the Ferguson Rifle (1973) Read online

  The Ferguson Rifle

  Louis L'amour

  *

  Chapter 1

  My name is Ronan Chantry, and I am alone upon this land. I have long since crossed the Mississippi. No other rides with me, and the plains lie vast about. My eyes are toward the horizon where the sun sets in gold and crimson, an enormous sun like none my eyes have seen in the thirty years that have been mine.

  What I loved is gone. What I lived for, vanished. I ride westward into an unknown land, toward what destiny I know not. It has ever been our way, we Chantrys, to turn westward when faced with grief and desolation.

  I ride to lose myself, but can a man ever lose that which is in him? That which is blood and bone to him?

  That which has been his life?

  Men have told me that I am a fool, that I ride only to my death; but if it is to be, then let it be.

  My wife, my dearly beloved, is dead.

  My son, who was to grow tall and sire yet another generation of our family, is also gone, done to death by the flames from which he tried to rescue his mother.

  Within me is emptiness; the studies to which I had given my life, abandoned.

  I have a good horse, a small pack, an excellent knife, and I have the Ferguson rifle. That rifle, my constant companion since childhood, is all that remains of my past, that and a few precious books to stimulate my thoughts until?

  The rifle was given to me when I was a small boy, presented by the man who simplified the loading mechanism and put into action the most efficient weapon of the century.

  Major Patrick Ferguson demonstrated the weapon at Woolwich in June 1776.

  Four years later, he was killed at the Battle of King's Mountain, North Carolina.

  The rifle was given me only a few weeks before his death, a truly marvelous weapon made and engraved by his own hand. It was one of the first to be loaded at the breech, and could be loaded and fired six times to the minute. In the almost twenty-five years since it came into my hands, I have seen no rifle to compare.

  Ours was a poor cabin, and I stood by the gate holding the heavy musket with which I had barked a squirrel, watching a red-coated officer riding up the path from the road.

  He looked at me sharply, then at my musket. "Lad, I am fair done in. Could I be having a drink from your well?" He had a good face, a strong face.

  "Sir," I said, "you men of England have been my enemies, but I will refuse no man a drink.

  Will you come in, then?" He glanced toward the house, wary of a trap.

  I had no idea of it then, but he was a much hated man, and a man known for his harsh opinions of the colonists.

  "There's nought to fear," I said, and there was scorn in my tone. "My ma is ill within, and I must be about fixing her supper." I held up the squirrel, and not without pride.

  He glanced at it, then at me. Riding through the open gate to the well, he dismounted to accept the water-filled gourd dipper from my hand.

  "Thanks, lad." He drank the cold water from the dipper, then refilled it to drink again. "There's no finer drink than this, lad. Hear it from a thirsty man." He noticed the puzzled expression in my eyes as I looked at his horse. It was a fine animal, but it was his weapons that puzzled me.

  He wore a saber, and there were two horse pistols in scabbards, which was not unexpected, but he also carried two rifles, one of them carefully wrapped in an oiled cloth.

  "What is it, lad?" "Two rifles?" I said.

  He chuckled, but his eyes were on my ancient musket. "If you can bark a squirrel with that," he said, "you must be an uncommonly good shot." "I daren't miss," I admitted honestly.

  "When our powder and shot are gone, we must live on greens." He finished his water, then led his horse to the trough. "May I pay my respects to your mother, lad? If you say no, I shall not intrude." "She would enjoy it, sir. We have few visitors here, and my mother pines for them. Until she came here, she lived always among people." My mother was a woman of rare beauty. It took me years and the viewing of many women before I really grasped how truly rare. She was pale now, and thin, lying in the old, high bed, but her hair was done on this day as upon every day of her life. She was ever groomed and neat, and much to my disgust, required that I be the same. The habit was well formed, and is with me still.

  The major stepped into our cabin, removed his hat, and bowed. "I am Major Ferguson, ma'am, of His Majesty's Second Battalion, Light Infantry Highlanders.

  Your son was kind enough to provide me with a drink, and I wished to pay my respects." "Will you be seated, major? I'm afraid we have little to offer, but if you would join me in a cup of tea?" "I would be honored, ma'am. Honored, indeed. It is little we see of the ladies these days. Times are hard for a soldier, ma'am." "And I would they were harder, major." Even as she said it, she smiled, taking the sting from the words.

