Henry pulled a zippered, triangular leather case from his shooting bag and opened it. Irwin Mann gave a start. "That is a-Smith & Wesson?" he asked. Henry looked surprised.

"Yes, it is. Have you used one before?"

"Only a few times, many years ago. A thirty-eight, as I recall." And every time I fired it the muzzle was pressed firmly against the target Irwin mentally added.

"This one's a lot smaller caliber than that-a twenty-two, like the Winchester," Henry explained. "But it's built on a .38 frame, so the gun itself is probably about the same size as the one you used." Henry swung out the cylinder, loaded the gun with ammunition he kept in the pocket of his shooting coat, and started shooting. Irwin Mann was astonished at what he saw. Henry Bowman quit talking, and for the next twenty minutes his concentration was absolute.

Henry shot with his left hand as well as his right. Using a two-hand hold, he shot at a channel-marking buoy anchored far out in the river. On all six shots, Irwin heard the dull 'thunk' as the bullets struck the steel cylinder. Irwin Mann would learn over lunch that the buoy was made out of a 55-gallon drum filled with foam, and it was almost 300 yards from shore. Henry shot wood blocks out of the water holding the revolver upside down and pulling the trigger with his little finger. He asked his father for a small metal film can about an inch in diameter with a screw-on top. Henry threw it out in the water, kicked it up in the air with the first shot and hit it in midair with the second. He hit it again as soon as it landed in the water, and then the perforated can sank.

Finally, Henry locked his elbows into his kidneys and held the revolver at waist level in a two-hand hold. He was aiming it at a medium-sized piece of driftwood about eight feet in front of him that had washed up on the shore. Suddenly a stuttering blast erupted from the revolver and fragments of the fragile wood flew into the air. Irwin thought that the noise sounded familiar, and he realized with amazement that it was the same sound made by the submachine guns the Germans had used in Warsaw.

Henry opened the cylinder and pointed the gun's muzzle at the sky. He pressed the ejector rod with his thumb, and six empties fell to his feet. "I'm down to right at one second for six shots. Ed McGivern could shoot five in four-tenths of a second, but that was with a thirty-eight. You can shoot a more powerful revolver faster than you can a .22, because pushing it down out of recoil helps you pull the trigger doubleaction. Sorry I wasn't explaining what I was doing, but shooting a revolver well takes a lot more concentration. Let's have lunch and then you can shoot some more."

Irwin Mann was even more quiet than usual as the three of them sat on big river rocks and ate the sandwiches Catherine Bowman had packed for them. She hadn't been certain what foods Irwin might find offensive, so she had played it safe and supplied roast beef on buns, a big Thermos of lemonade, and another of coffee.

After finishing his sandwich and lemonade, Walter got up and went over to his camera bag to retrieve his Contarex. He walked down the riverbank and started framing various shots of the river, his sort, and their guest. Irwin Mann, who was now alone with his young friend, finally spoke up.

"When I was a young man, before the war started, Henry, I knew nothing at all of how to use firearms. In fact, not a single relative or person I knew had any experience at all with guns of any kind. My entire family was killed by the Nazis in that war. I could not find even a single distant cousin after it was all over. My wife's sister, your Aunt Zofia, was the only one alive, and that is because she was here in America with your Uncle Max." Henry looked at the sadness in the older man's eyes, but he said nothing.

"I was shipped off with many others to a compound in Poland. We were slowly being starved to death. Some of us fought back, finally. We captured some weapons, but none of us knew how to use them. We had to figure them out as if they were strange machines dropped from another planet. My friends were doctors, engineers, and architects, and not one of them had one-tenth of the knowledge that I have seen you demonstrate today." He kicked at a small stone near his foot.

"We fought for many days, but we were too few, too unprepared, and too unfamiliar with how to defend ourselves. I was very lucky to escape alive into a safer area, through the sewers. The others I was with were not so fortunate." He took a breath and came to a decision. "Let me show you."

Irwin Mann retrieved his briefcase and withdrew the large hardcover book from it. He opened it to a page he had marked with a scrap of paper and handed it to the boy. Henry Bowman held the book in his lap and looked down to where Irwin Mann's finger was pointing. The words were in a foreign language.

