opposed to a car. It’ll knock down a moose or a cape buffalo or a grizzly like nothing else. The penetration is incredible. The bullets just blow through flesh and bone and are rarely ever recovered afterward, which is an attribute I thought you might appreciate.”
Nate nodded. He liked that. “Range?”
“Five-hundred-yard capability,” Merle said, “but it’s most effective within a hundred.
“In the right hands,” he winked at Nate, “and with an adjustable scope, accurate one-thousand-yard shots are not impossible. Plus at close range, one could, you know, knock out a bulldozer.
“Hell,” Merle said, “you’re
Nate said, “I’m getting interested.”
He liked the way it felt in his hand, loved its balance and weight. Large Merle stood behind him, silent, letting him get acquainted with the weapon. Nate kneaded it with his hands, spun it on his finger through the trigger guard, checked out the scope, then opened the cylinder.
He was well practiced with the model. He loaded one large shell, rotated the cylinder past an empty hole, then loaded the next three rounds. The idea was to leave the firing pin resting on the skipped cylinder for safety. Then he raised it like an extension of his right arm and cupped his left hand under his right. He kept both eyes open and cocked it with his left thumb. The snick-snick sound of rotating steel cylinder was tight and sweet, he thought.
The fence they stood next to had warped wooden posts spaced every ten feet. He counted out fifteen posts from where he stood—fifty yards—and fired. The concussion was tremendous and it seemed like the air around them had been sucked away for a second. Large Merle cried out, “Jesus Christ! My ears . . . give a guy some warning.”
The post was split cleanly down the middle. A wisp of smoke and dust rose from the top of the post. The barbed wire strands sang up and down the fence from the impact.
Nate smiled grimly. “A different attitude than the .454,” he said more to himself than Merle. “The .454 is snappy compared to this. The .500 pushes straight back like a mule kick.”
Then he counted out fifteen more posts and blew the top off one at a hundred yards. He let the gun kick back over his left shoulder near his ear, and as he leveled it, he thumbed the hammer on the down stroke. Another heavy boom, and a post a hundred fifty yards away shattered into splinters. He calculated, aimed down the fence line, and fired his last round.
“My God,” Large Merle said, taking his fingers out of his ears. “But you missed the last one.”
“No,” Nate said, “look farther down. At two-fifty.”
The post at two hundred fifty yards was blown cleanly in two, and the top half sagged near the bottom half, held aloft by the strands of wire stapled to it.
“It doesn’t need to be said, but that’s some shooting.”
“Then why say it?” Nate asked. “You did well, Merle. This will do the job. How much?”
“The .500 WE retails for twenty-three hundred dollars without the scope,” Large Merle said. “The shells alone cost three dollars each, so keep that in mind. But given the circumstances, you owe me exactly nothing.”
Nate said, “I don’t like being obligated.”
“Given the circumstances,” Merle said again, “it’s the least I can do. I really liked Alisha, you know. I know how you felt about her.”
Nate said, “Let’s not talk about her, please.” And he raised the weapon and aimed it between Merle’s eyes.
“Tell me again you didn’t know a thing about the people who killed her,” Nate said without inflection.
Merle’s eyes got huge. He was close enough he could no doubt see the half-inch round of bronzed lead seated in the long, dark end of the barrel and no doubt envisioned what it would do to his head.
“I didn’t know a thing,” Merle whispered.
“Okay,” Nate said, letting the hammer down easy and slipping the weapon into his new shoulder holster. “Just needed to make sure.”
Large Merle collapsed back on the grille of his pickup as if his legs had lost their strength. He put a big paw over his heart. He said, “I wish you wouldn’t do things like that.”
Before they left the grassy plateau, Nate withdrew two one-hundred-dollar bills from his wallet, rolled them into a tight tube, and shoved it into one of the empty .500 brass cartridges. He jammed the brass into a crack in the first shattered target.
“So the rancher can buy some new posts,” he explained to Merle.
As they drove slowly down the mountain, Nate said, “Have you heard how Diane Shober is doing in Idaho?”
Shober had been relocated via the growing underground network after what had happened the year before in the Sierra Madre with Joe Pickett. Nate hadn’t kept in contact with her, or with his friends who took her in.
Merle said, “Changed her name and her hair color. She’s gained a little weight since she’s not running anymore. But from what I can tell, she’s settled in.”
Nate grunted approvingly.
“Learned to shoot,” Merle said. “She’s just waiting for the revolution, from what they tell me. Nate, what do you think? Will there be one? Will they come and try to take away our guns and our freedom?”
“Don’t know,” Nate said. “I’ve only got one thing on my mind right now and it’s not that.”
“I’m worried,” Large Merle said. “Everybody’s worried. But we ain’t gonna let it happen without a fight. What the bastards don’t really understand is what it
Nate grunted again.
“How you gonna get the
