The rest of
the narrative largely appertains to the one conspicuous survivor, this
Dudley Stackpole already described.
Tradition ever afterwards had it that on the night of the killing he
slept--if he slept at all--in the full-lighted room of a house which was
all aglare with lights from cellar to roof line. From its every opening
the house blazed as for a celebration. At the first, so the tale of it
ran, people were of two different minds to account for this. This one
rather thought Stackpole feared punitive reprisals under cover of night
by vengeful kinsmen of the Tatums, they being, root and branch, sprout
and limb, a belligerent and an ill-conditioned breed. That one suggested
that maybe he took this method of letting all and sundry know he felt no
regret for having gunned the life out of a dangerous brawler; that
perhaps thereby he sought to advertise his satisfaction at the outcome
of that day's affair. But this latter theory was not to be credited. For
so sensitive and so well-disposed a man as Dudley Stackpole to joy in
his own deadly act, however justifiable in the sight of law and man that
act might have been--why, the bare notion of it was preposterous! The
repute and the prior conduct of the man robbed the suggestion of all
plausibility. And then soon, when night after night the lights still
flared in his house, and when on top of this evidence accumulated to
confirm a belief already crystallizing in the public mind, the town came
to sense the truth, which was that Mr.
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