"Eight hundred, or a little bit more," Allen Kane said after turning the thumbwheel to bring the halves of the split image into alignment.

"Let's see if the sight subcontractor knew what he was doing," Henry Bowman replied with a grin. "And the guys at Lake City Arsenal," Kane laughed as he looked up from the tripod-mounted 80 centimeter Barr & Stroud rangefinder.

Henry slid the rear sight of the 1945-era, New England Westinghouse-manufactured Browning Automatic Rifle to its 800-yard setting, checked to see that the bore was clear, made sure the wingnuts on the bipod were tight, and lay down behind the weapon. He put in his earplugs, snapped a full 20-round magazine into place, made sure the rate-of-fire selector was on 'slow', and pulled the butt tightly against his shoulder. He put the front sight on the rock outcropping jutting out from the distant mountainside and squeezed the trigger. Three blasts chugged out of the 20-pound weapon, and three red streaks curved out over the valley and disappeared into the hillside a half-mile away.

"Windage is good; you're about eight, maybe ten feet low," Kane offered, peering through the huge twenty power Japanese battleship binoculars that were also mounted on a tripod. "Shoot some more." Henry put five more bursts into the distant mountainside with very similar results.

"Tracers get lighter as they burn, probably drop more."

"Yeah, but you never know. Ball or AP might shoot somewhere else entirely."

"We'll find out after I shoot some more tracers." He adjusted his rear sight, then reached into the ammo can for another loaded magazine. He fired another burst, and the tracers bounced off the distant rock at unpredictable angles, burning out in midair as they tumbled. Henry Bowman loved tracer ammo. He fired thirteen more 20-round magazines before standing up. "Your turn," he said cheerfully as he picked up the fifteen empty magazines and stacked them neatly on end in the fifty-caliber ammo can.

"Now for the good stuff," Allen Kane announced as he lifted another .50 cal. can off the tailgate of the truck. "Blue tip."

Kane lay down behind the automatic rifle and adjusted the gun's position. He was careful not to touch the barrel, which was now at a temperature of over 700 degrees. He made sure the bolt was retracted and snapped a loaded magazine of .30-06 ammunition into the bottom of the gun's receiver.

Tracer ammunition enabled belt-fed machine gun shooters to see where their shots were going, especially at night. Standard military practice called for every fifth round in the belt to be a tracer, and the other four to be armor piercing rounds whose bullets were constructed with pointed, hardened, tungsten-alloy cores for penetrating steel armor plate. Both tracer and armor-piercing .30 caliber ammo were common on the surplus market. AP was easily recognized by the black paint on the tip of the bullet. Tracers were painted red or orange.

During the Second World War, the United States had developed a .30 caliber incendiary round, and had started loading it in 1943. Incendiary ammunition explodes with a flash when it hits its target, and is most useful for igniting the fuel tanks of enemy aircraft. U.S. incendiary ammo is characterized by blue paint on the tip.

Before the end of 1943, the U.S. Military had realized that since a) none of their fighter aircraft carried .30 caliber machine guns and b) the only time a .30 caliber ground gun was used in an antiaircraft capacity was by utter coincidence, there was little use for .30 caliber incendiary ammunition, and they stopped making it. Production of .50 caliber incendiary (and, to an even greater degree, silver-tipped armor-piercing incendiary) was summarily increased. Blue-tipped .30 caliber, however, was only found with the 43 head-stamp, and was harder to come by.

Blue tip was Henry and Allen's favorite.

Allen Kane put the rear sight back on the 800 yard setting, took aim, and squeezed off a three-round burst.

A little over a second later, three bright white flashes appeared at the base of the rock outcropping. They were easily visible, even in the bright sunlight.

"Good windage. You're right at the base of the rocks. Nice, tight group, too. Looked like all three were in about five feet."

"That's the BAR for you."

Allen Kane spent the next twenty minutes putting three-shot bursts of .30-06 incendiary into the distant rocks, then picked up his Garand and took some long range shots from the standing position with the WWII semiauto.

