The Walker Colt: Billy's Tale

A waitress had appeared when they first sat down and taken our drink order, beers all around. I'd quickly learned that it was pointless trying to order a beer that wasn't ice cold, so I'd nurse the damn thing until it was possible to drink it without suffering brain freeze. I'm sorry, beer is not supposed to that cold.

"Who's this guy, Patsy?" Carl asked. "Does Randy know you'll going out on a date."

"It's none of his damn business who I date. This is Bob Moore, Daddy's new partner. Earl was his cousin."

I held out my hand, "How do you do." I said.

Carl ignored me and carried on talking to Patsy "Jesus, Patsy, he's a Britisher. Randy's gonna be pissed when he hears about this."

"And I guess you'll be the one to tell him," she snapped back.

"I won't need to, he'll see for himself when he gets here. He's supposed to be meeting us."

Patsy gave me a look that was a mix of defiance and apprehension. "Do you want to go? If Randy's drunk, he can turn nasty."

I shook my head. I liked this woman and was hoping this date would lead to many more. In any case, I'd grown up in the East end of London. It was a place you wouldn't survive if you didn't learn how to look after yourself. Both of my parents had died when I was young, and my grandfather had brought me up. He ran a Pub near the Elephant and Castle, and his customers were some of London's old school criminal elite, all hard men in their time. My grandfather was one of them, the pub their clubhouse, and I was quickly shown the ropes.

The old guard's protectors showed me how to look after myself. "Never start a fight," old Albert had told me. "Just make sure you know how to end it, Bobby boy." He and the other bodyguards had shown me how.

It was in the back room of the pub I was shown my first gun. It was a battered old Walther, a souvenir of the Second World War. I'd fixed a few old clocks, and the owner of the pistol asked if I could look at it. I stripped it down, cleaned and fixed a broken part secretly in the metalwork shop at school. I fixed a few more, then my grandfather had a word and I was offered one of the prized apprenticeships at Purdy's.

"Do you want to go?" I asked Patsy.

"Not really, I'm like it here, and I'm enjoying the company." She took my hand and smiled at me.

She pulled me back onto the dance floor, wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her body against mine. We shuffled, it could never be called dancing, for what seemed a lifetime. All I was aware of was the sweet scent of a beautiful woman and the bluest eyes I'd ever seen. Electricity seemed to spark between us, and our lips were welded together. Long, long moments passed until she shivered and pulled back an inch.

"Ahem," she coughed, "the music stopped a couple of minutes ago."

I surfaced and realized we were the only couple left on the dance floor and the band was walking off the stage. We headed back to the table and her friends. A third man sat with the other two couples.

"I guess that is Randy," I said. Patsy didn't smile, but she squeezed my hand as she led me over.

"What are you doing here, Randy, I don't remember inviting you to join us."

"Do I need an invite to drink with my wife," Randy growled. He was a tall man, thickset, and I guessed he'd been a football player in high school. From the look of him, he'd gone to seed. I knew he and all the others at the table were the same age as Patsy.

He turned to me, and it seemed I didn't have his approval, not that I expected it. "So is this a British thing," he said mockingly. "You like to steal other men's wives? I wasn't sure I believed it when Carl here called to say he'd seen my wife on a date."

While I wasn't scared, it did seem sensible not to piss him off while he was surrounded by friends. So, I held up my hands in a gesture of appeasement. "My understanding is your marriage is over, which is why I asked Patsy out on a date."

Patsy snapped at him, "Dum dum here seems to have forgotten that our marriage is over. The fucking Pollson twins were the last straw. What part of 'forsaking all others' did you not understand?"

"Bitch," he said, and he was on his feet and drawing back his arm to strike her.

I reached him as he moved forward, grasped his hand by the thumb and using his momentum, spun him and forced his arm up behind his back. 'Thank you, Albert', I thought. He'd shown me this move when I was seventeen as a quick way to immobilize a drunk in the pub. With the victim's arm in this position, just a little pressure had them on their toes. A little bit more and the shoulder would dislocate.

Randy gave a grunt of pain and tried to move away. I applied a bit more pressure, and he was on his toes. Carl started to come to his aid, and I shook my head.

"You don't want to do that, Carl. If I apply any more pressure, Randy's shoulder is going to dislocate. Where I come from men, don't hit women." I resisted Albert's voice in my head urging me to give the guy a classic East End kicking.

