Free The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner Page A

the intent seriousness around his eyes. He seemed almost to have forgotten who she was, that she was even there.
    Of the first two squads only two men had possibles, Carter and Olson. Bo watched Olson with a steady, almost basilisk look. “There’s the guy to beat,” he said. “He doesn’t let down between shots at all. He’s a shooter, that guy.”
    The squad hustler came around reading names, Bo’s among them. When he stood up with the gun across his arm Elsa felt excited and nervous, weak with the desire to have him win. “Hit every one,” she said, and had to hold her hands back to keep from reaching out to touch him.
    He grinned at her absently. “Can’t miss,” he said. “See you after while.”
    â€œFive bucks you make a possible,” Jud said.
    Bo shook his head. “You’d jinx me.”
    He walked down to the table and joined the squad filling their pockets with shells. The last roar of number five’s gun rolled along the shore, and number five walked back into the crowd. Then Bo was standing behind number three trap, hatless, his gun over his arm.
    â€œPull!” the first man said. The clay bird arced, the gun came up, the roar of the shot mushroomed in the still air. Then number two, then Bo. Each time Bo shot Elsa scratched a tally on the ground. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. It took a long time, but every good bird was a little triumph. Glancing up from her tense concentration she saw Jud watching her. He lifted his eyebrows, and she made a face.
    The thirteenth bird was coming. Thirteen! She stiffened herself, trying to loan him her luck. “Pull!” he said. The saucer shot out, but wobbly, weak, short. Bo raised the gun, hesitated, let the bird fall.
    â€œNo bird,” the referee said. “No bird,” said the scorer. Bo fished up a handkerchief swiftly and wiped his face. The handkerchief trailed whitely out of his side pocket as he half raised the gun again. “Pull!” he said. The bird whirred up, he caught it with the barrels quickly, too quickly, and missed it cleanly.
    Elsa sat back with a noisily released breath. “Tough luck,” Jud said. But Eva turned with an incredulous smile. “What do you know!” she said. “I never knew Bo was superstitious.”
    â€œHe isn’t.”
    â€œDon’t tell me,” Eva said. “He was nervous on that thirteenth one.”
    â€œHe got a bad bird,” Jud said. “Breaks of the game.”
    Bo was slow coming back. When he sat down beside them there was a clamp on his jaw and a shine of hard anger in his eyes.
    â€œYou did fine,” Elsa said.
    His laugh was hard and choppy, a disgusted sound. “I did fine all right. Let myself get jinxed on that thirteen ball.”
    â€œBut only two hit them all,” she said, “and only three others got all but one. You’re tied for second.”
    â€œThat isn’t good enough,” he said. “This Olson bird doesn’t miss enough so you can afford to fool around.” He sounded almost as if he were scolding her for saying he had done well. His voice was so snappish that she kept quiet.
    It was after noon when he finished his second round. Going down still sore at the way things had broken in the first, he had missed the very first bird, and then in a cold fury that Elsa could see in his very shoulders and the set of his neck, had run out the remaining twenty-four as if each had been a personal enemy. Carter had dropped one, Olson none, and the rest of the field had dropped back so that Bo was third with forty-eight against Carter’s forty-nine and Olson’s possible.
    His string of twenty-four restored his temper, and when Elsa took two sandwiches out of his lunch he groaned. “I’ll be so weak I can’t pull the trigger,” he said.
    â€œI guess the four you’ve had will keep you from starving. Besides, you lost them