Joyce had just returned from England, where he had seen a very special gun using a hexagonal cross-section bullet. Although the gun was a bit expensive, almost $100 a piece, Joyce, who liked shooting and was not short of money, still paid for one and intended to bring it back to the United States to show off to his friends.

The boat he was on docked in New York, and he was only going to stay in New York for one night before taking the train back south. But a newspaper article about a shooting competition caught his attention.

"It would be nice to win a championship on the way." Although Joyce, a Southern ranch owner, didn't care about the $2,000 championship prize, wouldn't it be fun to be their best shooter in the biggest city in the North and take a championship back to the South? Moreover, Joyce believed that with his skills and the unbeatable Whitworth rifle, there was no chance that he would not win a precision rifle competition where the rules were so well suited to its performance.

However, in the preliminaries, he felt unprecedented pressure, there was a guy with a strange rear-loading rifle in the same group, but his results were not worse than his. In this way, until the end of the preliminaries, he was not able to overpower his opponent.

Then he found out that the rest of the group also had a player with that strange rear-loading rifle, and they all went into the finals with overwhelming margins. Now Joyce fully understood that these guys must be from the same team and that they were competing to advertise their rifles. And from what we saw in the front, the guns in these guys' hands were no worse than the ones in his hands.

At this point, Joyce's interest in this strange rifle had even exceeded his interest in the competition championship. He decided to buy one of these rifles to play with as soon as the competition was over.

After the 10 rounds of the final match, a problem arose, there were 4 people with similar scores, and all 10 shots were 10 rings. What to do? Of course, there is a solution, and very simple, another round, and move the target 50 meters away—one more round.

This distance was still within Joyce's precision shooting range, and although Joyce's desire for a championship was not as strong now, it was better to win, so Joyce got up and continued.

This time, it was really difficult to get another 10 rings. Joyce shot four 7 rings in a row, while the other three guys were able to guarantee that every shot was within 8 rings. Results have been gradually pulled apart, even, well, the first place as long as the last shot does not get off, no matter how the results will be his good. Joyce shook her head, it seemed the prize money was no longer with him, but the desire to buy a gun like the one they had after the competition was getting stronger.

Mason loaded his last round, he was already two rings ahead of Bob in second place, and he would have to outshoot him by more than two rings in the final round to have any chance of overturning the game. At most, it was just one more round.

At this time, Bob opened fire, and then the target announcer immediately reported the result: "9 rings." Nine rings was a good score, but at this point, it almost meant that he was out of the running for the championship unless Mason shot a seven-ring on his last shot. But Mason hadn't shot that badly in the whole match.

"Bang!" Sachs, who was temporarily in third place, also shot a 10-ring shot, but this 10-ring shot didn't change the situation anymore. Mason picked up his gun and started aiming at the target ......

"Bang!" "Bang!" Mason and Joyce fired their shots almost simultaneously.

"0 rings! Off-target!" The target reporter beside Mason reported a score that left everyone dumbfounded.

"How is this possible?" Almost everyone was stunned.

"I can't be sure of the rings, this gentleman had two bullet holes in his target, one for 7 and one for 10!" The target reporter beside Joyce shouted.

"Oh my God! Mason, the idiot, he reshot the wrong target!" Everyone on the shooting team reacted.

"That's gotta be it. Can't this guy ever get over himself when he's got the upper hand? Damn it, he shot off $2,000! That pig!" Team leader Robson slammed his towel to the ground with a vengeance. If he could win the first three places, he could also get prize money, but now, this pig not only shot away his own $2,000 prize money but also shot away Robson's $200 prize money, how can people not be angry?

But in the stands with binoculars watching the show Scrooge felt extraordinarily happy after seeing this scene. This is not only because of Scrooge's bad taste but also because, such a story of the peak of the road in various newspapers, is certainly happy to see. So, they will take out good space to report this story. In their coverage, they will exaggerate the overwhelming advantage of Mason before the last shot, so that the MacDonald 1857 rifle will also have a very high exposure. Likewise, the lucky man who made it into the top three and got the prize money will also be the focus of attention, and his story of finishing third in a pack of MacDonald 1857s will also highlight the overwhelming performance advantage of the MacDonald 1857.

