In other words, you take that rifle as it was manufactured, and you cut the barrel off 8 inches, and you take all the wood off the top of the barrel and cut this off here, and varnish it, and have it blued, and it makes a pretty little gun. It was one that he had wrapped up and handed over the fence, but they had two other guns that type. They had no scopes on them.
Mr. Liebeler. Was there somebody else?
Mr. Slack. That Sunday there sure was. The tall boy had the biggest feet of any kid I ever saw, and about the time he would go to shoot, he would kick with his feet, and I said if my feet was that big I would bump somebody too.
He was the boy that drove him to that rifle range the 17th. They found the boy. He had no connection with him except he had driven him there.
Mr. Liebeler. How do you know they found him?
Mr. Slack. I read it in the paper. I don't know what his name was. Don't know where they found him, but they found him, and he had no connection with him, no more than I had. He just probably begged a ride and he took him to the rifle range, but they had three guns.
Lucille remembers the boy handing the guns over the fence, and they were throwing the guns in the back of the old model car and taking off like they did.
And I recognized that because a gun, a good gun, you are not supposed—they just threw those old guns in that car, or they took two of them. Of course, one was wrapped up in a blanket, a dirty looking old grey blanket that had a red trim, I remember. I remember that, because we found an old blanket at our house and I told Lucille I was trying to think, I knew it was something common, this good gun, it was wrapped up and tied up.
The sporterized Italian gun was tied up and he handed it over the fence nicely. And he had a grey and red maroon, looked slick as satin, and I remember it well, what a gun case—you see everything at a shooting place—some bring a rifle in a tote sack and—for a gun case.
The other thing I remember about that blanket he had wrapped around his gun, it was tied up with a rag string that was torn about an inch and a half wide out of a filling station type wipe cloth, a ribbon, pink, and he had torn it up and—to use as a rag string.