196 



RECREATION 



or London laminated steel were sent to 

 Mr. Mullins in the rough and he put on 

 the finishing touches ; such guns were 

 stamped "P. Mullins," and are beauti- 

 ful specimens of skilled workmanship. 

 Guns of his own make throughout bear 

 the stamp of the maker's full name. 

 So highly did he value the product 

 of his own labor that whenever he 

 learned that there was a "Patrick Mul- 

 lins" for sale he would hasten to buy it 

 himself. 



One afternoon the old mechanic was 

 busy putting on the finishing touches to 

 a lovely "P. Mullins" fowling' piece, 

 which I had ordered, and while he 

 worked rebedding the locks, and filing 

 the iron pieces down, he talked of guns 

 which he had made and of the men 

 who owned them, giving interesting 

 anecdotes and biographical sketches 

 of both the men and their fowling 

 pieces. During a pause in the ramb- 

 ling reminiscences I incidentally re- 

 marked that I proposed soon to take a 

 roving trip among the unfrequented 

 parts of the Rocky Mountains. 



At the moment I spoke the smith 

 was holding the gun barrels up to his 

 eyes as if they were abnormally elon- 

 gated opera glasses and apparently he 

 saw something which interested him. 

 It was not dust or rust upon the glis- 

 tening inner surface of the tubes, for 

 they shone like glass. Still he gazed 

 long and anxiously and I was presently 

 aware that Mr. Mullins was in a 

 brown study and not using his material 

 eyes but his mental vision, for after a 

 moment or two he lowered the gun and 

 carefully rested it against the lathe and 

 turning to me with a troubled look he 

 made the astounding confession that 

 the best "Patrick Mullins" he had ever 

 made was lost somewhere in the Rockv 

 Mountains. When I say lost, I, of 

 course, mean that the gunsmith had 

 lost track of the ,eun. The truth is that 

 this particular "Patrick Mullins" was 

 in the hands of a perfect stranger, to 

 whom it had been sent upon an order 

 written by a stranger. 



Money would not of itself tempt the 



gunsmith to part with his wares. Irre- 

 sponsible purchasers having plenty of 

 money might commit the unpardonable 

 sin of so lightly valuing the old man's 

 art as to misuse one of his precious 

 guns, and hence it was necessary to 

 possess both the esteem and friendship 

 of Mullins before a man could be ad- 

 mitted into the select circle composed 

 of his customers; and only his custom- 

 ers were admitted into the gunsmith 

 shop at No. 36 Maiden Lane. Know- 

 ing this, you may judge of my astonish- 

 ment when I heard that a genuine 

 "Patrick Mullins" was sold to a man 

 who had not a word of introduction 

 or a reference. The very idea of the 

 thing struck me as humorous,' but see- 

 ing the serious expression on the 

 artisan face I controlled my inclina- 

 tion to smile. 



"It's an old-fashioned, muzzle-load- 

 i n g , long-single-barrelled-flint-locked 

 rifle, the only one of the kind I ever 

 made, but it is a beauty," said Mr. Mul- 

 lins reflectively, and, looking wistfully 

 into my eyes, he continued, with much 

 the same manner a parent might speak 

 of an absent child, "I wish you would 

 look it up. I got a thousand dollars 

 for it with never a murmur ; not a check, 

 but a beautiful buckskin bag all worked 

 with colored quills and filled with old 

 gold coins ; there hangs the bag in that 

 case. It was sent to me by express and 

 sent before the stock was dry or the 

 gun half finished. The fellow's name 

 is Weir W. Olf, and I'll wager my best 

 gun that Olf knows a good piece when 

 he sees it and how to use and take care 

 of gun metal, still I'd kinder like to 

 know what sort of a looking fellow this 

 Olf is; I'd like to have a photograph 

 of the fellow who owns that rifle. 



"There is something about the order 

 which pleased me ; it smells of big 

 game. The language is quaint and the 

 spelling beats the band ; but the hand 

 that penned that order, I'll bet, can pull 

 a trigger. The man who wrote that 

 order is a sportsman and knew exactly 

 what he wanted. Strange that in these 

 days of breech-loaders and repeaters 



