Free Novel 1959 - The First Fast Draw (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B

much. Still, I’d mostly be shooting from close up, and the target would be a man’s body. I’d waste no time on head shots.
    Whoever came against me would surely have help, and it was almost as sure that I’d be alone. Therefore if my gun was in action quicker then I might win with the first shot.
    Nine out of ten fist fights are won with the first blow, so why not a gun battle with the first shot?
    The problem was to get that gun out fast.…
    Right then I started to practice, drawing that pistol again and again, and sighting at whatever mark showed. The front sight had a way of snagging on my shirttail or beltband, so I would file that off. A thin white line on the muzzle would do most as good for close work, anyway.
    The problem then was to draw swiftly, to fire at once, and above all to make the first shot count.
    There was no use to waste ammunition firing until I’d developed some skill, and until I’d practiced turning and aiming at targets to the side or behind me. The problem here was to focus on the target at once and let the gun muzzle go where the eyes went.
    Right then I started, drawing fifty times by actual count, trying to break the draw down to its actual fundamentals. So I started trying to find the quickest and smoothest ways of grasping the gun—grasp counted for very much, and that first grip must be sure, clean and positive. If that was done half the problem was solved, for then the gun came up in line and didn’t jump when the trigger was squeezed.
    At daybreak the next morning I walked down to the far end of the island where nobody could see what I was doing and I practiced for three hours. After three hours I rested and thought about it for thirty minutes and then returned to work. My life depended on my success so I wasn’t about to waste time. So I worked on steadily through the afternoon.
    If the elbow was held loosely against the hip or the body above the hip my position seemed a little better, and the pistol could be pointed by the whole body.
    The art of drawing a gun fast had never been developed by anyone. Until now there had been no particular reason for developing any such skill, for men fought duels on carefully paced-off ground, or they went looking for one another, gun in hand. Usually, disputes were settled by carefully arranged duels with gun, knife or sword. Moreover, the first successful repeating pistol made in any quantity was the Walker Colt, invented by Samuel Colt and designed for the Texas Rangers by order of Walker. But like the Dragoon Colt, it was heavy.
    And the fast draw was of advantage only to a man who might expect attack at any time, from any direction.
    That first day I worked seven hours, until my hand was sore and I was some tired out. But I had a feeling that I’d hit on something new, and that what I was doing would work in practice, and that’s the test of any idea.
    Next day I rode to Fairlea and, with a team borrowed from a farmer who’d known Pa, I started breaking ground. After staying away for a few days so as to give nobody a chance for an ambush, I returned again. Each time that I came back to Fairlea I scouted all around before showing myself in the open. The chances were that Sam Barlow had no idea the field belonged to me, and most likely assumed I was merely passing through.
    On the fourth day I finished my plowing, and later I dragged the field and planted my corn.
    When I’d come back to Texas I’d had a little money, but most of it went to pay for the seed corn.
    Time to time I’d find myself thinking of Katy Thorne, although I knew I’d no business thinking of her. But I’d keep bringing to mind the way her face looked in the candlelight, and how good it felt to be sitting in a home, with comfort around me and the sound of a woman moving about the house. But much as I wanted to, I stayed away from Blackthorne. I’d no desire to go to stirring up a lot of wishing that I’d no business with. I was a man with nothing, and with small