pocket.
Loading a cap-and-ball pistol took time, so a man apt to need a lot of shooting
often took to packing more than one gun. There was an outlaw up Missouri way who
sometimes carried as many as six when on a raid. Others carried interchangeable
cylinders so they could nip out an empty and replace it with a loaded one.
When the Tinker walked nip to the fire they saw the other knives.
“You don’t carry a pistol?”
“I can use these faster than any man can use a gun.”
The youngest of them laughed. “You’re saying that to the wrong man. Cullen here,
he’s learned to draw and fire in the same instant.”
The Tinker glanced at the big man. “Are you Cullen Baker?”
“That I am.” He indicated the quiet-seeming man beside him. “This here’s Bob
Lee, and that’s Bill Longley.”
“I’m the Tinker, and this here is Orlando Sackett.”
“You’re dark enough for an Indian,” Cullen Baker said to the Tinker, “but you
don’t shape up to be one.”
“I am a gypsy,” Tinker said, and I looked around, surprised. I’d heard tell of
gypsies, but never figured to know one. They were said to be a canny folk,
wanderers and tinkerers, and he was all of that.
Cullen Baker and his friends were hungry, but they were also tired, and nigh to
falling asleep while they ate.
“If you boys want to sleep,” I said, “You just have at it. The Tinker and me
will stand watch.”
“You’re borrowing trouble just to feed us,” Bob Lee said. “We’ve stood out
against the Carpetbag law, so Governor Davis’ police are out after us.”
“We’re outcasts,” Baker said.
“My people have been outcasts as long as the memory of man,” the Tinker said.
“No Sackett,” I said, “so far as I know, was ever an outlaw or an outcast. On
the other hand, no Sackett ever turned a man from his fire. You’re welcome to
stop with us.”
When they had stripped the gear from their horses the other two went back into
the brush to sleep, avoiding the fire; but Cullen Baker lingered, drinking
coffee.
“What started you west?” he asked.
“Why,” I told him, “it was one of those old-timey gospel-shouters set me to
considering it. He preached lively against sin. He was a stamper and a shouter,
but a breast-beater and a whisperer, too.
“When he got right down to calling them to the Lord, he whispered and he
pleaded, and right there he lost me. Seems if the Lord really wants a man it
doesn’t need all that fuss to get him worked up to it. If a man isn’t ready for
the Lord, then the Lord isn’t ready for him, and it’s a straight-forward
proposition between man and God without any wringing of the hands or hell-fire
shouting.
“When that preacher started his Bible-shouting and talking large about the sins
of Sodom and Gomorrah, I was mighty taken with him. He seemed more familiar with
the sins of those foreign places than he did with those of Richmond or Atlanta,
but mostly he was set against movers.
“Sinful folk, he said, and the Lord intended folks to stay to home, till the
earth, and come to church of a Sunday. By moving, they set their feet on
unrighteous paths.
“Fact was, he talked so much about sin that I got right interested, and figured
to look into it. A man ought to know enough to make a choice; and Pa, he always
advised me to look to both sides of a proposition.
“Back in the hills mighty few folks ever got right down to bedrock sinning. Here
and there a body drank too much ‘shine and took to fighting, but rarely did he
covet his neighbor’s wife up to doing anything about it, because his neighbor
had a squirrel rifle.
“That parson ranted and raved about painted women, but when I looked around at
Meeting it seemed to me a touch of paint here and there might brighten things
up. He talked about the silks and satins of sin until he had me frankly
a-sweating to see some of that there. Silks and satins can be almighty exciting
to a man accustomed to homespun and calico. So it came on me to travel.”
Baker cupped his hands around the bottom of his coffee cup, and taken his time
with that coffee. So I asked him about that fast draw I’d heard them speak
about.
“Studied it out by my ownself,” he said. ‘Trouble is apt to come on a man
sudden-like, and he needs a weapon quick to his hand. When Mr. Sam Colt invented
his revolving pistol he done us all a favor.
“Best way is just to draw and fire. Don’t aim … point your gun like you’d
point your finger. You need practice to be good, and I worked on it eight or
nine months before I had to use it. The less shooting you’ve done before, the
better. Then you have to break the habit of aiming.
“It stands to reason. Just like you point your finger. How many times have you
heard about some female woman grabbing up a pistol—something she maybe never had
in her hands before—and plumb mad, she starts shooting and blasts some man into
doll rags. Nobody ever taught her to shoot—she just pointed at what she was mad
at and started blazing away.”
He reached inside his shirt and fetched out a gun. “This I taken from a man who
was troubling me—and you’ll need a gun in the western lands, so take it along.
This here is a Walch Navy, .36 caliber, and she fires twelve shots.”
“Twelve? It looks like a six-shooter.”
“Weighs about the same. See? Two triggers, two hammers. She’s a good pistol, but
too complicated for me. Take it along.”
She was a mite over twelve inches long and weighed just over two pounds, had
checkered walnut grips, and was a beautiful weapon. Stamped 1859, it looked to
be in mint condition.
“Thanks. I’ve been needing a weapon.”
“Practice … practice drawing and pointing a long time before you try firing.
Don’t try to aim. Just draw and point.”
He put down his cup and got to his feet. “And one thing more.” He looked at me
out of those hard green eyes. “You wear one of those and you’ll be expected to
use it. When a man starts packing a gun nobody figures he wears it just for
show.”
Come daybreak, they saddled and rode away, and the Tinker and me went west
afoot. And as we walked, I tried my hand with that gun. I practiced and
practiced. A body never knew when it would come in handy.
Somewhere behind me three Kurbishaws were riding to kill me.
Chapter Three
We were six months out of the piney woods of Tennessee when we walked into San
Augustine, Texas. It was an old, old town. Seemed like we’d never left home, for
there were pines growing over the red clay hills, and everywhere we looked there
were Cherokee roses.
We camped among the trees on the outskirts, and the Tinker set to work repairing
a broken pistol I had taken in trade. An old man stopped by to watch.
“Shy of gunsmiths hereabouts,” he said. “A man could make a living.”
“The Tinker can fix anything. Even clocks and suchlike.”
“Old clock up at the Blount House—a fine piece. Ain’t worked in some time.”
The Tinker filled a cup and passed it across the fire to him, and the old man
hunkered down to talk. “Town settled by Spanish men back around 1717. Built
themselves a mission, they did, and then fifty, sixty years later when it seemed
the Frenchies were going to move in, they built a fort.
“Been a likely place ever since. The Blount and Cartwright homes are every bit
of thirty year old, and up until the War Between the States broke out we had us
a going university right here in town.”
He was sizing us up, making up his mind about us, and after a while he said, “If
I was you boys I’d keep myself a fancy lookout. You’re being sought after.”
“Three tall men who look alike?”
“Uh-huh. Rode through town yestiddy. Right handy men, I’d say, come a
difficulty.”
“They’re his uncles,” the Tinker explained, “and they’re all laid out to kill
him.”
“No worse fights than kinfolk’s.” The old man finished his coffee and stood up.
“Notional man, m’self. Take to folks or I don’t. You boys take care of
yourselves.”
The Tinker glanced over at me. “You wearing that gun?”
Pulling my coat back, I showed it to him, shoved down inside my pants behind my
belt. “I ain’t much on the shoot,” I said, “but come trouble I’ll have at it.”
San Augustine was further south in Texas than I’d any notion of coming, but the