  "You come unbidden to our country as you came unbidden to my other country." "Your other country, ma'am?" "I was born in Ireland, major, and grew up there. I came over the sea to marry my husband, whose family was known to ours." "I am a Scotsman. Many of us, ma'am, did not approve of the manner in which affairs were handled in Ireland. We do not make policy. That is the king's business." "And a poor business he makes of it. But here, now! This is not fit conversation for a guest in my house. Ronan, would you pour tea for us, please?" My mother's hair was red gold, and the silken bed jacket she wore had come from France, in a better day than this.

  "If you will permit, ma'am"--the major accepted his tea--"I had not expected to find a gentlewoman in such a place. Not a woman of such obvious--was "Breeding, major? There is no latitude or longitude for breeding. We who migrated from Ireland left much behind, often including the O or the Mac that preceded our names, but we did not leave our pride, nor I hope, our good manners." She smoothed the rough blanket with her hands as though it were satin or whatever she'd known in her younger years. "You travel far, major?" "To join my command. It is twenty miles, I believe." As if reminded, he got to his feet. "I should prefer to remain, but the ride is long." He hesitated, and then said, "We shall not trouble your land much longer, ma'am. You have resisted us strongly, and at home there's a distaste for it." "As well there might be," she said quickly, but smiling. "If you pass this way again, will you stop?" She smiled impudently. "The good Lord commands us to forgive our enemies, major, and I forgive you." "Of course." He glanced at me. "The boy's father? Will he soon be home?" "He was killed in the war, major." "If there is anything I can do?" "No, major. My son does very well.

  He is a skillful hunter and we shall do splendidly." She extended a slender hand. "Do stop by, major. You will be most welcome." He took her hand, bowing gracefully, brushing her fingertips with his lips. "It was my pleasure," he said, stepping back, then another step, and turning he went out the door, putting on his hat as he did so.

  There was a moment when he kissed her hand that I could only stare, for I believed such things happened only in palaces or among great ladies and kings.

  "See him to the gate, Ronan. He is a fine gentleman, and conducts himself as one." Major Ferguson had gathered his reins and was stepping into the saddle when I came to open the gate. "Your mother is a great lady, lad, a great lady. She should not be living here, in this manner." From his saddle he took the wrapped rifle, unwrapping it slowly. It was utterly new, unused, silver mounted, and engraved. I gasped.

  "Handsome, is it not? I made it myself, for myself." He showed me how it was loaded for I had not seen a breechloader before, nor the mechanism he had invented, for he told me that as he showed me the rifle. "Lad, I have a notion I shall not have long to use it, and there's no telling into ^wh hands it might fall. A fine lad such as you, who appreciates a good weap
on and must provide for his mother... well, lad, you need a rifle, not a musket." I could scarcely whisper. "It... it's for me?" "It is." He put it into my hands.

  "Sir"--I held it reverently as a father holds his firstborn child--"I cannot accept it. My mother would not permit it." "Take it, lad. I shall be gone and there will be no way to return it." From his saddlebags he took a bag of shot and another of powder. "Do you take these too. You surely need them more than I, and before many hours are past, I shall be where there is little else.

  "Care for it, son, and it will care for you. I ask only one thing. Keep it always, and never use it against the king." When he had disappeared around the bend, I walked back to the cabin. When I showed it to mother, she reproved me gently. "You should never accept a gift unless you can return one of equal value, but when a gift is given, it should be accepted with grace." She leaned back on her pillow, happier than I had seen her in many weeks. We had few visitors, most of them country people. Good, honest folk they were, but with few social graces, and none of them from the cities beyond the sea.

  A few weeks later, we heard of the Battle of King's Mountain, and of the death of Major Ferguson.

  We heard much of him later, for he had admirers on both sides of the line. He came of a distinguished Scottish family, was only thirty-six when killed, and had been in the service for twenty-one years.

  The Ferguson rifle, which might have won the war in a matter of months, had been taken from his command and put into storage by General Howe after Ferguson had been wounded at Brandywine.