"This is the concentration camp at Treblinka in Poland. I was someplace else, but it was much the same."

There was a black-and-white photo of a German soldier with a Mauser rifle slung over his shoulder, smiling at the camera. In front of him were about a dozen men, all painfully thin, dressed in clothes that were one step above rags. The soldier was dressed in a heavy wool overcoat. It was obviously very cold.

"Turn the page." Henry did so. Another photo showed a soldier holding a 9mm Luger pistol in his hand, urging another group of undernourished, miserable-looking prisoners to move onwards. Each of the captives was nude.

"Those prisoners in the concentration camp are no longer fit to work. The soldier is making them march to the edge of a big pit where they will be shot and pushed in."

"Do they know that's where they're being taken?"

"Of course. The camp prisoners, the ones who were strong enough, were forced to dig the pit themselves. Every week the ones who were not able to work as hard as the soldiers insisted were taken to the pit and executed. Those men knew exactly what was going to happen."

"This picture is a..." Henry paused, groping for the right word, "...a reenactment of what happened at the concentration camp. It's not a photo that was taken when this was actually happening." He was making a statement of fact.

"No!" Irwin exclaimed. "These are not actors! The arrogant Nazis were proud of what they were doing! They did not mind that their evil was recorded on film."

"You mean this is a photo of what you were talking about while it was actually happening, and a minute after this picture was snapped all these people were dead, lying at the bottom of a big mass grave, and they knew they were going to be killed?"

"It was a horrible, evil thing the Nazis did," Irwin said slowly.

"I know, but...that's not what I meant. These German soldiers..." Henry said, pointing at the pictures, "...none of their guns are loaded."

"What?" Irwin Mann was startled at how loudly he had spoken, and realized he must not have heard the boy correctly. "I'm sorry-what did you say?"

"None of the soldiers' guns are loaded, Mr. Mann. Look." Henry was pointing to the soldier with the 98 Mauser slung over his shoulder. "You can see the cocking piece at the back of the bolt. It's in the down position. That means the firing pin's down. It hasn't been cocked. No one carries a rifle with a round in the chamber and the firing pin down. Even if he did, he'd still have to operate the bolt to cock the striker before he could fire the rifle, just the same as if the chamber was empty." Henry jumped up. "Here. Let me show you."

Henry Bowman retrieved his Mauser and brought it back to where Irwin was seated. He opened the bolt and made sure the gun was empty, then closed it again. "See how the cocking piece here sticks out a halfinch?" he said, pointing. Irwin Mann nodded dumbly. "The gun is ready to shoot." He pulled the trigger and the firing pin fell with a sharp metallic sound. "Look at the picture again. The rifle's cocking piece is down, just like this one is now." Irwin Mann saw that the cocking piece on the rifle in the photograph was down, just like the one on the gun Henry Bowman held in his hands.

Henry continued, unaware of the expression on the older man's face. "And he's got his rifle slung upside down over his shoulder, and the people he's supposed to be guarding are only a few feet away. There's no way he could get that rifle unslung and rack the bolt before all those men were on top of him, if they wanted to be." He turned the page.

"And look here. This Luger the soldier's pointing at the men that are about to be executed." Henry pointed to the pistol which was in perfect profile to the camera. "Lugers have a loaded-round indicator that tells you if there's a round in the chamber. It sticks up about an eighth of an inch, and lies flat if the chamber's empty. It's not sticking up in this picture, and you said these men were going to be shot in about a minute." All of a sudden Henry thought of something.

"There must be other soldiers we can't see that are out of the picture, holding loaded guns on the men that are about to be executed, and that's why the prisoners didn't jump the guard and take his pistol."

"Maybe," Irwin said bleakly, but he knew there were no unseen soldiers backing up the guard in the photo. All of a sudden he remembered opening the captured Mauser rifle for the first time and seeing the magazine full of cartridges. But the chamber had been empty! he realized with a shock. The Jews had no will to resist, and the Nazis knew it. Irwin Mann noticed he was trembling. Henry did not notice this, for he was turning the pages, looking for other pictures.

