drag the name of anyone else into this, especially a
woman's name, and her now dead and gone and in her grave; but I will
just say that if ever a man had a just cause for craving to see Jess
Tatum stretched out in his blood it was me. At the same time I will
state that it was not good judgment for a man who expected to go on
living to start out after one of the Tatums without he kept on till he
had cleaned up the both of them, and maybe some of their cousins as
well. I will not admit that I acted cowardly, but I will state that I
used my best judgment.

"Therefore and accordingly, no sooner did I hear the news about the dare
which the Tatums had sent to the Stackpoles than I said to myself that
it looked like here was my fitting chance to even up my grudge with Jess
Tatum and yet at the same time not run the prospect of being known to be
mixed up in the matter and maybe getting arrested, or waylaid afterwards
by members of the Tatum family or things of such a nature. Likewise I
figured that with a general amount of shooting going on, as seemed
likely to be the case, one shot more or less would not be noticed,
especially as I aimed to keep out of sight at all times and do my work
from under safe cover, which it all of it turned out practically exactly
as I had expected. So I took a rifle which I owned and which I was a
good shot with and I privately went down through the bottoms and came
out on the creek bank in the deep cut right behind Stackpole Brothers'
gristmill. I should say offhand this was then about three o'clock in the
evening. I was ahead of time, but I wished to be there and get
everything fixed up the way I had mapped it out in my mind, without
being hurried or rushed.

"The back door of the mill was not locked, and I got in without being
seen, and I went upstairs to the loft over the mill and I went to a
window just above the front door, which was where they hoisted up grain
when brought in wagons, and I propped the wooden shutter of the window
open a little ways. But I only propped it open about two or three
inches; just enough for me to see out of it up the road good. And I made
me a kind of pallet out of meal sacks and I laid down there and I
waited. I knew the mill had shut down for the week, and I didn't figure
on any of the hands being round the mill or anybody finding out I was up
there. So I waited, not hearing anybody stirring about downstairs at
all, until just about three minutes past six, when