  The rifle he left with us helped us through those bad times. Its accuracy was scarcely to be believed, and I became skilled in its use, acquiring speed in reloading. Each time I used it, I blessed the major.

  When spring came at last, mother received a small legacy from a distant relative in Ireland and we moved to the vicinity of Boston and I took the Ferguson rifle along.

  The woods lay not far from our home, and often I hunted there. The education I received and enriched by my own reading was an excellent one, andfora year I read law, but a meeting with Timothy Dwight convinced me I should become an educator and a writer of history. Yet now I rode westward into a wild land where the only education needed was that the land could provide.

  The sun was gone, although light remained. With darkness near, I still had no camp, and the bald plains promised nothing.

  Suddenly, as if born of a wish, there appeared a fold in the low hills. A grassy slope dropped away to a cluster of trees, dark now with evening, and I thought I detected the sheen of water.

  Many were the warnings I had received. Water holes were few, used by all, and at any such place death might await. I had not hunted through my boyhood years for nothing, nor had scholarship robbed me of my senses. My nostrils caught the scent of woodsmoke, and I drew rein to listen.

  At first I heard nothing, then the faint sound of horses cropping grass, and a crackle as from a fire. Standing in my stirrups, I peered through the leaves, but could see only the shine of light reflected from the seat of a saddle.

  It was unlikely a saddle would be used by an Indian, but there were many dangerous men on the prairie, not all of them Indians by any means.

  Rifle in hand, I walked my horse forward, calling out, as was the custom. "Hallooo, the camp!" "Come in with your hands empty!" The voice was matter-of-fact. "Or take a bullet through the brisket." I drew up. "When I come in, gentlemen, it will be with my rifle in my hands, and if you want to start shooting, just open the ball!" Somebody chuckled, and then said, "All right, all right! Come on in!" Several men sat about a fire, and two of them had rifles in their hands. All wore buckskins; all had the appearance of frontiersmen. My dress alone would add a discordant note, for I wore a brassbuttoned blue coat, gray pantaloons with straps under the arches of my Hessian boots, and a starched white cravat. My hat was of the English round variety such as was worn by the young gentleman of fashion. Yet their eyes were on my rifle.

  The Ferguson I carried was but thirty inches long; their own rifles look

  d to be forty-four inches at least.

  "'Light, stranger. Looks like you've come a fur piece." "That I have." Rifle in hand I dismounted, keeping my horse between them and me.

  One of the men chuckled. "Now that goes right with me. I like a careful man." Tying my horse, I walked around him.

  "Possibly I am less careful than you suspect. My friends told me I was foolish to come out here alone." "You're alone?" Startled, they stared at me.

  "Now that's hard to believe. You're four days ride from a settlement, mister." "Three... on this horse. You're the first living things I've seen, other than birds and insects." My palm slapped the rifle. "Anyway, as long as I have this, I'm not quite alone." The first man to speak indicated the rifle.

  "Don't know's I ever seen the like. Mind if I look?" It was my turn to chuckle. "Gentlemen, if I allowed a chance acquaintance to take my gun from my hand, I'd be a lot greener than I am ... and I am green." Moving up to the fire, I held it for them to see. "This is a Ferguson rifle, given me by the inventor when I was a lad. It is a remarkably accurate, fast-shooting rifle." A slim, dark young man seated near the Indian nodded. "I heard tell of them. Heard it said they can shoot six times to the minute." "Eight, gentlemen, eight times if one is practiced." I glanced around at the group.

  "I'm Ronan Chantry, and I'm riding west to the Rockies. If you're going my way, I'd like to join you." The lean dark man got to his feet. "I'm Davy Shanagan. Are you from the old country, then?" "My mother was, and my great-grandfather, too." "Sit, then, Ronan Chantry, and we'll talk of the western lands and what we'll do there. A man with a rifle that can be shot eight to the minute is welcome at any fire in the west." The others agreed, but my eyes went to the Indian, whose eyes were on the rifle in my hands.

  With a rifle like that, an Indian would be a big man among his own people.

  It was something to remember.

  CHAPTER 2

  Davy Shanagan glanced critically at my costume when I joined him at the morning fire.