"Look, here's a soldier with a broomhandle Mauser machine pistol in 7.63mm, with a 20-round magazine," Henry said, squinting at the photograph. "I read somewhere that that was Winston Churchill's favorite pistol," he added irrelevantly. "Must never have got his hands on an N-frame Smith & Wesson," Henry muttered under his breath. He turned his attention back to the photo. "Anyway, see how this pistol has an exposed hammer, and it's in the 'down' position? This gun doesn't have a round in the chamber either. That soldier'd have to rack the slide back and release it before he could fire the gun."

Henry moved his finger over on the photo. "And look at this guy. See the MP40 submachine gun he's carrying?" Irwin Mann nodded. It was the weapon that he had thought of when Henry was doing rapid fire with his revolver. "That gun fires from an open bolt. The bolt has to be held back under spring tension before you can pull the trigger and make it go off. See how the bolt handle is all the way forward? That gun's not ready to fire either. And the stock is folded. The only time you should fold the stock on a gun is when you're storing it, or packing it away someplace where space is critical, like for a parachute jump."

Henry and Irwin looked through the book for other concentration camp photos. In every picture where the soldiers' guns were plainly visible, not one weapon was ready to fire.

"Would many people notice this fact, as you have?" Irwin asked finally.

"Anyone with any knowledge of guns. My Uncle Max, for sure, and I imagine most of the people out at the rifle and pistol range. Some shotgun shooters don't know a thing about rifles and pistols, and not every shooter has read up on machine guns like I have, but yes, most shooters I know would notice that the guns weren't ready to fire."

If only we had had but one ten-year-old boy like this one twenty years ago thought Irwin Mann. Many more of us would now be alive.

"Henry," Irwin said finally, "I hope that you never lose interest in your shooting skills. If we had had a few less doctors and musicians in 1940, and a few more boys like you, perhaps what you see in these photos might not have been possible." Irwin Mann took a deep breath. "But Hitler and his brownshirts did not allow Jews like me to have guns."

"It's kind of the same way around here, but with Negroes," Henry replied, remembering what Al Goodman had told him.

Irwin talked to Henry a while longer, and then the two sat in contemplative silence for a few minutes. Walter Bowman was still down on the riverbank, taking pictures. He had intuited that Irwin Mann had wanted to say some things to his son.

Henry Bowman looked up at his guest, as if he had just remembered something.

"Here, show me what you can do with a revolver," the boy said, opening the cylinder of his K-22 and handing it to Irwin Mann.

On the drive home, Walter commented on Irwin's shooting and asked their guest if he had enjoyed himself. Irwin Mann answered mechanically, for his thoughts were on what he had seen and the things he had learned from the young boy. He felt a growing sense of shame at what he and his countrymen had allowed to happen a generation before on the other side of the globe. Finally, he wrenched himself out of this train of thought and recalled something Henry had said after lunch.

"Henry, what is an N-frame Smith & Wesson?"

"Oh, that's the biggest of the three frame sizes they make. They use special steels and heat-treat them so they're really strong for the .357 and .44 Magnum calibers. Ed McGivern shot at paper targets out in Montana with a long-barreled .357 Smith in 1937, and he proved you could hit a man-sized target at 600 yards with one, using a rest and good ammo. Uncle Max has one, and he lets me shoot it. He gave me his lead furnace, bullet molds, and loading tools, and he buys the powder, primers, and lead alloy. I load all our .357 ammo, and he lets me borrow his gun." Henry did not know it, but the boy and his uncle each viewed themselves as getting the better deal.

"Is the .357 the most accurate caliber?"

"From a rest, I can hit a coffee can at over a hundred yards every shot with a .357, but I understand the .44 magnum is even better. Big revolver bullets aren't as affected by slight imperfections as smaller ones are, and don't get deformed as much in firing. It's easier to shoot really tight groups with the .44." Henry hesitated a moment and then added, "At least, that's what all the recent testing I've read says. The .44 Magnum didn't exist in the 'thirties when Ed McGivern was doing his tests-it came out about seven years ago. Smith & Wesson doesn't make very many of them. I've only seen one in my whole life." Walter Bowman smiled at the last comment, in light of the fact that it was coming from a ten-year-old.

