Hot Springs (10 page)

It was after the morning run and the boys had changed back into the outfits they’d wear on the street—that is, into suits and ties, and damn the heat.

The old man didn’t give any orders at all and didn’t mean to command by force but by wisdom. His first move was to invite the boys to sit. Then he noted that it was hot, and since it was hot he suggested they take their coats off.

When the coats came off, he walked among them, and looked at their sidearms, mainly modern Smith or Colt revolvers in .38 Special, worn in shoulder holsters, as befits a plainclothesman. One of them even had an old Bisley in .44-40.

“That’s a powerful piece of work, young man.”

“Yes sir. My grandfather wore it when he was sheriff of Chickasaw County before the Great War.”

“I see. Well, it loads a mite slow for our purposes. Don’t get me wrong. A Colt single-action’s a fine gun. So’s a Smith double. But this here’s 1946 and it’s modern times. So we’re going to learn how to get ready for modern times.”

“Yes sir,” said the boy. “That is why I came here.”

“Good boy. Now, I suppose y’all are good shots. Why, I’d bet all of you shot expert on qualification. Let’s see how many did. Hands up.”

Twelve hands came up, unwavering with the confidence of the young and sure.

“All of them. See that, Earl? They’re all experts “

Earl, standing to one side with his arms folded and his face glowering in the best sergeant’s stare, nodded.

“Yes sir. Been known to use a Smith myself,” D. A. said. He threw back his coat and revealed what it had not hidden that effectively: his own Smith .38/44 Heavy Duty, with white stag grips, worn on an elaborately carved Mexican holster off a second belt beneath his trousers belt.

“Yes sir, a fine gun. Now tell me, who can do this?”

He reached in his pocket, pulled out a silver dollar. He turned and lofted the coin into the air. It rose, seemed to pause, then fell. His hand a blur, the old man drew and fired in a motion so swift and sudden it seemed to have no place in time. The ping from the coin, and the speed with which it jerked out of its fall and sailed thirty feet further out signified a hit.

“You” he pointed to the youngest of the boys. “Can you go get that for die old man?”

“Yes sir,” said the boy, the one Earl had nicknamed Frenchy yesterday.

Short retrieved the piece.

“Hold her up,” said D. A.

The young officer held up the coin, which was distended ever so slightly by the power of the .38 slug punching through its center. The Texas sunlight showed through it.

The boys murmured in appreciation.

“See,” said D. A., “y’all think that was pretty neat, huh? Truth is, it’s a miss. Because I hit dead center. Usually when I do that trick for the kids, I like to hit closer to the edge, so when they wear it on a thong around the neck, it’ll hang straighter. How many of you could do such a thing?”

No hands came up.

“Mr. Earl, you think you could?” asked the old man.

Earl was a very good shot, but he knew that was beyond his skills.

“No sir,” he said.

“In fact,” said D. A., “there ain’t but four or five men in the world who could do that regularly. A Texas Ranger or two. An old buddy of mine named Ed McGivern, a trick shooter. Maybe a pistolero in Idaho named Elmer Keith. See, what I got, what them boys I named got, you don’t got. That is, a special gift. A trick of the brain, that lets me solve deflection problems and coordinate the answer between my hand and eye in a split second. That’s all. It’s just a gift.”

He turned to them.

“I show it to you because I want you to see it, and forget about it. I’m a lucky man. I’m a very lucky man. You ain’t. You’re ordinary. You can’t do that. Nobody in the FBI could do that. So what I mean to teach you is how an ordinary man can survive a gunfight, not how a man like me can. You’ve seen fast and fancy shooting; now forget it.

Fast and fancy don’t get it done: sure and right gets it done. And take them revolvers back to your lockers and lock them up. You won’t be using them no more and you won’t be shooting with one hand and you won’t be trusting your reflexes. This here is the tool of our trade.”

He took off his coat, and showed the .45 auto he had hanging under his left armpit in its elaborate leather harness.

