Martialla claims to be a better shot than Lillian Smith or Annie Oakley with a Colt-Burgess rifle. Not with any other kind of firearm but specifically with a Colt-Burgess rifle. Sometimes people get on her back because they think that she’s claiming to be a better shot than Lillian Smith or Annie Oakley overall she’ll spend a long time explaining that she never claimed that ever, only that she’s a better shot than either of them WITH a Colt-Burgess rifle. The woman is out of her damn mind the way she lectures about that.
I don’t know if that claim is true, probably it isn’t, but in any event Martialla a good enough shot for my purposes. You don’t need to be much of a gunslinger to get the job done. As a former acquaintance of mine from Chicago remarked all you need to do it point the barrel in the right direction and squeeze the trigger since often the person you need to kill is maybe ten feet away. Shooting a playing card out of the air at thirty paces is impressive and all, but plenty of men, and a few women, who couldn’t hit anything smaller than the broad side of a barn have killed dozens of people just fine. Being will to do the deed? That’s a far more valuable trait than sharpshooting.
Still, no matter how good of a shot you are or how cold blooded of a killer you are it’s always a good idea to stack the deck on your favor however.
I only know about two other enchanted guns, which is actually a lot since what we’re talking about is impossible. Those other two were both empowered to kill better which is foolishness. Guns are already great at killing, that’s like putting a horse on another horse thinking it will be faster. If I needed to stop someone with a purse gun, okay that’s a reason to enchant a firearm, but if you can’t put someone down with a mundane Henry rifle you shouldn’t be shooting at anyone.
I don’t enchant a rifle for killing, I enchant it for silence. When I want it to Martialla’s Colt-Burgess rifle makes no more sound than the flapping wings of a butterfly. People drop dead and they don’t even know why. Good luck finding wherever she’s tucked in like a tick on a bull’s ass without any sound to guide you. The other thing I enchant for? When I want it to Martialla’s Colt-Burgess doesn’t leave bullet holes in whoever she’s killing, the wounds look like slashes with a blade. If you dig around in there you will find a bullet but why would anyone bother?
I don’t care if you’re William Waters you aren’t tracking that corpse back to us.
Martialla and the Frenchman abducted Cook Jackson or Cook Johnson, whichever one he was, and we dusted off the old sacrificial implements. You know what’s funny? The hardest part of the process is hanging the Aiapaec blanket up on the ceiling so it doesn’t get blood on it. The consarned thing is hundreds of years old, it’s not like you can beat it against a rock down at the creek. Not to mention that it’s hard to get bloodstains out in any event. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t enjoy slaughtering Cook Johnson-Jackson with the tumi either but hanging up that cloth is a real pain in the rump.
I sighed as Martialla was rubbing the head-stump blood on her Colt-Burgess rifle and she frowned at me “What?”
I waved irritably “Not you, I just heard one of those idiots downstairs kick over a blood bucket. We really need to develop a better system for this. Don’t they have blood troughs a butcher shops? Can’t we install something like that under the floorboards?”
The Frenchman rubbed his weirdly long pointed chin “I think the customers would be dismayed if there were blood troughs hanging from the ceiling.”
Martialla laughed her braying rooster-laugh “Yeah, I think that might hurt business!”
“Shut up Martialla.” I waved my hands like a child flying a kite “Spirits of the land, water and air, we honor thee with this gift, do the thing top the other thing, blah blah blah.”
“Thee?” the Frenchman asked quizzically.
“Could you make a tiny bit of effort on this please?” Martialla asked with hands on her hips like an unfucked schoolmarm.
I adjusted my headpiece “This thing fucking pinches! He got his blood, that’s all He cares about, the rest is just a formality. It doesn’t matter.”
Martialla looked down her overly thin beak-like nose at me “You’re not going to be so blasé about this if it doesn’t work because of your shoddy efforts and I’m just out there with an unenchanted rifle and your precious James Wasson is hanged from the neck until dead.”
“That’s not happening” I told her bluntly.
“You’re not going to fly around this time are you?” asked the Frenchman Frenchly “I don’t want to have to move again because everyone thinks you’re a witch.”
“I don’t know” piped in Martialla unasked “I wouldn’t mind a change of scenery. I’ve been wanting to see San Francisco for a while.”
“First of all” I pointed at Martialla “we’re just getting a concern going here, now is not the time to go anywhere. Second of all” I shifted my point to the Frenchman “no one believes in witches anymore, this isn’t medieval times. Third of all” I spread my two front fingers to point one at each of them “let’s get this over with, I need a drink.”
“But if you take to the sky . . .” the Frenchman started worriedly.
I threw my hand up in sour exasperation “No, I’m not going to fly! I did that one time and I learned my lesson about that!”
“Yeah” Martialla snarked as she was wiping down her Colt-Burgess rifle “she’ll just be burning people with gouts of hellfire from her hands, I’m sure no witness will remark upon that, nothing conspicuous there at all.”
“Shut up Martialla.”
She put her Colt-Burgess rifle on her shoulder and saluted “Shutting up sir!”
