Joyce had just returned from England, and while he was in England, he saw a very special gun that used hexagonal cross-section bullets. Although this gun is a bit expensive, almost $100 a gun, Joyce, who likes to shoot and is not short of money, still paid for one and planned to bring it back to the United States to show off to his friends.

His boat docked in New York, where he had planned to spend only one night and then take the train back south. But a newspaper report about a shooting competition caught his attention.

"It's better to go and get a championship and have fun." While Joyce, who came from a large southern estate, doesn't care about the $2,000 championship prize, isn't it interesting to beat their best gunslinger and go back south with a championship in the biggest northern city? And, Joyce believes that with his skill and the fact that this Whitworth rifle is unparalleled in the world, there is simply no way he will not win the rifle precision shooting competition in which the rules are so suited to its performance.

However, in the preliminaries, he felt unprecedented pressure, and there was a guy in the same group with a strange rear-loading rifle who was no worse than him, and every time he shot, when he hit a ten, before he was happy for a while, the North guy would also hit a ten. In this way, until the end of the preliminaries, he could not overwhelm that opponent.

Then he found out that there was a player in the other group who used that strange rear-loading rifle, and they all made it to the final by a landslide. Now Joyce fully understood that these guys must all be from the same team, and the purpose of their participation was to advertise the rifles in their hands. And judging from the previous situation, the guns in the hands of these guys are no worse than the ones in his hands.

By this time, Joyce's interest in this strange rifle had even surpassed interest in the championship of the competition. He decided that as soon as the game was over, he would buy one of these rifles to play with.

After the ten rounds of bullets in the finals, a problem arose, there were actually 4 people with comparable results, and 10 shots were all 10 rings. What to do? Of course, there is a solution, and it is very simple, do one more round, and move the target 50 meters away. One more round.

This distance was also within the range of Joyce's precision shots, and although Joyce's desire for the championship was not as strong right now, it was better to win, so Joyce pulled himself together and continued to compete.

The 150-meter shot didn't tell them the winner, so the sub was moved to 200 meters away, this time, it was really difficult to hit another 10-ring score, Joyce hit four 7-rings in a row, and the other three guys basically guaranteed that every shot was within the eight rings, according to the rules, only the top three had a bonus, and now, only the last round was left, and he and the top three results had been gradually pulled apart, and even, well, the first place as long as the last shot didn't take off, No matter what, the results will be better by him. Joyce shook his head, it seemed that the prize money was out of his favor, but the desire to buy the same gun as they had after the game was getting stronger.

Mason loaded the last bullet, he was already two rings ahead of Bob in second place, and in the last shot, Bob had to surpass him by more than two rings to have a chance of turning the tables, but even if he hit 8 rings, could Bob still have 11 rings out? At most, it's just one more round.

At this point, Bob fired, and then the target reporter immediately reported the result: "9 rings." "Nine rings is a good result, but at this point, it almost means that he is going to miss the championship, unless Mason's last shot comes out with a seven ring. However, in the whole game, Mason has never fired such a bad shot.

"Bang!" Thatch, who is in third place, also fired a shot, with a score of 10 rings, but this 10 rings will not change the overall situation. Mason picked up his gun and began to aim at the target......

"Bang!" "Bang!" Mason and Joyce fired at about the same time.

"0 rings! Miss! "The target reporter next to Mason reported a score that made everyone dumbfounded.

"How is this possible?" Almost all of them were stunned.

"I'm not sure how many rings it is, this gentleman has two bullet holes in his target, one is 7 rings and the other is 10 rings!" The target announcer beside Joyce shouted.

"Oh my God! Mason is an idiot, he's hit the wrong target again! "Everyone in the shooting squad reacted.

"It must be like this, can't this guy get carried away when he has an advantage? Damn, he flew $2,000 with one shot! This pig! Robson, the leader, viciously threw the towel to the ground. If he can win the top three, he can also get a bonus, and now, this pig, not only knocked away his own $2,000 championship prize with one shot, but also knocked Robson's $200 prize away with one shot, how can this not make people angry?