Irwin Mann remained silent. He was thinking of something he was going to ask Max Collins the next time he saw him.

"Dad, while you were taking pictures after we had lunch, Mr. Mann was telling me about what happened to him during the war." Henry and his father were down in the workshop, where Henry was cleaning his guns. Walter Bowman looked up at his son.

"Hm." Walter had never heard of Irwin Mann talking about that part of his past.

"He was telling me about how the police came and took him and his wife away, and he never saw her or any of his family again. He said that Hitler killed six million Jews like him, and would have killed all of them if the Americans hadn't fought against the Germans and beat them."

"That's probably true."

"He talked about how none of them had any way to fight back. He said first the police took away the guns that were like the ones the soldiers used, then they took away all their guns. He said he hoped I was always a good shot with as many kinds of guns as possible, in case the same thing ever happened here." Henry looked very upset. "Dad, I love shooting, but I don't want to kill anyone. Could something like what happened in Germany ever happen here?" he asked.

Walter Bowman, the history teacher, looked his son in the eye. Want to take this question for me, Uncle Cam? he said silently. Finally he answered.

"It probably won't happen here," he said, and mentally added the word again. "I certainly pray that it doesn't. We have a nation with the kind of freedoms that people in most other countries can only dream of. But to answer your question accurately, yes, it could happen here." And it killed your uncle.

"There are always men who want more and more power, and history has shown us that these kind of men will take all they can from the people they control. Sometimes they are finally stopped when the people fight back. Sometimes the people don't fight back, and they slowly lose their freedoms until it's too late.

"You know about the six million Jews being killed by Hitler and his police, because people talk about it. There have been many other examples of the same kind of thing, but they don't get discussed as much, for one reason or another."

"What do you mean?" Henry asked. He had stopped cleaning his 98 Mauser, and was hanging on his father's words.

"Russians, for one. Josef Stalin murdered twenty million of his own people fifteen years before World War Two, to make sure that the rest of the population would obey his will." Henry's eyes were big as he listened to what Walter said. "A few years before that, it was Armenians that were slaughtered by the Turks, in 1915. After World War II, the Chinese government murdered millions of its people, one big batch starting in the late '40s and another starting ten years later. I hear it's starting again."

Walter Bowman was unaware that over the next ten years, Mao Tse-Tung would up the ante by systematically slaughtering twenty million of his own people. This would equal Stalin's record but would be accomplished in a much shorter period of time. He also did not know of the coming genocides in other countries.

"I know you love shooting just for the pleasure it gives you. Ever since I was your age, I've been the same way about flying. I've never wanted to kill another person, and thank God I've never had to.

"But during the war, I taught hundreds of other men to fly well enough so that they could go into combat in the air, shoot down enemy fighters, and destroy targets on the ground. Those skills I learned just for the pure pleasure of it became very valuable to people's freedom, but in the course of it, a lot of people were killed.

"I really don't think you should worry about America turning into Nazi Germany, Henry," Walter Bowman said, but his face looked worried nonetheless. "At least not...not today." Wonder what my Uncle Cameron would think if he were alive to hear me say that. Walter licked his lips and was about to continue, but his son interrupted him.

"What's the matter, Dad?" Walter Bowman squinted, then nodded his head as he came to a decision.

"Son, I think it's time I told you about what happened to your Grandpa Mike's brother, Uncle Cameron Bowman, a little over thirty years ago, when I was a few years older than you are right now. He'd be your great-uncle, if he were still alive today.

"When he was a young man, in 1917 and 1918, he served in the Army in World War One, just like I served in the Navy in World War Two. Except when I was in the war, I stayed in this country and trained pilots on a Naval air base in Florida. Uncle Cam was in the infantry, and he got sent overseas. They sent him into combat in France, where German soldiers were shooting at him with rifles just like that one there." Henry looked at his Mauser as if it were a rattlesnake, and Walter chuckled in spite of the nature of the conversation.

"Don't look that way; he never got wounded, and he brought back some German guns for your Grandpa Mike. One of them was like that one of yours, but with a longer barrel."

"It was the standard rifle, not a carbine like mine."