  "You surely ain't dressed for the country." He glanced up at me as I warmed my hands.

  "Chantry, do' you have any idea what you're up against? We're westward bound, after fur. No tellin' what we'll find yonder." "I trapped some, as a lad." "You heard tell of this Lewis and Clark outfit? We figured if they could go west, we could, too. We won't be crossin' trails with them. They'll be much farther north, but James Mackay crossed this country we're ridin' into, and he trapped fur there." "It won't be easy," I admitted. "There was a Spanish army outfit marched north from Santa Fe to the Missouri, but Indians wiped them out when they got there.

  "The Mallett brothers and six others went back the other way. It's said they named the Platte. It's rough country, but I've a notion we can make it." Shanagan poked sticks into the flames. "Just about anywhere a man goes, he'll find somebody has been there before him." He glanced up at me again. "You up to that kind of travel?" Squatting on my heels, I said, "I believe I am, Davy. I left nothing behind me, nothing at all." "Then you won't go to p*'. A p*', yearnin' man is no good on the trail. When there's Injuns about, a man keeps his eyes open or he dies... an' sometimes he dies, anyway." He impaled a chunk of meat on a sharpened stick and leaned it over the coals. "You'll need an outfit. Those clothes won't last no time." "When I shoot some game, I'll make a hunting shirt and leggings." Davy looked doubtful. "You can do that? Of your ownself?" "Well, I haven't done it since I was a lad. There was a time when we were very poor. I often made moccasins and once a hunting shirt." Davy chuckled. "I never seen the time when I wasn't poor." He indicated the sleepers. "They're good men. The long, tall one is Solomon Talley, from Kentuck.

  Bob Sandy lyin' yonder is from the same neck o' the woods. The stocky, square-shouldered one is Cusbe Ebitt. I never heard him say where he was from, but Degory Kemble is from Virginny, and Isaac Heath is a Boston man." "What about the Indian?" "He's an Otoe." "Known him long?" "I ain't known none of them lon
g. Deg Kemble an' me, we rafted down to New Orleans, one time. I trapped a season in Winnebago country with Talley. The Otoe comes from the Platte River country... knows the river." One by one, the others drifted to the fire to roast chunks of meat and drink the strong, black coffee.

  Heath's eyes kept straying to me, and knowing he was a Boston man, I was ready for the question when it came. "That's an uncommon name you have, my friend." I shrugged. "Chantry? There've been Chantrys on the frontier for years, Mr.

  Heath. An ancestor of mine was on the east coast as early as 1602." My reply was flat and short, spoken with a finality that left small room for questions, and I wanted none. The past was in the past and there I wanted it to remain. If he had been in Boston within the past few months, he might know that which I wished to forget.

  We mounted and rode west with the Otoe scouting ahead, his pony knee-deep in the tall bluestem grasses. Occasionally flocks of prairie chickens flew up, then glided away across the grass to disappear like smoke. Far off we saw several moving black dots.

  "Buffalo," Talley said. "We'll be seeing them by the thousand, Chantry. This is their country we're coming to, and a grand, broad country it is." He leaned down from his saddle and pulled a handful of the bluestem. "Look at it, man! And this is the country some call the Great American Desert! They're fools, Chantry! Fools!

  Earth that will grow such grass will grow rye or barley or wheat. These plains could feed the world!" "If you could get men to live on them," Ebitt said wryly. "It's too big for them, too grand. They can't abide the greatness of the sky, or the distances." He pointed ahead. "Look!

  There's no end yonder. No horizon. You ride on and on and on and all is emptiness.

  Only the buffalo, the antelope, and the grass bending before the wind. I've seen men frightened by it, Chantry! I've seen them turn tail and run back to their cities and their villages. Only in Russia or the Sahara is there anything like it." "There's the pampas, on the Argentine," I suggested. "I've not been there, but it must be very like this." "Maybe," Ebitt said skeptically, "but I think there's nothing like it, not anywhere. The Sahara's desert. Well, Russia, maybe, like I said. I've talked with Russians and there seems to be a vastness to their land as well." My mind was on other things, for by nature I am a cautious man. "How much does the Otoe understand?" I asked Talley.