CHAPTER FIVE

Sighting In

After half an hour of speculation, neither Sandy, Mike nor Mr. Cook could come up with a reasonable explanation for Joe’s strange behavior. But, as Mr. Cook said, that wasn’t too surprising. “We don’t have too much to go on,” he pointed out.

The three of them were walking along the south shore of the Salmon River, not far from Dog Leg Falls. The country there was perfect for their purpose: it was clear of woods and reasonably deserted. Sandy was carrying several boxes of shells and four or five sheets of white plastic material, painted over with a red bull’s-eye. Mike had a small bale of packed straw he had found in Mr. Henderson’s stable, and Mr. Cook was lugging two gun cases.

“Let’s go over it once more,” Sandy insisted. “We know this much. Joe wants to leave here in a hurry and Mormon Crossing means something to him.”

“You _think_ it means something to him,” Mr. Cook corrected.

“We agreed that he began to act funny as soon as I started talking about it. And besides, he seemed to be pretty sure about what happened to that party of Mormons.”

“But, Sandy,” Mike protested, “they were massacred more than a hundred years ago. How could that make any difference to Joe now?”

“That’s my whole point,” Sandy explained. “How did he know it was a massacre? They might have died of starvation or any number of things. Why was he so sure?”

The three of them walked on, lost in thought. It was Mike who finally broke the silence. “This may be crazy,” he began, “but Joe could have some inside information.”

“How do you mean?” his father asked.

“He’s a Blackfoot,” Mike explained earnestly. “This used to be Blackfoot country. Maybe the story about the Mormon massacre was handed down within the tribe—you know, from father to son—until it reached Joe.” He shifted the bale of straw to his other arm and began to talk more quickly. “I know that Indians are part of our life now, but the tribe still means something to them.”

“You’re right.” Mr. Cook nodded. “They have a strong sense of tribal identification. It’s quite possible that each tribe passes its own legends along from generation to generation. Indians don’t keep any records, so naturally it wouldn’t be in the library. Joe might have heard about the massacre from his father or some of the elders of the tribe.”

Sandy still wasn’t satisfied. “That doesn’t answer the question about why he wanted to leave in such a hurry.”

“No,” Mr. Cook had to agree. “It doesn’t.” He started to say more, but just then the path took a sharp turn and they came face to face with the spectacle of the river gathering itself for its rush through Dog Leg Falls.

Mr. Cook stood and watched the lashing water of the rapids with a look of admiration. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said.

Behind his back, Sandy and Mike exchanged glances.

“That all depends,” Sandy ventured uncertainly.

Mr. Cook turned and smiled. “I guess it does, Sandy. I sure would hate to try to battle through it on a raft, wouldn’t you?”

Sandy coughed and turned away. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he muttered. “Er—don’t you think we’d better start to work?”

Mr. Cook tore himself away from the sight of the rapids and nodded. “Good idea. Let’s look for a shooting range.”

“Over there.” Sandy pointed. “There’s a nice little hill and about fifty yards of clearing.”

“All right,” Mr. Cook said, picking up the gun cases. “You boys set up the target.”

“Wouldn’t dream of going through those rapids, eh?” Mike muttered out of the corner of his mouth as he and Sandy walked over to the hill together.

Sandy grinned back at him. “What did you want me to say? That I do it all the time for laughs?” He watched Mike put down the straw bale and prop it solidly against the side of the hill. “Besides,” he whispered, “you know something?”

“What?”

“I’m afraid I may dream about it some night—and wake up screaming.”

“Come on!” a voice yelled. “You two fellows do more talking than a pair of old ladies!”

“Okay, Dad!” Mike shouted. “We’ll be ready in a minute.”

Quickly he helped Sandy drape the plastic cloth over the bale so that the concentric rings of the bull’s-eye faced Mr. Cook.

“Let’s weight it down with some stones,” Sandy suggested. “One or two shots and it’ll probably fly right off.”

“Good idea.”

“Boys!” It was Mr. Cook again. “Pace off fifty yards toward me.”

