HOLDING FIRE

A powerful meditation on a rural life of hunting in a world of guns—some of them used for sinister purposes.

“Animals slid backward into holes or crumpled motionless on the ground. I had learned to kill by watching and practicing, just as I had learned to stretch barbwire. I tried to do it well.” So writes Montana rancher Andrews, author of Down From the Mountain, about an early encounter with a hunting rifle. After growing up in the Northwest, the author arrived in Montana without a firearm, which raised considerable suspicion on the part of the people of the Madison Valley, some of whom “took it as an insult.” After acquiring a rifle, Andrews mistakenly killed a 6-month-old fawn instead of a full-grown deer, allowing that while the “meat was excellent,” the guilt was substantial—and an impetus for doing it right the next time. At the heart of the book stands a gun, a .357 Magnum, that has only one purpose. “I had never looked at my grandfather’s black-shining, beautiful revolver and told myself the simple truth: This thing I keep and carry is built for killing people,” writes the author. Andrews has spent considerable time wondering what to do with it. In one instance, he contemplated rowing out into the Pacific and dropping the pistol in the corrosive saltwater; in another, he took it to a shop while deciding whether to sell it, receiving a lecture from the owner: “What it’s made for is protection. What it’s made for is to save your damn life.” Ultimately, in a grand and philosophically charged adventure, Andrews decided to make it into something nonlethal, which required him to learn the skills of a blacksmith. He did so under the tutelage of a merry nonconformist whose every movement and word “told me something about how a person ought to live.”

A welcome, eminently sensible contribution to the literature of the American West—and responsible gun ownership.