Into the mill these newcomers carried the two Tatums, Jess being
stone-dead and Harve still senseless, with a leg dangling where the
bones were snapped below the knee, and a great cut in his scalp; and
they laid the two of them side by side on the floor in the gritty dust
of the meal tailings and the flour grindings. This done, some ran to
harness and hitch and to go to fetch doctors and law officers, spreading
the news as they went; and some stayed on to work over Harve Tatum and
to give such comfort as they might to Dudley Stackpole, he sitting dumb
in his little, cluttered office awaiting the coming of constable or
sheriff or deputy so that he might surrender himself into custody.
While they waited and while they worked to bring Harve Tatum back to his
senses, the men marveled at two amazing things. The first wonder was
that Jess Tatum, finished marksman as he was, and the main instigator
and central figure of sundry violent encounters in the past, should have
failed to hit the mark at which he fired with his first shot or with his
second or with his third; and the second, a still greater wonder, was
that Dudley Stackpole, who perhaps never in his life had had for a
target a living thing, should have sped a bullet so squarely into the
heart of his victim at twenty yards or more.
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