The Best Shots

by Raymond S. Spears

F ALL rough-and-ready marksmen, I suggest that the Missouri Ozark mountaineers were the best in the United States. I speak especially of those in Taney, Christian and adjacent counties. Down to within twenty years, and probably to this day, the shooters there handled their revolvers better than any other district's gunmen that I ever heard of, individually and collectively.

From Missouri, probably, came the best marksmen of the West, from Kit Carson's boyhood onward. Kentuckians salted the Missouri wilderness with their own skill.

In that particular district, the one covered by the Bald Knobber clan, the shooting was with meticulous accuracy. Two men fought; one put his bullet through the other's head, and followed that bullet with two others so close together that a dollar covered them; this, while the victim was falling.

Courage was at the base of the accuracy. They never shot from ambush. No bushwhacker, acting the coward, could shoot as well as the brave man who faced his enemy in the open. When, at a church one night, two enemies met, one, who had the advantage of being in the shadow cast by the moon, sprang forth into the bright light before he drew his gun and thus, all fair and square and in the open, the two fought—and the man who would not shoot even from a shadow was killed.

The practise in that land was to ride past trees at top speed, and then shoot the trifling marks on the bark. Quantrill's riders, and the upshoot bands of James, Younger and Cook—general terms, covering most Indian Territory desperadoes—and other badmen, had shooting characteristics of the Ozarks.

Sporadic marksmanship appeared elsewhere; a few good men gave a whole lot of mediocre shooters fame. Occasional good or lucky shots made the reputation of second-rate marksmen, but, as a region, with revolvers and derringers, the Ozarks were as great as Kentucky riflemen at their best.