They did as they were told, and in a few moments they were standing beside Mike’s father, who was bending over the Remington .721. “There,” he said, after the last shell slipped into place. “We’re all set.” He held the rifle out to Sandy. “Care to try it?” he asked.

Sandy took the gun and ran his hand down the smooth wood finish of the stock. Checking to make sure the safety lock was on, he cradled it in his arms and turned to Mr. Cook.

“You know,” he said with a puzzled grin, “I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do.”

“Ever shoot one of these before?”

Sandy shook his head. “A .22 is about the only thing I’ve ever handled. How does this gadget work?” He pointed to a telescopic sight mounted on top of the gun stock.

“Just like a regular sight,” Mr. Cook explained. “It’s detachable, you see. If you’re shooting short distances, you take it off and use the notch sight right on the barrel. But if your target is—oh, let’s say 250 yards off, then you screw on this telescope. Take a look through it and tell me what you see.” Sandy hoisted the gun up against his shoulder and squinted through the round glass end of the scope. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “That target looks as if it’s right on top of me.”

“Well, it’s a telescope, you know. What else do you see?”

“Two tiny cross hairs that intersect at right angles just about in the center of the circle.”

“Right. Now what you want to do is line up the intersection of those cross hairs with the target. Got that?”

Sandy nodded and, shifting his aim slightly, he focused on the exact center of the bull’s-eye. “I’m on,” he said, holding the position as best he could. “Okay,” Mr. Cook said. “Shoot.”

Sandy took a deep breath and curled his finger slowly around the trigger. He braced himself for the blast and recoil, every muscle poised and tense, concentrating on the circle of red that filled the sight.

Suddenly he felt an insistent tap on his shoulder. He jerked around to find Mike’s grinning face staring into his.

“Hate to bother you, Daniel Boone,” Mike said apologetically, “but you’ll do better with that thing off.”

“What thing?”

Mike reached out and flipped off the safety catch. “Okay, sport,” he said. “Fire away!”

Sandy gave an embarrassed grunt and nodded. He brought up the rifle a second time and tucked it into the hollow of his shoulder. Resting his cheek against the curve of the stock, he closed down gently on the trigger. The rifle bucked and roared in his hand. Sandy threw the bolt and pumped another shell into place.

“How did I do?” he asked.

Mr. Cook peered at the target through a pair of field glasses. “About five inches off center. Try again.”

Sandy brought the rifle up. “Want me to allow for it?”

“No, no,” Mr. Cook said quickly. “Aim for the target.”

Sandy spread his feet a little farther apart and took a comfortable stance. “Here goes.”

The rifle barked again. “Same place,” Mr. Cook announced. “You sure you were centered?”

“As far as I could tell,” Sandy said, a little annoyed with himself for missing a second time.

“Let Mike have a try at it.”

Sandy handed the rifle over to Mike and stepped back. Two shots rang out in quick succession. Mike looked over at his father questioningly.

“I guess that proves it,” came the answer. “Here, take a look.” He ducked his head through the strap of the binoculars and turned the glasses over to Sandy.

Sandy swung over to the target and focused in on four neat holes clustered close together about five inches to the right of the bull’s-eye.

“I don’t get it,” he said, lowering the glasses. “How come we’re missing?”

“The sights are off,” Mr. Cook explained. “A little adjusting will fix that.” He reached into a side pocket on one of the gun cases and pulled out a screw driver. “Now, let’s see,” he said, glancing over at the target. “At fifty yards, a minute of angle has a value of about half an inch. Each click on this scope is equal to two minutes of angle. That would make—” he pursed his lips as he made the mental calculation—“ahh—five clicks to bring her in line.” He shook his head and pushed his hat back off his forehead. “That’s too much. We’ll have to adjust the windage screws on the scope’s mount.” Squatting on his haunches, he began to manipulate two screws on either side of the sight.

“Hey, Dad!” Mike cut in. “You left me out in left field somewhere. How about filling us in?” He turned to Sandy. “Do you know what’s going on?” he asked.

