Chapter 17: The Big Screen

I breathed out and fired once.

The rope parted an inch above Brody's wrist.

He fell into the dirt, and the bull's next kick missed him by the width of a hand.

Two pickup riders drove their horses between them and hazed Reckoner toward the gate.

The bull went through it with his head up, and the gate man slammed it shut.

For a moment, there was no sound in the arena at all.

Then a woman in the front row stood up and pointed at the catwalk.

"He shot the rope!" she screamed. "He cut him loose!"

The crowd came apart in a roar.

I lay on the tin with the rifle against my cheek and did not move.

Carys's hand was on my back, and it was shaking.

"You could have let him die," she said.

"I know."

"Nobody would have blamed you."

"I would have," I said.

She put her forehead against my shoulder for a moment.

Then she lifted her head, and her face was fierce.

"Look at the screen," she said.

Down in the dirt, Brody lay on his side holding his ribs.

His father had reached him and was kneeling over him, shouting for a medic.

Brody looked up through the dust, past his father, to the catwalk.

He found me.

His mouth moved, and I could not hear what he said.

Then the big screen went black.

The crowd quieted, and eight thousand heads turned up together.

Carys's phone buzzed once against the tin.

*The Faulk man ran down to the dirt with everyone else. I have the board.*

White text appeared on the screen.

It was the burner thread, line by line, in the same order I had read it in Carys's truck.

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