"I shot the 7-ring, the 10-ring was shot by the gentleman who should have been the winner." He should have been the winner," Joyce told the judge who came to see what was going on.

Joyce, who always likes to boast about his biker demeanor and the fact that he didn't think a third-place finish meant anything, simply took a high profile and said he didn't want to take advantage. But the judges were instructed to follow the rules to the letter, and Joyce came in third.

The third-place prize was only $200. This prize money was not on Joyce's mind, and he once again asked if he could just be issued a McDonald 1857 rifle. This request was quickly answered. The organizers said they could buy the rifle for him with his prize money. Moreover, the organizer asked him how many rifles he wanted to buy.

"How many do you want to buy?" This question was slightly unexpected for Joyce, who was holding a Whitworth rifle that cost him close to $100. The rifle was more accurate than the Whitworth (Joyce didn't think any Yankee could shoot better than he did) and had a much higher rate of fire. Well, the match wasn't a high-speed shooting match, but he could see how the opponent standing next to him loaded the bullets in the blink of an eye. A gun like this should cost more than a hundred dollars, so how many do you want to buy?

"How much for one?" Joyce asked.

"It's $50 now, maybe a little cheaper in the future as production rises, but it'll be more expensive than the Springfield 1855 anyway." One of the people in charge answered him.

"Well, of course. I think $50 is cheap enough, if you decorate the gun a bit more and make it more beautiful, $300 a piece is not unacceptable. Well, I'll take four of them, so I can give them back to someone." Anyway, Joyce is not short of money.

So, a scene that made Scrooge even happier appeared, as the third-place finisher Joyce carried four MacDonald Model 1857 rifles to the podium when he received his prize. This scene was a free advertisement for Scrooge's rifle.

Although some self-financed competitors used some early breech-loading rifles, such as the Sharps 1852 rifle, these rifles could not compare to the MacDonald 1857 in terms of accuracy at long range due to a series of reasons such as gunpowder gas leakage. The distance of the target was set at 100 meters when Scrooge set the rules of the competition, and at this distance, it was not easy for those early rear-loading guns to hit the target. So, by the time the finals were over, the MacDonald shooting team had even rounded out the top five.

The effects of the campaign were soon evident as the '57 recession brought more Europeans to the Americas to try their luck, and with the prosperous East unable to provide them with enough jobs and bread, they continued to flock to the West. The vast expanse of the West was sparsely populated, with fertile land everywhere, and once there, they could sell 160 acres of land to the government for two dollars an acre and become a real landowner. Such a good thing in Europe is dreaming.

But, well, aoge has said before, the world's most lucrative businesses have one of two characteristics: either high risk or high barriers. Since anyone can go to the West, and it is so easy to get land in the West, it must have a relative risk. Compared to the East, the West is sparsely populated, there is no perfect social security, and it is a piece of chaos that has not yet established order. There are dangers everywhere, North American brown bears and North American gray wolves hanging around, as well as the Indians who are resentful because they were forcibly expelled by the whites to the barren reservations, and even those who try to get rich without working - you know, in the West, maybe a few square miles of the kind of area will not have police, generally speaking, a, Generally speaking, there is only one police officer in a town. Even if the police, as long as you draw faster than the police, shoot better than the police, it is not a big deal, even, if you can also be a cop while being a bandit, it is nothing.

So, if you ask, what is the most important necessity to go west? There is no doubt that it is a good, reliable gun. The port of New York was the starting point for many immigrants to land in North America. When they arrived here, they read about shooting competitions in the newspapers and were willing to buy a good gun like the MacDonald 1857, and Scrooge's MacDonald Infantry Arms did a great deal of business.