While Allen Kane was doing this, Henry Bowman got out his 8 3/8" .44 magnum, braced himself against the rear tire of Allen's truck, and did some half-mile sixgun shooting. It took him five shots to determine the right amount of front sight to hold up to hit the Volkswagen-sized boulder a half mile away. The sun was behind them, and Henry could easily spot the puffs of rock dust that flew up when the big cast slugs hit. After getting his sight picture down pat, Henry switched to a smaller rock, one about the size of an overstuffed armchair. He found that he could hit it three to four shots out of every cylinder. Got to ration myself he realized, when he saw how many fired cases had piled up already. Between us, we've only got maybe 15,000 rounds of .44s, and that has to last three weeks. He closed the lid on the ammo can, packed his empties in a canvas bag, and stood up.

Henry stowed the ammo can and fired brass in a side compartment of the truck's camper top and went back to the giant binoculars to study the exposed rocks around him. He and Allen were on a very large section of federal land in the central part of Idaho, and the rock formations were different from those that Henry was used to seeing in Missouri. The midwest was comprised of sedimentary deposits, which were evident along the river and anywhere on any interstate where the highway cut through a hill. Idaho had many more igneous formations, and Henry realized he was unconsciously classifying the geologic structures as he saw them. Henry enjoyed figuring things out, and he was just beginning to discover that geology offered limitless opportunities in that area.

"What?" Henry asked when he realized Allen Kane had said something to him.

"I said, let's pack up and head towards the Pahsimeroi Valley, see if Elmer was pulling our leg when he told us this was the big year in the jack cycle."

"Sounds good to me." Henry began to help Allen gather up their equipment, leaving the Browning until last, to give it more time to cool. When they got in the cab of the truck and headed back down the mountain, the BAR was stowed in a felt-lined canvas drop case.

Its barrel was still too hot to touch.

"How far out do you want them?" Henry asked nervously.

"Whatever you think'd make it interesting."

Great Henry thought. Put it all on me. He decided to spread the targets out over various ranges. Hundred paces ought to do it for the close ones. I can hit those, at least. He picked up the paper sack and started walking.

Allen and Henry were thirty miles outside Salmon, Idaho. Elmer Keith was with them. When Keith had heard Allen Kane was coming to shoot jackrabbits, he had agreed to take an afternoon off from writing and do some long range shooting with the Indiana ballistician and his young friend from Missouri. Allen and Henry had picked up the seventy-year-old gun writer at his house in Salmon, and Keith had directed Allen to a suitable spot outside the small town.

Henry Bowman was nervous. Elmer Keith had been shooting revolvers for over sixty years, and he had studied and mastered many of Ed McGivern's aerial shooting feats forty years before. He was also the man who had persuaded Smith & Wesson to produce the .44 magnum, and his book Sixguns, written when Henry was three years old, was the definitive work on using the revolver for hunting and defense. An entire chapter of the book was devoted to shooting revolvers at ranges up to a half mile.

Henry Bowman did not want to embarrass himself in front of Elmer Keith.

In the paper sack Henry carried were two dozen 2" diameter sticks of 80% strength ditching dynamite. Allen had bought four cases of it at a truck depot in Mackey on the drive north to Salmon. They had wrapped each stick with a piece of typing paper held on with tape and then given it a quick coat of fluorescent orange paint from a spray can for better visibility. Henry was walking out across the rocks and sagebrush to put the dynamite out at various ranges for the three of them to shoot at.

When Henry had counted off seventy paces, he got nervous. Be pretty lame if I can't hit any of them. Better stick a few close in. He lay down three sticks several yards apart, making sure they could be seen from where Allen and Elmer were standing, and then kept walking. When Elmer Keith saw this he raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

Henry put nine sticks a hundred paces out, six at a hundred fifty, and the final six at what he judged was two hundred yards. When he got back to his two companions, the older man was smiling.

"Seventy, a hundred, one-fifty, and two hundred," Henry announced.

"Why'd you stick those first three so close in?" Kane demanded.

"So you could show us some hipshooting," Henry shot back. The old man laughed.

"Now this ought to split the real gun hands out from the ones should do their shootin' across a table," Keith said around the side of his cigar. He was obviously amused. He tipped back the large 5X beaver Stetson that had been his trademark for over forty years and looked closely at Henry. "Go on," he said, nodding.

