Part Six
When Samantha was eight, Millie told her
she had something very special to show her. They mounted the horses and rode a
long way, must have been at least half a mile. As they came over a hill,
Samantha could see a long, narrow canyon ahead. It was very deep. A beautiful stream
meandered along the right side of it, with a flat, grassy meadow to the left of
the creek. A long, very crooked and steep trail led to the bottom. Even on Old
Murt, Samantha was very scared as they wound along the trail, deeper and
deeper. The trail was worn deeply into the canyon wall, showing that it had
been traversed thousands of times.
“This canyon is so deep, the sounds of the
shooting does not carry out of it very well. We can’t even hear it at the
Compound,” Millie explained.
Soon they were in the lush meadow. It was
long and straight. A small cabin stood at the near end of it. At the far end,
Samantha could see several brightly painted objects shaped like a person, and
they appeared to be about the size of a grown man.
“This meadow is three hundred yards long,”
Millie said. “This is our shooting range. Our family is surrounded by bad,
dangerous people. We have to learn to protect ourselves. All us Dudley’s, men
women and children, learn to be experts with this gun.”
Millie pulled out a very large, long rifle
from her saddle scabbard. Samantha had seen many of these large guns back at
the compound. She had noticed that when any adult leaves the compound, they
almost always carried one of these guns.
Millie explained. “As we get older, and
deal with big men, men who know how to fight, all the tricks I’ve shown you
with the boys won’t work. And we can’t beat them. They’re stronger. All these
people around us from the outside want to hurt us, even kill us.”
Samantha was getting a very bad feeling
about this.
“Every one of us, even a girl, must get
very accurate with this gun. So that when bad men who come onto our land,
planning to hurt or kill us, they will know that we are able to take them out
long before they can get close enough to hurt us. Most of these bad people
surrounding us already know that, so they usually stay away from our land.”
Samantha burst into tears. “But I don’t
want to hurt anybody! I hate guns! I never want to even hold one! All they are
good for is hurting people!” Please don’t make me touch that thing!”
Millie put the gun aside, and hugged
Samantha. Millie realized this was not going to be easy. “We have many needs
for this gun, and this skill. Don’t you like the meat you eat back at the compound?
How do you think we get that meat? We Hunt! And we all get very good at it.
When we get good enough, these mean people around us realize they must never
come here. If you work hard enough with this gun, and get to be the very best
around with it, people will soon know, and you will never have to shoot this
gun at a man. It’s just like fighting with the big boys at the compound. Don’t
you remember how they are afraid to wrestle me? They know I can hurt them, and
they leave me alone. They’re even beginning to leave you alone, simply because
they know you know all my tricks. All you ever have to do, mostly, is bluff.
Isn’t that true, Sam?”
Samantha was still sniffling, but she had
to admit, that was true. It did seem that the more the boys respected her
abilities, the less she had to actually wrestle one, which Samantha completely
detested.
“Let’s go in
the cabin. There’s always snacks and drink there. We’ll rest a bit, and I’ll
show you how this gun works.”
While they ate snacks and rested, Millie
started showing her the mechanics of this gun. Samantha was thinking about all
this. She did not know if she could ever get good with this gun, but it was
seeming like that may be her only out of having to shoot at a man, like her family seemed to be all about. And what
about her name? Samantha sound like a sissy, girlish name. Would people respect
the abilities of Sam more than Samantha?
For her
demonstration, Millie chose to shoot from two hundred yards. Continued, four
days. Thanks for reading.
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