Word had gone up and down the Yellowstone overnight the way Word does, and the enlisted men from Fort Kio had gotten themselves excused from something in order to be there. There was a woman shooting. The morning was nearly still, four or five miles an hour out of the north. Nothing. Ernest had picked his conditions, and his conditions had come.
900 Yd, five shots each, alternating, earnest first. Cold barrels, no cers. The steel at the far end looked from the firing line like a playing card set on edge in the sage brush. Ernest came down to lane one in a clean coat with aims at his elbow, and he shook hands on the way and made a joke that got a laugh. And then he lay down and took his time.
Anna came down to lane two in the same gray dress and canvas coat she had worn for three days and Carl walked beside her with his glass under his arm. Ernest's first shot went out. About 2 seconds later, the plate rang. Center 10. The crowd let go.
It was a beautiful shot and everybody there knew it. And Ernest did not look up from the sights. Anna's first shot went out. The plate rang. Center 10, Earnest, second shot.
Center 10, Anna, second shot. Center 10, Earnest, third, center, 30 a piece. And 400 people had gone quiet. Because whatever anybody had come out there to see, it had turned into this. Two people lying in the sage two lanes apart putting bullets into the middle of a door half a mile off.
One after another like men driving nails. Anna third center 10 on his fourth shot. Ernest took a long time. Ames talked steadily into his ear. Ernest changed his elbow twice.
The men standing behind him all agreed afterward on one detail. He lifted his head off the stock and looked downrange with his naked eye before he fired. That is a thing a man does when he has stopped trusting the instrument and started hoping. It was still a good shot. It went into the first ring low left 8 38.
Ernest got up off the mat and stood there and did not brush his knees. Anna fourth center 10 40 one shot each. She was two ahead and she was shooting last which meant that Ernest had to be perfect and then hope and Ernest had spent his entire life arranging matters so that he would never have to hope for anything. He lay back down. The whole flat was so quiet you could hear the pit crew talking 900 yd away.