"There are three kinds of men in the world," my father said to me the day he taught me shoot a pistol, "and you can only be one:  You can be the kind to only shoot another man who is unarmed or has his back turned, or you can be the kind who only shoots a man who is going to shoot you or yours if you don't, or you can be the kind of man who just plain can't shoot anybody. The first kind is a coward of the worst kind, and I don't believe you will be that kind of man, will you, son?"

I tried to hold his gaze and gave him my best "No, sir!"

"I didn't think so. The third kind, who can't shoot anyone ever, might be a coward and he might not. Some men just don't have killing in them, because they believe it is wrong, and would rather die than do wrong. Remember Jebediah Van Sooten? The old Quaker?" I nodded, trying to remember the old man's face. I could only conjure up his white beard and kind, bright blue eyes, but his features were lost to my young memory. He had died 7 years before, when I was only five. "Well Jebediah was no coward, but he believed killing was wrong. He knew standing up to those slave runners would bring trouble, but he never carried a gun, didn't believe in killing other men, or slavery neither. Those two beliefs combined to get him killed, and while I agree with him on the second, the first belief is not one I share – provided them that are being kilt need the killing, 'course. Anyway, Jebediah died for his beliefs and a braver man I have never known—"

"But, Pa," I interjected, "Old Jeb drowned, he weren't kilt." And I had never heard anything about slave runners, but I let that pass for now.

"You're half right, son – he was drowned, but he didn't get to his drowning natural. He stood up for his beliefs, he was helping slaves from Kentucky get up north, and ran afoul of some men who were set on getting those slaves back. Bounty hunters, or slave runners, I am not sure which, but to my thinking if you accept a bounty on a slave, you're as bad a slave runner. They killed Jebediah, hit him in the head with a rock, and then tossed him in the river. Old Jeb never raised a hand to defend himself; he knelt down and prayed, and let them hit him. Do you think Jebediah was a coward, Osirius?" I tried to imagine kneeling before a man I knew wished me harm. I knew the bible said to turn the other cheek, to love my neighbor, but I could not imagine just allowing someone to hurt me, or anyone else, either. I might run, I might fight, but just let them kill me?

"No, sir, I surely do not. But why didn't he run, Pa? I think I might have run, to be truthful about it."

"Well, I think a boy your age would be right to run. I don't know for sure why Jeb didn't run, cause I can't talk to the dead, but I expect he thought by stopping it would give a chance for the slaves he was helping to get away. Jebediah could not shoot anyone, but he was the bravest man I ever knew. Now some folks, they can't shoot anyone ever because they are just plumb too scared. Of what I do not know, maybe the judgment of God, maybe of somethin' else, but I have known quite a few who could not fight, and it were not because of any sort of belief in right or wrong, it was just because they were plum scared. These men are cowards, and while I do not think they are bad men, I do not have much use for them, either. I think we already know you ain't that kind of man." Here he gave me a warm smile and a wink, and I knew my fight of yesterday was forgiven, even understood. My father did not smile often, but when he did, the object of his looks, whether my mother, my sister, or me, always felt the same boundless joy and pride in having won his approval.

            "Pa, how do you know what really happened to old Jeb?"  His smile disappeared at my question and he seemed to be thinking of what to say. The seconds passed and I was afraid he would not answer, or worse, would call off the shooting lesson. Finally, he made an odd sound, shook his head a bit then sat down on the log where we had been placing bottles to shoot at. "I know, son, because the men who killed Jeb told me." His kind eyes met my curious ones, searching to see if I understood. Pa hated slave runners, and did not believe in slavery. I knew this. How could he know the men who killed Old Jeb? How could he be friends with them? He could not. So why would they tell him something like that?

            "I don't understand Pa, these men killed your friend, but you knew them?"

            "No, son, I knew of them, but I did not know them. You see when Old Jeb didn't come home, I went looking for him, found his tracks, and those of the slaves he was helping. Those tracks led me to the tracks of three other men, or rather their horses. I talked to those men, they told me what they had done. You see, Osirius," and he looked at me very gravely, "they did not believe I would ever be able to tell anyone else about what had happened."

            "They meant to kill you, Pa?"

            "Yes, son, they meant to kill me. And so I killed them. You see, Osirius, I am the Second Kind of Man, the kind who can kill if need be, and I think you are, too." I thought on this a bit, tried to imagine Pa killing someone. Pa never even hit us kids. All the other kids at the little school talked of whoopings, but Pa never raised his hand to anyone so far as I knew. Then I realized he had talked of three slave runners. He must have been with a whole group of men. Maybe the group killed the slave runners, and Pa meant the group he was with when said he killed them.

