For most folks, gettin’ mad makes you lose focus.
For me, it were the opposite. When they hit my daddy, who’d romped around with me on his shoulders, and made me dolls and little toy schoolhouses to play with out’ve bits of wood and junk, and who’d told me stories and even sung me to sleep once or twice when he’d had a bit of the hooch? Well, after everything went red, the way I remember it now it seemed like everything slowed way down, and anything I looked at stood out clear as a bell in a quiet room. I knowed that if I wanted to shoot anything with that six-gun, anything at all, I’d hit it. I couldn’t not hit it. I’d ping it straight in the bull’s-eye center whether it was standing still, moving, bobbing or weaving.
But I figgered I oughta give ‘em one chance to run off, just like Quickshot Billy Bodeen would do in the Nickel Novels Daddy’d brought home to me when he’d gone on his trips to try an’ sell his gadgets.
“You leave him alone, Dirty Pete!” I yelled, pointing the gun at them. I stood far enough away that I’d be able to hit at least two, maybe three of ‘em if they tried to rush me. I’d seen enough fights in the bar from a safe place to know that when you’re dealing with lowlifes like this, taking down the leader is the quickest way to make the mob scatter off.
Dirty Pete hadn’t gotten his nickname just because he never took a bath. He looked at me, then back at Daddy, then back at me again. “Well,” says he, “maybe I will lay off yer daddy a bit. What say you an’ me get better acquainted, while he watches?”
His friends laughed, but it waren’t a real laugh. It were a laugh where they was just trying to play along, though they didn’t like the idea much. I was too young then to know exactly what he meant, but I knowed it wouldn’t be good for me, and I wasn’t gonna let him nor his friends near me after what they’d done to Daddy.
Dirty Pete spat on the ground, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his duster, and walked towards me with a sick look in his eyes.
I raised my gun and pointed it right where I knowed he needed it, pulled back the safety.
“You ain’t got it in you, little girl. But I’ll git it in-”
I shot him. His forehead grew a big, red dot in front and a bunch of red stuff splashed out the back and landed in the dirt.
Dirty Pete’s face kept its grin a few more feet, and then he staggered and fell forward. He hit the dirt, and his nose smashed into a rock.
To this day, I can still hear the crunch.
His friends let go of Daddy. “You little bitch!” One ‘o them screamed, and ran at me.
I pointed an’ squeezed, and he dropped too, screamin’ and holding his gut and screaming for his momma, and screamin’ and screamin’ some more.
That spooked the other three, and they ran off.
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Daddy came and got me. He asked if I would give him the gun, and I said, “No.” And he was ok with that.
Those sidewinder friends of Dirty Pete went to the sheriff, I heard later. Tried to get ‘im to come and arrest me for murder. Sheriff wouldn’t do it, sayn’ he couldn’t arrest an eleven year old, and Pete had it comin’ anyways. Pete’s friends told the Sheriff he’d do it if he knew what was good for ‘im, and the Sheriff drew on the buggers and told ‘em to march into the jail cell for threatening an officer of the law. They got mad, and I wonder to this day if they actually looked like they were drawing on the Sheriff like he said later, or if he shot the three of ‘em just because he was tired of them doing bad stuff in his town and gettin’ away with it and making him look bad.
Whatever it was, they waren’t any trouble to no one ever again, and life in the town got ‘way better without them miscreants making everybody uneasy. Daddy got to strut through town a lot taller and with a spring in his step, now that his little girl’d broken the grip of Dirty Pete and his crew- seems he’d been bullying quite a few folks in town, and they was mighty happy that I’d done what none of ‘em was willing to do.
Best of all, we found ourselves gettin’ all kinds of good stuff from folks for the next week; Mr. Hooper at the grocery store tore up our bill we owed him, and gave us two free bags besides. Even the bank stopped bothering us about our mortgage for a few months, and by that time Daddy had a new way for us to make money.
Old Mulely the blacksmith also made guns and bullets, and did a bit of leatherwork when he could. I guess he asked Daddy what he wanted, because he came back from a trip to town one day with the most beautiful thing I’d ever been given:
It was a gunbelt, and it was filled with forty shiny bullets, handmade and oiled, perfectly calibrated for the two beautiful, shiny pistols that were in the holsters. Daddy brought them back for my birthday, my eleventh birthday, along with a free cake from Mr. Gareth the town baker. It was the first time I had a cake bigger than a cupcake for my birthday, and me, Daddy and Ma finished the whole thing in one night.
But the gunbelt was what drew my eye. It was fitted to my size, and with enough notches on the that it could be adjusted until I grew to be a woman. And I still have it today, and it’s what I wore to every job, and I’ll have it ‘til my dyin’day, and I’ll have it on my hips the day I pass on, God willin’.
I started shootin’ for fun. I got to be more than just the gal who’d popped a lawless man in the head and gave him a third eye; I started shootin’ tin cans out back of our house, then other kids came over to see. Then their Daddys came, too. Then they started tossin’ the cans in the air, just to see me pop ’em while they spun. Then they started tossin’ up rocks, dimes, playin’ cards, everyone tryin’ to find something I couldn’t hit, but I got it every time.
People started comin’ by our little shack house every Saturday night, bring vittles and cards, settin’ up on top of barrels and the like. Daddy had a thought and started passing the hat before I started the night’s shootin’, so’s we could buy more bullets from Old Muley, but really it kept us in vittles and the bank away once’t folks got to forgettin’ about me killin’ Dirty Pete.
At least for a while. Then folks started to get bored. Then, I learned that when they’re bored, they need to see a new trick. Daddy tried once to toss two cans in the air at once. I shot ‘em both. But then I had me another neat idea: while one was in the air, I shot it, ‘cause I knowed the bullet could bounce off just right if’nI hit it in the right place. Well, that made things a whole lot better, lemme tell you! One bullet did the job of two- we saved money, and everybody got to see something new!
And then the man came by.
He had a nice, store-bought suit on him, and a fancy little card he handed to Daddy, what said he was from Barnum and Bailey Circus, the Greatest Show On Earth. He told Daddy that if I traveled with the circus and did my trick shots, they’d pay us . . . well, I never did find out just how much it was, but it made Daddy’s jaw drop and Ma stopped complaining for nigh a whole week.
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TO BE CONTINUED....