Chapter 8 #2
"Better," Ruth said. "See? Two rounds and you're already anticipating less. That's why we did it. Now the first shot that matters won't be the first shot you ever felt. Clear it."
Francis cleared it, the way she'd taught, dropped the mag, locked the slide, checked the empty chamber, handed it back to her open.
His hands were tingling. His heart was still going. And under it, he felt something he hadn't expected. Not power, exactly. Something quieter. A door opening. A thing he could do now, a little, that he could not do an hour ago.
"Okay," Nathan said, pushing off from where he'd been leaning. "My turn to add something. I've got a thing to show him."
He reached under his coat, to the back of his belt, and drew out a pistol Francis had never seen him carry. Nathan always had the rifle. Francis hadn't known he had a handgun at all.
It was another Glock. Squared off, black, businesslike, near enough a twin to Ruth's that Francis had to look twice.
"Glock 19," Nathan said, clearing it as smoothly as Ruth had cleared hers, showing the empty chamber before he did anything else.
"This is the nine millimeter. Ruth's is the twenty-three, the forty caliber. Mine's the nineteen, the nine. Same family, near enough the same size, works the exact same way. If you can run one, you can run the other. The controls are identical."
He held it out for Francis to look at, side by side with Ruth's.
"The difference is what comes out the barrel. Hers throws a bigger, heavier bullet. Forty caliber. Mine throws a nine millimeter, smaller. But here's the tradeoff, and it matters."
He turned the gun so Francis could see the magazine well.
"Mine holds fifteen rounds. Fifteen. Hers holds thirteen. Same size gun, near enough, but the nine's bullets are a little skinnier, so you fit two more in the magazine. Two extra chances. Out here, two extra rounds before you have to reload can be your whole life."
Ruth made a small sound, not quite disagreement.
"Load him two of yours," she said. "Let him feel the difference. He's earned four rounds today, God help my ammo count. Two of mine, two of yours. Let him decide with his own hands."
So Nathan loaded two nine millimeter rounds into the 19 and handed it to Francis loaded, muzzle downrange, and talked him through it, same as Ruth had, and Francis raised it and found the sights, which sat just where the 23's had, and pressed.
It cracked and jumped, but less. Noticeably less. The kick was softer, snappier, faster back down onto the target, and Francis rode it easy this time and put the round into the board without milking it right.
He fired the second one. Same. Quick recovery. Easy back on target. He liked it. He liked it a lot better than the forty, if he was honest, the way it came back down, the way he could imagine firing it fast, one round after another, staying on target the whole time.
He cleared it and handed it back.
"I like that one better," Francis admitted. "The nine. It's easier. It comes back down faster, I could put more rounds on target quicker, and it holds two more. If I'm being honest, out of the two, that's the one I'd want."
Ruth nodded slow, not offended.
"It's the easier gun," she agreed. "No argument. Softer shooting, faster follow-ups, two more in the mag. For most people, most of the time, the nine is the smart pick. It's why half the world carried them. If you're going to reach for a handgun,
easy to shoot fast and accurate beats hard to shoot every day of the week."
"But," Francis said, because he'd heard the but in her voice.
"But," Ruth said. She patted her holstered 23.
"My forty hits harder. That's the whole trade. Nathan's nine is easier to shoot and holds more, and for putting a lot of rounds on target in a hurry, it wins. But when one of my rounds hits a man, it does more. It puts him down harder and keeps him down. A nine will kill a man dead,
don't mistake me, a nine's killed more men than I could count. But shot for shot, a forty caliber hollow point does more damage than a nine. It hits with more, it opens up bigger inside, it takes more out of whatever it touches. So it's a choice, insurance man.
Do you want more chances that each do a little less. Or fewer chances that each do a little more."
She looked at him. "There's no wrong answer. There's just the tradeoff. Anybody who tells you one of them is flat-out better than the other is selling something. They're just different tools for different hands and different fights."
Francis looked between the two pistols, the forty and the nine, and turned it over the way he turned everything over.
"Two more rounds versus more damage per round," he said.
"That's the whole of it," Ruth said. "That's the whole ancient argument, right there, and people fought about it for a hundred years and never settled it, because it never settles. It just depends. On the shooter. On the fight. On whether you're a person who'll place your shots careful,
in which case the bigger bullet makes each careful shot count more, or a person who'll need volume and speed, in which case the nine and its two extra rounds is your friend."