However, Scrooge, who was watching the play with a telescope in the stands, felt particularly happy after seeing this scene. This is not only because of Scrooge's bad taste, but also because such a story of ups and downs must be liked in various newspapers. So, they're going to be going to have a good page to cover this story. And in their report, they will try their best to exaggerate Mason's overwhelming advantage before the last shot, so that the MacDonald 1857 rifle will definitely have a very high exposure. Similarly, the lucky winner who finished in the top three and received the prize money will also be in the spotlight, and the story of his lucky third place in a crowd of Macdonald 1857 will also highlight the overwhelming performance advantage of the MacDonald 1857 rifle.

"I hit 7 rings, and that 10 rings were played by the gentleman, and he should be the champion." Joyce said to the referee who came to understand the situation, "That 10 rings should be counted in that gentleman's score." ”

Joyce always likes to boast of his chivalrous demeanor, and in his opinion, a third place is not interesting, so he simply puts on a high posture and shows that he is not willing to take advantage. However, the referee was instructed to strictly follow the rules, and Joyce still finished third.

The prize money for third place is only $200. Joyce didn't take this bonus seriously, and once again asked if he could just send him a MacDonald 1857 rifle. The request was answered promptly. The organizers said they could use his prize money to buy the rifle on his behalf. Moreover, the organizer also asked him, how many do you plan to buy?

"How many are you going to buy?" The question was a little unexpected, and the Whitworth rifle in his hand cost him nearly a hundred dollars. And this rifle is more accurate than the Whitworth rifle (Joyce doesn't think any Yankee really has better marksmanship than herself), and the rate of fire is much higher. Well, it was true that the match just now was not a high-speed shooting competition, but he could still see how the opponent standing next to him loaded his bullets in the blink of an eye. How can such a gun cost more than a hundred dollars, how can you ask how many you plan to buy?

"How much does one cost?" Joyce asked.

"It's $50 now, and maybe it'll be cheaper when production is higher, but it's certainly more expensive than Springfield 1855 anyway." One of the officers in charge replied to him.

"Well, of course. Actually, I think $50 is cheap enough, and if you put a high decoration on the gun and make it beautiful, $300 a piece is not unacceptable. Well, let's just take four of them, just take them back and give them away. "Joyce wasn't short of money anyway.

So there was an even happier scene for Scrooge, as Joyce, who finished third, took the podium with four MacDonald Model 1857 rifles on his back. This image is simply a free advertisement for Scrooge's rifle.

The rifle rapid-fire competition that followed was even more MacDonald 1857, although some self-funded players used some early breech guns, such as the Sharps 1852 rifle, but these rifles still could not compare with the MacDonald 1857 in long-range shooting accuracy due to a series of reasons such as gunpowder gas leakage. When Scrooge set the rules of the game, he determined the distance of the target at 100 meters, at this distance, it was not easy for those early rear-loading guns to achieve the target of the gun, and the reliability of this kind of gun was not very good, and the final result was naturally not an opponent. Therefore, when the finals were over, the McDonald shooting team even rounded up the top five.

The effect of this campaign soon became apparent, and the recession of '57 caused more Europeans to try their luck in the Americas, and when the prosperous east could not provide them with enough jobs and bread, they constantly flocked to the west. The vast expanse of the West is sparsely populated and full of fertile land, and once you get there, you can sell 160 acres of land to the government for two dollars a acre in one go and become a real landowner. Such a good thing in Europe is definitely a dream.

But, well, as Scrooge said before, the world's most lucrative industries will have one of these two characteristics: either they are risky or they have a high threshold. Since anyone can go to the west, and it is so easy to get land to go to the west, it must be relatively risky. Compared with the east, the west is sparsely populated and has no perfect social security, and is completely a chaotic place where order has not yet been established. It's full of dangers, the North American brown bears and the North American gray wolves, and the Indians who resent them for being forcibly evicted to barren reservations by whites, and even the whites who are trying to make a fortune for nothing—in the West, you know, there may be no police for a few square miles and so on, and in general, there is only one police officer in a town. Even if you meet a policeman, as long as you draw a gun faster than the police, and your marksmanship is better than that of the police, it is not a big deal, and you can even be a policeman and a bandit at the same time, which is nothing.

So, if asked, what are the most important necessities to go west? There is no doubt that it is a good gun that is reliable. New York Harbor is the starting point for many immigrants to land in North America. When they got here, they saw the news in the newspapers about the shooting competition, and naturally they were willing to buy a good gun like the MacDonald 1857, and Scrooge's MacDonald Infantry Weapons Company was doing a lot of business for a while.