The Road to Reckoning. Robert Lautner

you so choose but the chamber will be loaded ready.’ I eased the hammer down and put it back in his hand. ‘With spare cylinders you can load fast and have five shots in moments.’

      ‘Spare?’

      ‘For more dollars it comes with a spare and tool, cutter, cartridge maker, nipple picker, and twenty-two-grain loader.’

      ‘Does it come with pan and brush to pick up the pieces when it chain-fires? I never seen so many screws. Who made this toy?’

      ‘Mister Samuel Colt of the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company, sir,’ I declared straight up.

      ‘You paid for this, Chet?’

      ‘And ordered six more, Henry.’ He winked at me.

      ‘You shoot it yet?’

      ‘I only had it a day, Henry.’

      ‘Do you want to buy a unicorn as well, Chet?’

      ‘I seen a letter from Jackson affirming it.’

      ‘I have an affidavit for my unicorn from the same hand. Ink still wet.’ He put his first finger on the mouth of the barrel. ‘I have nothing under a musket-bore. Make me a load, Chet, twenty-two-grain like the boy says. We’ll go out back and see what this Indian gun can do. I can get by with one hand if she goes grenado on me.’

      Mister Baker set up a plank of pine against the back fence. This was maybe thirty yards from Henry Stands, who stood, feet apart, playing the pistol back and forth in his hands. I would admit that the gun looked weak in his fists.

      ‘You clear out now, Chet. No telling what this thing will do.’

      Mister Baker dodged back and came beside me. I watched Henry Stands take a breath, which also appeared to move something unpleasant in his chest, which he spat out. He puffed his chest again and I failed to notice mister Baker cover his ears, and a blink later I was deaf.

      The gun-smoke was pure white. A waft of copper and hot iron and a puff of sawdust from the plank. I thought of the five shots into my father. Two from Heywood. I had not heard their noise.

      Once down from the frame the trigger stayed until the shooter put it back. This allowed for rapid fire and Henry Stands picked up on this a breath later and blasted twice more successively.

      He was now in a cloud and I wondered how he could see or even think as my hands were clapped to my ears and I was dizzy.

      He shifted his footing and, as there is only one tidy way to empty any firearm, he cracked it twice more into the suffering wood.

      Five shots like the ticking of a watch. He stepped out of his cloud.