"Pa, you said there were three of them. Were you with a group of men?"

"No, son, and you see that is what made the killin' easier. The more your life is threatened, the easier it is to take the life of another. I now it would seem the other way around, but for men like us, the second kind of men, who know killing is wrong but sometimes unavoidable, the more threatened we are, the more unavoidable it is, the easier it becomes, and that is why you need to be careful. By careful I mean, careful of yourself, you mustn't lose control or forget that killing is wrong." I thought on his words a bit, tried to wrestle with the idea of my father killing any one man much less three of them, then with the idea that killing is wrong but unavoidable.

"Pa, killing is wrong, but not when you have to right? Is that what you mean?" I still couldn't imagine Pa killing three men, but I sure wasn't going to say he was mistaken or remembered it wrong. Pa didn't talk about things he didn't know about and Pa never lied, ever.

"No Osirius, even when you have to, killing another man is always wrong, always. What I mean about unavoidable is that sometimes killing another man is the least wrong option. When you start thinking killing another man is not wrong under certain circumstances, well then you are on your way to being the First Kind of Man. Now, son, let's do some shooting." He placed the last bottle on the log, put his hand on the back of my neck, as he often did, and led me away, back twenty paces. From his saddle bag he pulled an old but well cared-for bandolier. I could smell the freshly-applied oil.

I had only seen it once before, a year or so before this day, as Mama had been cleaning out the family trunk. She put it away as soon as I asked what it was, but, in the manner of both my parents, had answered as many of my questions as she could before telling me clearly I was not to ask anymore: it was a bandolier, a sort of belt that went around the body instead of the waist; it held pistols, they were my fathers; I hadn't seen it before because my parents had agreed that my father would not carry pistols anymore once they married; my father owned pistols because he had not always been a farmer, "and that, she said, is all I am willing to say about this right now and we will not speak of this further until your father chooses to speak to you about it, are we understood?" I assured her we were. "And you need not be reminded you are not to go into the family trunk, correct?" I did not need to be reminded and assured her of that, too. It is true my folks never hit us kids, never berated us or made Patti or me feel low or bad by putting us down. Their form of discipline was The Talk. They would explain what we were to do and not to do and if we ever went against them and behaved in a manner which was not to their liking, well, then, we got the talk, in which it was explained our parents were disappointed in us, expected better, gave us everything they could, etc. Either of us, Patti or I , would have gladly taken a whipping rather than be subjected to the guilt and hard sadness brought on by one of our parents administering to us one of their talks.

I never looked in the family chest, but the day before my shooting lesson Patti and I did break a rule, when we got into a fist fight with three boys who teased Patti. She was two years younger than me, so that makes her 11 at the time and I guess she took after Ma, cause Patti was starting to show some bosom. Only two other girls at school were showing any bosom, Mary and Jenny Cafferty and they were the two oldest, too old for school, many said, being they were fifteen and sixteen, but their pa owned the mill and was the richest man in town, and did not want his girls working or marrying, so they went to school. Anyway, Patti was only eleven and was showing some bosom and one of the older boys, Jack Pillon, a big blonde boy of 15 or so said to his friends how he would like to milk Patti like a cow and then his friend, a smaller darker one named Ernie said yes he would, too. Pattie had been teased before, and we both knew saying anything at all would just make it worse, so we tried to ignore them and just kept walking up the sidewalk. I thought they were done teasing poor Patti because they stopped and we kept going. We were just passing in front of the General Goods store, where kindly Mr. Jackson often gave us kids sweets. The three boys were talking and whispering but we kept our eyes straight ahead, just kept walking, then, quite by surprise, the red-haired boy Colm O'Flannery ran up behind Patti and put one hand on each of her breasts and squeezed hard enough that she yelped out.

Well, rules against fighting or no, that sent me into a temper and as Colm turned to run back to his friends, I put out my foot and tripped him, Colm falling on the wooden slats of the sidewalk, his two friends running up. Patti jumped on Colm and started hitting him in the back of the head. I might well have pulled Patti off of Colm, but Jack and Ernie Came running up and Jack pushed me. Well, I was already so mad I did not feel I had control over my limbs or mind, like as if I was a puppet and someone else were moving me in a performance of some kind. My right hand came up to hit Jack and he blocked it but that was ok since I am left handed and my left hit him solidly on the nose and I felt his nose crack and munch under my fist. Ernie came around me and jumped on my back, his arms circling my neck and choking me. I moved backward fast, still feeling like someone else was moving my limbs for me, but thinking maybe I would push Ernie into a wall or a post or something, maybe hurt him enough to knock him off me, when I felt a bump and Ernie let go, then I heard a splash and I turned around. Ernie had hit a post and he had fallen, all right, off the sidewalk and into a horse trough, and bumped his head on the way in. I looked at him and realized he was knocked out, and I was afraid he would drown, so I pulled him out of the water and let him down onto the ground softly as I could. By this time Colm was sitting on the sidewalk, crying and sobbing, his nose leaking snot into his mouth, and Jack was sitting beside him, his hands on his nose, blood pouring out between his fingers. Patti was standing up again, hands on her hips, berating Colm, threatening him, when several men came across the street, one of them Doc Sanford.

