Pappy looked at me mildly and began punching the empties out of his two .44's. I didn't even bother to draw my own guns. My insides turned over and got cold as I thought of what Pappy could have done to me the other night, if he had wanted to. I breathed deeply a few times before I tried to speak.
At last I said, “All right, Pappy. Where do I start to learn?”
He grinned faintly. “With the holsters first,” he said. “If you don't get your pistols out of your holsters, it doesn't make a damn how good a shot you are.” He made me unbuckle my cartridge belts and he examined the leather carefully. “See here?” he said, working one of the .44's gently in and out of the holster. “It binds near the top where it's looped on the belt.”
We went up to where the blanket rolls were, and Pappy got some saddle soap out of his bags. “You don't develop a fast draw all at once,” he said, rubbing the saddle soap into the leather with his hands. “You cut away a piece of a second here, a piece of a second there, until you've got rid of every bit of motion and friction that's not absolutely necessary. All men aren't made to draw alike. Some like a cross-arm draw, or a waistband draw. Or a shoulder holster under the arm is the best for some men. You've got to find out what comes easiest and then work on it until it's perfect.”
He stood back for a moment, looking at me as if I was a horse that he had just bought and he wasn't sure yet what kind of a deal he'd got.
Finally he shook his head. “Your arms are too long for the cross-arm or border draw. That goes the same for the waistband. At the side is the best place, low on your thighs, where your hands cup near the butts when you stand natural. You can't work out any certain way to stand, you've got to be able to shoot from any position.”
He handed the belts and holsters back and I buckled them on again like he said. He looked at me critically.
“Unload your pistols and try drawing.”
I punched the live rounds out and shoved the guns back in my holsters. Then I grabbed for them and snapped a few times at a spot in front of me.
“Again,” Pappy said.
I did it all over again, but Pappy wasn't satisfied. He went over to where his saddle rig was and cut a pair of narrow leather thongs from his own bridle reins. Then he made me stand still, with my legs apart, while he put the thongs through the bottom of my holsters and tied them down to my thighs. “Arms too long, that makes the holsters too low,” he said briefly. “They'll flap when you walk if you don't tie them down. Now try it again.”
I pulled two more times and snapped on empty chambers so Pappy could get the right perspective.
“I guess they'll do,” he said reluctantly. “Now we'll get to the shooting. The drawing can come later.”
The dozen boxes of cartridges that I'd got from Old Man Garner went that afternoon. And most of Pappy's extra ammunition went the next day.
“Hell, no!” Pappy would shout when I tried to shoot from the hip. “Aim. That's the reason they put front and rear sights on a pistol, to aim with.”
Then I would try it again, holding the pistol straight in front of me, like a girl, aiming and shooting at whatever target Pappy happened to pick. Once in a while Pappy would nod. Once in a great while he would grunt his approval.
“Now aim without drawing your gun,” Pappy said finally. “Imagine that you've got your pistol out in front of you, aiming carefully over the sights!” He threw an empty cartridge box about thirty yards down the draw. “Aim at that,” he said.
I stood with my arms at my sides, trying to imagine that I was aiming at the box.
“Now draw your pistol and fire. One time. Slow.”
I drew and fired, surprised to see the box jump crazily as the bullet slammed into it.
“Now with the other hand,” Pappy said.
I tried it again with the left hand and the box jumped again.
I turned around and Pappy was looking at me strangely. “That'll do for today,” he said. He rubbed the ragged beard on his chin, glaring down the draw at the cartridge box. “You've still got a lot to learn,” he said gruffly, “but I guess you'll do. It took me two years to learn to shoot like that.”
I thought I had been doing something big when, as a kid, I had managed to put a bullet in a tossed-up tin can. But I knew that hadn't been shooting. Not shooting as an exact, deadly science, the way Pappy had worked it out.
The next day we worked on my draw, starting with empty pistols, drawing in carefully studied movements. It was agonizingly slow at first. Arms, and hands, and position of the body had to be correct to the hundredth of an inch. Only after everything was as perfect as it could possibly be did Pappy let me try for speed.
I watched Pappy do it slowly and it seemed so easy. His hands cupping around the butts, starting the upward pull. Thumbs bringing the hammers back as the pistols began to slide out of the holsters, forefingers slipping into the trigger guard. Then firing both pistols, not at the same time, as it seemed, but working in rhythm, taking the kick on one side and then on the other.
“All right, try it,” Pappy said.
He pitched out another cartridge box, and I drew slowly, carefully, for the first few times to get the feel of it. Then, as I bolstered the pistols again, Pappy shouted:
“Hit it!”
I wheeled instinctively, catching a glimpse of the small cardboard box that Pappy had tossed in the air. The pistols seemed to jump in my hands. The right one roared. Then the left one crowded on top of it. The cartridge box jerked crazily in the air, then fluttered in pieces to the ground.
I stood panting as the last piece of ragged cardboard hitthe earth. I could feel myself grinning. I thought, Ray Novak and his two bullets in a tin can! I wondered what Ray Novak would say to shooting like this. I was pleased with myself, and I expected Pappy to be pleased with the job of teaching he had done. But when I turned, he was frowning.
“Take that silly grin off your face,” he said roughly. “Sure you can shoot, but there's nothing so damned wonderful about that. I could teach the dumbest state policeman in Texas to shoot the same way, if I had the time. You just learn faster than others, that's all.”
I didn't know what was wrong with him. He had worked from sunup to sundown for two days teaching me to shoot, and now that I had finally caught the knack of it, it made him mad.
Then his face softened a little and he looked at me soberly. “Now don't get your back up, son. I'm just trying to tell you that knowing how to shoot and draw isn't enough. Boothills are full of men who could outdraw and outshoot both of us. Shooting a man who's as good as you are, and shooting a pasteboard box, are two different things. Look....”
He drew his pistols and held them out to me butts first.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Is this the way you'd disarm a man? Make him hand over his pistols butts first?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Then take them.”
I reached for them. The pistols whirled almost too fast to see, with no warning, no twist of the hand. With his fingers in the trigger guards, Pappy had flipped the pistols over, forward, cocking the hammers as they went around. In a split second—as long as it takes a man to die—he had whirled the .44's all the way around, cocked them, and snapped, with both muzzles against my chest.