The American Experiment (Riot Quest)

Annie Oakley was the best shot around. She had shot the cigar out of her husband's mouth and the wings off of a wasp. She was born in the backwoods of Ohio, she had married in Ontario, she had toured all the great cities of Europe - Paris, London, Venice, Rome, Berlin, Hamburg, even Istanbul. And everywhere she went, she had taught women how to shoot, from girls as poor and desperate as she had been to proud princesses. But when she came to Chicago, attracted by the news of the recent exposition and the unrest that had rocked that city, she had found something she had never seen before.

The Society of Universal Suffrage was massive, powerful, and dedicated. Radical in belief and action, they sometimes frightened Annie with their intensity and fervor, but she was not a woman who let fear rule her. An exchange of letters later and she found herself on a train to Chicago, eager to give some more ladies lessons in how to shoot. The rail strike had died down by the time she had left, but she had heard her hosts in the city had participated, and the rumors that traveled up and down the luxurious train of the group led by the disgraced "Valkyrie Queen" only made her more intrigued. Claims that Voight had singlehandedly stopped a hundred militiamen by standing in the street and glaring at them were probably false though.

As the train screeched to its last stop, she hefted up her bag, dismissed a few attempts by so-called gentlemen to assist her, and strode out of the car. She surveyed the station and found some hints that the strike had not settled everything. A mural covered half of one station wall, showing an indistinct army of figures waving red and black banners, overwhelming a few rich fat men and drowning them with strength and numbers. There was probably more too it, but it had been partly painted over, and a small guard of police stood around it, protecting the man slowly covering the mural with simple whitewash. Nearby, one of the police was hassling a couple - a black woman and a white man, it looked like.

Lips tightening, Annie strode over, ready to intervene. The man turned to her, and Annie quickly corrected her judgment. "Mrs. Oakley, so good to see you. I saw your show the last time you were in Chicago, it was really something. I hope you can teach me and the others to shoot half as well as that!"

The young lady reminded Annie of a wolfdog one of her childhood neighbors owned. It could be quite friendly and energetic...but it could also rip you limb from limb, and it had few compunctions about doing so.

"A pleasure, Miss, although I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage," she said, and was quickly introduced to her guides - Sylvia and Gertrude.

Gertrude turned her attention from glaring at the policeman who had been bothering them to Annie. "Walpurgia sent us to meet you here and show you to where you'll be staying. It's at our compound, although there's plenty of hotels if you prefer," she said, and then added "ma'am," almost perfunctorily.

"Please, call me Annie, and I think the compound will do nicely. But before you take me to where I'll be staying, why don't you take me to where I'll be shooting?"

Gertrude shrugged. "They are in the same place. Want help with your bag, Annie?"


The three of them walked out of the station into a virtual wall of noise. Chicago was even more packed than the last time she had been there, and the chaotic journey from train station to compound was something she could only remember later in flashes - crowds mobbing paperboys, signs proclaiming "Union Shops" hanging from a half-dozen buildings, posters for the Socialist Labor Party, a crashed automobile lying on its side. It got only slightly quieter when they made it to the compound, which was a hive of activity in its own right. "The SUS has all its offices here, and there's newspapers, shelters for people who need them, there's one of our soup kitchens here...this place can do a little bit of everything. We set up a shooting range for you, I can show you to it," Sylvia said.

As Gertrude departed to let everyone know Annie Oakley, the legendary markswoman, had appeared, Syliva guided her through the crowded compound into a room that seemingly had been half-build and then abandoned. The walls and roof and floor stretched out then abruptly ended, leading out to hard-packed dirt. Around the dirt was a collection of hammered-in posts, with a set of haybales and round targets at the end. Sitting on one of these haybales was a pale individual wearing a mix of men's and women's clothes who looked up at Annie entered.

"Ahh, hello friend. I am Public Universal Friend the Second."

The person glanced at Annie, seemed to recognize her, and stood up. "I will depart, and allow you to teach the ways of violence in peace."

Annie protested, and a brief, awkward argument ensued, made more awkward by Annie's uncertainty on how to address them. Should she call them Public, or use their full name? Or perhaps just Friend?

Regardless, Public Universal Friend the Second agreed to stay and watch for a time, although he or she refused to take part.

Friend sat in the corner as thirty women stood, holding pistols. "You shouldn't use a pistol for fighting," their teacher said. "If you know you are going to a fight, bring a rifle. Or better yet, bring ten friends with ten rifles. But you can't carry a rifle around everywhere, and even if you could, you might start fights you don't need by doing so. A pistol you can hide, and even if you don't, people won't take offense to it like they would a long gun. So, since a pistol is what you are most likely to use if you find yourself facing some man with bad intentions, a pistol is what you are going to learn to use."

And then she began to teach them. She taught them to breathe, to stand, to hold the gun. She taught them how to clean it, how to aim it, how to be safe with it, how to treat it with respect. And only then were they allowed to shoot it.

They listened to her and the Friend realized something. Annie Oakley was not teaching those women how to shoot because she thought it was important. She was teaching them because she believed that they would need violence to defend themselves, believed it like the Friend believed in peace. Believed in it like the Spirit had moved her to.

For Annie Oakley, guns were her god, and teaching women how to use them, how to defend themselves, was a prayer.

The Friend watched the act of worship before them, and managed not to weep.

"Oh Lord, how great are your works, how grand your design, that there may be beauty even in this."

Requested benefit, @Physici: make this happen: Annie Oakley publicly joins the SUS