Doc ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Sanford was a friend of my father's, but I did not know the other men except by sight. They were laughing and joshing with each other, and I heard one say "The boy is a scrapper, three on one, not bad."

"I don't think that is quite right, I think the girl took one!" which caused all the men except Doc Sanford to laugh even louder. Doc leaned over Ernie and opened each of his eyelids with a thumb. I was afraid, then, suddenly, afraid Ernie might be really hurt bad, or even dead, but it passed quickly when Ernie started mumbling and tried to sit up.

That night at home Ma and Pa gave us both The Talk, Patti and I sitting in chairs and the two of them standing, taking turns and interrupting each other as they told us how disappointed they were in us both, how we knew better than to fight, and how it was good to stick up for one another but being older I should have seen to it Patti got home safe, not gotten involved in the fray. I was feeling pretty low when they finally told us to go to bed, but then Pa came into my room and told me that while it was true I shouldn't fight, he was proud I had pulled Ernie from the trough, and that Doc had said all three of the other boys were going to be fine. Then he said that tomorrow he was going to teach me to shoot, which confused me since I had been hunting with him for a couple years already, but he explained he meant shoot pistols. I lay awake most of the night, a little confused and very, very excited.

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Pa put the bandolier over his right shoulder, him being left-handed like me, or rather, me like him.  There were four holsters along it, and each one carried a single shot pistol, made of wood and brass. The lowest of the pistols was waist high, the uppermost at his arm pit. The top two were the same as the bottom, but with the butt facing his right side instead of left.

"This pouch here, beneath the lowest pistol, is where your ammunition is kept. Just as with your rifle pouch, you should always keep it full, and flint and tinder dry."

"Yes, sir, I remember."

"Now, us both being lefties will make it easier. These bottom two are to be used one after the other, with the left, the top ones you hold in your right, passing to your left if you need them. Don't try to shoot with your right hand, it will just make you more likely to miss with your left. Shoot one gun at a time, then pass the gun in your off hand to your good hand. I will show you what I mean, then you can reload and take a turn, all right?" I had never been so excited in all my life; I was going to shoot pistols! Then, so fast I could hardly see it happen, Pa turned so his left side was facing the bottles. He drew two pistols, one in each hand, then fired and the left-most bottle shattered, the pistol in his right hand moved to his left, but I did not see it happen, the pistol was just there, as the first dropped to the ground and he fired again; another bottle shattered, and he drew the last two pistols and repeated the process, except it all happened so fast, so smoothly, it did not seem as though there had been any process or repeating, just one fluid motion, four pistols, four broken bottles. And then I understood very clearly what happened to the four slave runners who had killed Pa's friend Jebediah Van Sooten. I was certain my father had killed them, and, I expect, with a pistol to spare.

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   Pa and I practiced shooting pistols twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays, until I was fifteen. We practiced long guns sometimes, too, but what with all the hunting we did, actual practicing was not so important, or did not seem so. Ma didn't like it, the pistol shooting, I could tell, but whatever was said between Pa and her about it I did not hear. In fact I never heard my folks argue about anything, which is odd now I think on it, the house being a small one, just one bedroom downstairs (where my folks slept) and the loft upstairs where Patti and I slept on either end of the house. Other than my parents' room, the first floor was one large open area, with a dirt floor. We had a dinner table, and two stoves, one ma used to cook on (and Pa occasionally) and one for heating the house. The family chest was in my parents' room, and the only other furniture besides the table and some chairs was a large bookcase that was my father's prize possession. Books were rare in those days, and few folks in town had more than a bible, but Pa could read and loved to do, buying or trading any book that he could get. He and Doc Sanford often traded books back and forth, and discussed them late into the night. I would listen from upstairs, trying to follow their conversation, but not understanding most of it. 

Anyway, I know my folks must have argued from time to time, like all folks do, but I never saw it actually happen, even though I knew some things they disagreed on because Ma would look at my father in a certain, disapproving way at times. When we went pistol shooting, or when Pa would go on his trips with Doc Sanford, or if Pa spent too much money on a book. I think they must have argued after Patti and I were asleep, or maybe while we were at school, but I never actually heard it.