had chosen one of the few models that didn’t have any. Looking down the barrel, he fired. His shot added another cloud of gunsmoke. It also left the rocks untouched.
“Not bad for our first try,” Melissa encouraged them. “It will be weeks before we find the Hoodoos. All the time in the world to hone our skill.”
“What skill?” Tony added some harsh words in Italian. “A ten-year-old with a slingshot could beat us.”
Charley hated to admit it, but his friend was right. It would take a miracle for them to hit anything smaller than the broad side of a stagecoach. And miracles were in short supply.
Chapter Eleven
Painted Rock
Kansas
The settlement of Painted Rock owed its existence to two mistakes. The second was made by six families from Pennsylvania who believed they could travel from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Denver, Colorado, on their own. They refused to pay what they viewed as exorbitant fees charged by professional guides.
Their leader, Floyd Havershaw, a blacksmith, summed up their feelings best when he stood on a crate in St. Jo’s public square and declared, “How hard can it be? Kansas is as flat as a flapjack, and eastern Colorado doesn’t have a hill higher than I can spit over. I say we head due west and trust in Providence to watch over us.”
Two wagon wheels broke in the first ten miles. A week later, half their horses ran off one night when the livestock was left untended, and it took four days to gather them up. Jack Taylor broke his foot when he accidently ran over it with his Conestoga. And Floyd Havershaw nearly lost a hand when the anvil in his wagon shifted and fell on it.