Shooter

“ Comes a few yells and a few shots out on the street and then the clatter of six-shooter explosions.
“The celebration is on,” says I. “It was due to start at ten o’clock. Let’s take a chance. I hope to gosh them broncs are there for us.” I takes my life in one hand, a six-shooter in the other and leads the way. ”

“ So far from this defying the shooter, it is one of the finest opportunities that can be afforded for death and destruction. Let him sit in a small punt or canoe, fore and aft among the rushes, where towards dusk he will be so completely hid, that he may either shoot at birds flying within pistol shot, or wait for a good chance on the water ”

“ At these fires,—quite effectually protected from shot and shell and bullets, though within forty yards of the line of battle, a fellow could cook anything he happened, by accident, to have, or slip back from the works, now and then, when not engaged at the guns, warm himself and stand up straight, and stretch his legs and back, without the imminent risk of being bored by a sharp-shooter ”

“ A bullet makes the merciful wound; and a bullet through the head is a simple way of going. The bad wounds come mostly from shells; but there is something about seeing anyone hit by a sniper which is more horrible. It is a cold-blooded kind of killing, more suggestive of murder, this single shot from a sharpshooter waiting as patiently as a cat for a mouse, aimed definitely to take the life of a man.
Again we move on in that narrow cut of earth with its waiting soldiers, which the world knows so well from reading tours of the trenches. ”

“ But you’d be dead sooner or later. It’s just a matter of what a man shoots you with that makes the difference in time.
“Of course,” he continued agreeably, “you don’t expect no pea-shooter to kill me as quick as a thirteen-inch gun would. If you expect that you’re unreasonable. But the principle is just the same. Shootin’ is shootin’. You know how that pome goes—
‘The constant drip of water
Wears away the hardest stone—’
and that’s just as true of murderin’ a man with a pea-shooter. ”

“ A line of sharp-shooters was thrown forward to drive them in; but their guns were not as good and the cover was inferior, and it was only after numerous losses that they succeeded in silencing most of them. They still left several men up among the rocks, who from time to time sent a bullet into the line with deadly effect. One man, in particular, ensconced behind a rock on the hill-side, picked off the men with unerring accuracy. ”

“ When the guns got to the top of the rise, they must go at a trot to their positions, the sooner to get the horses from under fire. Twenty or thirty steps brought us to the top of the sharp little ascent. Here we found a few of our sharp-shooters exchanging compliments with the enemy, and the balls were knocking up the dirt, and whistling around. I was interested in watching one of our fellows. He was squatting down, holding his rifle ready. A Federal sharp-shooter, whom we could not see, was cracking at him. ”

“ I'm not shooting with my own gun, though. It's one of my brother's, and it's rather short in the stock for me.
That starts you comfortably with the Bad Shot. You soothe his ruffled vanity, and give him a better appetite for lunch.
Now, besides the Good Shot, and the Bad Shot—the two extremes, as it were, of the line of shooters—you might subdivide your sportsmen further into—
(1.) The Jovial Shot. This party is on excellent terms with himself and with everybody else. Generally he shoots fairly well, but there is a rollicking air about him, which disarms criticism, even when he shoots badly. ”

“ The sharpshooters on either side were vigilant, and an exposure of any part of the person was the signal for the exchange of shots. The men, worn by hard marching, hard fighting and hard digging, took every precaution to shield themselves, and sought cover at every opportunity. ”

“ But I am again drifting into that tiresome tideway of politics which I have sworn to myself to avoid, if only for a few days; in pursuance of which wise resolve I shall betake myself to the mountains, under the pretext of shooting. A gun is an idler's passport, and a game-bag and a shot-pouch are sufficient to throw a dignity over vagabondism. You will therefore divine that I am not bent on snipe slaughter, but simply a good excuse to be alone! ”

