"Haven't heard from him." There was a pause. "Yeah, my clock says it's a couple minutes after noon." "So it's mine?"

'"Less you change your mind when you see it."

"I mean, if this other guy shows up as soon as we hang up, and he's got eight thousand in hundred-dollar bills in his hand, it's still my gun, right?" Henry repeated. The man on the other end laughed. "That's how I do business. I gave him 'til noon. It's past that time, his money isn't here, and yours is. You bought yourself a 4-bore double rifle, mister. Been looking for one, I take it?"

"For fifteen years," Henry said with feeling.

As it turned out, Henry Bowman had not needed to call Ft. Collins to get the exact time. The other man who had wanted the gun did not contact the owner of the big rifle to tell him he'd rounded up the money until almost 12:30, and when he did, it was over the phone and not in person. He was very upset to learn that the gun had been sold, but as a serious buyer, he played by the rules and knew that the roles could have been reversed. The seller called Henry and suggested waiting until after Christmas before dropping the package off at the UPS office.

Henry Bowman reluctantly agreed to this sensible recommendation.

Oh my God Henry thought when he lifted the lid of the 90-year-old fitted oak and leather trunk case and pushed aside the newspaper that had been used to cushion the contents. The rifle which lay inside had seen substantial use, but it had been well cared for considering it had been built for hard service. The quality of the workmanship was superb. And the size! Henry marveled. It was just as he remembered in the photo Al Goodman had shown him years ago. The overall length of the Rodda was no greater than his .577 Rigby, but it was much more massive.

Henry Bowman lifted the barrels out of their felt-lined compartment, swung the forend lever to the side, and removed the forend. He examined the bores. They were mint, as promised. And huge. He stuck his thumb in the muzzle of one the right barrel. It didn't even touch both sides. They're so big I could almost...well, not quite Henry thought.

He hung the barrels from a piece of string and rapped them with a wooden ruler. They rang like a big gong. He laid the barrels on the carpet, lifted the stocked receiver out of the case, and swung the big underlever to the side. He picked up the barrels, fitted them to the breech, and swung them shut while returning the underlever to its original position. Then he fitted the forend iron to the barrels and locked it in place with the forend lever.

He cocked the hammers and stuffed a sock in between their noses and the firing pins, then tested both triggers. They broke cleanly with no trace of creep, with a rather heavy pull, Henry was pleased to note.

Henry stood up, closed his eyes, and threw the 24-pound rifle to his shoulder with one fluid motion. When he opened his eyes, the front sight bead was resting in the V-notch of the 50-yard rear leaf. The stock would not have fit Henry any better if he had been the original owner for whom the gun was built.

He was grinning like an idiot as he carried the big rifle over to the end of the couch and picked up the telephone.

"I don't think you really need twenty-five, but I got them all done," Curt Behnke said as he let Henry Bowman in the back door of his basement workshop. "I know you're champing at the bit to go fire that monster. Matter of fact, I'd like to watch." Henry followed the gunsmith over to his cluttered workbench. Behnke reached into a box and pulled out a polished brass cartridge case, four inches long and about an inch and a quarter in diameter, which he handed to Henry.

Only a handful of makers in England had ever made 4-bore rifles, and each firm's guns used ammunition that was specific to that manufacturer. Henry had never intended to even look for the correct original ammunition for his gun. Even if it could be located, hundred-year-old ammo loaded with black powder would not likely still deliver original ballistics. If it did, it wo uld still be too valuable to collectors to justify shooting it up.

Henry had obtained a ten-foot length of 1 3/8" round brass bar stock, and cut it in half so he could get it in Curt Behnke's basement. Behnke had used his power hacksaw and lathe to make twenty-five cases that exactly fit Henry's gun.

"Cut the primer pocket for .50 machine gun primers, like you wanted, but I think a shotgun primer'd have been plenty," Behnke opined as he went to his safe and retrieved the barrels to Henry's Rodda. "Four hundred grains of FG black is a lot to light off," Henry replied as he dropped the oiled case into the right chamber. It fit perfectly. He extracted it and tried it in the left one with the same results. "Near as I could tell with my inside mikes, the chambers are within a couple tenths of each other," the gunsmith said. "When did you say that gun was made?"

did you say that gun was made?"

40, huh?" he said with an upraised eyebrow. Behnke nodded in agreement, then moved over to his lathe. "Here's the shell holder I made. And here's your neck sizing die, your seating punch, and your crimp die, all threaded inch-and-a-half twelve for that Hollywood press of yours. You sure it's got enough leverage?" "It sizes my 20mm cannon brass okay," Henry pointed out.

"Oh. Right." Curt Behnke periodically seemed to forget about some of the larger guns that Henry Bowman owned and used. He himself did not own a rifle larger than .30 caliber, although that would change after his seventieth birthday, when continued exposure to Henry Bowman's enthusiasm for elephant guns would prompt Behnke to build one for himself.

Henry inspected the handmade loading tools. They were flawlessly machined. "How much do I owe you?" he asked. Behnke looked pained.

