The Walker Colt: Billy's Tale

Copyright Andyhm. 2017

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons. All characters engaging in sexual relationships or activities are 18 years old or older.

When Randi asked if I would be interested in submitting a story for her western event, my first instinct was to say no. Then this story began to form in my mind. Yes, I know it's not a classic western, but I think it fills the brief.

I'm British, and the Wild West has never really interested me, but early firearms do. I used to own a pair of flintlock pistols, but time and circumstances forced me to sell them a long time ago. This is the first part of a series of tales I want to write centered around the pistol. Each tale will be a stand-alone piece with a common theme. As this is the first part, I have included a fair amount of backstory, so please live with it. I've no schedule for the later parts; they will be written as the muse takes me.

I can't thank Randi enough for her guidance and editing expertise; thank you R. All the remaining mistakes are mine as I just can't resist making that last tweak.

The Walker Colt: Billy's tale.

I was in my office, sitting by my bench putting the finishing touches to a Purdy shotgun I was restoring, when my business partner, John Davies, called me into his office. His office smelled fresh after the metallic twang and the ever-pervasive aroma of gun oil of the workshop.

"I've got something for you; it was found in a concealed drawer in a dresser from an estate sale in New Mexico," he told me. He opened a box sitting on his desk and pulled out a handgun transport case. He unlocked the case and pushed it in my direction. Nestled in the foam interior was a large and very dirty, revolver, only it wasn't just any revolver; it seemed to be an 1847 Walker Colt. If it was one, then it was one of only 1100 ever produced.

I whistled in admiration. "Christ, that's a beauty; it's traveled a long way to get here," I said. "How did you get hold of it?"

"A guy I know spotted it on an online auction site and told me about it. It was described as a replica in bad condition, but there was something about it that made me wonder. I took a gamble that it was not a fake and got him to buy it for us. It cost us $2,000, and now I need you to make sure it's the real thing, work your magic and restore and research its history."

I reached into the box and placed my hand on the revolver. The metal was icy cold. The lights in the room seemed to flicker, and for a moment I swear I could hear an out of tune piano playing in the distance.

Who am I? I'm Robert Moore, a transplanted Brit, now living in the land of the free. I'm 38, six-feet-tall, and weigh 12 stone 2 lb (that's 170 lb for you nonimperial heathens). Five years ago, I'd been working as a gunsmith at the Purdy's in London when I got a letter from a lawyer's office in Texas. A distant cousin had died, leaving me, his only living relative, his entire estate, some investments and a ranch, west of San Antonio

I'm a Londoner; what the hell did I know about ranching? My first thought was to sell up, so I could afford to ask my girlfriend to marry me. That was the same week Katie decided her boss was a better prospect and moved in with him.

Texas suddenly seemed a much more interesting prospect. I took a week leave and bought a ticket to Dallas. I naïvely hired a car thinking I could only be a couple of hours away from the ranch. Yes, I know everything thing in the states is larger, a fact the GPS in the car was quick to point out. A seven-hour journey and it was already five in the afternoon.

It was mid-afternoon the following day when I found the postbox with the name Earl McAlister painted on it. A dirt road headed off through fields of sunburnt grass in the direction of a low rise about a mile away. I'd called the lawyer earlier, he suggested meeting me at the ranch and had given me directions. As I rounded the rise, a shallow valley opened up before me. The land was much greener, and sunlight glinted off the surface of a large pond.

A long low Adobe ranch house sat in the shade of a stand of trees. A barn and several other work buildings sat off to one side. Without understanding why I knew this was where I wanted to live for the rest of my life.

A dusty SUV sat in front of the house, and as I pulled up a figure in blue jeans and a denim shirt came out onto the porch. He introduced himself as Justin James, my cousin's lawyer. Everyone calls me JJ, he added.

I took a moment to gaze around me, and JJ said, "Your cousin, Earl, has left you all of this, I've got the full list back at the office, and you will need to come in to sign a batch of forms.

"So, this," and I gestured at the valley, "is all mine?"

