20

The gun was heavy in Randall’s hand, as it should be in any hand, and heavy with the weight of decision and consequence and the destruction to come. It was, he thought, a machine constructed to kill and spill the blood of nations and become a commodity for the powerful, and another tool with which to control the weak and later the same tool that would make the weak believe they have power when in truth they have none. Only a gun, heavy in their hand.

Randall’s gun was polished steel with gold plates clasped to the handle—added weight, added worth, he’d been told. He missed his first three shots and his ears rang with the embarrassment and his face grew as hot as the gun itself and Charlotte offered no words of encouragement or advice.

“Again,” she said, and again he fired.

They’d eaten the last of the tinned fruit that morning with beans charred over the fire in a clay fry pan. They warmed tortillas in the pan and it was hot enough from its first encounter with the fire that it did not need another to toast the thin saucers of wheat flour while they soaked up the remaining juices from the beans before them. Charlotte gathered the empty fruit cans, taking the last one out of Tad’s hands as he attempted in vain to scrape a final meaningful bite from the bare tin.

“Tad, look after the horses and don’t get spooked when you hear shooting,” she told the boy, him still sullen over the empty can. “C’mon, Mr. Dawson. Bring your guns.”

She’s going to kill me, he thought. He’d deflected her advancement the night before and now she was out to exact her revenge.

She led him out from the cottonwoods on foot and together they scrambled up the rocks of a stunted plateau and then more carefully navigated the steep descent of the far side. With a wall of rock at their back Charlotte told him to walk and so he did and thirty yards later she called, “Stop,” and he did this as well and turned to see her and thought she was beautiful at any distance.

“Seems far,” he said.

“If you can shoot far, you can shoot close,” she replied, and he had nothing to say to this.

The sun was up in full but it had not yet heated the air and it sat low in the sky as a spectator to the earth and its happenings. What was left of an oak long since fallen had been bleached by the dust and the sun and upon it Charlotte placed the cans in a row, and there they rested as if on an altar and Randall charged with defying God.

Charlotte moved to the side though not so far as Randall would have liked, and Randall drew one of the Colts and fired and missed and took a better aim and missed again. He stared at the gun, inspecting it as though the fault could not have been his own and to further this suggestion he holstered the weapon and pulled the second pistol from his belt and took even longer still in the aiming before he fired.

“Again,” she called, and again he sent a bullet whistling into the dirt and rock of the far ridge while the cans stood defiant in tribute to their oaken God.

“Move back,” she called.

“Don’t you mean forward?”

“Back,” she repeated, and he complied with growing frustration.

He fired two more bullets and was now growing accustomed to the failure in the way a betting man is accustomed to the loss of his money.

“Back,” she called again and believing it could get no worse he diligently walked further from the cans until she called stop.

A whiptail lizard darted across his path and disappeared into the sagebrush, reemerging on a small rock some ten feet away to assess this unfamiliar predator or perhaps just to sit on the rock and watch the strangeness of the world as it unfolded.

Randall raised his arm and searched for the cans and they were visible but barely and he shot and missed as was his routine.

The smell of smoke and powder filled the air in ten- and fifteen-yard intervals and Charlotte told him once more to step back and even the lizard had grown tired of the procedure and moved on.

This time Randall used both hands and squinted into the growing distance and found the cans smaller than the sight on his pistol. Aim. Squeeze. Miss.

“Come here,” she called and Randall prepared for his lesson, hoping the woman had noted some error in his act which had caused the bullets to fly false. He kept his head down as he walked, lost in his own analysis of his regrettable performance and was only pulled from his thoughts when Charlotte yelled stop.

He did so and looked up at her and she motioned to the cans and called, “Again,” and the tins were now so close that he may well have counted the ridges on their sides and he drew and aimed and fired and sent the middle can spinning backward violently. Without waiting he fired again and it was another hit and he holstered the gun and looked back to Charlotte.

“We should’ve started this close,” he said.

She pointed to the ground around him and there he saw his own casings—not two, but several—and when he looked back up, Charlotte had gathered the fallen cans and started back up the ridge. Randall smiled and followed.