Henry looked at the rifle. The brown plastic stock was exceedingly ugly. He had read of how a shooter named Tom Frye had been hired by Remington and had used two of the guns in late 1959, soon after they first were introduced. He had hit 100,000 wooden blocks thrown in the air, missing only six. Frye had broken Ad Topperwein's fifty-year-old record, but it was not an exact comparison. Topperwein had adhered to the old rules where the targets were thrown twenty or more feet vertically by a person standing at least twenty-five feet in front of the shooter. Frye had his throwers stand right by his shoulder, and throw the wood blocks along the intended path of the bullet.

Henry picked up the rifle, checked the chamber, and threw it to his shoulder. It was light and balanced well, but he hated the feel of the cold plastic. He tried the other two Remingtons and although the wood felt better in his hands, the guns did not seem to fall into place as had the Winchester pump gun. He laid each rifle back on the counter and looked at his father.

"Dad, I'd rather not have a rifle with a plastic stock. I don't care how strong it is."

"I guess all that time spent with me in the shop rubbed off on you. Al, put that nylon one away. Anything else we should look at?"

"Yes, the Winchester 77, and the Browning. The Winchester doesn't have a tubular magazine, but if you don't mind loading a clip, it's a fine rifle. Here, let me show you one." Al Goodman carried the Nylon 66 back to the rack and returned with the Winchester in his left hand and the Browning in his right. He handed the Winchester to the boy. Henry looked at it carefully and opened the action, then threw it up to his shoulder. He laid it down next to the other three rifles. He had a look of concentration on his face as he stared at the four guns. Then he looked back at the store owner, who handed him the Browning autoloader. It was the most finely finished of all the rifles there, and the grain of the wood was very handsome. The very slender receiver necessitated a swelled shape for the forend, which Henry thought was vaguely strange looking. It handled beautifully. Henry was well aware that it was the most expensive rifle in the group, and he had hoped he would not like it as much. He didn't want his father to think he wanted it based on its price.

"What do you think, son?"

"Let me try them again" Henry Bowman snapped each rifle into position quickly, one after the other. When he had laid the fifth one down, he looked at his father, and then at Al Goodman. He felt awkward with what he was about to say. He didn't know if it would sound stupid. "The sights on the Winchester pump line up the quickest with my eye, and the Browning auto is almost as good. The other three, it seems like I have to squash my face down on the stock a little to line up the sights."

"Your son is exactly right," Al Goodman said to Walter Bowman. "The Winchester and the Browning are the oldest designs here. The others you've seen were brought out in more recent years, since scope sights became affordable and more people wanted them, even on twenty-twos. Their stocks are shaped to hold your head higher up, in line with where a scope would be. You see these grooves here?" Al asked, indicating two parallel channels milled in the top of the Remington. "They are for mounting a lightweight .22 scope. The Winchester pump doesn't have them. The Browning does, but the factory has only recently started putting them on, and they didn't change the stock dimensions from the original." He looked Henry's father in the eye. "Is your son this observant about everything?"

"About things that interest him, yes. Always."

"Are you planning to use a scope with your rifle, Henry?" The way Al said it, Walter Bowman imagined he was hearing a recording on the telephone.

"No, sir. I want to hit targets in the air like Herb Parsons and Ed McGivern." Walter Bowman was momentarily embarrassed and started to say something, but Al was talking again.

"If you're serious about trick shooting, either of the two guns would work, but with a low-recoil gun like a .22, the semiauto will be better." He looked at Walter Bowman. "You should know that all the other rifles are between fifty and fifty-five dollars. The Browning is seventy."

Walter Bowman was no stranger to fine craftsmanship, and he waved his hand in dismissal. "It looks well worth an extra fifteen dollars." He turned to his son. "Shall we take it home?"

Henry smiled, but he had an anxious look on his face. He turned to the mild-looking owner of the gun store. "Do you have a Winchester Model 63?"

Al Goodman shook his head. "Winchester stopped making the 63 last year. It wasn't selling well, because it was a more expensive gun to make than their competition's." Al squinted, and continued. "Now, I do have a used one that was part of an estate collection, but it's about twenty-five years old."

"Could I see it?" Henry asked immediately. He did not know what an estate was, but he did not particularly care.