“ I commanded. "Wait for her when she runs out. I'll chase her outdoors. She has only one shot left, so you needn't be afraid of her. I'll get that bullet, all right. Scream at her, scare her to death if you can, but don't touch her. If you do, by God, I'll kill you!"
He stole noiselessly down the stairs and disappeared. I tried another panel with the ax, but, as she was clever enough not to shoot, I reloaded my first pistol, and, taking what risk there was without thought, I seized the ax again and with one fierce blow smashed the lock to pieces. ”

“ No one could have climbed up to the window without leaving traces. Suppose a man had fired through the window, it would indeed be a remarkable shot who could with a revolver inflict so deadly a wound. Again, Park Lane is a frequented thoroughfare, and there is a cab-stand within a hundred yards of the house. No one had heard a shot. And yet there was the dead man, and there the revolver bullet, which had mushroomed out, as soft-nosed bullets will, and so inflicted a wound which must have caused instantaneous death. ”

“ I'm used to guns," she explained, turning to the officer. "My father was an army man, and he taught me very early to load and fire a pistol. There was a prolonged sound to this shot; something like an echo of itself, following close upon the first ping. Didn't you notice that, Warren?"
"I remember something of the kind," her husband allowed.
"He shot twice and quickly," interposed the policeman, sententiously. "We shall find a spent bullet back of that mirror." ”

“ We spread out in the open: it was like a bath of lead;
But the boys they cheered and hollered fit to raise the bloody dead,
Till a beastly bullet copped 'em, then they lay without a sound,
And it's odd — we didn't seem to heed them corpses on the ground. ”

“ True, a single rifle-shot might drop him and be no great disclosure. But firing is infectious—and see how rapidly he moves, with never a pause except as he whirls his horse about to take a new direction, never directly backward toward us, never directly forward toward his executioners. All this is visible through the glass; it seems occurring within pistol-shot; we see all but the enemy, whose presence, whose thoughts, whose motives we infer. ”

“ The theory is, and there seems to be none other, that the father, hearing a suspicious noise at the window, set down the child he was endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and his own pistol, and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the assassin himself, sent his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other let go the trigger which drove a similar bullet into his breast. ”

“ Those at the front strove madly to retreat from the fire-spitting guns in their very faces, and those in the rear pressed as madly forward to the attack. The bullets from the big 45:90's drove through half a dozen men at a shot, and the passageway, gorged with surging, helpless men, became a shambles. The rifles, pumped without aim into the mass, withered it away like a machine gun, and against that steady stream of death no man could advance. ”

“ The rifle sends one pellet of death, the shot-gun sends a dozen leaden messengers, each shrieking for a life.
Three men on the towers fired almost simultaneously from the shot-guns, whose scattering fire raked and tore through the bushes. ”

“ A part of the inhabitants who were acting in a particularly mean fashion and were firing madly with all kinds of firearms, without let or hindrance, upon our troops, were shot down to the number of about twenty; amongst these were some women who, with special cunning, fired again and again into the companies from the rear. This shooting was done to defend ourselves and to scare the inhabitants from any further atrocities. ”

“ Innocent and unoffending men were shot down or bowie-knived merely for the pleasure of witnessing their death agonies. Men walked the streets and public squares with double-barreled shot guns, and hunted each other as sportsmen hunt for game. ”

“ So now this is the queer position of affairs: we fire a pistol shot off at 12 midnight to-night by arrangement, and they reply with some shots over our heads, after which things continue to hum as before. You have no idea how pleasant everything seems with no rifle bullets or shells flying about. ”

“ With great holes pierced through their bodies by the leaden messages of death, their sole anxiety seemed to be to return shot for shot, and only when the spark of their life ceased to burn did they relinquish their hold on the death-dealing revolver, and they sank to earth as the smoke from their weapons ascended as from a funeral pyre. ”