JJ laughed, "This and another ten square miles, Bob. You've been on your land ever since you pulled off the highway. It stretches a couple of miles either side of the drive and goes back another mile and a half, all the way up to that escarpment." He pointed at a line of cliffs in the distance.

He added, "There's about 1800 head of prime beef and dozen or so horses. Earl, employed a foreman and a hand to help him run the place, I guess you'll be keeping them on?"

I had to interrupt him. "JJ, I know nothing about ranching and cattle, I've got a job back home. I work for Purdy's as a gunsmith, and I'm only here for a week."

"Purdy's, don't they make those fancy British shotguns?"

"Yes, and rifles."

"They are fairly pricey ain't they?"

"They start at around 100,000."

"Dollars?"

"No, Pounds, so that's something in the region of 150,000 dollars."

"I think you are going to like Earl's gun collection."

I'd handled firearms all my working life, yet because of the gun laws in the UK, I had never owned a gun. Now it seems I owned a whole collection. JJ went over the contents of Earl's will. There was the ranch and all its contents, and then there were his investments. Actually, it was the other way around; cousin Earl had been an investment banker, and after a lifetime of making money, he'd retired and bought the old family ranch.

It seems though you can't keep a good investment banker down, and he'd invested into several of the local business. The one that made me sit up and pay attention was a company called Lone Star custom firearms. Unfortunately, JJ didn't know much about it, other than they built and repaired firearms, and I would be an equal partner in the business.

It took a few months to get organized, but with JJ's help, I moved into my new home after probate was sorted out. My residency status was approved by immigration, and I was the holder of a green card with all that it implied.

Sam, the ranch foreman, a weather-beaten grizzly man in his fifty's, was keen to stay on and took over the running of the ranch. He employed a second ranch hand, and the three of them worked the ranch, employing casual laborers when needed. Sam's wife, Leigh, looked after the house. I helped out around the ranch when I could, but I've never felt comfortable around the stock, I was still a city boy at heart, and I knew where my interests lay; I wanted to find out more about the gun store.

My first meeting with John Davis, the partner at Lone Star Custom guns, was interesting!

Walking in through the front door, I entered a store that was completely different from the Purdy showrooms. It was like a pawn shop off the television. Glass counters full of handguns with racks of rifles and shotguns lined the walls. The only point of reference I recognized was the tang of gun oil and the hint of spent ammunition that pervaded the chilly interior.

Three shop assistants eyed me warily until they saw JJ enter behind me. They relaxed and moved their hands away from their sides. Christ, they all had a holstered handgun at their waists. A far cry from the bespoke-suited assistants at Purdy's showrooms that I was used to.

JJ asked one of the assistants, a pretty young blonde woman, if she could get John. While we waited, I walked around and studied the guns on display. My eyes were drawn to a lone shotgun in a case and I grinned, for it was a classic Purdy sidelock shotgun.

"Can I see the Purdy?" I asked.

"Sorry, not without the bosses say so; that's his prize possession," the assistant replied.

JJ laughed and said, "You might want to let him take a look; meet John's new partner."

"This is Earl's cousin, the one that's supposed to know about guns?"

JJ said yes, and I nodded. He opened the case and passed me the shotgun. I broke the piece and checked the serial number. I could remember every piece I'd worked on, and this was one of mine. It was a custom order for a Canadian, one of a pair I'd worked on ten years ago

"When did John get this?" I asked.

"Five years ago," a new voice said.

I glanced up to see a man standing next to the female assistant. I assumed he was John. "You've got the pair?" I said.

"The other one is in my office."

"How did you get them, they were made for a Canadian in Vancouver."

"From an estate sale, and how the hell do you know who they were made for?"

"Because I worked on them. I'm Earl's cousin, Bob, by the way."

"And I hear you're a gunsmith."

"Yes, Purdy's gave me an apprenticeship when I was 16. I've been working for them since then."

John looked happy at this and ushered JJ and me through to the back of the store and into a network of offices and workshops. The young woman came with us, and I took a moment to enjoy her beauty. We all got comfortable in John's office.

"Patsy, sweetheart, could you bring us a fresh pot of coffee." The young woman murmured an agreement and disappeared.

