Trey nods, like he’s scared to talk in case Cal changes his mind.
“This,” Cal says, lifting it out, “is a Henry twenty-two lever-action rifle. One of the finest guns ever made.”
“Ah, man,” Trey says, on a reverent rush of breath. “My dad’s gun wasn’t like that.”
“Probably not,” Cal says. Next to the Henry, he finds most other guns seem either runty or bad-tempered. “They used this rifle in the Wild West, on the frontier. If you ever watch old cowboy movies, this is the gun those boys use.”
Trey inhales the scent of gun oil and runs a finger down the rich walnut of the stock. “Beauty,” he says.
“First thing, before you do anything else with it,” Cal says, “you gotta check that it’s unloaded. Magazine comes out like this, lever goes down like this, make sure there’s no round in the chamber.” He slides the magazine tube back into place and holds out the gun to Trey. “Now let’s see you do it.”
The kid’s face when he takes the gun in his hands makes Cal glad he decided to do this. His private opinion about a lot of the baby thugs and delinquents he encountered on the job was that what they really yearned after, whether they knew it or not, was a rifle and a horse and a herd of cattle to drive through dangerous terrain. Given those, plenty of them—not all, but plenty—would have turned out fine. Failing that, they got as close as they could, with results ranging from bad to disastrous.
Trey checks the gun with the same neat-handed, intent care he puts into the desk. “Good,” Cal says. “Now see this here? This is the hammer. You pull it back all the way, it’s cocked, ready to fire. But you bring it back just a little bit, like this, so you hear it click? That means it’s safe. You can pull the trigger all you want, nothing’ll happen. To go from cocked to safe, you ease the trigger back, just a little bit, then click the hammer forwards. Like this.”
Trey does it. His hands on the rifle look little and delicate, but Cal knows he has more than enough strength to handle it. “There you go,” he says. “Now it’s safe. But remember: safe or not, loaded or not, you don’t ever point it at any creature unless you’re prepared to kill it. You got that?”
“I got it,” Trey says. Cal likes the way he says it, with a level unblinking gaze across the gun in his hands. The kid is feeling the weight of this, and he needs that.
“OK,” he says. “Let’s go give it a try.”
He gets the plastic bag where he keeps empty beer cans and gives it to Trey to carry. He puts the rifle on his shoulder, and they go out into air that’s soft and heavy with mist and rich with wet-earth smells. The first of the evening is just starting to seep in; off to the west, where the clouds thin here and there, their edges are gold.
“We need to pick ourselves a good spot,” Cal says. “Somewhere we’re not gonna hit anything we don’t intend to.”
“Will we shoot them?” Trey asks, flicking his chin at the rooks, who are arguing over something in the grass.
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“I like having ’em around,” Cal says. “They’re smart. Besides, I don’t know if they’re good eating, and I don’t kill creatures for kicks. We get something, we’re gonna skin it, gut it, cook it and eat it. You OK with all that?”
Trey nods.
“Good,” Cal says. “How ’bout we set up here?”
The low dry-stone wall of Cal’s back field has clear views of open grass all around; no one can walk into their firing line unexpectedly. It’s also on the side of the land overlooked by silent, incurious P.J., rather than the side overlooked by Mart, although right now even P.J. is nowhere to be seen. They balance beer cans on the rough stones, stacked there who knows how long ago by what ancestors of Mart’s and P.J.’s and Trey’s, and retreat across the field. Their feet swish in the damp grass.
Cal shows Trey how to pull out the magazine tube, drop the bullets into its slot and slide it back into place. They’ve picked a good day: the cloud keeps the low-angled light from dazzling them or throwing shadows, and the breeze is just an easy brush along one cheek. The beer cans are silhouetted