“I think so,” Sandy said as he looked over Mr. Cook’s shoulder. “According to what we saw through the sight, we were right on target. The only trouble was, the sight didn’t match up with the barrel of the gun. It’s just sitting on top of the gun and it must have twisted around to one side. Right now your father is trying to get the two of them back together so that what we see is what we shoot at.”

“That makes sense,” Mike conceded. “But how do you know which way to turn the scope? Do you swivel it around to the left or to the right?”

“That’s easy.” Sandy grabbed a twig and drew a small rectangle on the ground. “Here’s your scope. And there—” he ran a dotted straight line out to a spot he marked with an X—“that’s the target. You see the scope’s pointing right at it.” Mike nodded and Sandy went on.

“The four shots all fell about here.” He punched four holes to the right of the X.

“Which means,” Mike added, “that the gun was over to the right in relation to the line of sight through the scope.”

“You got it,” Sandy nodded.

“So,” Mike went on, “in order to get the scope and barrel lined up together, we have to move the cross hairs over to the right.”

“And there are two ways of doing that,” Mr. Cook pointed out. “We can move the cross hairs _inside_ the scope. Or we can move the scope itself.”

“What’s the difference?” Mike asked.

“One is for fine adjustments.” He pointed to a knob on top of the telescopic sight. “See this?”

The boys nodded.

“This,” he went on, “moves the cross hairs. And these—” he gestured to a pair of screws—“turn the whole mount any degree you want.” He grinned at them. “Simple, eh?”

“One more question.”

“Shoot.”

“How do you know how much to turn it? All that business about a minute of angle having a value of about half an inch at fifty yards—that’s all Greek to me.”

“You remember your geometry, don’t you, Mike? An angle cuts off an arc. And you know how to measure an arc.”

Mike looked surprised. “In minutes and degrees,” he said, with sudden comprehension.

“There’s your answer. Now I’ll grant you,” Mr. Cook added, “that I just happen to know how big an arc an angle makes at various distances. But that’s only because I’ve been working with guns for a long time. And if I didn’t know, I could always figure it out. The rest,” he said, standing up, “is trial and error. Let’s see how we did.”

With a single easy motion, he hunched over the rifle and, in rapid succession, poured three shots into the bull’s-eye. “Well?” he demanded as he straightened up.

Sandy peered through the binoculars. Three holes bunched together in the space of a dime had perforated the plastic directly above the target.

“You’re right on,” he announced. “But a little high.”

“Good,” Mr. Cook replied. “We want to be high.”

“How come?” Mike demanded.

“Bullets don’t go straight forever,” Mr. Cook explained. “Gravity forces them to curve down until they hit the ground. This rifle shoots a little high at fifty yards. But it’ll be right on target at two hundred and fifty—and that,” he pointed out, “will be about as close as you’ll get to an elk.” He patted the gun with evident satisfaction. “She’s all set,” he said. “Let’s get busy on the others.” Now that the boys knew what they were doing, the work went faster. An hour and a half later, they were finishing with the last rifle.

“One more shot, Dad,” begged Mike. “I’m still not happy with this one.”

His father shrugged. “Suit yourself. I think she’s fine.”

“You watching, Sandy?” Mike called out, slinging up the gun.

“Go ahead,” Sandy called.

Mike had just put his eye against the sight when Sandy yelled out a warning. “Hold it! There’s somebody coming down the hill.”

“He sure is running fast, whoever he is,” commented Mr. Cook. “Take a look through your glasses and see if we know him.”

“Sure we do,” Sandy said after a pause. “It’s Doug Henderson. He looks scared—almost as if somebody’s chasing him.”

“Hey, Doug!” Mike yelled. “Over here!”

The boy scrambled down the foot of the hill and came sprinting up to them. His face was pale and his eyes were unnaturally large.

“Is there anything wrong, Doug?” Mr. Cook asked.

The boy gasped as he struggled to catch his breath.

“It’s Joe,” he gulped. “Something’s happened to him.”

“What?” Mr. Cook’s tone was sharp and worried.

Doug swallowed hard and shook his head. “Don’t know,” he panted. “He’s hurt. Dad says for you to come. It happened while he was loading your trip boxes.”