SHORT-BARRELLED SHOOTING
Cut-down barrels for cowboys
CCAP-AND-BALL revolvers were never designed to be used as target guns. These, the first multi-shot handguns, were made strictly for close-quarter work in life-threatening situations. Serious competition shooting with handguns only began with the invention of the self-contained cartridge.
A while ago I had the opportunity of firing a cap-and-ball six-shooter that was out of the ordinary because it came with factory-fitted adjustable sights. These modern additions were the whim of the Italian maker of the replica Remington because they were never found on the original gun. The piece shot well and my article on the weapon appeared in the July 2019 issue of Magnum.
Just recently I had the pleasure of test firing another caplock Remington that, although full size, had a barrel only 5½ inches long – as opposed to the standard length barrel of 8 inches. There is no manufacturer’s name on the gun and I suppose the short barrel was also just a whim of the maker because I could find no similar Remington in Flayderman’s book on antique American firearms. I think the usual reason for wanting a shorter barrel was because the weapon was easier to carry or conceal. But why, you may ask, did people not just buy one of the many hide-out pistols available back then? The answer is that the small pocket jobs of those times were mainly single-shot derringers or the guns that were introduced when the first self-contained .22 rimfire cartridge became the craze. These were soon followed by the revolvers that took .32 or .38 rimfire cartridges that appeared during the American Civil War which soldiers bought to back up their single-shot muzzle-loading rifles.
BOTH COLT AND Remington did produce pocket size cap-and-ball revolvers, but they too were in pipsqueak calibres like .28 and .31. Out West, men who faced death daily wanted a hide-out gun with more clout and some started carrying cut-down versions of the heavy six-shooters they wore on their hips. They all knew the impor
tance of that first shot and a solid hit from a .44 or .45 slug would drop a man in his shadow.
For instance, Deputy U.S. Marshall, Dallas Stoudenmire, carried a model 1860 Army Colt that had been converted to take .44 calibre centre-fire cartridges. The barrel of the El Paso lawman’s back-up gun was cut down to just 2⅞ inches. Likewise, Wells Fargo detective, James Hume, who tracked down stage robber Charles ‘Black Bart’ Bolton, carried a cap-and-ball .44 Army Colt with a cut-down barrel. Arizona Ranger ‘Chape’ Beatty favoured a .45 Colt Peacemaker with a barrel cut down to 2 inches and, the famous lawman, Heck Thomas, who broke up the Dalton-doolin gangs carried a Colt New Service .44 with its barrel shortened to 2 inches. Texas bad man Bass Outlaw favoured a Colt Peacemaker with its barrel chopped to just a few inches and, the adventurous Frederick Burnham, who wrote Scouting On Two Continents carried a sawn-off Colt when he conveyed secret messages for an Arizona smuggler. Burnham said he wore his hide-out gun under his arm or tucked into his bootleg. Most of the actual cutdown guns just mentioned are illustrated in the book Guns of the Gunfighters produced by the Peterson Publishing Company.
THE SHORT-BARRELLED Remington my collector friend and I test-fired had another surprise in store for us. I realise that the 5½-inch barrel cannot be considered a chopped-down gun because that was a popular length in later Colt Peacemakers used throughout the West but, it was unusual to find it in a full size .44 calibre cap-and-ball revolver.
Both the long- and short-barrelled Remington replicas were produced in Italy and were outwardly identical but the cylinders were not interchangeable. Why would we want to swop cylinders? Well here’s the thing; when we loaded the short-barrelled gun we found that the ball fitted tightly in five chambers but was loose in the sixth. Thinking we had a wrong ball mixed into the batch,
we tried one or two more but discovered they too were undersize. So we measured the chambers and discovered that one had been drilled out to a slightly larger diameter. How ’bout that! Anyway we scratched around and found a bigger missile and when we rammed it in over the powder, it left a thin ring of lead behind, like it always should. The mouth of each chamber was then smeared with bore butter and the nipples topped with size 10 percussion caps.
As we prepared to shoot, my friend warned me that he had set the trigger pull to be very light. This, to me, was another surprise. I had never come across a cap-and-ball revolver with a hair trigger setting. When I asked him to explain he pointed to the little screw in the inside curve of the butt and said he had turned it out a little to release the tension on the main spring. I pondered over the wisdom of doing this but, when I later looked up an exploded drawing of a Remington caprevolver, and-ball I discovered the little screw is referred to as a ‘strain screw’ so maybe easing it off is an acceptable thing to do.
I wondered where the hold would be on the target and if it shot as well as the long-barrelled job with target sights. In our many years of shooting cap-and-ball revolvers, we have found they all shoot high – even the first Colt cartridge-takers were notoriously inaccurate.
I HAD JUST read a story in the Wild West magazine about how two lawmen George Witty and William Smith tracked down two robbers hiding out on a remote ranch. As they approached the dwelling, the wanted men, Stokes and Gibson, came out with guns drawn. A brief verbal altercation took place followed by an eruption of gunfire. As the smoke lifted, it was to discover that not one of the 35 shots fired had found its mark! With that, the robbers threw down their empty guns and surrendered. So there you have an example of just how inaccurate those old guns were. This incident took place in 1895 and although the weapons the four men used were not mentioned, in all probability they were the popular Colt six-shooter.
Being the proud owner of the short-barrelled Remington, my friend had the honour of taking the first shot.
Our target was set up at gunfighter range – fifteen paces. Expecting the gun to shoot high, he aimed at the bottom end of the long vertical line of the cross. He fired and punched a hole low and to the left of the aiming point. For every shot thereafter he held a bit higher and walked the bullets up until his fifth shot touched the little square marking the centre of the target. He then handed me the gun for the last shot telling me exactly where to aim.
AS I STEPPED up to the firing line I recalled an interview I read about a fellow who had been a Texas Ranger in his youth. The interview took place in 1974 when the man was 92 years old. One of the questions the interviewer asked him was, “In the movies the good guy always gives the bad guy the chance of drawing his gun first and he always shoots to wound – did it really happen like that?” The old man guffawed and replied, “No! We shot first and we always shot to kill.” He explained that the Rangers always rode in pairs and when they approached a wanted man, they drew their guns and ordered him to drop his gunbelt. They then watched his hands, and if he made the slightest move towards his gun they’d shoot him. The next question was how many men he had killed. The answer came as a surprise because the old fellow simply said that he didn’t know. Because there were always two Rangers shooting at the same time, they never knew who had fired the fatal shot.
With that in mind I stood there, gun in hand, covering an imaginary outlaw, waiting and watching his hands just like the old Texas Ranger would have done. I had to make my only shot count. The Remington had a nice deep slot along the top of the frame to act as the back sight so, with the weapon levelled, I aligned the high front blade in the notch. Just then a gust of wind made the paper target flutter like a man making a hostile move and I fired. The trigger required the slightest touch to set it off and the heavy ball struck just to the left of my friend’s last shot, almost plumb centre of the target. I reckon that was good enough to put the toughest hombre down for keeps. Heck, I actually shot better than I did with the long-barrelled gun with fancy sights. And that’s the long and short of my story about shooting two six-shooters with barrels of different lengths.