I eased the pressure on his arm, and he dropped down from his toes. He was spluttering incoherently, but I ignored him.

"You need to take him home before he does something stupid." I nodded in the direction of a pair of bouncers heading our way. "Probably best if you're going by the time they get here."

I let go of Randy and Carl dragged him off towards the back entrance of the bar. Patsy and her other friends intercepted the bouncers. I sat down, the adrenaline rush leaving me exhausted.

Patsy surprised me by sitting down on my lap and drawing me into a long kiss. This was far more than I'd hoped for, and I think she surprised herself and her friends. The table fell silent, and I glanced around apprehensively, but there were smiles on the two women's faces.

Patsy glanced down at her hand, "It feels funny not to be wearing my rings," she commented. "They were his grandmother's, and I didn't feel right keeping them."

Hey, I'm British, not stupid, I can take a hint. "Do you want to go ring shopping?" I asked, trying to keep the fear of rejection from my voice.

She gave me what I was to learn was her coy look. Head bent slightly forward, blonde hair falling over her face, striking blue eyes looking up at me. "What sort of ring?"

"One with a diamond or maybe a sapphire to match your eyes."

"Any specific reason you want to buy me a ring?"

"I have this vague idea that you might like to marry me."

"I might."

"Well if you're not sure," and I moved as though I was going to dump her off my lap and onto the floor.

She gave a shriek and tightened her grip on me. "Yes, yes, yes. Yes, I want a ring, yes I want to marry you, and yes I want your babies."

"How's my daughter?" I asked.

Patsy placed her hands over mine as they caressed her bulge. "Don't you mean our son. Tadpole is doing well, and so is his mother."

I laughed, I'd never been happier in all my life. I spun her around and drew her into a kiss. She complained as the case I was still holding hit her.

"What's in that?"

"I think it's an original Walker Colt, your Dad wants me to restore it."

"Okay, but why did you bring it home?"

Honestly, I wasn't sure why I had brought it with me, so I um'd and ah'd for a moment, then shrugged it away and said. "I just felt like spending a couple of days at home with my wife. Thought I'd work on it in my spare time, that's all."

"So, show it to me then, I've never seen one before."

"It's in pieces, I'll show you when it's finished."

She pulled the case from my hands and dropped it on a coffee table in the lounge. "Dad told me about it earlier, I'd really like see it."

Nervously, I opened the case and showed her the pieces of the pistol. She picked up the frame and rubbed her finger along it, "There's something stamped here," she indicated the left-hand side of the frame.

I held out my hand, and she passed it to me. It was icy cold, and my fingers tingled where it touched them. The room around us seemed to phase in and out of focus and the faint inscription 'C COMPANY No 142', appeared to glow on the metal in front of my eyes. The letters surged and pulsed. The sound of people shouting echoed in my ears.

"Billy," a gruff voice called out, and a hand shook my shoulder.

"Bob, Bob, are you okay?" Pats said in a worried tone.

I looked down at the gun frame I was still holding and then up to her worried face. I swallowed and croaked out, "I'm fine, I've just got a bad headache." I did have one that pulsed behind my eyes.

"I'm just going to put this away, and then I think I'm going to lie down," I said.

Patsy took the piece from me and placed it back in the case. "I'll put this in your study; you need to go and lie down, you're looking pale."

I acknowledged her and made my way to our bedroom where I stripped off and climbed under the covers. My head hurt, and I felt cold, I shivered and pulled the covers tightly around my body.

Patsy came in carrying a glass of water and a bottle of pills. She offered me a couple of painkillers, and I swallowed them down with a mouthful of water.

"Do you want me to stay with you?" she asked. I demurred and told her I just wanted to sleep.

She stroked my forehead and gave me a kiss before leaving and closing the door quietly behind her.

It took a while for the chills to leave me and the sharp pain behind my eyes to settle down to a low throbbing ache. I fell into a fitful sleep. It was the smells that seemed to come first. Stale sweat, unwashed bodies and horse, followed by flashes of a dusty track and a town off in the distance.

Then the town was right before me, and I was riding a horse past adobe and clapboard buildings.

