He fired. The plate rang and the flag went up and it was center. 48. At 900 yards on a cold barrel. It was the finest shooting Ernest Foster had done in 20 years.
And against any other human being in that territory, he would have won with it. He got up and looked over at lane two. Anna Lambert put her cheek down on her husband's rifle. Carl said, "Nothing at all. It's dead flat.
It's yours. She heard him. She also heard from further off a big man with big hands saying a thing he had said to her a hundred times on a river bottom 11 years before when she was 23 and could not hit a barn. You don't have to be quick. Anybody can be quick.
You have to be still. The rifle went off. Nobody breathed for the second and a half it takes a bullet to go 900 yards and come back to you as a sound. Then the steel rang flat and heavy and dead in the middle and the flag came up and it was over. 50 5 For5.
The noise that came off that flat was heard in Miles City 2 and 1/2 miles away and people in the street stopped and looked east. Anna stood up, worked the block, and put the empty case in her pocket. Otis was already walking toward the scoring table with the sheet in his hand, and the purse box was under that table, and the whole thing should have taken 4 minutes. Ernest got there first. He came up onto the platform and took the speaking trumpet off the rail, and the crowd quit making noise because a man in his position going for a trumpet at that moment could only mean one thing.
Before anybody hands out any money, Ernest said, "There is a question on this range that has not been answered. I asked it Thursday morning in front of all of you and I never got an answer." He pointed down the line at her. "That is a United States Army presentation rifle. Those are issued to soldiers by name for service. There is a name on it and it is not hers." He was not shouting.
He had his color back and his voice was steady and reasonable and it carried. I do not know who that woman is. I do not know where she got that gun and neither do any of you. And I am not putting $500 of my money in the hands of somebody carrying a dead soldier's rifle until she stands up in front of this crowd and says whose it is. And there it was.