Chapter 1

I'd always loved to "play" with guns. My mother used to say that I lived for the Western movies and TV shows. Hopalong Cassidy and Red Rider were my constant companions. Why, I even had a Red Rider BB gun! I was in heaven the Christmas I got my first .22 rifle. The advantage of living in New Mexico was that I could have all the guns I wanted and the space to shoot them.

As soon as I could get a job, I started saving for my first pistol. I found an old Smith and Wesson break-top single-action revolver in .44-40 caliber in a pawn shop and I was able to buy it after only a few weeks at my job. It was badly worn and needed some repair, but I was able to restore it to usable condition by scrounging or making by hand some of the overly worn parts. The ammunition was a bit too expensive for my budget, but I discovered the joy of reloading my own cartridges, so I was able to shoot as much as I wished (which was all the time).

Fortunately for me, we lived on the outskirts of town, so I had no problem with setting up a shooting range and the noise didn't disturb any neighbors. It didn't take me long to learn that the movies had it all wrong with their quick-draw nonsense. I did some experimenting and found out that Wild Bill Hickok was right: the cross draw was faster than the straight draw from the thigh. I also found that using two hands to hold the gun while shooting was a lot more accurate than the one-handed stance, but a bit slower. Mother always said that my first true love was that old .44-40.

My love of guns led to my occupation: I became a gunsmith. Though I had been doing it for years as a hobby, as soon as I graduated from high school, I set up a formal business and got all the necessary federal and state licenses to sell and repair all types of guns. I soon got the reputation of being able to do miracles with guns and I started to get business from all over the region. I refused to do mail-order, if you couldn't stop by my shop, you could take your business elsewhere. I wanted to know and have a personal relationship with my customers. This may have cost me some income, but I was doing well enough with drop-in business.

Pistols were fun, but it also didn't take me long to learn how effective a shotgun was as a weapon of self defense. As an experiment, I modified a double-barreled 16-gauge shotgun into a pistol-like weapon. I cut the barrels off to 10 inches and replaced the stock with a pistol grip. Using #4 buckshot in this gun was like hitting a target with a machine gun. The range was very short, but any range over 50 feet with a pistol was pretty chancy, too. I rigged up a holster for this special gun and delighted in "fast drawing" my secret weapon. The only problem with this gun was that it was pretty heavy; it took a big man with a big hand to control it. Fortunately, I was both.

Enough preamble! Now to the meat of the story. I never will know how it happened, but I don't really care. I'll just tell the tale as I lived it and we'll all wonder together at the hows and whys.

I was in my shop one morning in 1957 finishing up some last minute details on a Colt .45 Peacemaker I was restoring for a valued customer when I felt a tingling sensation flood over me. The feeling lasted only a moment and I thought no more about it. I was getting tired from the close work I was doing, so I thought that I would relax by doing a little shooting at my range which was next to the shop. I strapped on my special rig for the modified shotgun and slipped on my bandoleer of ammunition and stepped out the door.

What the hell!?! This wasn't the town of Zuni that I knew and loved. The paved street was gone; it was replaced by a rutted dirt road that hardly qualified for the name. Several buildings were across the street where I expected them to be, but they were all crude adobe and only one was faced with stucco. I looked back and the buildings on my side of the street, including my shop, were all of adobe! There were no cars or trucks, but I did see a number of saddle horses and three buckboards.

In a kind of daze, I walked across the street toward a building with a sign saying "cantina" over the door. I was fluent in Spanish, so I was sure that I could find out what was going on from the bartender, no matter which language he spoke.

I went in and stopped for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the dim light. I was startled at what I saw. A large and very dirty man was holding a gun on a well dressed elderly gentleman who had his hands in the air. "I'm goin' ta kill ya, ya nigger-lovin' bastard!"

Without giving proper thought to the situation, I yelled out, "WHAT'S GOING ON HERE? PUT UP YOUR GUN!"

"Shut up, you bastard!" the man snarled as he swung his gun toward me.

Still without thinking, I drew my modified shotgun and fired one barrel at the man's hand holding the gun. Fortunately for him, he was standing so close to me that the shot didn't have time to spread very much and it simply took off all of his hand and most of his forearm. He was still in profile, so none of the shot hit is body.

I yelled, "GET A DOCTOR!" as I rushed to get a tourniquet on the man's arm. Everybody just stood around, so I asked, "Why aren't you getting a doctor?"

"Cuz there ain't none in town. You know that!" said the bartender.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot. What are we going to do about this galoot?"

"I'll git the vet. He kin sew up that mess."

The bartender called to his swamper, a Negro, "Go find the vet an' tell 'im what happened. Clean up the blood an' bone when ya git back."

"Yes, Masser."

The elderly gentleman turned to me and said, "I must thank you for saving my life. I do believe that fool was going to shoot me. Oh, by the way, my name is Jasper Witherspoon."

"It was my pleasure to stop him, Mr. Witherspoon. My name is John Akers. Why was he attacking you?"

"The bartender commented on my accent and I told him that I was from Massachusetts. The man you shot assumed that meant I was an abolitionist. I tried to tell him differently, but he would not listen. I suppose that he was intoxicated."

The bartender, Jesse Jones, commented, "Nah, that jughead is jus' naturally mean. He wuz always lookin' fer a fight he wuz sure he could win."

In an effort to cover my ignorance, I looked around and saw a calender. June, 1857. "My God! This is crazy! What am I doing here?" I thought. "The bartender seems to know me, but I don't know him. I had better be careful or they will lock me up or chase me out of town."

Now that I had a moment, I replaced the fired shell and shoved the empty in my pocket. I looked down and discovered that I was wearing clothes of the period. I pulled some coins from my pocket and discovered they matched this era, too. I was getting more and more confused. At that moment, Witherspoon asked, "In appreciation, may I buy you a beer?"

"Sure, that sounds good. I could use something wet right now." Witherspoon dropped a nickel on the bar and received 3 cents change. With that, I was convinced that I was no longer in 1957!

I thanked Witherspoon and drank the beer. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't too bad, so I finished it without further delay. I excused myself and figured that I had better look the town over, just in case I was stuck here for a while. The vet and swamper came in as I was leaving, so the man I shot was going to get the best attention the town had to offer.

I walked down the edge of the street, since there was no sidewalk. I passed a couple of general stores on either side of a barbershop, and a livery stable on this side of the street. Across the street were a church (Catholic), another saloon, and another livery stable. My shop was just past that livery stable.

The beer was talking to me, so I went back to my place to see where I could relieve myself. I went in and found that it really didn't look like my old shop up-time in 1957. I looked around and found that behind the main shop was a store room and behind that was a small nook with a bed and a simple kitchen. I went out the back door and found a well and a privy. I was unhappy with that arrangement until I looked down the well and saw that it extended through the hardpan. That should keep the shit and piss out of the drinking water as well as I could expect in 1857. I used the outhouse and kept looking at the rest of my holding.

Back of the shop was a shed and a small corral. I looked in the shed and found a horse and tack. Damn, I was lucky that I had learned to ride when I was a kid! I went back inside to see what I had to fix for lunch.

I found some beans and some biscuits that looked like they were left over from breakfast, so I warmed the beans on the wood-burning stove and fixed some coffee. It was a good thing that I had learned to drink unsweetened black coffee, because I couldn't find any sugar and there was no place to keep milk or cream.