"I've got over forty hours in all this stuff. I've got to have three hundred." He did not let on, but he still thought of Henry Bowman as the ten-year-old who had first come into the basement workshop with his father in 1963.

"You take cash on Saturdays?" Henry asked as he reached into his pocket. It was an old joke. "If that's all you got," the older man replied, deadpan.

"You busy tomorrow, Curt, or would you like to watch me break my collarbone? I'm going out to the range to see how it shoots," Henry said as he handed over the bills.

"I'll be there by eight-thirty," Behnke grinned.

"Here goes nothing," Henry Bowman said as he pulled the butt into his shoulder, tightened his grip on the forend, leaned forward, and squeezed the front trigger with his right index finger. He had placed a large, heavy wooden crate on top of the concrete shooting bench, and a cheap, loosely-rolled sleeping bag on top of the crate. The sleeping bag was in such a position that Henry could rest his left forearm on it while holding the rifle and standing straight up. It was how he shot double rifles for accuracy, for it allowed support while permitting the gun to recoil in the same way that it would when fired offhand. This was important for double rifles, for unlike single-barrel rifles, the axis of each bore on a double was to the side of the axis of recoil, not in line with it. If a double rifle were shot off sandbags, it would shoot to a different point of impact than when it was fired offhand.

The trigger broke at sixteen pounds, and the huge rifle rocked Henry's body backwards about ten degrees as a deep 'whoom' rattled the galvanized roof over the firing line. The large cloud of white smoke which had belched out of the gun's muzzle began to drift away in the wind. Henry lowered the rifle and looked at Curt Behnke.

"Not bad at all. I could shoot that load all day. Of course, it wasn't a full charge." Both men stared downrange at the fifty-yard target butt.

"No problem spotting your shots with that gun," Behnke said immediately as he hopped from one foot to the other in the cold weather. The one-inch bullet hole was very easy to see with the naked eye at the fiftyyard distance. Henry had used black spray paint, butcher paper, and a paper plate to stencil a black ring for a target. His shot was two inches outside the black at two o'clock, which put it about eight inches right of center and three inches high. He cocked the left hammer and took aim again, this time squeezing the rear trigger.

The big gun boomed again, and this shot was a mirror image of the first shot, on the left side of the target. The two holes were at the same height, spaced about fifteen inches apart.

"Hah!" Henry yelled with pleasure when he saw where his second shot had gone.

"That's good?" the benchrest gunsmith and record-holder asked dubiously. Fifteen inches apart for two shots at fifty yards was good for a bow and arrow maybe, but not any rifle Behnke would want to own.

"Elevation's identical, and the barrels are shooting apart and high with a load that's too light. That's a real good sign. The gun starts recoiling as soon as the primer goes off. With a lighter powder charge, there's more time between when the primer ignites and when the bullet leaves the muzzle. That means the right barrel should shoot right and high, and the left barrel should shoot left and high. That's the theory, at least. Remember the engineer's creed."

"When the results don't agree with the theory, believe the results and come up with a new theory," the gunsmith answered.

"Right. Let's see what results we get when we up the powder charge fifty grains." Curt Behnke winced. Bench rest shooters fired cartridges which held around twenty-five grains total. A .300 Magnum case held three times that. A cartridge where the shooter might elect to increase his powder charge by fifty grains was an assault on Behnke's sensibilities.

"What load were you shooting?" he managed to ask.

"Three hundred grains of single-eff gee. Because this gun weighs a full twenty-four pounds, I suspect it was regulated for the full sixteen dram charge. That's one ounce, or four hundred thirty-eight grains. The next pair I'll shoot is a three hundred fifty grain charge, same bullet."

"What's your bullet weight?"

"The slugs I'm shooting weigh 2140 grains out of linotype metal. Some of these old guns were regulated for a round ball cast out of pure lead, which would weigh 1750 grains. Most of them were set up for conical bullets, though, as near as I can determine. If it still shoots apart with the 440-grain charge, I'll have to shoot lighter bullets." Curt Behnke watched as Henry extracted the fired cases and replaced them with another pair. He did not ask Henry if he had brought ammunition loaded with the 440-grain charge he had mentioned. He believed he already knew the answer.

The report of the next two shots was noticeably different. It was both louder and sharper, and the older man could see that the gun recoiled with more vigor. On the second shot, he watched the target instead of the shooter, and was startled to see a large quantity of dirt and ice from the backstop thrown twenty feet in the air behind the target frame. The holes in the paper were eight inches apart, spaced equally on either side of center, and an inch high.

"Looks like your theory is holding up."

"Nice not to need a spotting scope, don't you think?"

"Recoil still okay?"

"It's definitely getting heavier. Notice the difference in the sound? Those two were supersonic."

"Eleven hundred feet per second?" Behnke said immediately. For some reason it had not occurred to him that the huge bullets could be driven that fast out of a gun which could still be fired from the shoulder.

