Free Past All Dishonor by James M. Cain Page A

and its uncomfortable, and there’s always the chance that when you draw, that was when you had the thing hitched around a bit, to ease it, and the gun jams with unfortunate, not to say fatal, consequences. The .36 fits comfortable into an armpit holster, the only way to carry arms, and specially this .36 does. That’s a navy gun, my friend, made in the Colt London factory; if you look at the engraving on that cylinder, you’ll see it’s a battle at sea. And it’s one of the few models that were made with a short barrel, so it really does tuck under your arm there nice and snug and inconspicuous. Try it there. See how natural it is for your hand to go to it? Just like going to your heart. Your arm coddles the holster, so there’s no sticking, fouling, or jamming. And when it comes out, it’s about two feet closer to the line of vision than a gun coming out of a belt holster and that’s a fraction of a second saved, but it could be the difference between yes and no or, as we say, perpendicular or planted.”
    “Did you learn all this by heart?”
    “And I hope you will.”
    “The aim comes next.”
    “On that point there’s also a great deal of unreliable stuff told. You’ll hear about hip and fan shooting, and undoubtedly there’s been some, with monuments commemorating the results. But I’m telling you there wasn’t any proper cause and effect. It was simply accident, or you could say luck. There’s only one way to aim a gun. Bring the sights in line with the target and your eye. Do it as quick as you can, but do it, or you’re liable to wish you had. Noting once more that you can level a nice handy gun like this one quicker than a big one, I pass to the subject of fire. Here the same principle is still guiding us. A .44 is simply too big. Even if you aim it, by the time the heavy trigger pull is taken into consideration, you’ve twitched your weapon out of line, and accurate shooting is impossible. Naturally any gun, no matter what caliber, needs some work to bring the trigger pull to where it’s exactly right for you. I don’t mean hair trigger, you understand. A hair trigger is nothing but a fool’s way to get his thumb shot off, or whatever shot off that happened to be in the way, and with a belt holster it might not be his thumb. But get a whetstone and stone your notch, so the gun is as much a part of you as your hand is. And even on that point the lighter gun is better. And now I come to the point so seldom thought of, the lack of whose proper appreciation has had so many, many sad but final consequences. A .44, I don’t care if you’ve got the arm of a grizzly bear, is simply going to yank your hand up three feet in the air, and you’re not going to shoot it again, to hit anything, until you’ve pulled it down, aimed it, and fired it. But a .36—”
    “Is this holster for sale?”
    “It is, but I’ve got a better one.”
    “It sounds expensive.”
    “It is, but you’ll thank me.”
    It was a beauty all right, all hand-stitched in limp, tanned buckskin, with straps to hold it in place and a set to it that fitted the gun under your coat so most people would hardly notice it. I took it, and some ammunition, and thanked him for his lesson, and next night, around sundown, sneaked down Six-Mile Canyon to a gully where there was nobody around, stuck a playing card up on the timbers of an old drift, and went to work. Every thing he told me, I found out, was true, and specially what a fine gun I was using. I bought a stone and took it down, and worked on spring and hammer and pins and everything else in there, and wiped everything with machine oil and dried it, so every night it was better and then one night it was right. And then came the night when I could shoot. At ten feet I’d put up a six spot of hearts and knock holes in the spots as fast as I could pull the trigger. At fifteen feet I could hit three but stay on the card, and at twenty I could hit the card. I taught myself to keep