“We use the .45 auto. We carry it cocked and locked. We draw with one hand, clasp the other hand to the gun and grip hard, we concentrate on the sights, we lock our elbows until we’re nothing but triangles. We got a triangle of arms between ourself and the gun and a triangle of legs between ourself and the ground. The triangle is nature’s only stable form. We’re crouching a little because that’s what our body wants to do when we get scared. We aren’t relying on the ability of our mind to do fancy calculations under extreme pressure and we ain’t counting on our fingers to do fancy maneuvers when all’s they want to do is clutch up. Every goddamn thing we do is sure and simple and plain. Our motions are simple and pure. Most of all: front sight, front sight, front sight. That’s the drill. If you see the front sight you’ll win and survive, if you don’t, you’ll die.

“Did I hear a laugh? Do I hear snickers? Sure I do. A man shoots with one hand, you’re telling me. All the bull’s-eye and police shooting games are set up for one hand. Them old cowboys used one hand and in the movies the stars all use one hand. You don’t want to use two hands, ‘cause that’s how a girl shoots. You’re a big strong he-man. You don’t need two hands.

“Well, that there’s the kind of thinking that gets you killed.”

He withdrew another silver dollar from his pocket, turned and lofted it high. The automatic was a blur as it locked into a triangle at the end of both his arms and from the blur there sprang the flash-bang of report; the coin was hit and blasted three times as far back as the previous dollar. Again, Short retrieved it. He held it up. It was no souvenir. It was mangled beyond recognition.

“You see, boys. You can do it just as fast two-handed as one.”

They worked with standard Army .45s without ammunition for the first day. Draw—from a Lawrence steer hide fast-draw holster on the belt right at the point of the hip— aim, dry-fire. Then cock, relock and reholster. That was D. A.’s system, the .45 carried cocked and locked, so that when you drew it, your thumb flew to the safety as the gun came up on target, and smushed it down even as the other hand locked around the grip and you bent to it, lowering your head and raising the gun until you saw the tiny nub of front sight and the blur of the black silhouette before you.

Snap!

“You gotta do it right slow before you can do it right fast,” he would say. “Ready now, again, ready, DRAW … AIM … FIRE.”

A dozen clicks rose against the North Texas wind.

“Now, again,” said the old man. “And think about that trigger pull. Control. Straight back. That trigger stroke has got to be smooth, regular and perfect.”

On and on it went, until fingers began to get bloody. Even Earl pulled his share of draws and snaps, aware that he among them all could not complain, could not stop. But there were so many troubling things about it.

Finally a hand went up.

“Sir, are you sure about this? I could draw and shoot much faster with my Official Police. I don’t like losing my Official Police.”

“Any other questions?”

There was silence, but then one hand came up. Then another. And a third.

“The sights are so much tinier than my Smith. I can’t pick them up.”

“I heard automatics jammed much more than wheelies. It makes me nervous.”

“I think I’d feel better carrying at the half-cock, and thumb-cocking as I drew, like I did with my old single-action.”

Mumbles came and went.

And even Earl had his doubts. He didn’t like walking about with a pistol on safe. To shoot he had to hit that little bitty safety, and under pressure, that might be tough. He didn’t like the idea of pointing a gun at somebody set on killing him and getting nothing out of the effort.

“Earl, how ‘bout you?”

“Mr. D. A., you’re the boss.”

“See, men, that’s Earl. That’s a good Marine to the last, supporting his old man no matter how crazy. But Earl, if I wasn’t the boss, what would you say? Come on, now, Earl, tell these boys the truth.”

“Well, sir,” said Earl, “under those circumstances I’d say I’se a bit worried about carrying that automatic with the safety on. You got to hit that safety to shoot fast and I know in the islands, we many times had to shoot fast or die. No guns in battle are carried with the safeties on. There may not be time to get them off.”

“A very good point, Earl. They’re all very good points. Which is why today we make the change. You have to understand what don’t work as. compared to what do work. Let’s head back to die indoors.”

The unit trooped back to the explosives disassembly building, which had been appropriated as a classroom. There, against one wall, was a shipping box of cardboard, maybe two feet by two feet, swaddled in tape and labels. Earl looked at the label and saw that it was from something called Griffin & Howe, in New York, and searched his memory for some familiarity with the place, but came up with no answer, though the words had a tone he knew from somewhere.

“Coupla you boys, load this up to the table,” commanded D. A. and two of the officers did so, by their effort proving that the box contained a considerable amount of steel.

“Earl, would you please open the box for me.”

