She sat down, took her rifle from Paul, pumped a shell into the chamber, rubbed a gleam of spit on the front bead, and aimed long, putting everything out of her mind and waiting for the sweet feeling of perfect alignment to form in her shoulders and chest, a feeling that the shot has been made before the trigger has been pulled, a knowing that the bullet will graze the top of the match. Letting the front bead sink like a pearl into the pocket of the rear sight, she waited for the sun to come from behind a cloud, and then she fired. A small dusty luminescence burst above the match into a gold flare as the sulfur ignited. A full second of perfect silence was blasted by a crash of recognition in Toot’s Sweet Lounge, a hundred voices saying something different all at once. The marine came over and shook her hand, but before she let go of it, someone came up and pushed him in the chest, yelling that the marine nearest him had cost him a hundred dollars because he couldn’t outshoot a damned woman. With an open hand, the marine swatted him like a fly, and three or four men began a grabbing, mixed-up shuffle. Colette quickly found the men she had bet with, and Paul snapped his fingers at the bartender for the five hundred. Etienne was across the room, arguing with someone over a side bet, and Colette gestured wildly to him to come on.

“I hope we clear this place before they find out, if they do,” she said.

“What you talking about?” Paul wadded up all the money and shoved it deep into his gray work pants.

“I can’t say,” she whispered. Then her eyes grew wide. The man who owned the field glasses was out on the wharf examining the matches, touching them. “We’ve got to grab Etienne and get out of here, now.”

The man with the field glasses charged into the room with the target in his hand. “How many of you bet with Thibaut”—he jerked his thumb at the bartender—“saying the match wasn’t gonna be no tie?”

About twenty men yelled and began to move toward the bar, the impending fight subsiding for the moment. “Well, the matches he gave the girl to shoot at was wet. Look at how the color was running down the sticks.” He held up the board to the room. “He tried to rig a tie.”