The Fourth Life of Sean Donoghue by Trish Hanan (children's books read aloud .txt) 📕

It was fairly obvious how to do it. The book did point out that if you didn’t want to be shot by your own gun that you had to make sure that a bullet wasn’t in the chamber before you released the little hinge and bended it in half. Sean lifted an eyebrow at that. He could just see some idiot blowing himself in the face cleaning his rifle.
Sean made his targets out of logs, splitting them in half and nailing them together and making tall rectangles. He painted huge outlines of a bear, a deer and smaller ones of squirrels, rabbits and birds on them to aim for. He, on purpose, didn’t put the outline of a man on them. He figured the men who shot the rifles would figure out soon enough that you could shoot a man with them as well as you could shoot a deer, he didn’t have to give them any ideas. He knew that the Hamish army hadn’t intended the five thousand he had stolen from them for deer hunting.
Sean lined up his targets with the mountain behind them and counted off a hundred paces. He had set everything up on a table and Danny and Ryan stood by the table with smiles of anticipation of their faces. Bill, Sally and Annie were sitting off to the side; they didn’t want to miss on the excitement. Sean carefully loaded a bullet into the chamber, slid the bolt back and then cocked the handle. Then he lifted the rifle and braced it against his shoulder, closed one eye and peered through the ‘v’ of the sight, aimed and gently pulled the trigger. The gun jerked out of his hands, made a loud explosion and a bullet raced out and struck the target a few feet from where he had been aiming. He hadn’t held it tight enough; Sean hadn’t been ready for the jerking of the rifle.
“Oh, my God, did you see that, holy shit,” Ryan yelled and he patted Sean on his back and grinned. Danny was practically jumping up and down.
“You hit the target, Granddad, you hit the target,” he shouted. Bill and the others clapped their hands. Sean took a bow.
“This thing has quite a kick to it, it almost flew from my hands,” he told them. “I’ll hold on tighter this time,” he said. He slid the bolt back and the shell casing flew out and onto the ground. Danny bent down and picked it up and then almost dropped it.
“Hot damned, this sucker is hot,” he said and they all examined it. It was hot. Sean looked it over.
“The gunpowder must make it hot when it explodes,” he said and they all nodded. He loaded another bullet and cocked the handed being careful to keep the barrel turned to the ground away from everyone and then lifted it up, aimed and fired. This time he was ready for the jerking and hit the deer right in its head. Everyone cheered.
“You’re a hell of a shot, Granddad,” Ryan said and kissed him full of his lips. Annie laughed. Sean fired five more rounds and then handed the rifle to Ryan.
“Here, lad, you fire a few,” he offered and Ryan grinned.
“You know I want to,” he said and Sean grinned. He watched as his grandson carefully loaded it, barrel to the ground like he had seen Sean do and then he took aim.
“You look through this little ‘v’ thingy, right?” Ryan asked and Sean told him yes. Then he told him to hold tight because when he fired it was going to jerk a lot. Ryan nodded and he fired. The rifle almost went flying out of his hands and the bullet hit the mountain. Annie groaned.
“You’re too old to be messing with that thing, Ryan, put it down,” she snapped. Sean glared at her.
“He just wasn’t ready for the jerking, he’ll be ready next time,” he informed her, then he turned to Ryan, “Try again, lad, and this time; hold on tighter.” Ryan nodded and this time, he hit the deer in the chest. Everyone cheered and he fired twice more before he gave up tired.
“It’s a young man’s game, this rifle business,” he told his Granddad. “But thanks for letting me try it,” he said with a big grin. Sean nodded. And of course Danny had to take his turn and he held on tight and hit the target the first time. Everyone cheered and clapped but after five shots he agreed with his brother that it was a young man’s game. Then Sean turned to Bill and offered him a try.
“Who me, I’m just the hired man?” Bill stammered. Ryan laughed.
“There’s no such distinction to Sean Donoghue,” he informed him. And to Bill’s complete surprise Sean took out a brand new rifle and handed it to him.
“This one’s for you, lad, try it out and see if you like it,” he said and winked at the brothers. Ryan elbowed Danny and they both covered their mouths to hide their grins. Bill tried the rifle and discovered what Sean had discovered; it was a powerful weapon and felt wonderful in his hands.
“This is going to change hunting forever,” he exclaimed thinking of how easy it was going to be to get a deer with this thing. Sean nodded.
