"Yep, and it hit the hood of the patrol car and smashed the windshield. The side pillar-this thing here," Max said, pointing to the left side of the Buick's windshield, "kept it from going all the way into the car and killing the cop. But the car went out of control and flipped. Cop broke his back and lost his right eye. He got some feeling back in his legs, but he never walked again."

"Did the man who dropped the log on him go to jail?"

"They had a big trial, and guys who try to kill cops are usually despised, but then again so are cops who break into people's homes and vandalize their property. Also, the Highway Patrol doesn't do any real police work-they mainly just give out traffic tickets. There was a surprising amount of public sympathy for the Dell kid.

"One of the local car clubs had some decals printed up of Paul Bunyan driving a souped-up Oldsmobile. Then a local cop got pissed off when he saw one on some colored kid's car, and he smashed the driver's window with his nightstick and worked the kid over, right in front of his girlfriend. Put him in the hospital. That got another big writeup in the papers.

"Eventually, the jury did send Dell off to prison at Gumbo for a few years. He's out now, but doesn't live around here. Every now and again you'll hear someone from this area say he'd like to 'pull a Paul Bunyan' or 'pull a Billy Dell'. That usually means he's mad at some cop that screwed him over."

Pull a Paul Bunyan Henry thought to himself. It's got a ring to it.

"Runs pretty good, don't you think? Cuts the wind, too." The Buick's speedometer needle was hovering around a hundred ten miles an hour as they sped through St. Charles County. The 401-cubic-inch V-8 emitted a healthy roar, but there was surprisingly little wind noise. Henry Bowman had a big grin on his face as he stared out the windshield at the road.

"Had the dealer pitch the shocks that came on it and put on a set of Konis before I picked it up. Had 'em put in metallic brake shoes and make sure the alignment was dead-on, too. Watch this." Max Collins took his hands off the steering wheel and stepped hard on the brake pedal. Henry felt himself thrown forward against his seat belt as the blue coupe behaved as if the air outside had suddenly become ten times as dense. The car tracked straight on the two-lane road as it decelerated. At fifty miles an hour, Max put his hands back on the wheel and his foot back on the accelerator.

"Aren't you supposed to drive slowly when a car is brand new, to break it in?" Henry asked.

"I've never met a race mechanic that agreed with that. They've all told me that the way to scuff the rings in is to put the engine under load, like accelerating up a steep hill, and the way to seat the valves is to run it flat out. If your engine isn't all the way warmed up I think you could damage it, but I've run the bejeezus out of every car I've owned, and I never saw an American V-8 that didn't act like it was going to last forever, 'cept for maybe that blown Ford I had in '57.

"The 'drive slow for the first 500 miles' stuff is so people will get used to how their new car handles before they get too enthusiastic. Also to shake out any loose metal particles in the engine from when they put it together at the factory. Before I picked this one up, I had the mechanic put a magnetic drain plug in the oil pan, drive it twenty miles, and change the oil. He didn't find any metal on the plug, so hell, she's ready to run." He looked over at his nephew.

"We got about fifteen more miles. You want to drive the rest of the way?"

"Yeah!" Henry exclaimed as his Uncle Max pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped. The man opened the driver's door and got out while the boy climbed over the console and slid into the driver's seat.

"Handle at the front right adjusts your seat back V forth," Max said, pointing. "Couldn't let you do this if this car had a bench seat-I'd be squashed up under the dashboard." Henry slid his seat all the way forward and adjusted his lap belt. He stretched his arms out, looking at the dash and getting a feel for where the controls were, and adjusted the mirrors.

"Keep it under a hundred indicated," Max said in an expressionless voice.

"Can you get in trouble if we get caught?" the boy asked. Max Collins shook his head.

"Judge in this county likes to hunt pheasants, and I got him set up at Doc Wiemann's place, where we're going today." Max did not mention that he had also introduced Doc to the art school student Wiemann had been screwing twice a week. "Anything short of armed robbery, we got us a free pass."

Henry nodded as he dropped the lever into Drive, checked his left mirror, and accelerated back onto the road.

"What's the matter, you got sore feet?" Max asked pointedly as he looked at his nephew. Henry was holding the Buick at a steady sixty-two. "Get on it some, while you still got a smooth road and no traffic." Henry pressed on the accelerator, not quite enough to make the automatic transmission kick down into second gear, and the blue car smoothly sped up. At ninety, the boy eased up on the pedal enough to check the car's acceleration, but not enough to cause it to slow down. The car was holding ninety indicated, and Henry's eyes flicked constantly around the road ahead, scanning for other vehicles, objects in the road, and animals. Max smiled at the boy's technique.

