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 quite a little
while to make sure everything was all right for me, and then I hid my
rifle under the meal sacks, where it stayed until I got it privately two
days later; and then I slipped downstairs and went out by the back door
and came round in front, running and breathing hard as though I had just
heard the shooting whilst up in the swamp.
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