idea of running away from a fight that was bound to come sometime anyway. I figured he must have his reasons, so I let him have his way.
By daybreak, Pappy said we were almost to the Washita, and it was as good a place as any to pitch camp. The next day we pushed on across the Canadian, into some low, rolling hills, and that was where I began to see Pappy's reason for running.
First, we picked a place to camp near a dry creek bed; then Pappy insisted on scouting the surrounding country before telling me what he had in mind. Fort Gibson was on our right, Pappy said, over on the Arkansas line, but he didn't think it was close enough to bother us. The Fort Sill Indian Reservation was on our left, on the other side of the cattle trail, but the soldiers there were busy with the Indians and wouldn't be looking for us. The thing we had to worry about now, he went on, was government marshals making raids out of the Arkansas country. But we would have to take our chances with them.
“I've told you before,” Pappy said, “that you've got a lot to learn.” He led the way down to the dry creek bed and pointed to a log about forty yards down from us. “Pull as fast as you can and see how many bullets you can put in it.”
It sounded foolish to me. And dangerous. What if soldiers heard the shooting? But I looked at Pappy, and his face was set and dead serious. I shrugged. “All right, if you say so.”
I jerked at my righthand gun, but before I could clear leather the morning came to life with one explosion crowding on top of another. Pappy had emptied his own pistols into the log before I had started to shoot.
Pappy looked at me mildly and began punching the empties out of his two .44's. I didn't even bother to draw my own guns. My insides turned over and got cold as I thought of what Pappy could have done to me the other night, if he had wanted to. I breathed deeply a few times before I tried to speak.
At last I said, “All right, Pappy. Where do I start to learn?”
He grinned faintly. “With the holsters first,” he said. “If you don't get your pistols out of your holsters, it doesn't make a damn how good a shot you are.” He made me unbuckle my cartridge belts and he examined the leather carefully. “See here?” he said, working one of the .44's gently in and out of the holster. “It binds near the top where it's looped on the belt.”
We went up to where the blanket rolls were, and Pappy got some saddle soap out of his bags. “You don't develop a fast draw all at once,” he said, rubbing the saddle soap into the leather with his hands. “You cut away a piece of a second here, a piece of a second there, until you've got rid of every bit of motion and friction that's not absolutely necessary. All men aren't made to draw alike. Some like a cross-arm draw, or a waistband draw. Or a shoulder holster under the arm is the best for some men. You've got to find out what comes easiest and then work on it until it's perfect.”
He stood back for a moment, looking at me as if I was a horse that he had just bought and he wasn't sure yet what kind of a deal he'd got.
Finally he shook his head. “Your arms are too long for the cross-arm or border draw. That goes the same for the waistband. At the side is the best place, low on your thighs, where your hands cup near the butts when you stand natural. You can't work out any certain way to stand, you've got to be able to shoot from any position.”
He handed the belts and holsters back and I buckled them on again like he said. He looked at me critically.
“Unload your pistols and try drawing.”
I punched the live rounds out and shoved the guns back in my holsters. Then I grabbed for them and snapped a few times at a spot in front of me.
“Again,” Pappy said.
I did it all over again, but Pappy wasn't satisfied. He went over to where his saddle rig was and cut a pair of narrow leather thongs from his own bridle reins. Then he made me stand still, with my legs apart, while he put the thongs through the bottom of my holsters and tied them down to my thighs. “Arms too long, that makes the holsters too low,” he said briefly. “They'll flap when you walk if you don't tie them down. Now try it again.”
I pulled two more times and snapped on empty chambers so Pappy could get the right perspective.
“I guess they'll do,” he said reluctantly. “Now we'll get to the shooting. The drawing can come later.”
The dozen boxes of cartridges that I'd got from Old Man Garner went that afternoon. And most of Pappy's extra ammunition went the next day.
“Hell, no!” Pappy would shout when I tried to shoot from the hip. “Aim. That's the reason they put front and rear sights on a pistol, to aim with.”
Then I would try it again, holding the pistol straight in front of me, like a girl, aiming and shooting at whatever target Pappy happened to pick. Once in a while Pappy would nod. Once in a great while he would grunt his approval.
“Now aim without drawing your gun,” Pappy said finally. “Imagine that you've got your pistol out in front of you, aiming carefully over the sights!” He threw an empty cartridge box about thirty yards down the draw. “Aim at that,” he said.
I stood with my arms at my sides, trying to imagine that I was aiming at the box.
“Now draw your pistol and fire. One time. Slow.”
I drew and fired, surprised to see the box jump crazily as the bullet slammed into it.
“Now with the other hand,” Pappy said.
I tried it again with the left hand and the box jumped again.
I turned around and Pappy was looking at me strangely. “That'll do for today,” he said. He rubbed the ragged beard on his chin, glaring down the draw at the cartridge box. “You've still got a lot to learn,” he said gruffly, “but I guess you'll do. It took me two years to learn to shoot like that.”
I thought I had been doing something big when, as a kid, I had managed to put a bullet in a tossed-up tin can. But I knew that hadn't been shooting. Not shooting as an exact, deadly science, the way Pappy had worked it out.