"Of course." Al Goodman walked twenty feet over to the used gun section of the store and withdrew a rifle from the back row of the case. He brought it over and handed it to the boy. It had a tubular magazine which was filled through an oval port in the right side of the stock, just like the Browning. Unlike the Belgian gun, however, the Winchester had a taller receiver and the contours of the wooden forend blended smoothly into it. The bluing was worn from all the sharp corners of the receiver, and bare metal shone through. The same was true of the muzzle. The gun was well oiled, and no hint of rust or corrosion was evident anywhere on it. The grip section of the stock and the center of the forend had a different sheen to them than did the rest of the wood. Walter Bowman recognized instantly the signs of wood that had been long exposed to the polishing effects of human hands.

Henry threw the rifle up to his shoulder and a huge smile split his face. The sights fell in line the instant his cheek hit the stock. The rifle felt like it was a part of him. "This is my favorite, Dad," he said immediately, and handed the gun to his father.

"It looks like it's been well cared-for by someone who used it quite a lot," Walter Bowman said to the older man as he examined the rifle. "Is the bore in good shape?" He was no firearms expert, but he knew enough to ask about that.

"Twenty-twos will never wear out a bore from shooting, but any obstruction can ruin the barrel if a shot is fired through it, and unlike a centerfire, you usually can't see the damage from the outside. Twenty-twos get shot so much, that's a real risk with a used one, and we see our share of jugged barrels. We won't accept those, either in trade or on consignment. You're right about the owner. He shot this gun quite a lot in the last twenty-five years, but he never shot bad ammo that left a bullet in the bore, or accidentally poked the muzzle in the dirt. You may have known him-name of Hamilton. Passed away last month. His widow brought in his entire collection." Al Goodman remembered Walter's question about the rifle and added, "I'll be glad to get you a bore scope and let you examine it yourself, if you'd like, but we both know Henry's uncle would skin me alive if I sold you a rifle with a bum barrel."

"Do you think a semiauto is a good choice for an eight-year-old?"

"Another good question. Ordinarily, we recommend a single shot as a first rifle for young boys, because you have to manually operate the action and insert a new cartridge between shots. Most people think any manually operated repeater is safer than a semiauto for first-time shooters. But the fact is that anyone who shoots much gets into the habit of working the action immediately after firing a shot, so that the gun is ready to fire again. That's true for a bolt action, lever action, or pump. Your son has demonstrated impeccable safety habits here today. I think he will be equally safe with any of the rifles we've looked at, if you or his uncle gets him started with his new rifle."

Walter Bowman looked at his son, and held out the Winchester. "This the one you want, kiddo?" Henry nodded, and Walter turned to the older man. "We'll take it, Mr. Goodman."

Al Goodman liked customers who didn't haggle over prices, but he wasn't used to ones who didn't even look at the tag. The Goodman brothers had enough finances that they could buy large collections outright from heirs eager to get cash. They always tried to buy estate collections for less than a third of what the guns cost new. Used guns had more profit margin in them than new ones, and thus more room for negotiation. The Goodmans also liked to have a new customer eager to return. Al looked at the price tag on the rifle and mentally subtracted five dollars.

"That gun is twenty-five years old, and the finish is worn. The last list price on a Model 63 was eighty dollars. I can let you have that rifle, along with a soft case so it won't get scratched, for forty-five dollars. How does that sound?"

"It sounds like we'll be able to afford quite a bit of ammo. Any recommendations?"

"Winchester Super-Speed is good. The bullets are copper plated so they won't leave lead in the bore even with lots of shooting, and they don't have a waxy lubricant that some companies use which picks up dirt. Seventy-eight cents per fifty-round box. How many boxes would you like?"

"We'll take a case."

"A full case is a hundred boxes. Ten ten-box cartons. Five thousand rounds for sixty-six dollars. Can you use that many right away, or do you want to start with less?"

Walter Bowman had thought that a case of .22 rimfire was 2500 cartridges, but he nodded at the salesman. "I think we'll take a full case, if that won't clean you out. Save us from having to run back here right away."

"Of course. I'll have the stockboy bring one out for you." Al Goodman rang up the sale, and Walter Bowman paid him with twenty-dollar bills and collected his change. A hundred dollars was a lot to spend on an eight-year-old, but Henry had not wanted toys that would soon be forgotten, and his birthday was so close to Christmas that in previous years his parents had only given him a cake and a few knick-knacks.

"Take you a long time to shoot all this up," the teenage stockboy said as he met them in front of the store. Walter lifted the heavy carton onto his right shoulder and took his son's hand with his left. The two of them walked towards the car, with Henry carrying his rifle in the soft cloth case in the crook of his left arm.

"I'll come back for more when it's gone," Henry replied cheerfully. The teenager, a smallbore competitor who practiced on an indoor range every day, smiled broadly. It made him feel good to see a little boy with his first rifle.

