s's heart. But before the boy
could fire Travis saw the hawk-like flutter of the blacksmith's
pistol arm, as it measured the distance with the old quick training
of a bloody experience, and Richard Travis smiled, as he saw the
flash from the outlaw's pistol and felt that uncanny chill starting
in his marrow again, leap into a white heat to the shock of the ball,
and he pitched limply forward, slipped from his horse and went down
on the ground murmuring, "Tom--Tom--safe, and Alice--he shot at
last--and--thank God for the touch again!"

He lay quiet, feeling the life blood go out of him. But with it came
an exhalation he had never felt before--a glory that, instead of
taking, seemed to give him life.

The mob rushed wildly at the jail at the flash of Jack Bracken's
pistol, all but one, a boy--whose old dueling pistol still pointed at
the space in the air, where Richard Travis had sat a moment
before--its holder nerveless--rigid--as if turned into stone.

He saw Richard Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to
the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a
helpless, pitiful way,--then lie down as if it were sweet to rest.

And still the boy stood holding his pistol, stunned, frigid,
numbed--pointing at the stars.

Silently he brought his arm and weapon down. He heard only shouts of
the mob as they rushed against the jail, and then, high above it, the
words of the blacksmith, whom he loved so well: "Stand back--all;
Me--me alone, shoot--me! I who have so often killed the law, let me
die for it."

And then came to the boy's ears the terrible staccato cough of the
two Colts pistols whose very fire he had learned to know so well. And
he knew that the blacksmith alone was shooting--the blacksmith he
loved so--the marksman he worshipped--the man who had saved his
life--the man who had just shot his father.

Richard Travis sat up with an effort and looked at the boy standing
by him--looked at him with frank, kindly eyes,--eyes which begged
forgiveness, and the boy saw himself there--in Richard Travis, and
felt a hurtful, pitying sorrow for him, and then an uncontrolled, hot
anger at the man who had shot him out of the saddle. His eyes
twitched wildly, his heart jumped in smothering beats, a dry sob
choked him, and he sprang forward crying: "My father--oh, God--my
poor father!"

Richard Travis looked up and smiled at him.

"You shoot well, my son," he said, "but not quick enough."

The b