Wonderful Henry thought. Like we couldn't all shoot at the same time, and make it a little less embarrassing. He slipped his earplugs in and went to the tailgate of the truck. He retrieved a .50 caliber can full of what he considered his 'match' ammo. It had been loaded using once-fired cases and bullets Henry had cast out of the alloy he had found to be most accurate in S&W revolvers. The bullet design was the Hensley & Gibbs #503, cast using the matched pair of molds his father had given him five years before, lubricated with a 50% Alox/50% beeswax mixture, and sized in straight-through Star dies. Elmer Keith had designed the bullet in the late '20s. They shot well at all distances.

Henry Bowman put the ammo can at his feet and drew the 8 3/8" N-frame from the crossdraw holster. He had sighted that particular gun to shoot three inches high at one hundred yards. He loaded the cylinder, pulled the big sixgun into the braced, two-handed position, and cocked the hammer.

The orange targets at the 150-step range were small, but not as hard to see as Henry had feared when he had put them out there. He put the front sight on the orange speck and made sure the top of the rear blade was even with the top of the gold insert in the front ramp. Henry increased the pressure of his right index finger, and squeezed the final few ounces just as the front sight obscured the distant orange target.

The big Smith bucked in recoil. "Just over the top," Allen Kane said immediately. "I think if you'd been a couple inches lower you'd have hit it." Henry nodded and eared back the hammer for another try. This time he willed the trigger to break just before the front sight covered the orange dot in the distance.

Immediately following the blast of the magnum revolver came the distant, satisfying boom of the ditching dynamite, detonated by the impact of the 250 grain flat-nosed slug. A ten-foot cloud of dust appeared and began to settle at the spot where the charge had been. Without hesitating, Henry cocked the hammer again and loosed another round at the next charge set at the same distance. It exploded as well. Henry missed with his fourth shot, again going a bit high. He connected with his fifth, then switched to the 200-yard targets for the last round in his cylinder.

"Gonna try two hundred," he announced. He held up about a sixteenth of an inch of the front sight blade, put the target on top of it, and willed the gun to fire.

"Less than a foot right," Elmer Keith announced as Henry lowered his gun, opened the cylinder, and ejected the spent cases into his ammo pouch. "Al," Keith said, addressing the man from Indiana, "I guess young Henry here won't be calling me a liar about six-guns at long range." Kane laughed, and Henry smiled at the compliment.

"Time to see if I've still got my eyesight," Keith announced, and drew a 4" barreled Smith & Wesson from an inside-the-pants holster on his right hip. It was identical to Henry's gun except for the shorter barrel and the smaller grips, which were inlaid on each side with an eagle medallion.

Keith exploded the three remaining hundred-yard charges with four shots, missed one at 150 yards, then connected with his last round. Henry noticed that Keith fired all six rounds in about half the time that he himself had taken. He is good Henry thought.

"Leave me the easy ones and the impossible ones, huh?" Allen Kane said in mock indignation. "We've got plenty of dynamite," Henry said cheerfully.

The three shooters had spent the rest of the afternoon shooting a variety of long range and aerial targets. Henry Bowman was especially impressed with what Allen Kane and Elmer Keith could each do with two revolvers, fired from the hip simultaneously. Keith, in turn, was surprised at Henry's skill on aerial targets, especially with the 20-pound BAR.

Henry shook the man's hand once again as they dropped him off at his house. "Thanks for taking the time to see us today, Elmer" Henry said.

Keith smiled. "You got the right idea with that .375 Ackley of yours, son," he declared as he climbed out of the truck. "No point in spending all your time practicing with a pest rifle like that 7mm Remington if you're ever going to hunt game animals." He turned and walked towards his house. Allen Kane waited until he had entered the front door, then accelerated away from the curb.

He's better than I am with a revolver Henry decided. I need to practice more.

August 13,1969 "If you're looking for a department that will teach Marxism, I'd advise you to consider another school."

"Pardon me?" Henry said. He thought he had heard the man correctly, but after listening to some of the economics professors at other liberal arts schools boast of the progressive courses their departments offered, he was startled by the man's blunt declaration.