If Henry Bowman had chosen any of the other guns he had seen that afternoon on his eighth birthday, he would probably never have become aware of a quirk that was peculiar to Winchester Model 63 rifles. He definitely would not have discovered this quirk at the age of eight, when his interest in shooting was beginning to seriously accelerate, and his own preferences were crystallizing.

Henry did go home that day with the Model 63, however, and his choice would prove to have powerful repercussions that would not be ultimately felt until long after he had become an adult.

As it also turned out, it did take Henry Bowman longer than he expected to shoot up all five thousand rounds of his birthday ammunition. It was winter, and he and his parents only went to their place in the country on Saturdays.

Henry and his father would not return to Goodman's for more ammo for almost two months.

April 7, 1961 "Mr. Johnson, most law professors here at Harvard, me included, have a reputation for criticizing often and praising almost never. We do that so that students will not become complacent. Your work in my Contracts class has been uniformly excellent, and I am strongly recommending you for the Law Review.

"Although I suspect you will be successful in whatever area of the law you choose to pursue, I suggest you give serious thought to working on Wall Street. They have always needed top-flight contracts specialists, but even more so now with the Kennedy administration's apparent pro-business stance. I would not be surprised to see a substantial increase in both the required level of excellence of securities contracts lawyers, and in their compensation as well. If you are interested, I may be able to assist you in getting a summer internship at Lambert, Burns in New York. I still have a little influence there."

Raymond Johnson sat up a little straighter. Lambert, Burns was a powerhouse law firm on Wall Street, and Professor Dobbs was not known for making idle promises. "That's very generous of you, sir. I have two offers for internships right now, but neither one of them is as appealing as a summer at Lambert, Burns."

"You realize there won't be much chance to go hunting if you spend the summer in New York City." Dobbs was exhibiting a rare smile as he said this. It had become common knowledge on campus that while all of the other male students at Harvard Law School were using what little spare time they had to pursue Radcliffe undergrads, the Colorado native was apt to be out in the woods an hour west of Boston with a small game rifle.

"Upstate New York's got some decent hunting, sir. I might be able to get off some Saturday afternoon." He smiled when he said this. Both Ray and the professor knew that the pace Lambert, Burns set for its summer interns was apt to be even more rigorous than that of the Law School.

"I hope you're right. I'll make some calls and see what I can do about getting you in with them. They'd be missing a bet if they didn't make you an offer. Listen," the older man said, changing the subject, "I've got papers to grade and you've got cases to prepare. I'll call you in again when there's more to tell."

"I appreciate that, sir," Raymond said as he stood up to go. "I'm glad you think enough of my work to do this for me."

"Part of my job. Not many people know it, that's all." He turned his attention to a stack of papers on his desk.

Some days you win, as Dad always says Raymond thought as he closed the office door behind him. Law Review. Not bad. As he left the building he decided to go by East Bay Sports and see his friend Gene.

August 12, 1961 "Yes, sir. How can we help you today?" The proprietor smiled and faced the young man who had just entered the storefront in New York City.

Raymond Johnson looked at the man and smiled back. "Been planning to come here ever since I got to New York in the beginning of the summer, but this is the first Saturday I haven't had to work." He walked over to the older man with his hand extended, but could not resist staring around the room. "Ray Johnson," he said immediately, recognizing the man from photos he had seen. "I've wanted to see what Griffin & Howe looked like ever since I was a kid, out in Colorado."

"I hope we don't disappoint you, Mr. Johnson," the man said wryly.

"Not likely," Ray said immediately as he continued to take in the rack upon rack of beautifully finished rifles that covered the walls. He lowered his gaze to the glass case that stood waist-high in front of him. Inside it were several of the handmade steel quick-detachable scope mounts for which Griffin & Howe was internationally known. "I should warn you that I'm not in much of a position to buy one of your custom rifles right now, but it's likely I'll be moving permanently to New York in a year, and my finances are apt to improve, assuming I pass the Bar."

"Law student?"

"Start my third year in two weeks," Raymond said, nodding. "Company I'm working for says they'll probably want to hire me when I graduate, if I don't do anything stupid between now and then." "What firm you interning with?" The question came from a man a few years older than Raymond who had been examining a rifle.

"Lambert, Burns." At this reply, the man gave a low whistle.

"Best securities firm on Wall Street. They don't hire just anybody, Jim," he said as he transferred the rifle to his left hand and extended his right in greeting. "Tony Kearns, Mr. Johnson. Anyone Lambert, Burns plans to hire who also likes fine rifles is a man I'd be proud to know."

