"You need to pick up my guns and take them home with you."

The words cut like a dull knife. Merle's rifles were staples of his rancher life. Along with fence pliers. A saddle and bridle. Spurs. Cowboy hat. A bandana to protect his neck against a winter wind, and to wipe the sweat off his brow in the summer heat. He never left the house without any of them.

He'd had to give up the ranch when the coal company made an offer he couldn't refuse. The stress prompted a heart attack, then a stroke. Even to him, it was obvious that fighting was futile. Moving to town was giving up, giving in, but it was the only option.

Now, 20 years later, he was moving again. They call it assisted living - three squares a day and a room where people attentively watch over and care for him. While secure, it was a far cry from gazing out over thousands of acres of your own sage and pine-studded prairies where cows bawl, deer roam, and silence envelopes night skies peppered with diamond crystals from horizon to horizon.

In his head, he was still 25. Why couldn't he walk a straight line without a walker? Why couldn't he hear people on the phone? Why were most of his lifelong friends 6 feet under or ashes blowing in the wind?

As they passed on, he mourned from a distance, given his physical frailties. Sitting in his recliner, Merle looked pensively at me, tears welling in his eyes. "It's time, Tim. Do what you want. My days of hunting are over. Give them to your son Jeff, or Jon, your grandson. But do me a favor. Make sure they understand where they've been."

The tears weren't something I'd have expected from Merle, but the directive was just like him. What needed to be done, he did. Face a thing straight on. Deal with it. Nothing more to discuss.

Leaving his room, I pondered his request. Was this the beginning of the end? Did he sense something that even the doctors didn't?

I hoped not, yet left wondering. His intuition had always amazed me. Time would tell. I hoped it was just another moment of wise judgment about what should be done as he struggled with the realities of the "golden years."

I opened the hidden closet in his house, camouflaged by a pantry wall of canned goods, and the rifles gleamed in the dull light. Clean, oiled and ready for use, albeit never again by him. I picked up the Winchester Model 88 .243 that I had refinished and reblued for him just before he'd left the ranch years before. He'd traded it for a saddle or something. While the rifle shot well when he got it, it looked like it had been dragged behind a horse over miles of cactus and prairie scrabble. It probably had. Over the winter, I'd sanded and refinished the walnut stock into factory-new condition. A gunsmith recheckered the stock, making it look better than new. After the rifle's barrel and action had been reblued, a gun-buyer friend of mine offered me two months' mortgage payments on my house for it. Wisely, I'd refused. That fall, Merle had shot a beautiful four-by-four mule deer buck with it. The next year, he'd made a great shot on a three-by-four buck that took one step and collapsed. Six years, six bucks, six shots. Deadly accurate in the hands of someone who loved the rifle and knew what to do with it.

LAST FALL, I STOOD ON the hill overlooking the basin where Merle and I had gone on his last deer hunt. My son Jeff had dropped me off to walk a couple of ridges seamed with steep coulees that camouflaged the local does and the bucks that were searching for them. The memory was still fresh: Merle and I standing on this spot, glassing into the basin below when he whispered, "There's a buck." His ability to see game where none seemed to exist always amazed me. It shouldn't have. A life spent looking for stray cows and horses had honed his eyesight to recognize something that didn't belong.

"Where?" I whispered.

"Right below us at the edge of that coulee. ... See his white butt?"

After minutes of searching, I found the buck in my binocular. We crafted a plan - the two of us would walk down the road to shorten the range before he made a stalk on the deer. Merle's eyes were still sharp enough, but palsy from nerve damage made shooting difficult. When we finally got close enough for the shot, he labored to rest the rifle on a tree branch, find the buck in the scope and steady the rifle. In his prime, it was rifle up, deer dead. Now, nothing came easy. Luck blessed us; the two-point buck fed unaware of us 100 yards away. I knew he wouldn't shoot until everything was right for a certain, lethal shot. As I waited patiently, wondering if it would ever happen, the explosion reverberated through the canyon; the buck collapsed.

Turning to me, he smiled, then sat down with his back against the tree. "Go over and make sure he's dead, will you?" he said.

I dragged the deer down to the road below where he sat. Slowly, he stood up and walked down to the buck. Kneeling, he caressed the hair on the young buck's face and then its antlers. I left to get the pickup, and when I drove up, I found him sitting by the buck, still rubbing the mahogany antlers but gazing down the canyon, seemingly trying to soak in all the moment held. Snowflakes began falling, and he looked skyward. A tear wandered down his wrinkled cheek, and he looked away. Struggling to stand, he got on one knee, looked at me, and simply said, "He's a nice one, isn't he?"

I smiled and said, "He's a dandy." It remained unsaid, but both of us knew it was the last buck he'd ever take. And more importantly, the last hunt we'd ever have. With a knot burning in my throat, I cleaned the buck. Then we drove back to town in silence, savoring the moment and the times we'd shared.

