Winchester Model 21 shotgun

The Winchester Model 21 shotgun carries several incompatible meanings through Ben Givens’s desert journey: it is his father’s inheritance, a weapon used to save Rex, the instrument by which Ben kills one of William Harden’s hounds, and the means he still intends to use in his suicide plan. Its changing role makes the gun more than a familiar tool. Under pressure, it exposes how tightly Ben’s attachments, memories of war, and plans for death have become bound to a single object.

Inheritance and Intended Use

Ben carries the Winchester Model 21 shotgun into the desert as part of his hunting equipment, but it is never simply equipment. When he takes it up after his dogs chase a coyote, he loads two shells from the loops on his vest. Moonlight makes the gun seem dreamlike, as if it belongs to the same altered world as the desert around him. Yet its history is concrete: it belonged to his father, and earlier that morning Ben had put it in his own mouth while attempting suicide. Holding it again brings a moment of regret for every gun he has ever handled. He does not linger over that revulsion; he packs his blanket and poncho, shoulders his rucksack, and follows the dogs.

The gun’s paternal provenance remains important even as Ben sees it as a tool for his planned death. Later, he reasons that he needs the Winchester for his suicide, in part because it has been his father’s. Losing it feels wrong to him. Its value therefore cannot be reduced to either monetary worth or practical function: the weapon connects Ben to his family history even while he tries to make it serve as an exit from his own life.

The Shot That Stops the Attack

When Ben reaches the dogs, Harden’s hounds have turned from the coyote to Rex. They knock Rex down and attack him at the hindquarters, withers, and throat. Ben rushes into their midst and fires the Winchester Model 21 shotgun toward the stars as a warning. The noise makes the hounds desist, but one still has Rex by the throat and continues to toss him from side to side.

Ben first strikes that hound with the gun’s stock, then kicks it in the ribs and head. None of this releases Rex. Seeing his dog pinned and struggling to breathe, Ben understands that he must act decisively, in a manner he has resisted since the war ended. He presses the barrel against the hound’s ribs and fires. The gun that had figured in Ben’s suicide attempt has, within the same desert journey, become the means by which he tries to save another life—and the means by which he kills. Ben does not pause to weigh the shot’s destructive force. He kneels beside Rex, whose injuries are severe, and apologizes to him.

Confiscation and a Changed Relationship to the Gun

After the attack, Harden’s rider takes possession of the Winchester Model 21 shotgun. While the rider goes about his business, Ben hears the shotgun break open and recognizes the action. The rider remarks on its antique appearance and engraving; Ben identifies it as a Winchester 21. The rider then frames the loss of his hound as a cost to be recovered: replacing Jim will be expensive, he says, and he plans to sell Ben’s gun to pay for a new one. Ben objects that this is robbery, but the rider orders him to stay still and snaps the action closed.

The confiscation makes the gun newly conspicuous through its absence. Ben cannot treat its loss as an inconvenience he can solve by buying another firearm. He anticipates that a new gun would raise questions if he died with it while the inherited Winchester remained missing. His daughter Renee might wonder about the discrepancy, the county sheriff might investigate, and Bill Ward might be prompted to speak. Ben’s thoughts reveal that the gun is at once a practical requirement in his suicide plan, an inheritance he feels bound to retain, and a trace that could expose what he is trying to conceal.

The Recovery Plan and the Gun’s Significance

After arranging travel on Greyhound and reserving a rental car, Ben plans to drive to Malaga, find William Harden’s Wolfhound Orchard, and try to get the Winchester Model 21 shotgun back. The intended route does not end with recovery: Ben plans to walk in the Colockum country to hunt grouse, find a barbed-wire fence, and shoot himself in the neck. Recovering the gun is thus a necessary step in a plan he has not abandoned. He considers appealing to rightful ownership, fair play, or his apology for the hound’s death, but expects Harden to refuse; theft is equally beyond what he can imagine doing.

Across these episodes, the Winchester Model 21 shotgun shifts from inherited possession to object of revulsion, from warning and rescue to lethal force, and from a private instrument of intended suicide to property controlled by an adversary. The rider’s threat to sell it turns Ben’s attachment into a practical crisis, while Ben’s determination to retrieve it shows that the weapon remains inseparable from both his family past and his planned death. Its material presence repeatedly interrupts the abstraction of his intentions: it must be loaded, fired, taken, and recovered before the future he has imagined can proceed.