"You been out flying with your dad much lately?"

"Almost every weekend," Henry replied without taking his eyes off the road.

"Never did take to being up in an airplane, the way he did." Max looked off in the distance ahead. "After this right-hand bend, there's a gravel road about a quarter-mile, up on the right. That's where we're going."

Henry eased off on the throttle without releasing it completely, and soon the car was traveling at half its former speed. He checked his mirrors and braked as the gravel road came into view, and pulled off the pavement.

"Take this 'til it dead-ends," Max instructed. "Less than a mile." The road was well-tended without ruts or potholes. Henry drove the car slowly on the loose gravel, slightly to one side so as to keep the car's undercarriage away from the high spot in the center of the road. In a few minutes the road ended at a group of white wooden buildings which appeared to serve various functions. There were three cars parked in front of one of them, and Henry pulled in and stopped next to the one on the end.

"Grab your gear and bring it in," Max said as he got out of the car and went to open the trunk. Henry retrieved his gun case and shooting gear from the floor of the back seat and got out of the car. The big engine was making soft ticking noises as it cooled in the spring breeze. The boy followed the big man into the wood frame house.

"Max!" exclaimed an older man with grey, thinning hair. He had a big smile on his face, and Henry could see that one of his teeth was missing. "Haven't seen you in a while. Come to shoot some pheasants? And who are you, big fella?" he asked as he peered intently at Henry. One of the older man's eyes was a milky color, and his posture showed the onset of curvature of the spine. His stained clothing was the shade of dried mud. His shirt and pants appeared to have been washed a few hundred times with very caustic soap. He looked like an aging yard man.

Henry held out his hand. "Henry Bowman, sir. My mother is Uncle Max's sister. Uncle Max brought me with him today."

"Pleased to meet you, Henry-Doc Wiemann." He gave the boy a firm handshake. "But none a that 'sir' or 'mister' shit with me. You call me 'Doc', just like ever'one else here. Your uncle bring you here today to shoot pheasants?" he asked.

Max answered for him. "Not today, Doc. I need to use your pattern board. Got a Perazzi that seems to be shooting low. Henry here hasn't used a shotgun much, but he's hell on wheels with a rifle. Brought his Winchester .22 along. Your back range free, to where he could do a little plinking?"

"Sure Max, no problem. No one's shooting skeet today, he can have that whole area all to himself." "Okay if he uses the low house from the number seven station?"

"With a rifle?"

"You got that big hill for a backstop, if you stay on number seven."

"Hell, I'm not worried about that. How's he going to hit even one if he's not a shotgun man?" "Maybe he won't, but I think he'd like to try."

"Well, shit. I'll come run the thrower for him m'self. Be a sorry thing to have your nephew hit a clay bird with his rifle and me not see it." He chuckled at the thought.

"Henry, you go with Doc out to the skeet range. Doc, after I go get my things out of my locker, I'll be over behind you at the pattern board to see how much I need to bend the barrel on this thing. You need anything, kid? Glasses? Plugs?" he asked his nephew. Henry shook his head and patted the leather belt pouch he wore that contained his ammo, shooting glasses, and ear plugs. "Okay then, I'll come over and see how you two're doing when I'm all done. Shouldn't be long." The big man walked into the other room where the members' lockers were.

"This way, Henry," Doc Wiemann said with an inclination of his head. The pair walked outside and headed towards the skeet range.

Unlike the skeet and trap club in Bridgeton where Max Collins usually went to shoot clay birds, Doc Wiemann's club only had one range for skeet and trap. Few wildfowl clubs in St. Charles County had any, but Doc Wiemann, a retired vascular surgeon, had shrewdly realized that many of the wealthy wingshooters had more money than time, and needed some quick practice to tune up their swings a bit before taking to the field. The cost of putting in two skeet houses and a trap bunker had been minuscule compared to the value of the club's land and the expense and effort required to maintain it.

"Thrower should be full," Doc opined. "I guess you've seen the way they fly. You want to stand at this station here and try to hit low house ones going away?" He was indicating the concrete pad a yard away from the opening in the righthand skeet house, where the shooter would stand with his back to the wooden structure while the clay pigeon was thrown out of the opening and flew directly away from him.

"I think I'd have the best chance here. This may not work at all. I've never tried it before. Most shotgun ranges don't have a hill to stop a rifle bullet. We were going to use a hand thrower on the riverbank, but Uncle Max was coming out here today, and said to bring my rifle." Henry reached into his pouch and took out his shatterproof shooting glasses. Doc Wiemann smiled with inward approval. He had retired from surgery when a stray pellet from a hunter in another field had blinded him in his left eye. Since that time, his own shooting glasses were perched on the bridge of his nose, just as they were now, whenever he was outdoors. Losing his left eye had cost him his practice. He could not afford to lose the right one. It was something he thought of every day.