"Well...thank you," Raymond answered, feeling a bit awkward and not knowing quite what else to say. "Are you a lawyer, Mr. Kearns?"

Kearns shook his head. "Please, it's Tony. No, I'm an analyst with White, Weld," he said, naming a goodsized Wall Street brokerage firm. "Risk arbitrage department. Such a huge part of the firm's business they're even thinking about hiring a second person." Kearns grinned. "When you guys draw up merger deals, I look at them after they're made public, and try to figure out which company's stock White, Weld should buy and which it should short. If any," he added as an afterthought.

"If you've been looking at merger deals, they haven't been drawn up by me, Tony. All summer I've been a research flunky, and that's all," Raymond said, wanting to change the subject. "What's that?" he asked, indicating the rifle in Tony Kearns' hands.

"Tony is one of our rather eccentric customers," the proprietor broke in, feigning a pained expression. "Despite our worldwide reputation for building graceful, perfectly-balanced rifles on Springfield, Mauser, and Model 70 actions, Tony will have none of them. He is only interested in rifles built on the big, clunky, old Enfield." He said the last word as if it were heresy to do so.

"Jim here is getting old, Ray, and he's too weak to hold up or carry a rifle unless it's a featherweight," Kearns explained with an attempt at a straight face. "His brittle old bones also can't take any more recoil than a .270 produces, which is why he'll never go hunt something that might eat him."

The man laughed. "Ray, Mr. Kearns here has taken more mental safaris to Africa than any other person on earth."

I wouldn't be too sure about that thought Raymond. "What caliber is it?" Ray asked, indicating the big rifle.

".450 Ashurst," Kearns said immediately. "Full length .375 H&H case necked up to .458 caliber and blown out straight. Holds more powder than the .458 Winchester magnum, but only if you've got an action with a long magazine. In a Model 70, a Springfield, or a Mauser, you can't seat the bullets out far enough to use all the powder capacity in the case. The receiver's too short. That's why I like Enfields. They'll handle real cartridges. And you'll notice that despite our host's irrational infatuation with lesser weapons, his gunsmiths manage to do quite a fine job with one of these clunky old World War One relics." He handed the younger man the rifle.

Raymond saw that quite a bit of effort had been expended to turn the military action into a worthy basis for a fine hunting rifle. The ugly 'ears' on the receiver bridge had been milled off, the dog-leg bolt handle had been replaced with a straight one, and the utilitarian trigger guard and floorplate had been replaced with a beautiful handcrafted unit milled out of a single piece of steel. All the metal parts had been carefully polished and finished in the deep rust blue for which Griffin & Howe was known. The stock was dense black walnut, with straight grain through the grip area and finely checkered in a traditional pattern. He continued to examine the rifle.

"What about a Mag Mauser, if you like big calibers?" Raymond asked.

"They make into a decent rifle, but actions alone are hard to come by. You can still buy a French Brevex, but I've always been a little leery of the frogs when it comes to steel and heat-treating methods for highpressure cartridges. Any German Mag Mauser action you find is apt to be a complete rifle built up by one of the English makers. The Brits do damn fine work, but they aren't big on some of our magazine calibers, and their ideas of how a bolt action should be stocked differ a bit from my own. They do a beautiful stocking job on double rifles, though," he added. "But big doubles are out of my price range right now, I'm afraid.

"Anyway, I'd hate to buy a Rigby and then throw away the stock and barrel. Also, an Enfield has a true 5 degree interrupted thread for its locking lugs. A dinged case or a bit of dirt won't stop you from camming that bolt closed, which makes for peace of mind if you're in Africa. Jim's right-I've never been there, but by God I'm going to, one of these days."

"So am I. I've been dreaming about it for over ten years."

"Then you understand," Tony Kearns said immediately. "When / go, I'm going to be carrying a rifle like this one, built on an Enfield. One that will hold five or six rounds of something with some real steam, like a .475 Ackley or maybe even that .50 caliber John Buhmiller came up with on the .460 Weatherby case."

Ray Johnson heard this last statement from his new friend, but he was thinking about his .600 Holland double rifle, and Tony Kearns' words didn't register at the time. He would recall them twenty years later after a particularly harrowing experience, and would take them to heart.

Tony Kearns had no inkling that the words he had just spoken would one day prolong the lives of several people. Ray Johnson's would be one of them.

April 6, 1963 The Buick Riviera pulled into the driveway, and the car was unfamiliar but the driver was not. Henry Bowman had just put his clothes on after getting out of bed on the sunny Saturday morning. He ran out the back door to greet his Uncle Max.

