Ben relinquishes his family shotgun to William Harden

Ben Givens relinquishes his family shotgun to William Harden after going to the Wolfhound Orchard to reclaim it. The encounter reverses the purpose of Ben’s journey: he arrives prepared to confront the man who took the Winchester, but ultimately tells him to keep it, condemning the weapon and refusing to carry its history forward. The decisive change is not a recovery but a deliberate break with the gun.

The Search for Harden

Ben’s decision takes shape as he approaches the Wolfhound Orchard on Joe Miller Road. The area is busy with the work of apple harvest: bins crowd the roadside, workers move fruit, and a tractor and forklift operate among the trees. That ordinary activity complicates Ben’s search. He has never seen the face of the night rider who took his shotgun, and he wonders whether one of the workers might be the thief. He wears sunglasses despite the late hour, feeling that he looks conspicuous, while anticipating that Harden may recognize his battered eye, a feature Ben regards as his calling card.

The search is not a sudden diversion. Ben understands the day’s delays as a prolonged stall, but now believes he is back on course. His immediate purpose is plain: after resting enough to regain his strength, he will find Harden and take the gun back. This resolve gives the later reversal its force. Ben does not arrive announcing that he has already rejected the weapon; he first approaches the orchard with recovery as his objective.

The Confrontation

Ben eventually encounters Harden near a maintenance shed. Harden has arrived in a pickup carrying a power drill and carpentry equipment, and has started toward the shed when Ben struggles out of his car and calls him by name. Ben identifies himself as the hunter whose Winchester Harden took a couple of nights earlier. Harden disputes the word stolen, but Ben does not pursue an argument over the description. He states that he came to get the gun back, then immediately tells Harden that he has changed his mind.

Harden’s response is to tell Ben to leave. Ben continues toward him, limping and moving with difficulty. Close enough to see Harden clearly through his steel-rimmed glasses, Ben notices that Harden’s eyes are uncertain. Harden, meanwhile, holds the drill firmly, as though it could serve as a weapon, and sets down the nails and carpenter’s belt. The encounter therefore retains the possibility of a physical threat, but Ben does not answer it with force or demand that Harden produce the shotgun. He makes the decision on his own terms and speaks of the gun’s history instead.

A Family Inheritance Rejected

Ben explains that the gun had been in his family for sixty years. His father used it to hunt birds and killed many; after him, Ben also killed his share. The weapon is thus not simply property taken from Ben. It carries a repeated family practice, passed from father to son and continued by Ben himself. By recounting that history before rejecting the gun, he makes clear that he is not denying his connection to it or pretending that he never used it. He acknowledges both generations’ involvement before judging the inheritance as bad.

Ben then calls the gun cursed and extends that condemnation to all guns. His declaration changes the meaning of the confrontation: instead of treating possession as something to restore, he treats the family shotgun as something from which to separate himself. He removes his glasses and tells Harden to take it, saying that he is passing the gun on and washing his hands of it. Harden had already told him that reclaiming it was his call; Ben’s answer accepts that choice but uses it to end his claim. The scene records a verbal relinquishment and permission for Harden to take the gun; it does not describe a physical handover.

Consequence and Significance

The outcome reverses Ben’s stated intention at the orchard. He had come to find Harden and recover the Winchester, but the face-to-face encounter produces a different resolution: he relinquishes the family weapon rather than carrying it back. Harden’s refusal to accept Ben’s description of the earlier taking does not settle their disagreement, and the scene offers no reconciliation between them. What changes is Ben’s relation to the gun. He stops treating its return as the necessary completion of his journey and makes its rejection the point of the meeting.

Afterward, Bea Harden drives Ben upriver, crossing the Columbia River at East Wenatchee and passing Rock Island toward the country where he grew up. Apple trucks and workers harvesting the last fruit mark the route. The movement away from Harden’s orchard and toward Ben’s childhood home places the relinquishment immediately before a return to remembered ground. The juxtaposition does not undo the violence associated with the weapon; it sets the decision to leave it behind beside a journey back into Ben’s own past. His family history has included the gun, but the scene ends that inheritance by choice rather than by recovery.