“ Every person who has a gun may fire it as often as he pleases, and the noise thus made is undoubtedly fearful enough in its intensity to cause any wandering traveller from the far-off fiery land to retrace his steps with speed. The bang and rattle of pistols, muskets, shot-guns, and rifles cease not till the break of day, by which time the city is effectually cleared of all its infernal visitors.”383 From this account we learn that among the spirits thus banished are the souls of the dead, who revisit their living friends once a year. ”

“ It was nothing to them that every now and again the house above them shook and quivered to the shock of a heavy shell exploding somewhere on the ground round the house, that the rattle of rifle fire dwindled away at times to separate and scattered shots, brisked up again and rose to a long roll, the devil's tattoo of the machine guns rattling through it with exactly the sound a boy makes running a stick rapidly along a railing. ”

“ I know guns have this power of projecting horrible emanations of themselves into the slumbers of sportsmen who have not treated them as they deserved. I have suffered from it myself. It was only last week that, having said something derogatory to the dignity of my second gun, I woke with a start at two o'clock in the morning, and found its wraith going through the most horrible antics in a patch of moonlight on my bed-room floor. I shot with that gun on the following day, and missed nearly everything I shot at. ”

“ I have known my own revolver and the double refuse duty at the same instant, and have faced the moaned inquiry of the leading man, who ought to have been stretched out in apparent death throes, 'What the devil's going to happen now?' To make matters better, when I had thrown away the useless weapon with an improvised execration and was about to hurl myself upon the virtuous victim, the pistol in the wings obeyed the pressure of the prompter's finger, and the leading man dropped to a shot from nowhere, to the great mystification of the audience. ”

“ In her dream she sees the murderer about to spring upon her and she cries, ‘Help! Murder!’ Her hand wildly seeks the revolver she had placed within her reach on the night-table by the side of her bed, but her hand, striking the table, overturns it, and the revolver, falling to the floor, discharges itself, the bullet lodging in the ceiling. I knew from the first that the bullet in the ceiling must have resulted from an accident. Its very position suggested an accident to my mind, and so fell in with my theory of a nightmare. ”

“ Cautiously raising himself he glanced over the boulder in the direction from whence the last shots came. Crack! crack! crack! the bullets whiz surlily around him.
194 Bang! bang! bang! goes the rifle.
A new feeling takes possession of him. His nerves tighten like steel, and he pumps empty shells out of the rifle’s chamber and cartridges in with a fierce speed. Kill! kill! let him take one of those howling murderers with him, and he doesn’t care how soon after death comes. But what is the matter with his aim? He has not yet killed one, not even wounded one that he knows of. ”

“ Men died with their boots on. Loaded shotguns lay in ambush behind front and back doors. The atmosphere smelt of blood and possible killing. Saloon plate-glass mirrors showed the track of pistol bullets. Mass meetings were assemblages of men from town and country, secretly armed. People spent most of their time hating each other. ”

“ Advice has been given to householders, that they should follow up the shot at a burglar in the dark by hurling the pistol after it, so that if the bullet misses, the weapon may strike and assure the rascal he has it. ”

“ Such being the case, those who have been through several battles become naturally careless and fearless. At first we involuntarily lower our heads a little at the sound of a small bullet. Even the officer who scolds his men, saying, “Who is it that salutes the enemy’s shot?” cannot help nodding to the enemy at first. ”

“ On such occasions the bleeding victim grew desperately furious, from the smarting of his wounds, and the shouts of savage joy that were echoing from every side; but, from the number of accidents that happened, this dangerous mode has been little practised of late years; the park-keeper alone generally shooting them with a rifled gun, at one shot. ”

“ There are other men, again, who are dead pistol shots when allowed to draw deliberately and take aim slowly and fire at leisure ; but when compelled to use the pistol instantly in some imminent peril, the only time they are ever really required to use it, they are slow, awkward, and embarrassed.
Let us for a moment follow the fortunes of these two men before us : the one lying bleeding on the ground, and the other flying down and across the hill, firing, and trying to hold his spirited horse to the work. ”