The Legend of "Six-Shooter" Harris

To be read in the voice of Sam Elliott

Ain't ya heard the legend of Ian "Six-Shooter" Harris? Not named for the gun he carried, but for the bike he rode.



Harris blew in to Sturgis, South Dakota like some kind of thundering tumbleweed: hot, dry, and mean.

In another month, there was a rally happening here, but it wasn't getting any cooler and funds were tight. He wasn't there for that.

No, he had come to find his fortune in the Homestake gold mine in Lead. That plan...didn't work out. Not only due to his propensity to ride in carts of explosive material,



but all the gold had been completely mined out by 2001



and it is now used as a laboratory for researching neutrinos and dark matter.

After his failed stint at the mine, Six-Shooter, desperate and dejected, headed over to the (in)famous town of Deadwood, to try and win big in the casinos.

With his last 2 dollars burning a hole in his pocket, he parked his monstrous steed and walked in to the nearest casino. Mesmerized by the flashing lights, he sat down at a roulette table. Now watchin' that little ball bounce around that wheel can be quite stressful indeed.



But lady luck must've been blowing him kisses from across the room and before long he figured he had better high tail it out of there before he's dragged into a back room and worked over for winning too much.



So away he walked, at a brisk pace, on over to "The Original Location Saloon" to pay his respects to the mannequin of "Wild" Bill Hickok, which supposedly sits in precisely the spot where the man himself was shot.



Sometimes when a dude is in a place, he just needs to have a drink. Especially if it's hot out.



Not much a fan of beer, Six-Shooter got himself a root beer, and rode on out of Deadwood for the only place a man like him could call his home: The Badlands.

There ain't no pictures of his time in the Badlands. There could be several reasons: Some say his bike was so powerful, it tore a hole straight through to hell; and he rode down there, won the devil's crown in a poker match, and there he now rules. Still others say Odin himself came and traded his powers for Six-Shooter's jacket and Six-Shooter was able to then explore other worlds, while Odin got a pretty sweet jacket. They also say Odin got the better part of that deal.

But most say, and I'd like to believe this is true, he had some sort of epiphany out there; threw away all he had, left his bike in a ditch, and spent the rest of his days enjoying the beauty of the black hills. Now adds beautiful backgrounds to his pictures of turtles. They say if you're out in the Black Hills of South Dakota, after midnight when the sky is clear, you can still hear the six roaring cylinders of Six-Shooter's motorcycle.
















They're wrong though. He was in Spirit Lake, Iowa after a night in the badlands.