"Right. Dad sold it-or gave it away, I don't know which-after Uncle Cam died. Dad said Uncle Cam always told him the Enfield was a better rifle than the Mauser."

Henry nodded.

"It is. It's stronger, and the bolt lugs are a true interrupted thread, so the Enfield will chamber dented or bent rounds when the Mauser won't."

"Then why do you have a Mauser?" Walter asked, allowing himself to get off the subject. "Ammo's cheaper."

Walter Bowman nodded as he looked at his son, and then said something that had crossed his mind off and on for several years.

"I wish to hell Uncle Cam was still alive to see you, Henry. I've always thought you had some of his blood in you, and today reminded me of it all the more." He took a deep breath and resumed the story of his dead uncle.

"Anyway, your Great-Uncle Cam had a small farm in the western part of this state, and in 1931, he got too far into debt, and he couldn't pay back the bank that had lent him money, so he had to give them his farm instead."

"He couldn't sell the farm first, and then pay them?"

"No, lots of people had the same problem, and nobody wanted to buy his farm for as much money as he owed the bank. The bank took the farm, but they couldn't get much for it, so they lost a lot of money, too. There were other people, not just Uncle Cam, that they had lent money to who couldn't pay it back. So the bank ended up with a bunch of farms like Uncle Cam's, and when they finally sold them, the price was very low, and they lost so much money that they went out of business too. It was a bad deal for everyone.

"So your Great-Uncle Cam was broke, and he'd lost his house and property, but he had been a soldier in the war, and the government had promised that they'd give every soldier a bonus depending on how many days he'd served. In Uncle Cam's case, I think the bonus was five or six hundred dollars, which was a tremendous amount of money thirty years ago when the country was in the middle of a terrible depression and many people had no jobs.

"The problem was, the total amount the government had said they'd pay all the soldiers was over three billion dollars. The government had promised this money-and they were going to pay it, there was no doubt of that-but the agreement was that they were going to pay it in 1945, and that-"

"They were going to pay the money at the end of World War Two?" Henry broke in.

"Well, yes," Walter said, suppressing a smile, "but in 1918 no one knew then that there was going to be a World War Two. At that time, 1945 was just a date in the future."

"Oh. Right." Henry felt like an idiot.

"Anyway," Walter continued, "1945 was twenty-seven years after the end of the war these veterans had fought. Now it was 1931, the bonus was still fourteen years away, and fourteen more years might as well have been forever if you were someone who had lost his house and had no job.

"So in 1932, a bunch of veterans went to Washington to try to convince the government to pay them early. They jumped onto freight cars that were heading east, they packed into old trucks and marched through towns where people gave them coins so they could buy gas, and some of them even walked to Washington."

"Grandpa Mike's brother was one of them?"

"Exactly. He was one of the Bonus Marchers, or Bonus Army, as they were called then, and he got to Washington, D.C in...May, I think it was, of that year."

Walter Bowman proceeded to tell his son about all that had happened those two months in the spring and summer of 1932, when he himself had been fifteen years old. Henry listened raptly as his father described the events of that tragic period in history, and of how his father and his grandparents had read about them as the story had unfolded in newspapers and radio broadcasts across the country.

"Hoover wanted the 'Death March' to end, and he told General MacArthur to clear the Bonus Army out of the area around the Capitol. MacArthur's men did this by using tear gas, cavalry, and tanks. Then they set fire to the shacks that were there, so that the marchers wouldn't come back into the city. All that was bad enough, but it was what they did next that people remember most. There's also some argument about just who was responsible for what was about to come.

"Some people say that General MacArthur followed President Hoover's direct order, and some say he acted on his own. Hoover always took full blame for what happened that night, so it could be either." He took a deep breath.

"There's no doubt in my mind that Hoover ordered the Army to clear the veterans away from the Capitol building. But from what I've read and what I believe about the men involved, I think what MacArthur did next was exactly what the President told him not to do. The President took the blame, and he was right to take the blame, because the President is ultimately the one in charge, even if something bad happens because a General disobeys him." Walter went on.

"What happened next was, in the middle of the night, General MacArthur and Majors Patton and Eisenhower-"