"Patsy's my daughter," John explained as I watched her leave the office. I didn't say anything and waited while JJ opened a packet of papers. She returned with the coffee and poured it out into mugs.

She hesitated and gave me a look, "Would you prefer tea?" Her voice was as beautiful as she was.

I shook my head, "No, coffee is fine; I'm not a big tea drinker."

"To business," JJ said as he sipped his coffee. "John, as you are aware, Bob is Earl's only living relative and as such he has inherited Earl's share in Lone Star."

"Yep, I was going to ask if I could buy some of your shares back. I didn't want a stranger to have an equal say in the business, especially not a Brit." He said the last with an embarrassed smile. "But now I think you could be just what this place needs. From what JJ has told me you are a fully qualified gun maker of shotguns."

"Not just shotguns, Purdy makes custom rifles. I'm also a member of the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers. We are responsible for the London proof house where the barrels are tested."

John looked pleased with that. "We sell new firearms and offer a customization package on them. Just basic stuff, nothing too fancy. We also offer a restoration service. That's how I met Earl, he had an old Sharps carbine he wanted to be restored."

"Yes, I've seen it, it looks good," I replied. I wasn't going to tell him it looked a damn sight better now after I'd taken it apart and done a bit of work on it. Earl had a fine collection of early western firearms, a dozen pistols and several rifles, including the Sharps and a Model 1873 Winchester. There were a few modern guns as well, but they were just off-the-shelf pieces.

John smiled, "I'm pleased you think that. I thought you might want to become an active partner here. Keep your hand in, so to speak. What do you think?"

"It depends on what you think my role should be. I'm not going to play around customizing a cheap, off-the-shelf piece. I'll restore a gun if I think it deserves it, and I'd like to make a few shotguns and rifles from scratch."

"When you say 'from scratch', how much of them would you really make?"

I pointed at the Purdy I'd placed on his desk. "Every part of that is made by hand, and I know how to make each part. That's what I mean 'from scratch'."

"How long did it take you to make that one?"

"I worked on each of the pair for a couple of months. All in, they would have taken six months to produce."

"So how many could you make in a year?"

"All depends on the type. I could probably make six of those a year to that standard." I picked up the Purdy. "This is a custom piece, I'd guess the previous owner paid a quarter of a million for the pair." I could almost see the dollar signs in John's eyes as I spoke. "Remember that's because it's Purdy; anything I make won't have that cachet, and a lot will depend on what equipment you've got here." I added.

Within a month I had resigned from my job in the UK and settled into my own office at Lone Star. I'd fitted out the office with a custom workbench, and all the tools I needed, and started work on my first custom rifle.

Over the next few years, Lone Star's reputation grew as the place to go to in Texas if you had an unusual firearm that needed restoration, and my standing as a premier gunsmith grew alongside the business.

"Bob... Bob, Christ, son, are you okay?" John's voice broke into my consciousness, and I looked up at his concerned face. "You zoned out there for a few moments."

"Sorry, John," I replied as I shook my head to clear it. "I'm fine," I muttered. 'What the hell was that?' I thought. I hesitantly placed my hand on the pistol for the second time, and nothing happened. The metal was cool to the touch, but that was all.

John gave me a curious look as I stood up to leave. Case in hand, I walked back to my workroom and placed the case on the workbench. I gave the case my close attention for a moment, but I didn't open it. Reluctantly, I turned my attention back to the Purdy and spent the next hour applying the finishing touches to the restoration.

This Purdy was a beautiful example of a master gunsmith's devotion to detail. Unfortunately, thirty years in the damp attic of a Scottish shooting lodge before the present owner had bought it had done it no favors. The restored fifty-year-old piece now looked as good as it would have when it first left the shop in Mayfair all those years ago. I boxed the Purdy up and placed on a shelf in the dispatch room, eager to start on the Walker Colt.

Back at my desk, I opened the revolver case and gingerly removed the foam tray holding the heavy pistol. Nothing happened, and I gave an embarrassed sigh of relief. Set into the second layer was what looked like the original black powder flask, powder measure, and bullet mold. A rusty tin of percussion caps sat beside them. If this was a reproduction, someone had spent a ridiculous amount of time on the accessories.

