The brown-haired Cutter named Lin cleared his throat as his comrades and others of the Rippling Waters men gathered around, letting their preparations drop.
"Hear the terms of this shoot!" he said, trying to be formal. "Eddie here can shoot three arrows. If he misses the apple and the gal with all three, then our own Jack gets the gal, or Eddie pays him forty-five dollars cash money. If he hits the gal, then he and his bear the loss 'cause he isn't as good a shot as he claimed. If he hits the apple, then Jack has to pay him forty-five dollars fine for groping his bought gal and being a natural-born stupid dumb fuck as we all know he is."
"Fuck you, Lin!"
"Not while there's sheep on Rippling Waters, Jack," Lin said cheerfully. "They smell better'n you, too. Let the fun begin!"
"No help for it, then." Rudi studied the younger Mackenzie's face. "Ground and center. No, I mean it, clansman! Breathe in-breathe out. Slow and steady."
Edain obeyed, and a little of the gray tightness left his face as he controlled lungs and heart.
"I don't know if I can do it," he said, and held up his hand.
There was a slight quiver to it.
"You can," Rudi said. "You're the laddie who won the Silver Arrow younger than any before you, and then beat me for it the next year!"
Edain's grimace showed his teeth. "That was just a target!"
"And this is just a target," Rudi said, and forced all sympathy out of his voice; if he couldn't banish fear, he'd have to make Edain use it. "And that's what you're going to do, because you must. Invoke Them… and then get out there and let the gray goose fly, clansman!"
The young Cutters had hustled Rebecca over to the town wall. She stood with her arms crossed, staring straight ahead with a faint smile on her face as they placed the apple on her head; it was a large one, bright red, and still unwithered. Rudi looked aside and noticed Jed Smith looking at Edain… with a considering expression in his eyes.
"That young nephew of yours is a mite soft," he said quietly to Ingolf. "Getting all bothered about a bought gal, as if she were kin or his sweetheart."
The man from Wisconsin shrugged. "Young guys are like that around women," he said. "Especially young, pretty women."
"You should've let him screw the bitch silly and get over it," the Rancher said.
"Well, Good Lance decided he fancied her, you see. I'll still get her sale price, but otherwise…" Ingolf shrugged. "I'm not going to piss off a Sioux clan who're good friends now to let my own nephew blow off some steam and get the girl out of his head."
"Ah," Jed said, glancing over at Odard. "Good thing he's not too mad about this."
"He may be. Hard to tell, with Injuns. But they're sticklers for taking up a challenge, you know-at least, the Sioux are."
"Right. Well, I'd have lent you boys some of ours… let's hope your Eddie can pull off that shot. I swear, even if Jack is my sister's son, the little bastard is such a pain in the ass, I almost wish it was him there with the apple on his head!"
Edain strode out to the mark Jack drew in the scrubby grass with a boot heel. It was fifty yards to the wall where Rebecca waited, far enough that her face was mostly a blur and the apple only a red dot. He looked expressionlessly at her, at the movement of the grass in the light irregular wind. Then he stripped off his leather jacket, tossed it to the ground, and laid bow, quiver and sword belt on it. Jed made a grunting sound and watched more closely as the young clansman flexed his arms and rotated them slowly to stretch sinew and tendon, working his fingers as well. Cords in his forearms stood out sharply, moving beneath the taut white skin. Edain was only average in height, but he looked strong even in that company, and he had quite a few scars for a man so young.
Then he picked his leather-and-steel bracer, adjusting the straps to fit his bare forearm, took up the bow and strung it Mackenzie-style-bottom end over the left instep and right thigh over the riser, pushing down with his body weight as his right hand slipped the cord into the notch in the elk-antler nock. When that was done he picked the agreed three shafts from his quiver, all with hunting broadheads that had started their lives as stainless-steel spoons. The triangular heads were honed to razor sharpness, and they glittered in the strong sunshine as he rolled each arrow over his thumbnail to test its straightness.
He's using broadheads because he hopes they won't break the skull bone even if he misses, Rudi thought sympathetically. Not a hope, my friend. At that range and with a draw that heavy…
"That's a good bow," Jed said slowly. "Strange-looking, but it's made by someone who knows what he's doing."
"We've got first-rate bowyers in Newcastle," Ingolf said. "Have since the Change."
"But I've seen Newcastle bows, and they're our style, pretty much-we buy some from you, traded hand to hand. I've never seen one quite like that 'un."
"We got the idea from farther east," Ingolf said easily. "Just these last couple of years. Too long for easy horseback work, but some of the younger men have taken them up."
"What's that wood? It doesn't look like bois d'arc."
"Yew. Grows in the canyons," Ingolf lied with easy fluency.
Jed Smith could almost certainly read, unlike many of his younger cowboys. But he probably didn't have occasion to do so very often, and he certainly couldn't go look up the natural vegetation around Newcastle, Wyoming.
Ingolf went on: "They're good for hunting on foot in the Black Hills up north of town, or shooting from the town walls. Don't have to cure in a hotbox, or be lacquered against the wet. And they're cheap, a tenth or a quarter the cost of a saddlebow, so you're not out of pocket so much if you damage one."
Smith grunted again, rubbing at his jaw. "Might be worth the trouble, then, for townsmen," he said with kindly scorn for men who lived behind walls and worked on foot.
That turned to an instinctive duck and snatch at the hilt of his shete as Edain drew, turned on his heel away from the town wall, and loosed. Jack did throw himself flat; Edain had wheeled to face him, and there was nothing wrong with his reflexes. He lay on his back with his fighting knife naked in his hand, gaping upward at the trajectory of the arrow Edain had shot nearly straight up. There was a murmur of amazement from the watching cowboys as something fell back-two things, the arrow and the mallard duck it had transfixed.
The bird thumped into the dusty earth not more than arm's length from Jack's gape. Two of his friends dodged neatly as the arrow plunged into the dirt with a shunk! The young Mackenzie strolled over, pulled the shaft out of the dirt, then leaned over the Cutter.
"Are you not going to thank me, then, Jack-me-lad?" he inquired mildly, reaching out with the end of his longbow to nudge the limp blue-green shape of the bird. "You've the makings of a fine roast-duck dinner there, and the flight feathers will do for fletching when you've plucked it. And I'll ask no more of you if you decide to call this quits. Save yourself forty-five dollars, friend… and enjoy your duck."
Rudi found himself smiling involuntarily. Jed Smith snorted a laugh, and the young Cutter's friends roared until they staggered around wiping at their eyes and slapping one another on the back; a few fell helpless and drummed their heels on the ground. Several urged their comrade to accept the terms, between sputters and whoops. Skill with the bow was the thing they admired most in all the world, after horsemanship and raw courage.
Jack came back to his feet with a shoulder roll. The Cutters all looked a little awkward to Rudi's eyes when they were afoot, though they were as graceful as panthers in the saddle. That didn't mean the young man wasn't strong and quick, and Rudi judged that he'd be good with a blade. He didn't draw, quite…
"You got two more shafts, or the split-tail is mine," he said with quiet venom, all garrulousness washed out of him by the hate that made his face go white around the nostrils. "Now shoot. I'm of a mind to see how many ways I can fuck that bitch and you can keep your forty-five dollars."