what you went to town for.”
“Ha, Wade, you think Pearlie ain’t got you pegged?” Toby said with a laugh.
Pearlie took the buckboard into town. He stopped first at Cousins’ General Store to fill the list of food items needed for the chuck wagon while the roundup was ongoing.
“Hello, Pearlie,” Cousins said, greeting the young cowboy as he came into the store. “Come for your possibles, have you?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Cousins,” Pearlie replied. “We’ll need beans, flour, bacon, coffee, sugar, and some dried fruits. It’s all written out.”
“You got a buckboard outside?”
“I do.”
“I’ll fill your order and take it out to the buckboard for you. If you have anything else to do in town you can go ahead and take care of it.”
“Thank you. I’ll do that.”
Food wasn’t the only thing on Pearlie’s shopping list. From Cousins’ General Store he walked over to the gun shop where he bought several boxes of ammunition in various calibers. From there he went to the post office to pick up the mail. By the time he got back to the store, the food had been loaded onto the buckboard. He touched the brim of his hat, in a salute to Cousins, climbed into the seat, picked up the reins, and clucked to the team.
Back at the ranch, Smoke Jensen was standing in an open field by the barn. Twenty-five yards in front of him were three bottles inverted on sticks of varying heights, one as high as a man’s head, one about the height of an average man’s chest, while the third would align with a man’s belly. The sticks were ten feet apart.
Off to Smoke’s right, but clearly in his vision, Cal was holding his right hand out in front of him, palm down. There was an iron nut on the back of his hand, and beneath his hand, on the ground, was a tin pie plate.
The full-time hands, the ones who had stayed through the winter, as well as some of the new men, the temporary cowboys who were showing up for the spring roundup, were gathered around in a semicircle to watch the demonstration.
Cal turned his hand over, and the nut fell. The moment Smoke saw Cal turn his hand, he began his draw. He fired three quick shots, breaking all three bottles before the iron nut clanked against the tin pan.
The men cheered and clapped.
“Damndest thing I ever seen!” one of the cowboys said.
“How can anyone be that fast?”
“I’ve read books about him, but I always thought they was just made up,” another of the hands said. “I never know’d there could be anyone that could really shoot like that.”
“Yeah, but this is just trick shooting,” a new cowboy, one who had never worked at Sugarloaf before, said. “Seems to me folks who can do trick shootin’ ain’t always that good when it comes to the real thing.”
Cal, who was picking up the iron nut and the pie pan, overheard the last remark. “Trust me. When it comes to the real thing, he’s even better.”
“How would you know?”
“’Cause I’ve been right there beside him when the real thing happened,” Cal said.
He walked over to join Smoke, who had gone back up to the big house. Smoke was leaning against the porch, punching out the spent cartridges and replacing them with live bullets. “Better not let Sally know we used one of her pie pans for this.”
“Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot!” Cal said. He examined the pie pan carefully, then breathed a sigh of relief. “Ah, it doesn’t look like it was hurt any.”
At that moment Pearlie came driving back in the buckboard. He came all the way up to the porch, smiling as he was holding up a letter.
“Looks like you got a letter from Miss Sally,” Cal said.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” Smoke said.
“Reckon how long she’s going to be gone before she comes back?”
“Next week, I believe,” Smoke said as he reached for the letter. “Unless this letter says something different.”