I'd only ever seen photographs of a Walker Colt, and the gun that lay on my bench looked like those. If it was one, then it was one of only 1100 produced. One thousand had been ordered by a fledgling army unit in Texas: the United States Mounted Rifles; the remaining one hundred had been kept by Colt for private sales.

First things first, I got my camera out of the desk drawer and took some photographs of the pistol from all angles. I began to strip it down to its component parts. At each step, I took some photos. Was this an original Walker? At first glance it was looking promising. Everything matched the reference documents I'd found online, but I was aware that there were some very good fakes out there.

I picked up the barrel, and a chill went through my fingers and seemed to creep up my arm. There were the distant sound of... chains? No, horse tack, it was the jingling of bridles. The room seemed to dim and there was the smell of horses, sweat, and dust.

The barrel fell from my nerveless fingers, and the office snapped back into focus. I stared around me, nothing seemed out of place. I coughed, my throat dry and my head throbbing. This was just too weird; I needed to go home.

I packed the pieces of the pistol back into the case and went to put it in my secure cupboard. I hesitated, and then tucked it under my arm and walked out of the building. I drove back to the ranch with the case on the seat beside me.

The ranch house had changed very little since the first time I'd seen it, but my personal circumstances had. I parked the truck; I'd gone full native and owned a Ford pickup. I took the case and walked inside.

A beautiful voice welcomed me with, "Bob, you're home early," and a woman as beautiful as the voice wrapped her arms around me. Lips kissed mine, and I breathed in the heady aroma of my wife. I caressed the small bulge that that was our unborn child. Patsy was four months pregnant with our first child and beginning to show.

Yes. I'd married John's daughter. Patsy had been 24 when I'd first met her, and she'd been in the midst of a nasty divorce. She'd married her school sweetheart when they were both 21 and had graduated from the state university. She'd grown up; her loser of a husband hadn't. He'd carried on trying to live his frat boy lifestyle, and a couple of months before I'd arrived she'd walked in on him and two women.

I'd found the beautiful girl fascinating, hell, the woman wore a Glock 19 pistol at her hip for work. Patsy admitted that she, in turn, had been intrigued by the quiet soft-spoken Englishman who had appeared suddenly. She was intrigued enough that she had made the first move and asked me out on a date a month after I started at Lone Star.

The first date started well, good food at a nice country-style restaurant then fell apart when Patsy took me to a local bar to go dancing. Dancing, for me, had been a Friday or Saturday evening in one of the numerous London clubs packed in like sardines with a crowd of swaying sweaty adults.

Patsy's version of dancing was completely alien to me. She directed me to a barn-like roadhouse a couple of miles out of town. The place fulfilled every fantasy I'd ever had about a western bar. Wooden floors, a bar counter that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. To the side was a low stage with a band playing country-style music, and in front was a dance floor with some couples dancing.

She dragged me out on the floor, and I hung onto her, desperately praying I didn't make a complete fool of myself. I lasted two songs before Patsy took pity on me and led me to a table where I collapsed in a chair in gratitude. She grinned and sat down beside me. Two couples, friends of hers, approached the table and after saying hi, joined us.

All four had gone to school with Patsy, and I, as a newcomer, was treated with some suspicion. It seemed that they were all friends with her husband and were convinced that Patsy should give him a second chance.

"Fuck second chance," she said. "I caught the cheating bastard in our bed with the Pollson sisters, and what does he say? That I should strip off and join them, he's man enough for the three of us."

"Christ, Patsy, you know what Randy's like. They don't mean anything to him. It's you he's always loved ever since sixth grade," a tall red-headed guy said.

Patsy turned to me, "Bob, these 'friends' of mine are too rude to introduce themselves, so let me do it for them, and then they can leave." She pointed at the redhead, "This is Carl, he's my soon to be ex-husband's cousin." He nodded in my direction.

She pointed at the other three, "Cindy, his girlfriend, and David and his wife, Zoe. We all went to high school together with Randy, and for some reason they all want me to forgive my cheating bastard of an almost ex-husband."