I was at a table, a glass and a bottle in front of me and a pistol in my hand. The Walker Colt weighed heavily in my grip, the metal fresh and un-pitted. The cylinder was engraved and stamped on top of the barrel was ADDRESS, SAML COLT, NEW-YORK CITY.

I had no idea why it was in my hand, then it wasn't. A woman's nipple pressed against my palm and my fingers dug into her breast. A woman's voice was urging me to fuck her. "Harder Billy, fuck your Eileen harder," the voice had a soft Irish accent.

"Eileen," I muttered.

"Wake up Bob. Wake up love, you're dreaming."

I started awaking and noticed one impression was correct I was holding a breast. Patsy's breast and her blue eyes stared down at me in the glow of a bedside lamp.

I looked back at her in confusion.

"Who's Eileen," she asked and a savage pain shot through my head causing me to fall back against the pillow. Then just as suddenly, it was gone, and our bedroom snapped back into focus. There were red marks on Patsy's breast where I'd been grasping it.

"Shit, I'm sorry," I whispered. "That was the weirdest dream." The clock on the bedside cabinet said it was 5:20 so I'd been asleep for over ten hours.

"I know," she said and curled up against me. "I tried to wake you when I came to bed, but you were completely out of it. You've been tossing and turning for the past couple of hours then suddenly you grabbed my tit and tried to stick your cock between my legs."

That's when I realized I was sporting a magnificent hard on and her hand was wrapped around it

"Any chance you could forget Eileen and use that on me instead?" She applied her coy look and squeezed.

I pushed her onto her back, and she groaned in anticipation. She wriggled, and her panties flew across the room. She gasped as I sucked her nipple into my mouth. I groaned as she tightened her grip on my rigid cock. She let go of my cock and grabbed my head.

Her fingers, trapped in my hair, pulled, urging me to cover her. I pushed in deep and hard. Her legs wrapped around the back of my thighs. Her fingers clenched and unclenched the skin on my back, as I thrust hard and fast into her soft silky pussy.

I kept up the pace, changing the rhythm of the strokes in tune with her needs and the rolling of her hips. Her body stiffened as she came. She babbled out my name repeatedly. I kept moving; she was the only person I loved, and I was going to prove it to her.

She whimpered and cried out as her body shook while her orgasm washed over her, and she kept coming until I came with a rasping gasp, pumping my hot cum against the entrance of her womb, covering her cervix with my possessive essences.

Her fingertips were dug deep into the muscles on my back, and the walls of her passage clenched tightly around me, milking the last drop from me.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked up at me with a look of love and desire. I rolled to the side, but Patsy refused to let me pull out. Her finger traced a line of sweat running down my chest. She kept squeezing my shaft with her pussy.

She gave a little sob of happiness, and turning over, she pushed back and let me spoon her. She relaxed in my arms, drew my hand down to rest on the bulge of our child, and I fell into a dreamless sleep.

I sat back and basked in a wave of self-gratification. In front of me on my desk in the study sat the restored Walker Colt, clamped in a display stand. The metal parts gleamed with a bluish tinge. The brass trigger guard had polished to a golden hue, and the polished wooden handgrip shone.

There was no doubt that this was an original Walker; all the tests had come back in the correct range. The marking was correct and confirmed that this was one of the pistols that had been issued to Company C of the United States Mounted Rifles. There was no record of who it had been issued to, but I was convinced if we ever did find out, his first name was going to be Billy.

I'd had no resurgence of the dreams and flashbacks in the week I'd been working on the pistol. What I couldn't get over was how pristine it had been under the layers of ground in dirt. I'd run all the metal pieces through an ultrasound bath and over 150 years of crud had flaked off, leaving the pieces in an amazing condition. There were the obvious signs of wear and a small degree of pitting along the frame and barrel. The battle scenes engraved on the cylinder were worn, but still visible.

The powder flask, powder measure and bullet molds all appeared to be contemporary if not original. The flask still contained several measures of powder which I'd needed to discard. The tin of percussion caps was from the 1860's, and while I kept the tin, I'd got rid of the dozen caps it contained. A good job, too, as one exploded as it rolled off my desk onto the floor. I had puzzled over the glass jar until I'd read a few contemporary accounts and discovered that the practice had been to seal the loaded chambers with fat to prevent a chain fire.