"Picked this up half an hour ago," Max Collins said as he leaned against the gleaming blue coupe, "and thought I'd see if you wanted to go for a ride. Your mother said your dad had a teacher's meeting first thing today and couldn't be at home. Want to go get a hamburger breakfast at Steak n Shake, then go shoot your rifle some? I got a place where you might be able to try what you were talking about the other day."

Henry's grin was all the reply Max needed. "I'll go tell Mom!" Henry said as he ran back in the house to get his Winchester, shooting glasses, ear plugs, and ammo.

"Highway 40 used to end here at Brentwood," Max Collins said to his nephew as they sat in the parked car and chewed on their hamburgers. "They didn't extend it east until about the time you were born." Max rested the hand that held the hamburger on the bottom rim of the steering wheel. The smell of the freshlycooked meat mingled with the Buick's new-car smell. It was a pleasant combination.

"In 'forty-eight, 'forty-nine, a kid from the West End used to hang out in this parking lot looking for races. Billy Dell. Had an Olds 88, just like your dad drove, the one with the 'Rocket V-8' engine that would run like a striped-assed ape, only Dell's was black. Used to get races lined up right here in this parking lot.

"After he and whoever he was going to race had decided what they'd run for," he said, gesturing out the side window, "they'd get on that entrance ramp there, and park for a couple of minutes, blocking it. That was the only way to get on 40, and it pissed off whoever was right behind 'em, but it made for a clear stretch of highway to race on.

"There was one cop, a highway patrolman, who made it his mission to nail Billy Dell. Waited him out one Saturday afternoon about a half-mile up the highway. That black Olds went whistling by, and the cop lit out after him, but he never could catch up. Billy was more careful after that, and he'd make a slow pass down the highway before coming back here and giving the all-clear."

"Did the policeman ever catch him?" Henry was fascinated by this story.

"No, and he did something he shouldn't have. The kid lived with his parents, down on Kingsbury near where your cousin Ruth has a house. He kept his hot rod in a locked garage whenever he wasn't driving it. Billy raced for money and he didn't want anyone doing anything to his car when he wasn't looking. He even had put a padlock on the hood. But the police know how to get into locked places without keys. One night, the state patrolman picked the lock on the garage and picked the lock on the hood."

"What did he do?"

"Well, he wanted to do something that would ruin the engine. He could have put sugar or something like that in the gas tank, but that would just gunk it up. The kid would have to take it apart and clean it, but then the engine would be back to normal. The cop didn't want that to happen.

"So what he did was, he took off the air cleaner so he could get at the carburetor. That's the thing that lets air and fuel into the engine. And he dumped a handful of hardened steel ball bearings down into the carburetor. Then he worked the throttle linkage with his hand and opened the carb, like would happen if you stepped on the gas pedal. That let the ball bearings go though the carb and into the intake manifold. You couldn't see them any more, even with the air cleaner off. Then he put the air cleaner back on, locked the hood, and locked the garage door behind him.

"The next morning, Dell got in and fired up his car, and there must have been an awful noise. Before he could shut it off the motor seized up and quit. When he disassembled the engine, all kinds of stuff was broken. Bent valves, cracked pistons, a crack in one cylinder head, and a lot of other stuff I can't remember."

"How did you find out about it, Uncle Max?"

"Hell, everybody in Missouri knew about it. Came out at the kid's trial. See, the cop couldn't resist telling one of his buddies on the patrol about what he had done. Word got out to the whole troop station. There are a few guys on the patrol-or at least there were back then-that don't much believe in giving speeding tickets at all. One of them must have thought vandalizing a citizen's car was dirty pool, because one way or 'nother, someone told Billy Dell what had happened."

"What did he do?"

"For a long time, nothing. He found out what the trooper's routine was, though. One night when the trooper was out cruising 40, the kid was on one of the bridges about ten miles west of here, waiting for him. A week before, he'd painted little white spots on the shoulder that were different distances from where he stood on the bridge, and he had practiced dropping small pebbles from the bridge when cars going at different speeds passed those marks. See, he was figuring out exactly when he'd have to drop something so that it would hit a car, not land in front of it or behind it. When he was practicing, he dropped the pebbles at the side of the road. He didn't want to ding up anyone else's car. But he paid close attention to where the car was when the pebbles hit the ground."

"What did he drop on the police car-a big rock?" Henry went to a school that pushed learning very hard, and he knew that heavy objects fell at the same rate as light ones if air resistance was not a major factor.

"No, a 200-pound oak log."

"A log?"