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were making them in their own secret factories. If Oliver Winchester “could get out a preliminary injunction, restraining the Indians from the use of his rifle, it might be of signal service to our troops in the next engagement” (Army and Navy Journal, July 22, 1876). Lurking furtively behind the Journal’s jokes was the implication that the respected Mr. Winchester was no stranger to slightly dubious arms dealing, if on a relatively minor level and mostly because American arms-makers were desperate to find new markets once the Civil War ended. Thus, back in 1865, using a French agent named François de Suzanne as an intermediary, he had sold one thousand prototype, King-adapted Henrys to Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, the Paris-backed monarch then causing conniptions in Washington over untoward French influence on the U.S. border. The guns were run from New York to Cuba and then shipped to Mexico, neatly avoiding American officials’ scrutiny. Following the invocation of the Monroe Doctrine, Winchester, alarmed that revelations about the dodgy deal might return to haunt him (and hurt domestic sales), sold the same number of Model 1866s to Benito Juárez, the U.S.-backed republican rebel who toppled Maximilian. Houze, Winchester, pp. 41, 59. Ultimately, Winchester shipped just seven hundred rifles to Mexico before the fall of the emperor; the French government requested that the remainder be sent to Le Havre. Ibid., pp. 61–62.

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87. Garavaglia and Worman, Firearms of American West, p. 2:40.

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88. Quoted in ibid., p. 2:186.

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89. Quoted in ibid., p. 2:202. Hopalong Cassidy, the great cowboy himself (albeit a fictional one created by Clarence Mulford in 1904), was at one with Hiram. In the 1906 adventure, Bar-20 (New York: A. L. Burt, 1906), p. 243, Mulford captured the single-shot/repeater debate that had evidently been the ruin of many a friendship: “Winchesters were Mr. Cassidy’s pet aversion and Mr. Connors’ most prized possession, this difference of opinion having upon many occasions caused hasty words between them. Mr. Connors, being better with his Winchester than Mr. Cassidy was with his Sharps, had frequently proved that his choice was the wiser but Mr. Cassidy was loyal to the Sharps and refused to be convinced.”

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90. L. Wallace, “A Buffalo Hunt in Northern Mexico,” Scribners Monthly, March 1879, pp. 713–24. On Wallace’s background, see R. M. Utley, Four Fighters of Lincoln County (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), pp. 61–77.

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91. G. O. Shields, “Antelope Hunting in Montana,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 69, no. 411 (August 1884), pp. 364–69.

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92. See Sharpe, Rifle in America, p. 295.

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93. “Improvement in breech-loading fire arms,” Patent no. 35,947, July 22, 1862, available at the U.S. Patent Office Web site. On the history of the company, see Edwards, Civil War Guns, p. 36.

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94. Sharpe, Rifle in America, p. 78.

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95. H. Bodinson, “The Martini-Henry: But Whatever Happened to Mr. Peabody?” Guns Magazine, December 2005.

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96. Ibid.; Williamson, Winchester, pp. 64–65. Estimates differ on the number of Peabody-Martinis in Turkish hands during the war. I have used the figure given in J. Grant’s authoritative “The Sword of the Sultan: Ottoman Arms Imports, 1854–1914,” Journal of Military History 66, no. 1 (2002), p. 15.

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97. Williamson, Winchester, pp. 55–57; 63–65.

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98. This description of Plevna is based on R. T. Trenk Sr., “The Plevna Delay: Winchesters and Peabody-Martinis in the Russo-Turkish War,” Man at Arms 19, no. 4 (1997), available online at www.militaryrifles.com/Turkey/Plevna/ThePlevnaDelay.htm. I have adjusted downward Trenk’s estimation that the first Russian casualties on July 30 occurred at three thousand yards. On this point, see W. C. Church, “American Arms and Ammunition,” Scribners Monthly 19, no. 3 (January 1880), p. 436, who quotes contemporary sources regarding the ranges.

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