Earl took out his Case pocketknife and sawed his way through the cardboard and staples and tape. When he got it open, he saw that it contained a nest of smaller boxes from Colt’s, of Hartford, Connecticut, each about eight inches by six inches, and beside the Colt’s logo, it said National Match Government Model.

“Now, I worked for Colt’s for a number of years, so I got a deal on these guns. Then I had ‘em shipped to Griffin & Howe, a custom gunsmithy in New York. Earl, take one out, please, and show it around.”

Earl pulled one box out, pried the lid off it. Inside, a Colt government model gleamed blackly at him, but he saw immediately that the cardboard of the box was slightly mutilated in one spot, where it meant to hold the pistol snugly, as if something larger than spec had been pushing at the box. He pulled the pistol out.

“See what you got?” D. A. asked. “You tell ‘em, Earl.”

“The sights are much bigger,” Earl noted right away. Indeed, the target pistol’s adjustable sights had been replaced with a bigger fixed version, a big flat piece with a cut milled squarely into the center; at the front end, instead of that little nubby thing, there was a big, square, wide blade.

“Oversized rear, Patridge front sights. What else, Earl?”

Earl gripped the pistol and his hand slid up tight to nest it deep and his thumb naturally went to the thumb-safety, which had been enlarged into a neat little shelf with the soldered addition of a plate. His whole thumbprint rested squarely on it. No way he was going to miss that thing.

“Now dry-fire it,” the old man said.

Obediently, Earl pointed in a safe direction, thumbed back the hammer, pressed the safety up for on. When he plunged it down with his thumb, the thumb met just two ounces or so of resistance, then snapped downward with a positive break. Earl pulled the trigger, which broke at a clean four pounds, without creep or wobble.

“That is a fighting handgun,” said the old man. “The best there is. Completely safe to carry cocked and locked. Its ramp polished and smoothed so that it will feed like a kitten licking milk. A trigger job to make it crisp to shoot. A fast, seven-round reload in two seconds or less. A big ass .45, the most man-stoppingest cartridge there is, unless you want to carry a .357 Magnum, which would take you two years to master, if that fast. And finally, the shortest, surest trigger stroke in the world. Gents, that’s the gun you’ll carry, it’s the gun you’ll shoot, it’s the gun you’ll live with. It’s the gun you’ll clean twice a day. It’s the gun that’ll win your fights for you if you treat it well. I should tell you it was all thought out by a genius. Not me, not by a long shot. But that’s what the Baby Face did to his .45s. He was a killer and some say even crazy, but he had more pure smarts about guns of any man since old John Browning himself.”

Draw, aim and fire.

Draw, aim and fire.

Two hands, the safety coming off from the thumb’s plunge as the second hand came to embrace the first in its grip, the rise of the front sight to the target.

“You don’t got to line it up,” said the old man. “What you’re looking for is a quick index. You have to know that the gun is in line; you don’t got to take the time to place the front sight directly between the blades erf the rear sights. You got to flash-index on the front sight. You see that front sight come on target and you shoot.”

Draw, aim and fire.

Draw, aim and fire.

Earl was surprised how well it worked, once you got the hang of it. It helped that his hands were so fast and strong to begin with, and that he’d fired so many shots in anger and so shots in practice meant nothing. But clearly, he had some degree of exceptional talent: the pistol came out sure, it came up and BANG it went off, almost always leaving a hole in the center of the target.

“Forget the head, forget the heart,” counseled the old man. “Aim where he’s fattest, and shoot till he goes down. Center hit. Clip him dead center. If he don’t go down, if he’s still coming, shoot him through the pelvis and break his hipbone. That’ll anchor him. Some of these bigger boys take a basketful of shooting before they go down. That’s why you have to shoot fast and straight and a lot. Usually, the man who shoots the most walks away.”

D. A. watched with eyes so shrewd and narrow they missed nothing. This boy, that boy, this boy again, that one again: little flaws in technique, a tendency to flinch, a lack of concentration, a finger placed inconsistently on the trigger, a need to jerk, or, worst of all, an inability to do the boring work of repetition that alone would beat these ideas into the minds. But D. A. was patient, and kind, and never nasty.

“Short, you are very good, very fast, I must say,” he said to the young Pennsylvanian, who, to be sure, was the best of the youngsters, a very quick study.