Francis was about to answer, about to weigh it out loud, when Nell called down from the ridge.
"Somebody coming," she said. Not alarmed. Watchful. "On foot. Alone. Coming up the long road from the highway. Slow. Hands out where I can see them. Doesn't look like Combine. No truck. Just a person, walking in, plain as day."
Francis's hand went still on the empty Glock.
Another one. Another lone figure walking up the long road, the way Nell had come, the way Ruth's people had come. The road that was supposed to be secret and wasn't, that everyone lost and desperate seemed to find.
"Everybody in," Francis said, the old drill snapping into place.
"Ruth, guns away, out of sight, we don't show what we've got to a stranger till we know them. Nell, keep your eyes on them the whole way, and watch the horizon behind them too, make sure they're not the front of something bigger. Nathan, with me. We meet them at the fence, careful, same as always.
Kind and careful. Both at once."
They gathered themselves and moved back toward the farm, and Francis's mind was already working, already reading the situation before he could even see the stranger, and some part of him thought grimly that the long road brought them all now, the lost and the running and the grieving,
and that each one was either one more strand in the braid or one more knife in the dark, and there was no way to know which until you looked them in the eye.
They reached the fence as the figure came up the last of the road.
And Francis stopped.
Because the stranger walking up his road, hands out and open and empty, was an old man.
Older than Ruth, maybe. Tall, and lean, and straight-backed despite the years, with a long white mustache and a weathered brown face under a wide-brimmed hat, the real kind, sweat-stained and shaped by years.
He wore a long canvas coat against the plains wind.
And on his hip, worn openly, unhidden, in a tooled leather rig that was a piece of history all by itself, hung the longest revolver Francis had ever seen.
The old man stopped a respectful distance from the fence, exactly the right distance, the distance of a man who knew the rules, and he lifted one hand to the brim of his hat in something almost like an old-world courtesy, and he looked them over with pale sharp eyes that missed nothing.
"Afternoon," the old man said. His voice was dry and slow and steady.
"Heard shootin'. Figured that meant people. Real people, teachin' somebody the ropes, not just killin' each other, on account of the shots came slow and spaced, like a lesson, 'stead of fast and panicked, like a fight."
He nodded, approving. "A lesson's a good sign. Means somebody up here's still buildin' somethin' 'stead of just tearin' it down."
Francis studied him. And studied the gun on his hip, because he could not help it, because it was extraordinary.
The old man saw where his eyes went, and something almost like a smile moved the white mustache.
"You're lookin' at the Colt," he said. "
Everybody does." And slowly, carefully, telegraphing every movement, keeping it entirely non-threatening, he drew it and held it out flat across both palms, offering it for inspection, the way you'd offer a thing you were proud of to a man you'd decided wasn't an enemy. "
Go on. You can hold her. I can see you're a careful sort, you and the old gal there with the Glock she thinks I didn't see her tuck away."
Francis glanced at Ruth. Ruth gave the smallest nod. Careful, but not no.
Francis stepped to the fence and took the revolver across his own palms.
It was heavy. Heavier than the Glocks by half, and longer, so much longer, the barrel a good seven inches and more, blued steel gone silver at the edges with a century of handling, the grip worn walnut smooth as river stone.
It was old. Not old like the trucks were old.
Old like a church was old. Old like a thing made before anyone alive was born.
"Colt Single Action Army," the old man said, watching Francis handle it with the pride of a man showing off a horse.
"The Peacemaker. Forty-five Long Colt, seven and a half inch barrel, the cavalry length. This here's the genuine article, son. Not a reproduction, not a copy. An honest-to-God Colt out of the Old West, made when the West was still wild, been in my family a hundred and forty years,
passed hand to hand, father to son, all the way down to me. Every man that carried her is dead now and I'm the last, and she still shoots true as the day they made her."
He nodded at it in Francis's hands. "Six shots. Slow to load, slow to fire, one at a time, thumb the hammer back for each. She's not fast like your plastic guns. But every one of those six is a forty-five, big as your thumb, and where it hits, the fight ends."