"We're not done yet. Here comes four hundred grains." Henry pushed his earplugs in a little deeper, reloaded the Rodda, and rested his arm against the rolled sleeping bag. He made a conscious effort to grip the gun as tightly as possible. The recoil, while still manageable, was unlike that of any other weapon he had ever used, and he didn't want to drop the gun.

This time the report sounded to Henry like standing next to a tree as it was struck by lightning. A one-inch hole appeared in the paper less than two inches right of center and dead-on for elevation. Henry cocked the left hammer and took aim again. His second shot was a little higher than his first, and a little over three inches left of it.

"How high you going to go?" the older man asked.

"I loaded some at four-forty," Henry replied. I'll clean the gunk out of the barrels and give 'em a go." He swung the underlever to the side, broke the gun open, emptied it, and laid it on a blanket on the next shooting bench. Henry Bowman picked up an aluminum shotgun cleaning rod with a 12-gauge brush screwed in the end, and wrapped a large piece of rag around the bristles. He sprayed the cloth liberally with WD-40, sprayed more into the breech of the right barrel, and shoved the rod down the bore from the breech. When the wrapped brush emerged from the muzzle, it was thoroughly caked with shiny black carbon residue. Henry inspected the bore, then used a new piece of rag to repeat the process with the other barrel. "There's a lot of it, but it seems to come right out. I think the alox and beeswax bullet lube I'm using may be an improvement over what the Brits had a hundred years ago," Henry said. "Although it wouldn't surprise me if they had something just as good or better," he amended after a moment's reflection.

"Fresh target this time," Henry said as he removed two big cartridges from the bag he had labeled '440' and loaded the gun. He wiped the fog from his shooting glasses and assumed the position at the standing rest. This time he made an effort to put his feet a little farther back so that he would be leaning into the gun a little more.

The blast was tremendous, and recoil rocked Henry back until the muzzles of his rifle were pointing up at about a forty-five degree angle. Henry brought the gun down out of recoil and cocked the left hammer. He settled back into the bag and locked into position again as he switched his index finger to the rear trigger.

"It looks like you're-" The sound of the second shot cut off Curt Behnke's comment about where Henry's first shot had gone. Henry laid the gun down on the blanket, and both men squinted off into the distance. "Almost touching," the older man said with admiration in his voice.

"Let me put two more of the same load in there, see if they fall in the same group." Henry had loaded four rounds each with 400- and 440-grain charges, and eight rounds of 300- and 350- grain loadings. He replaced the fired cases with his two remaining rounds that carried the heaviest charge. Curt Behnke stepped several paces to the side, and held a camera trained on his friend. Behnke was braced against one of the roof supports, for he knew the blast would jar a freehand hold. At the shot, the gunsmith tripped the shutter, catching Henry in full recoil.

Henry Bowman recovered, cocked the left hammer, and let drive with the second barrel. He looked over at his fifty-nine-year-old companion. "Doesn't look too bad," he opined. The target showed two pairs of overlapping holes, with about an inch of space between them. Elevation was perfect.

Behnke stared at the target butt. "You going to raise the charge again?" he asked uncertainly. The barrels were obviously very close to regulating perfectly.

"I think I'll lower the bullet weight instead. Could you take an eighth of an inch off the base in the lathe without too much trouble?"

"Yeah, sure. Put 'em in the collet chuck, I could give you a half-dozen each of several different weights. You don't need a thousand, or anything like that, do you?" Both men broke into laughter at that idea. Henry wiped down the Rodda and laid it on the blanket.

"I think I'll give my central nervous system a rest for a while. Shall we shoot some varmint rifles? Three hundred yards, five groups averaged for record, loser buys lunch?"

"What kind of a handicap do I have to give you?" Behnke asked cautiously.

"None. I'm in too good a mood about my 4-bore." Curt Behnke just smiled.

When they were finished shooting, Curt Behnke had an average group size of 1.42". All his groups were nearly round. Henry's groups had a little over an inch of vertical dispersion, but on that gusty January day, the horizontal spread averaged almost four inches. His targets were what Curt Behnke liked to refer to as 'weather reports'.

Henry Bowman was still grinning when he picked up the check for a late lunch.

February 22,1977 "Hey!" the man yelled out across the office, his hand covering the mouthpiece of the telephone he held. "Sloan just had a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Dead as a hammer in Washington."

His friend sat bolt upright. His mind was racing, and he was already thinking several steps ahead to the special election that would have to be held to replace the dead congressman. "Carter's only been in office a month-maybe we can make some hay on this one."

"Some other well-intentioned guy out of left field, you mean?" He began to smile. The idea was definitely appealing. "Somebody we can control?" His smile grew broader, then his brows furrowed. "Got to be someone white, though. Might backfire if we try to sneak in another Clay," he warned.

The second man nodded at this assessment. There were limits, after all. The goal was to always expand them. "Yeah," he said, nodding his head.

"What we need is somebody who can tell people what they want to hear, and doesn't have some stupid agenda that can get us into trouble."

"Shit, that doesn't narrow the field much."