Desperado, The Phoenix Firearm
by William Crisp
A few years ago, I wrote a story about a favorite gun of mine, an old 16 gauge double barrel I call “Desperado.” When last you heard of the gun it stood at the end of a lineup of all my guns for the annual cleaning and inspection. To help jog your memory about the character and quality of the old gun, I’ll share a few lines from that last story which describes it.
‘As I move down the formation doing a careful inspection of every piece, I come to the end of the line of guns. Wobbling there is my old double barrel. It has obviously just fallen into formation, late again. The old double barrel probably just snuck in from the parking lot, stumbling, from another night of filthy infidelities and drunken debauchery, a speck of rust on its collar and smelling of blood and sweat.