Everything I'd read said that they used a 60-grain powder charge, but I wasn't going to risk that for my first test firing. Half load, I thought, I'd made a batch of balls from a modern mold. The original mold could make both balls and conical bullets, but I didn't want to risk using it.

At the back of the barn, Earl had set up a firing range. I loaded the chambers with a half charge of powder and the balls, then sealed them with an inert wax before adding the caps to the nipples.

The target was a couple of gallon water jugs, and I stepped forward, lined up on the target and pulled the trigger.

The pistol fired and kicked back twisting in my hand. A cloud of black powder smoke hid the target. Christ if that was a half charge I'd hate to think what a full charge would do. The charging lever dropped, and I couldn't rotate the cylinder.

"I told you it would do that, Billy," a gruff voice said. "You need to tie the damn thing up, or it'll drop each dang shot."

Oh fuck, not again I thought, only this time it felt so real. I took a moment to look around while my hands instinctively locked the charging lever into place. I stood at the back of a long low building. One of several that stood to one side of an open area. On the far side were what looked like stables and some smaller buildings.

"Here, Billy boy." A hand held out a length of rawhide and tied it around the barrel and lever. The man behind the voice was weather-beaten, a couple of days of stubble adorned his chin. He wore dusty work trousers and a shirt. He was bareheaded. I had no idea who he was, yet it seemed my mouth did.

"Now try," he said

"Thanks, Drew," I said, and stepped back to the firing line. I cocked and fired and then fired the remaining four loads at the target, a packing case with a row of clay jugs on it.

"Good lad," Drew said as I lowered the pistol and set it down on the top of a barrel that held my second pistol, the power horn, a tin of caps and a leather pouch of balls.

"You are going to need this," he said, and handed me a glass jar. "It's full of bacon fat, you'll want to plug the loaded chambers with it. It'll stop an extra chamber going off when you're shooting."

"That's kind of you, Uncle Drew."

"I just want you to do your Pappy proud, Billy boy."

It was weird; I knew I was Robert Moore, yet I wasn't, I was Billy Pruitt, an 18-year-old from San Antonio, with all his memories. I'd come to serve with my uncle, a corporal in the mounted rifles. I'd been here a month and been issued with my pistols last week. The man teaching me was Andrew Pruitt, better known as my uncle Drew

I reloaded the pistol leaving a single chamber empty as Drew had told me. The hammer rested against the empty nipple, so there was no risk of an accidental shot. I placed it in its holster and followed my uncle back to the bunkhouse. Over the doorway was painted a sign.

US MOUNTED RIFLES

Cots stretched along both walls, about a third occupied. A long line of tables ran down the center of the dark room. I headed down the room and stopped at a cot I knew was mine and flopped down on it. I was hoping that if I fell asleep, I'd wake up back in my time.

Sleep eluded me, the commotion a hundred men made, the rank smells, all combined to keep me thinking. There were two layers to my personality, and I was starting to find it difficult to separate them. Bob's was beginning to drift into the background as young Billy's tried to force itself into dominance.

Something kicked my foot, and I started. Staring down at me were three young men. Two were obviously brothers, same thin faces, and dirty blonde hair. The third was a stocky man, a couple of years older. His face was twisted into a tight smirk. Names seemed to appear like comedy cartoon balloons above their heads. The brothers were Sam and Josh, the third older man was, I knew, their cousin, his name was Daniel.

"Soooo," he drew out the first word, so it sounded like an insult. "Guess who I'm going to be fucking tonight, Billy boy." He grinned at me and tossed a couple of silver dollars in the air before catching them and placing them in his vest pocket, and his sidekicks laughed. "I'm going to be fucking your sweet little Eileen, I'll make her squeal my name."

I surged off the bed but stopped at a shout from Drew. "Billy, stop." Drew hurried down the room. All four of us froze until he arrived.

He stepped right up to Daniel and put his hand on his chest. "You always were a piece of horse shit, Daniel. You're one, and your father was one, and I don't know why the captain let you join. Get out of my sight and take these two idiots with you."

I thought Daniel was going to say something, then he turned and walked out of the building. The brothers paused and then left.

Drew turned to me and said. "For Christ sake, Billy, he's right about the girl; she's a whore. You can't let Daniel get into your head over her because he's right. If he pays her fee, then she'll open her legs for him.