Otis came down the line at a speed that surprised everybody, including Otis. He looked at 6 in of white cotton tied to a front sight base and he looked at the man from the scoring table. Every buffalo hunter on the Yellowstone shot with one of those for 15 years. Otis said, "You want to go tell the dead ones it's an instrument? Get off my line." So she shot with the thread.
It lifts when the air moves. And how far it lifts tells you how hard. And it tells you in the half second while you are already behind the rifle, which is the only half second that matters. A man with a $400 glass gets the same news a beat and a half later out of somebody else's mouth. Her first shot went into the center of the plate.
So did her second, third, and fourth. By the fifth, the people who had come out to watch Ernest win his own match were standing on wagon boxes, and the noise they made when the steel ryang was not a cheer exactly. It was closer to the sound a crowd makes at a fire. Sixth, center, seventh, center. On the eighth, the wind quit.
That is the thing nobody who has not done it understands. A steady wind is a problem you solve once. A wind that stops is a trap because you are already holding four feet into a thing that is no longer there. The thread went slack on the barrel and she saw it go slack and she was already committed and the bullet went out into the first ring on the left. Eight points, her first drop shot in two days.
She lay still for 11 seconds. Then she put the ninth in the center and the 10th in the center and it was over. 98 Out of 100 she had beaten the field by 20 points. In that wind alone there was a moment of nothing. And then the back of the crowd went up.
The families and the enlisted men and the boys on the water barrels. Anna got up out of the grass, picked her hat off the ground, and walked back to her wagon. And if you had been close enough to see her face, you would have found nothing on it at all. Carl was close enough. He watched her go by and said mostly to himself, "In that wind, on her own." Up on the platform, Ernest folded his field glasses and buckled the case, and he took his time about it.
Then he went and found Otis. The third round had been published for two months is 700 yards, 10 shots, all 12 remaining shooters. High aggregate takes the purse and it was printed that way on 400 handbills in four towns. At 4:00 that afternoon, Ernest stood up on the platform with the trumpet and changed it. On account of the quality of the shooting we have seen here, we are going to give this territory a finish worth watching.
Tomorrow morning, the third round will be shot at 900 yards. There was a noise from the crowd. 900 Yards is not a longer version of 700. It is a different thing entirely. And it will be shot head-to-head.