Knowing that if George wasn’t already dead, he very soon would be, O’Brien turned his attention back to Pistol-Whipper, expecting -- hoping -- to see the man turning tail and lighting a shuck.
     Instead, he found himself staring right down the barrel of his opponent’s Cavalry Colt.
     He thought, Damn!, which was pretty mild considering that he’d just used up his fifth and final shot on George, and the Lightning in his fist was now empty.
     Hard on the heels of that, he thought about the Winchester .45/.60 in the scabbard under his right leg, although he knew he’d never be able to draw, aim, lever and fire the rifle before Pistol-Whipper blew him out of this life and into the next.
     All of which left him with only one other weapon to which he had immediate access -- a weapon he used without further ado.
   He bawled, “Yee-haah!” again, and the blood-bay beneath him powered forward into a flat-out gallop, all thousand pounds-plus of it headed straight for his adversary.

PEOPLE on the western fiction scene are far more familiar with David Whitehead talking about other writers' work than his own. David has been promoting the genre, championing the genre and recording the genre's history for -- gasp! -- more than 25 years.

To general applause, David has been a real friend of  Black Horse Extra from its outset, contributing several major articles. This has been more important than can be imagined by those not in a position to know what goes on behind the scenes. At a pre-existing Net forum, a couple of BHW authors, who shall remain nameless, had the odd notion that anyone expressing views not suiting themselves or their friends should be denied an audience and fellowship. "I will not allow any emails regarding another version of  [BH newsletter] to be passed through this group," said the man in charge. "Anyone doing so will be automatically removed."

"See how you like this you sheep-herding sonsofbitches."
    He fired both barrels [of a sawn-off shotgun] into the approaching riders. Eighteen large slugs tore into horses or men. Corbett's horse reared straight over backwards. Tom Casey dropped his rifle as he was hit in the right upper arm. Grazed by a slug, Mike Casey's horse started to buck and collided with that of Perez. Suddenly all was confusion with plunging horses and startled riders milling about.
    Had Norris waited until his targets were closer, the shots would have been more devastating but round balls fired from smooth bores lost power rapidly after thirty yards and wounded rather than killed.

THE average nineteenth-century westerner was not a quick-draw artist. He wouldn't compromise safety in carrying his gun by using a specially made, loose holster likely to lose the gun while mounting or dismounting from a horse or struggling with big calves at branding time.

Myth and reality exist side by side in many a western, in print or on screen. But the tied-down holsters worn by fictional heroes and villains were unknown until the US Army started tying down their automatic pistols long after the Wild West was gone.

The working cowboy wore his gun fairly high on his hip where it would not get in his way when riding or working on foot. The holsters were deep, and in some cases tight-fitting, and the loop over the hammer spur that crept into 1950s television westerns was not necessary.

The many photos of lawmen and cowhands taken in frontier times never show a tied-down holster or a hammer thong.

The Texas Rangers, favoured by western pulp magazine writers and readers of later times, had more than their share of gunfights. My own next BHW, Red Rock Crossing, will tell of two Texas Rangers held up by a flood. They have with them a prisoner -- a man fleeing a range war and a sinister hired killer called Missouri Sam. And an important twist in the story involves a gun.

For now, what I can reveal is that Texas Rangers didn't rely on quick draws. They had a practice of always drawing their weapons before going into dangerous situations. Survival was not a sporting event. Speedy draws were no good without accuracy. In many documented gunfights, the first shots were hasty and usually missed.

Intentionally shooting guns out of opponents' hands was virtually impossible because shooter and target were both moving and there was no time to aim, let alone calculate the correct amount of muzzle elevation for the range. A revolver sighted to hit the point of aim at 50 yards would place its bullets a little higher inside that range. It would make little difference on a man-sized target but something as small as a man's hand or a gun would most likely be missed. In life-and-death situations men usually shot for the largest part of  their adversary. A wound that slowed or disabled an opponent was better than a clean miss because fancy shooting went wrong.

Revolvers are not easy to shoot because of the short sight radius and the tendency to pull the weapon sideways if the trigger is not squeezed carefully. Under favourable conditions, a trained revolver shot with a good weapon can hit a man at 50 yards but the average shooter in a gunfight is more likely to miss. Firing from horseback it would be good shooting to hit a man anywhere at 10 yards' range.

A man holding back the trigger and fanning the hammer of a gun would not be able to shoot accurately past a couple of yards. Nor can a man fire two guns simultaneously and hit two different targets.