Slipping the Winchester into a gun case, I picked up the Marlin .22 rimfire. Little bluing remained on the barrel or receiver, and the stock was scarred and scratched. Like the notches on a gunslinger's .45, every gouge, scratch and scar has a story worth telling. The long scrape on the forearm is from the time Merle's brother, Wayne, lost his balance and slid down a coulee bank. He ripped the bottom out of his jeans but protected the rifle from damage, except for that one abrasion. To those who remember the moment, the stock wears the scratch like a badge of honor.

There's a crack in the plastic butt plate. My fault. I was 8 years old and hunting cottontails on my own for the first time. As I'd been taught to cross a barbwire fence, I'd leaned the rifle next to a fence post and then crawled under the fence. After crossing, I gingerly picked up the rifle, but my small hands lost their grip. The butt of the gun cracked against the only rock in 25 yards. I'm sure my eyes were pie-plate size as I examined the damage, knowing I'd have to fess up to my mistake. Merle stared hard at the damage, and then sternly looked at me. "Well, what did you learn from this?" I've forgotten my reply, but the lesson of safe gun handling is tattooed on my psyche.

Finally, I picked up Merle's Winchester Model 94, simply known as the "thurty-thurty." How many freezers full of deer steaks and roasts this rifle was responsible for I'll never know, but the serial number says it's one of the first of its kind ever manufactured. In its prime, it wasn't pretty. Ranch rifles never are. They are tools used to shoot coyotes preying on newborn calves or to take down that skunk raiding the chicken coop. Yeah, a .30-30 is a lot of gun for skunks, but on the ranch, you use what you've got in the pickup. The "thurty-thurty" was a permanent fixture, hanging in the truck's gun rack, often caked with road dust and other ranch grime, the price paid for being a faithful companion.

The rifle showed its age and history, but it was clean and well oiled. I could see Merle's weathered hands meticulously removing the dirt and grime, all the time savoring the moments rekindled as he held his old friend. As I handled the rifle, a cavalcade of memories streamed through my mind as well.

I shot my first deer with this rifle. But I'd missed my first shot at a small buck. My dad tried to console me as we walked down an old two-track road. Suddenly, a doe stepped out of the brush. I'm sure it seemed like an eternity for my dad as he watched me sit down, rest the rifle on my knee for support, only to see the rifle bouncing wildly on my nervous knee. I know I shut my eyes and jerked the trigger because, when the old "thurty-thurty" exploded, I couldn't see a thing.

"What happened? Did I miss the deer?" I exclaimed. If I'd kept my eyes open I would have seen her lying dead 20 yards away.

Then there was the time dad and Merle were out with my sister, Vickie. Dad had gotten excited and missed a bruiser of a mule deer buck at first light. He went off, trying to track the deer to make amends, leaving Vickie and Merle. Merle handed Vickie the Winchester, and they slowly began their way through some scrub pines with daylight filtering through the pine canopy.

Merle spotted a small two-point working his way through the timber. Vickie rested the rifle on a deadfall as they waited for the buck to walk into range. At 50 yards, Merle whistled. The buck stopped. The Winchester barked. Minutes later, dad walked up, wondering who had shot, only to find Merle and Vickie quietly celebrating her first deer. When Merle retold the story, dad said something about his little girl being a good shot. While the exact words have been lost over the years, the gist of Vickie's response was, "It's really quite simple. You just have to hit what you are trying to shoot."

After securing the hidden closet door, I carried each rifle out to my pickup. They seemed heavier than they'd ever felt in the field. I have plans for each of them. My son and I will take the .243 deer hunting this fall, and when my grandson can come hunting with me again, I plan on giving him the .30-30. I hope the .22 rimfire can travel to Wyoming next fall on a mule deer hunt. That is, if I've accumulated enough preference points over the last five years to change my miserable luck trying to draw a coveted tag. No, a .22 rimfire is not a deer rifle. It's to carry on a long walk in fields of sage and cottonwood bottoms, where, as a boy, I stalked cottontails. Youthful enthusiasm and the rifle were a deadly combination all those years ago, bringing savory rabbits to the table, and maybe that little rifle can take me back there for an hour or two.

It is the same with each of the rifles - they prompt recollections of special moments, frozen in time. I'd like nothing more than to share one more day afield with Merle, to delight in meandering up coulees, sharing stories, laughing over missed shots and celebrating those that hit the mark. He can't. Time has run out. But what he gave me is bound up in these rifles. It defined my life and will always be the best part of his legacy.

They're scratched and scarred, but measure how I chose to spend my days and who I spend them with. I'd like to think I had the best teacher. I only hope I measure up.