“Your competition isn’t following suit.” He motioned over to the marine, who was leaning on the window frame, waiting for the next set of targets.

“Let him stay dry. I’d just as soon he drank a cup of coffee about now. Might make him shake.” Within five minutes she drank half the beer, several bettors watching her with worried faces. She picked up her rifle, and it felt solid and comforting in her hand, the edges of the octagonal barrel precise and logical against her skin. She held it close to her and read the lettering on the metal, the patent dates and serial number. She wondered who in her family had fired it first, who had lifted it from its wooden box when it arrived from New Haven, Connecticut.

The bartender hurried out to the wharf in a rocking canter, stopped at a piling only twenty feet from the window, and nailed up another board with five matches rising from it. He came back in out of the sun and put his hands on the marine’s shoulder, but he looked at Colette, a smile sliding from under his mustache.

Colette motioned with her beer bottle. “You’re taking it easy on us,” she said. “We’re going to knock down matches again, but closer?”

The bartender shook his head.

“What’s up?” the marine asked, glancing at the kitchen matches.

“You ain’t gonna knock ’em down,” the bartender said. “You gonna light ’em.”

An outburst of guffaws came from the crowd. Etienne doubled over. Everyone liked the perverseness of the round, especially those who had bet against Colette, because unless she won the round outright, without a tie, she would lose her side bets, and everyone knew how hard it was to light a match with a rifle bullet. A new flurry of betting started, delaying the shooting for five minutes. During the course of the match, men were drifting in and getting caught up in the action. Nearly one hundred drank, danced, and jostled in the steamy bar, and yellow flies began to come in after the gathered meat.