Revolver shots do not disembowel people or blow heads off. The study of ballistics was only in its infancy in the nineteenth century and many revolver bullets actually were under-powered.

The derringer, the pocket-sized gun featured by so many western writers was a very poor weapon. The famous Remington over-and-under derringer fired the .41 rimfire cartridge. Across a card table it was capable of killing, but the cartridge was very low-powered and had been known to bounce off trees at 15 yards. Most small revolvers and derringers were made of inferior metal for lightness and their cartridges were low-powered to avoid blowing up the guns. Because of the small grips and inadequate sights, derringers were not accurate except at very close range.

Some writers like to introduce exotic weapons into their stories, but ammunition for some of these would not be readily available on the frontier. The Colt .45 and the Winchester repeating rifle were very popular, reliable weapons so authors do not lack originality by using them in their stories as long as they are used within the right time frames -- from 1866 with the first model Winchester and from 1873 with the Colt .45.

The Wild West era was virtually over before high-powered rifles became available to civilians. A high-power cartridge was one that travelled at 2,000 feet per second or faster. The powerful rifles of the black-powder era pushed their heavy bullets along somewhere between 1,400 and 1,600 feet per second and used much heavier bullets. They could throw bullets up to a mile but because of their high trajectories accurate shooting was only possible when the range was correctly calculated and the sights set accordingly.

Rifle shots at people more than 300 yards away were very difficult with the Winchester repeaters and other carbines that were so popular in the Old West. At that range the front sight almost completely covers a man. A good shot using a rifle he knows, can still hit him, but cannot guarantee where the bullet will strike. Different shooters hold their rifles differently and not all are sighted exactly the same. A good shot using a strange weapon could still miss. Telescopic sights were available as were long-range target sights but these were not carried by the usual westerner. They saw some use though among buffalo shooters and other professional hunters.

The killing range of a shotgun using shot cartridges is normally about 40 yards. If the weapon is sawn off, the lethal range would be about 30 yards as the shot is less concentrated. Heavy shot, like buckshot had a greater killing power than light bird shot. But because the pellets are round and not spinning like rifle bullets, all lose their velocity very quickly. The main killing area of a shotgun is about a 30 inch area where most of the shot is concentrated. A blast from a shotgun in not going to mow down three or four men at 40 yards although it might seriously damage two.

Close-range shotgun blasts do not cut people in halves but they can inflict terrible wounds. Shot spreads roughly 1 inch per yard that it travels. The greater the distance, the less concentrated is the impact of the shot. Heavy buckshot balls were around .30 calibre and at close range hit with a lot of power, so sometimes one pellet in the right place could be fatal.

The advantage of a shotgun was that the spread of the shot gave the shooter a good chance of hitting his target even if most of the load missed. A shotgun is not likely to be destructive over a wide area because by the time it has spread widely, the pellets are losing their power. But at 30 yards it will cover an area that could be three feet wide and still deliver killing velocities.

The western writer who finds a hazy knowledge of firearms daunting cannot take easy refuge in other weapons.

Knives were used occasionally in the Old West, especially in the days of slow-loading percussion firearms, but it is doubtful that too many people were seriously hurt by thrown knives. A knife, thrown over any distance, turns end over end and unless the distance between target and thrower is carefully measured, there are long odds against it hitting point first. Even if it does, the knifepoint is likely to be deflected by clothing or even ribs. A  thrown knife point should strike vertically in relation to the ground and is unlikely to penetrate a person's rib cage.

The Indians were aware of this and fitted the heads on their war arrows horizontally to the ground so that they slipped between ribs. An arrow would have more power than a thrown knife. A fatal wound from a thrown knife could happen but the chances of the victim being killed by lightning would be considerably higher!

Westerners were familiar with all kinds of whips, from light riding whips up to heavy bull whips, and would know that whips were very poor weapons. With a conventional whip the real damage is inflicted by the soft cracker on the end that moves at supersonic speed if the whip is used correctly, but even that is unlikely to do serious damage. Whips cannot be used indoors, nor can they be brought into action quickly. A whip with a plaited thong more than seven feet long is slow and awkward to use. The length of a whip has little effect on its impact but whips do not break bones or kill people. Given the time and space to use it, a real expert with a whip might do some very minor damage . . . but a man with a whip who goes against someone with a gun is confusing his ambitions with his capability.