all of a sudden came
the first shot.

"What threw me off was expecting the Tatums to come afoot from up the
road, but when they did come it was in a wagon from down the main
Blandsville pike clear round in the other direction. So at this first
shot I swung and peeped out and I seen Harve Tatum down in the dust
seemingly right under the wheels of his wagon, and I seen Jess Tatum
jump out from behind the wagon and shoot, and I seen Dudley Stackpole
come out of the mill door right directly under me and start shooting
back at him. There was no sign of his brother Jeffrey. I did not know
then that Jeffrey was home sick in bed.

"Being thrown off the way I had been, it took me maybe one or two
seconds to draw myself around and get the barrel of my rifle swung round
to where I wanted it, and while I was doing this the shooting was going
on. All in a flash it had come to me that it would be fairer than ever
for me to take part in this thing, because in the first place the Tatums
would be two against one if Harve should get back upon his feet and get
into the fight; and in the second place Dudley Stackpole didn't know the
first thing about shooting a pistol. Why, all in that same second, while
I was righting myself and getting the bead onto Jess Tatum's breast, I
seen his first shot--Stackpole's, I mean--kick up the dust not twenty
feet in front of him and less than halfway to where Tatum was. I was as
cool as I am now, and I seen this quite plain.

"So with that, just as Stackpole fired wild again, I let Jess Tatum have
it right through the chest, and as I did so I knew from the way he acted
that he was done and through. He let loose of his pistol and acted like
he was going to fall, and then he sort of rallied up and did a strange
thing. He ran straight on ahead toward the mill, with his neck craned
back and him running on tiptoe; and he ran this way quite a little ways
before he dropped flat, face down. Somebody else, seeing him do that,
might have thought he had the idea to tear into Dudley Stackpole with
his bare hands, but I had done enough shooting at wild game in my time
to know that he was acting like a partridge sometimes does, or a wild
duck when it is shot through the heart or in the head; only in such a
case a bird flies straight up in the air. Towering is what you call it
when done by a partridge. I do not know what you would call it when done
by a man.

"So then I closed the window shutter and I waited for qui