Drax's revolver

Drax's revolver is the firearm Henry Drax intends to use against Patrick Sumner in the Hull timber yard, but its first shot kills Stevens instead. Sumner takes it from the cabin floor after killing Drax, carries it into town, and later uses it to hold Jacob Baxter at gunpoint. The weapon's significance lies in this change of hands: Drax's planned attack fails, while Sumner carries the revolver into the final confrontation with the man whose schemes helped set the conflict in motion.

Function and Condition

The revolver is a practical, limited weapon rather than an abstract threat. Before the encounter at the timber yard, Drax opens its cylinder to check it. The bullets drop out, and he loses one while trying to retrieve them. He continues with four remaining, believing a single shot will suffice to kill Sumner. The lost bullet does not change his plan, but the moment establishes both the gun's immediate readiness and the small, consequential mishap that accompanies its use.

The weapon remains tied to Drax's intentions even as his condition makes execution uncertain. He waits near the yard gate, expecting Sumner to enter, and steadies himself to fire when he hears approaching voices. In the darkness, he cannot identify the two men who come through the gate. His confidence in the revolver's power outlasts his ability to distinguish his target. The firearm can deliver the shot he intends; it cannot ensure that he has chosen the right person.

Drax's Shot and the Mistake

Drax fires at the figures entering the yard and strikes the man on the left. Afterward, he approaches the fallen man to determine whether the shot has been fatal. Seeing by the light of a match, he recognizes Stevens, not Sumner. The revolver has thus killed someone other than its intended target, turning Drax's attempt to remove Sumner into an additional death and leaving Sumner still hidden in the yard.

Drax then calls for Sumner and offers to put down the gun for a fight without weapons. The offer does not lead to a meeting on those terms: Drax retrieves the revolver and searches the cabin. When he crosses its threshold, Sumner attacks with a rusted saw blade and kills him. The gun does not decide this encounter. It is Drax's chosen instrument, but the decisive action comes from Sumner's improvised weapon at close quarters.

Transfer to Sumner

After killing Drax, Sumner takes the revolver from the cabin floor and rushes across the yard. He keeps it with him as he walks into town and enters a pub, where it remains in his pocket beside his pipe. The transfer is abrupt but consequential: the firearm that represented Drax's control over the planned attack is now carried by the man he meant to kill.

At the pub, Sumner asks the barman for a railway timetable. The revolver is present, but the evidence does not show him using it there. Its next explicit role comes when Sumner goes to Baxter's house. Before entering Baxter's study, he takes the weapon from his pocket and checks that a bullet is in the chamber. He then opens the door and displays it to Baxter, stopping him from getting up. The earlier loss of a bullet and the later chamber check give the revolver a continuous practical history: it is not merely carried as a sign of victory but kept available for use.

The Confrontation with Baxter

Sumner points the revolver at Baxter again when Baxter resists his demand. He cocks the hammer and tells Baxter that killing Drax with a broken saw blade has not made shooting him an impossible next step. The comparison places the firearm within a changed balance of power. Drax had relied on it to make a sudden attack; Sumner now uses it openly to make his threat credible.

Baxter answers by warning that shooting him would leave Sumner with two murders and by offering money in exchange for his departure. Sumner does not move. When Baxter later scowls and refuses to approach the safe, Sumner again aims the revolver at his head and cocks it. In the supplied scene, this is the weapon's final recorded position: loaded, raised, and controlling the immediate confrontation, but with no further shot shown. The revolver's passage from Drax to Sumner therefore ends not with a confirmed second killing, but with Sumner holding the possibility of violence over Baxter while deciding what to do next.