“Get her blaster, Brother Steele,” Wolfe said, keeping his patient smile pasted firmly in place. “I imagine that Brother Dix might wish to go over it out with you, Sister Wyeth. You may have fifteen minutes from now.”
“IT’S FINE,” the Armorer said, quickly and neatly clicking the weapon back together, having given it a lightning field-strip and clean. He wiped a layer of thin gun oil off his fingers with a length of cotton rag.
Mildred took it, automatically checking the load, feeling the familiar balance as she weighed it in her right hand. “Wonder what they’ll want us to shoot against.”
“That man Caitlin,” Krysty said, lip curling in disgust, “had a beady little red eye like a rabid ferret. Looks to me just like a classic redneck shootist. Put one through the belly and leave it to suffer.”
“You happy with your blaster against his long gun?” Jak asked.
“Guess so. Unless they set up the match at a half mile or over. Then I’d struggle.”
“Be little point in this testing they have if it was all a cheat,” Ryan said, hearing the layer of doubt that hung there in his voice.
“STANDARD MATCH TARGET of nine inches across, graded in regular circles from ten through to one point. Shoot just four rounds at each distance, beginning at twenty-five yards, then fifty, then one hundred. Finally at two hundred paces.”
“Long range for a big pistol,” said a voice from the watching crowd.
Wolfe half turned. “Anyone object to it? How about you, Sister Mildred?”
The woman shrugged, the beads in her hair tinkling softly. “Doesn’t matter to me,” she said.
Mildred walked calmly to the mark scratched in the dirt at the end of the ville’s main street. The heavy Czech revolver was at her side, her thumb already on the short-fall cocking hammer.
The targets had already been nailed to pine trees, one above the other, out at the agreed distances. Brother Wolfe called out that the outlander would aim at the higher target and Caitlin at the lower. “We’ll spin a silver coin for the right to shoot first or second.”
“Heads,” Caitlin called as the glittering coin whirled in the air.
Wolfe neatly caught the coin, peered at it and then quickly pocketed it. “Heads it is,” he called loudly.
Ryan glanced at Mildred, questioning whether she wanted to object to the blatantly unfair tossing. But she simply shook her head.
“I’ll go first,” Caitlin said, readying himself on the mark, slowly bringing the rifle up to his right shoulder, squinting two-eyed along the barrel.
The big .44-caliber blaster was as steady as a rock. The man licked his lips and held his breath, finger creeping onto the spur trigger.
“Open fire at will, Brother Caitlin,” Wolfe said quietly. “And may Blessed Jesus the marksman guide your bullets to their target.”
The crack of the Winchester was flat, the echo of the shot instantly swallowed up by the vastness of the surrounding forest.
A tall man, as skinny as a lath, stood at a safe distance from the target, holding a tiny brass folding telescope that looked like it dated back into the 1800s. He raised it to his left eye, hesitated a moment, fiddling with the delicate adjustment.
“Looks like a ten.”
Caitlin fired again. Again a ten.
The third and fourth shots were also dead-center bull’s-eye, bringing a round of hearty applause from the watching Children of the Rock.
“Forty from forty,” Wolfe announced. “The saints be praised, Brother Caitlin. Your turn now, Sister. You may shoot at will.”
Mildred stood sideways on, her whole body relaxed. Ryan knew that the woman’s skill with her revolver was unparalleled. It was the sort of skill that had died out after the long winters. He had no doubt that she could outshoot anyone he’d ever seen in all Deathlands.
Caitlin was better than adequate with his rifle, but so he should be at only twenty-five paces.
Mildred aimed and fired quickly, all four shots seeming to run into one another, giving an odd quadruple echo that quickly faded into silence.
The elder with the scope took some time. “Looks like all four through the same hole,” he called, bringing a buzz of excitement from the spectators.