“It’s going to change a lot of thing forever,” he told him with a slight smile. Then he showed him how to clean the rifles and they unhook the little hinge, after making sure they were unloaded and everyone watched them put a little cleaning oil on the cloths, hook them to the rods and stick them down the barrels. They were amazed at the reddish dirt that had accumulated.
“That must be gunpowder residue,” Daniel explained and they all nodded like they had ever seen it before. When the guns were cleaned, Sean put the supplies back in the little wooden box they had come in and handed one of them to Bill who looked surprise.
“Why are you giving this to me?” he asked timidly, hope shining in his eyes. Sean smiled at that hope.
“Well, you’re going to need this to clean your rifle,” he explained. Bill’s eyes lit up.
“You’re giving me the rifle?” he asked weakly and Sean nodded.
“Of course I am, you’re my man and you work for me, consider it a bonus for a job well done,” he said and the man gave a big yell and hugged him. All the men laughed and Annie frowned.
“He’ll probably shot his foot off with that thing,” she grumbled and Bill shook his head.
“Oh, no, Annie, I won’t I’ll be real careful,” he assured her. Sean gave him three hundred bullets in a leather bag and told him to get the slugs from the animals he shot when he could and of course save the shell casings because they could be used again. Bill rushed back to the house a happy man. Sean, Ryan and Danny walked over to the targets and with knives dug out the fired slugs, which were now mashed messes.
“Wow, look what we did to this one!” Danny exclaimed as he held out a smashed ball of gray metal. Sean took it from him.
“Imagine what this wee little piece of metal could do to a man,” he said grimly. They both shook their heads.
“It’s a good thing you did, Granddad, stealing those rifles from the Hamish,” Ryan said softly. “Imagine those rifles in the hands of those filthy bastards.” Sean nodded.
“They’ll have them soon enough but what’s important is that we’ll have them too,” he said smugly. Both men nodded.
The next day Sean spent making a lot more targets and some plank tables. He lined them up by the mountain where they could safely fire and no one could get hurt, he didn’t want an innocent passerby getting shot by a flyaway bullet. Then he gathered all of his male relatives sixteen years and older, there were fifty-two of them and had them met him, Ryan and Danny by the targets. Of course all the women and younger children had to come along to see what the excitement was about.
“I asked all of you here because I wanted to show you something we brought back from Ennis,” Sean spoke loudly so they all could hear him. He held the rifle up so they could see it. Ryan, Danny and Bill held up theirs.
“This is called a rifle and it was invented by the Giovanni brothers and it’s going to change the way you hunt forever,” Sean continued. “It fires one of these, they’re called bullets,” he said and held up a bullet. He passed bullets out so that they all could see what they looked like. All of them looked interested in what he was saying and he could all see they wanted to get their hands on one of those rifles. He didn’t blame them, when Pierre first showed him the rifle, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on one either.
“Now a bullet is made up of three things, first there’s the shell casing, that’s the shiny gold part, then there’s the slug, that the grayish part on the top,” Sean informed them. “And there’s a third part that you can’t see, that’s the gunpowder and that’s inside the casing and its red. That’s the most important part of the bullet, that’s the part that makes it explode out of the rifle, or the gun, as it’s also called and fires it down the barrel and into the deer or bear or squirrel.” Everyone looked at one another and smiled.
Then Sean and the others spread out and he identified the parts of the gun and told them what each part did. Then he showed them how to load the bullet in and cock the handle which he read in the book was called the lever. So he cocked the lever.
“Now when you cock the lever to load the bullet, you want to make sure that the rifle is pointing at the ground and not another person,” Sean told them firmly. “Always point the barrel to the ground when you have it in your hand. This trigger mechanism is very delicate and it goes off with just a mere touch. You don’t want to shot your wife or children or your buddy you’re hunting with. You could kill them the same way you can kill a deer or a bear with this rifle. So always point the rifle to the ground when you’re holding it,” Sean emphasized and they all nodded. He could see they all understood the seriousness of the weapon.
Then Sean faced the targets, lifted the rifle to his shoulder, told them about the sight on the barrel and how to look through it, closing one eye helped, and holding on tight because it had a fierce kick. Then he fired and they all flinched at the explosion. They watched the bullet hit the deer right in its painted eye and they all grinned. Now Sean could see they couldn’t wait to get their hands on a gun now. So he opened the boxes and lined them all up at tables and handed them their own rifles.
“Todd, keep that barrel facing the ground, you