"You hunt much with your .22, Henry?" Doc asked the young boy.

"Almost never," Henry said, shaking his head as he put his ear plugs in. "Almost all plinking, down on the river at my Mom and Dad's place. I'm pretty good on old golf balls, but since I throw them myself, they're a lot closer and slower moving than a clay pigeon will be. I've shot a few crows in the air, but they fly pretty slow." He gave the scruffy-looking man whose net worth was perhaps two million dollars an apologetic look. "This might be a waste of your time."

Doc Wiemann, who had been thinking much the same thing, quickly revised his opinion. As Henry withdrew the semiauto Winchester from the case, the man noticed that the rear sight had been relocated farther forward on the barrel, to snap shoot more quickly, at close-in targets. He decided this might be interesting after all. He shook his head in reply to the boy's statement.

"Henry, if it burns powder and goes bang, it's never a waste of time. You want to look at one first?" Before Henry could answer the man's question, Doc Wiemann pressed the upper right button on the heavy metal box with the black cable running out of it that he held in his hand. A whirring noise came from the wooden structure and a clay pigeon flew out of it, climbing at a shallow angle as it traveled away from them.

Henry watched its trajectory as he withdrew the magazine tube from the Winchester's buttplate and fed cartridges into the gun's loading port by feel, never taking his eyes off the target. Doc Wiemann noticed this, and his opinion of the boy's skills went up another notch. It did not occur to Doc Wiemann that this skill would one day save Henry Bowman's life.

"All set?" Doc asked. Henry stood at the ready next to the opening in the skeet house and nodded assent.

"Pull!" said the boy, as he snapped the rifle up to his shoulder and loosed a shot at the departing clay pigeon. The flight of the spinning disc continued uninterrupted, despite the crack of the rifle. Henry lowered his rifle to the ready position again. Doc Wiemann was surprised to find himself disappointed that the bird had not shattered.

"Pull!" The second clay bird followed the same path as the first, finally landing at the base of the hill which rose up at the left side of the skeet range.

"Pull!" Miss.

"Pull!" Miss.

"Pull!" Another miss. Henry lowered the rifle, withdrew the magazine tube, and dumped the cartridges into his hand. Then he opened the action and emptied the chamber. The cartridges went back into the leather pouch. He looked at the older man. "The ground's not dry, and I don't think there'd be a fire hazard. Is it okay if I use tracers? That's how I first learned on targets in the air," Henry explained.

Doc Wiemann scowled. ".22 tracers? Never heard of "em."

Henry looked embarrassed. He hated trying to tell adults about things they hadn't heard of. "They're made in France. I get them from a man in New Jersey named Steen." He reached in the leather pouch, withdrew a white cardboard 50-round box, and held it out for the older man's inspection. The name GEVELOT was printed on it in green. "He's the only one I know who imports them. I get a lot of my shooting supplies from him. I don't think he knows I'm ten years old," Henry added as an afterthought.

Doc Wiemann took the small box in his free hand and poked it open with his thumb. The cartridges looked like ordinary .22s, except that the very tip of each bullet was painted a dull orange. "I'll be damned. How long do they burn?"

"About a hundred twenty-five yards."

"They hurt your barrel?"

"I've shot an awful lot of them, and I can't see that they've done any harm. I always clean the gun the same day when I shoot tracers, though."

"Yeah, load 'em up," the man said, handing the box back to the boy. "Let's see where you're shooting." Henry loaded the rifle with the French ammunition and stood in the ready position.

"Pull!" The rifle cracked an instant after the butt hit Henry's shoulder, and a burning red dot streaked away from him at about twelve hundred feet per second and buried itself in the hillside ninety yards away. Henry saw that his shot was high.

'"Bout eight inches over the top of it. Try another."

"Pull!" The shot was again high.

"You hold on that one the same as the one before? Both shots were high the same amount."

"Yes, I wanted to see if they'd be the same. You have to get on a lot faster than when you're just tossing golf balls in the air."

"They're coming out of the thrower at forty-five miles an hour, and you've really only got the edge to shoot at from this angle. Try putting a little daylight under the next bird. Damned if I don't think you're going to bust one in the next few shots."

"Pull!" The clay pigeon flew out of the hole to Henry's right and sailed on a leftward path away from him. The Winchester cracked and the burning dot just missed the right edge of the spinning black disc.

"Just a hair behind it. Elevation looked good."