Henry Bowman was in the final stages of that ritual common to prep-school students in the summer preceding their senior year: The College Visiting Trip. In late June, Henry had removed the rear seat and control stick from his clipped-wing, 140-horsepower Cub, and bolted a cover over the hole in the floor where the stick had been. He had packed camping gear, clothes, a folding bike, his 5" Smith & Wesson, and 3000 rounds of ammunition behind the front seat, and headed east.

Henry had spent the last three weeks flying around New England, landing at local airports and bicycling to various schools. Most New England colleges had small airports nearby, and all had quoted him reasonable hangar rates if he decided to base his plane there during the school year. LaFleur airport was only four miles from Amherst College, and the people there had been very hospitable. Airport owners tended to admire acrobatic pilots, particularly ones who camped out of their airplanes.

"This department teaches Economics based on the principles of free market capitalism, and no one currently on our faculty advocates anything else."

Professor Nelson was about sixty-five, had white hair, and was slightly hard of hearing. His teeth were white and straight, and he showed a lot of them when he spoke. He was very outspoken, which Henry could see, and he had no patience for the students who attempted to 'take over' classes in the five college area of the Pioneer Valley.

This had happened often the previous year, under the guise of 'war protest'. Professor Nelson had no quarrel with those who opposed the war; he was no fan of it himself. He had noticed, however, that all protest efforts took place during daytime hours of weekdays and disappeared on weekends and vacation days. It seemed crazy to the professor that a student who was paying thousands of dollars to attend college would barricade the door to a classroom and hold the class hostage to a free-form 'rap session' about the war instead of demanding that the professor deliver every bit of his expensive expertise to the class. The only rational reason Nelson could accept was one he had overheard a demonstration leader tell another young man the previous spring: "The hell with whether you believe this shit or not-this is the best way to get good-looking rich chicks to fuck you I've ever found."

James Nelson was one of the longest-tenured professors at Amherst College, and was a nationallyrecognized expert on railroad regulation. As such, he was keenly aware of the problems created when policy planners attempted to unload their own socialist agendas onto dynamic, creative people powerfully motivated by economic self-interest.

Professor Nelson smiled at Henry Bowman and added, "I tell you this now so you won't feel misled if you matriculate here a year from now. Maybe you'll want to reconsider your choice of colleges."

Henry Bowman liked this man, even though he'd only known him for twenty minutes. He kind of reminds me of Elmer Keith Henry thought. That is, if Elmer Keith had lived in an eastern college town, worn a suit, and taught economics for the last forty years instead of living in Idaho, riding horses, guiding hunting parties, and shooting guns two or three hours a day.

"On the other hand," Henry countered, "what you've said may make me want to tear up my applications to Hampshire, Antioch, and Williams, and bribe the Dean of Admissions here to make sure I get in." Nelson chuckled at this. Nobody who applied to Amherst College even considered attending any of the three schools Henry had just named.

"Thank you for taking the time to talk to me," Henry said, becoming serious again. "I've read the descriptions in the course catalog of what this department offers. There are a lot of classes I'd like to take here."

"We do a fair job," Nelson replied. Henry stood to leave.

"Can you aim me towards the Geology building?" he asked. Nelson pointed with his cane out the window. "Corner of the quad. Two hundred yards. Make sure you go to the geology museum, too. It's the small building right next to the science center."

"Thanks. I'll do that." Henry left the man's office and found the stairwell.

Nelson smiled to himself as Henry left. He liked young people in general, and the one he had just met was no exception.

If anything, James Nelson had understated the Amherst College Econ Department's aversion to statist intervention and socialist economic policies. Eight years later, a student group devoted to campus humor and practical jokes would print up and distribute an official-looking notice of 'Recent additions to the Spring Course Catalog'. One of the entries would ostensibly be taught by the Chairman of the Economics Department, and was described thus: Econ. 32: Constructive Alternatives to Capitalism Professor Kohler. Required for major.

Room 312 Converse Hall

12:00 Noon-12:05 first Wednesday of every month.

James Nelson would find this very amusing.