Photo: Wikipedia
We had a lot of predators in the area in ’62, so everybody went armed. I had a Colt New Service M1917 on my belt, loaded with what is called ‘.45 Auto Rim.’ The M1917 was chambered specifically for the same .45 ACP cartridge the GI automatic pistol used because it was, in WWI, an ILO (in lieu of) for the auto pistol. The auto pistol came into adoption in 1911. When the army was expanded from about 120,000 in 1911 to nearly half a million in 1917, there simply weren’t enough automatics to go around.
Colt chambered its New Service revolver and S&W chambered its Hand Ejector model for the .45 ACP cartridge so the services would have enough pistols to arm the people who were entitled to carry pistols. Once the revolvers were released for civilian sale, ammo makers made a rimmed version of the .45 auto cartridge specifically for those two revolvers.
Now, my horse was not a nervous animal. He was very calm. I shot off him with everything from a .22 to a 12-gauge shotgun, and he never shied at any of it. He could, however, follow a cow, sheep, or goat like he had a string in his teeth with the other end tied to the animal’s tail. As we approached the old road the horse suddenly froze in his tracks. His ears began to twitch back and forth and I could feel him tremble slightly.
“Aha,” thinks I, “we’ve got a critter here–a predator. That’s what’s got Rebel upset.” I hauled out the .45 and prepared to deal with the situation. There was no critter. Like I said, the moon and stars were so bright you could read the big print in a newspaper by them. That means I wasn’t seeing flickering shadows. What I saw was no ‘shadow.’
