I’d only known Cowboy Bill for an hour when the contest came to pass. Of course I’d heard of him. It seemed everyone in Montana knew Bill. Or knew of him. Cowboy Bill. Crazy Bill. Little Bill. Old Bill. Silent Bill. Bill the Jockey. Cookie Bill. Wild Bill.
He walked into the bar and came right for me. His face was Montana. So were the spurs and hat. He could have been a hundred. Or thirty. It was hard to tell just looking at a man in these parts. This is serious country and it did a hell of thing to a man’s face. His hands were huge and hard. He was 5’3” if he was an inch. You knew by the way he walked, legs bowed east and west that he was a horseman. He grinned like he’d been in the bar before or another bar, before.
‘I hear you’re looking for a .22.’
Bill lacks nothing in brevity.
I nodded and said yes I was.
I’d wanted to learn to shoot better while I was out here. And with open sights. Rumor had it that Bill had a .22. A brand new Ruger. A black, synthetic number that could stand up to the place and whatever else you might give it. Since I’d scope-eyed myself for the second time with my deer rifle I’d gotten flinchy. Just a little. I figured a 10/22 rifle would be the perfect thing to get back into form. The lack of scope would give my skull a chance to fuse back together.
An hour later we were in Bill’s yard. Which just so happens to be a few thousand acres of pristine country. Bill baby-sits the place for a moneyed lady that lives somewhere money suits a person better. He introduced me to his dogs by pointing to the charging pack and then his eye. They were all blind. And huge. His horses were out in the pasture. Half of them pregnant.
Shortly after the tour I was holding onto his Nixon-era pickup for dear life. Bill drove with his knees over a makeshift dirt lane. He told me about the monster deer and elk he’d killed back here. He pointed to scrapes that even his blind dogs couldn’t miss. If he liked a fella he’d let them have the run of the place for hunting season. He just couldn’t find anyone he liked well enough. I was doing my best to be liked well enough and keep down my lunch at the same time. No easy balancing act I assure you. We rumbled on.
From the outset Cowboy Bill was likeable. Very. He’d been a jockey in his younger days and took to a life caring for horses naturally. Under the hardened exterior was a kind man who liked to laugh. His horses came to him when he whistled. They respected and loved that tiny, weathered man. And he them.
By the time we’d gotten to Bill’s secret spot along the river we were laughing and carrying on like old pals. Bill may have even spoken.
Out comes the rifle. As promised it was brand new. Maybe ten rounds through the thing. Not much to it. Black. Synthetic. Open sights. It might as well have been Marylyn Monroe. I was smitten
Bill thrusts the rifle at me and says let’s see what you’ve got without saying a word.
He’d made it very clear that he didn’t want to sell the thing. He’d gotten it for the rich lady’s kids for gophers and learning on. Only problem was the kids couldn’t get the hang of the thing. It is an autoloader. The kids kept forgetting he said. And he was tired of ducking.
He didn’t want to sell it. But if he had to, he sure wasn’t going to sell it to just anybody. Especially some cold fish from back east with two very deep scope ring scars above his wide eyes.
So there’d be a challenge. If the challenge were met, Bill would part with the rifle. Apparently there would also be a bonus round. Which, if met would inspire a discount of Bill’s discretion.
As you might have guessed none of this was expressed verbally.
He just handed me the rifle and some shells, which I fumbled to load. By now I was nervous. It stopped being about the gun. I didn’t want to let Bill down. He was a real cowboy with a lot of life under his belt. And a lot to teach. I was none of these things. Green as moldy cheese. And I really wanted to hunt on this postcard in the fall.
As I’m pushing through the last of the cartridges Bill throws two sticks down into the river.
‘Go ahead.’ He says.
‘What?!!” I asked, no so coolly.
‘Shoot.” He says.
By the grace of some higher hunting power. With the dexterity granted me by some mystical nimrod guardian angel that had never until this very moment given me the time of day. Even when I needed it most. I managed to pull off one of the great moments of my hunting life and blew those sticks right out of the water. One. Two.
Later while I loaded the rifle into my truck, pleading with the blind dogs to stop peeing on my tires Bill ambled over and handed me a tin.
‘Give these to your dog if you don’t like em.’
I opened the tin. Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. I’d passed the test. He liked me well enough. It was my invitation to hunt the postcard.
‘Thanks Bill’ I said without a word.
Crazy Bill. Cowboy Bill. Wild Bill. Cookie Bill.
My friend, Bill.
In the month’s that have followed my lucky shooting, I’ve gotten almost passable with that trusty .22. Many a can, a few more sticks and just one or two unlucky gophers can attest to my progress. That mild case of the yips is gone from my hunting rifle. Any deer fool enough to be floating past my stand this fall just might be on his last swim in the river.
A week after Bill’s challenge I put the gun on a rest and proceeded to sight it in properly. Only to find that the thing was off a good two inches to the left at 75 yards. A fact, that after much cajoling, Bill would later admit. Smiling. Proving only that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.[wpg_thumb height=”200″ width=”180″]
