Chapter 26

Karen

Spring came. My class was done. I was disappointed in my students. They had all done a superlative job building ... but they were KITS! The hard part was done. Uberti Santa Fe Hawken kits come assembled. There’s no guess or by gosh. They fit! Everything fits. The guns were beautiful ... as good as mine ... and mine was a beauty.

The wood was a wonder to behold. It shot straight and true. I had built the rifle with a long barrel... 35 inches.

Then I drilled six “S size” holes in the face of the muzzle three inches deep and parted the barrel at 33 inches leaving a two inch stub that I pinned with six 0.125 inch diameter 2 and 7/8 inch pins. The stub ends of the pins were threaded to 1/8th NFT and fitted with a slot for a screwdriver. The pins were screwed in to the stub barrel leaving 7/8ths of an inch of the pins extended. This stub was fitted to the barrel, reamed and rifled when the barrel was rifled ... a false muzzle. Loading was accomplished by short starting a .525 lubricated pillow ticking patched round ball through the false muzzle and into the 33 inch barrel then using the ramrod to seat the patched ball on the powder charge. The false muzzle was then removed, the lock primed and the round applied to the target.

Since the cut off piece was rifled at the same time as the barrel, the 1” in 48” twist rifling lined up perfectly. I wasn’t hunting with this rifle ... this was a paper shooter. At two hundred yards the rifle exceed a minute of angle and often placed two or more balls in the same hole. I won many Hudson’s Bay four stripe blankets shooting at weekend shoots.

There are times when it pays to outshoot the men.

I had used my own homemade “cherry” to cut the mould to cast the lead balls.

In my spare time, using Laubin’s Sioux pattern and a Singer Baby treadle sewing machine, I sewed up an eighteen foot canvas tipi using European hemp canvas ... Sail Cloth. The tipi ... although called an eighteen is actually 19 foot three inches.

The cabin provided access to chokecherry thickets for lacing pins and tent pegs.

I also tanned two hair on buffalo hides taken from animals auctioned off as excess by the Thermopolis based Hot Springs State Park. I dickered for the hides. I skinned the animals for the hides. Labor for hides. Lots of labor.

And I joined the Story Blackpowder shooters club.

And I started taking Flying Lessons. At Buffalo.

Busy girl.

Buffalo had a pair of interesting aircraft. AT11 Bomber gunner trainers ... missing the dorsal turrets ... but still had that ugly glass nose. A variant of the Beechcraft 18, they looked ... abandoned. And, more or less ... that’s what they were. Sitting long enough to have nesting Doves in the cowlings and flat and checked tires, I felt sorry for them.

Every day I taxied the J-3 Cub past them and generally edged towards them. Forlorn ... they were. A part of American History, Socialism would rather forget ... days of real heroes ... and real deaths.

The FAA had formulated directives “To Clean Up The Airfields.” Get rid of the junk. And they were looking Wyoming, Montana way.

So ... I asked.

“The owner died six years ago, that would be 1971, of wounds sustained during the war,” said the Fixed Base Operator. “His heirs were part of that mess up in Bozeman ... at the University ... occupying the Hall in protest of the ROTC for men and Home Economics for women requirement ... Officer and his housewife was not a popular theme in the late sixties. They had no use for the aircraft. So there they sit.”

“What happened to the turrets?”

“They’re in his hangar along with the Norden Bombsights.”

“Hmmm.” I asked, “If he has a hangar, why aren’t the planes in it?”

“We needed the space,” he confessed. A massive blush infused his face.

“You are an accountant,” not a question ... a plain boldfaced statement. I’ll bet he doesn’t even fly!

“Yes. Wanna buy them?” he asked ... hopefully.

“How much?”

“Arrears on tiedown parking and hanger rental.”

“How much?”

“I can cut you a real deal,” he said.

“Gimmie a dollar amount ... cash,” I said. “Friday week.” I said using local terms. I meant and he understood it to mean, a week from this Friday.

“Twenty.”

“Bucks?”

He laughed, “Thousand.”

“Both planes, the turrets, and back in the hangers for ... six years pre paid?”

“And the machine-guns.” He said, “Wait ... back in the hangar? I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” I said, “You been screwing his estate for six years.”

“They haven’t paid either.”

“Not my problem.”