The man with the long-barrelled rifle none the less avoided the open road and edged along the protecting growth of heavy weed stalk and wild rose thicket until he came to a point where the heavier shadow of the big walnut tree blotted all shapes into blackness. There he cautiously climbed the fence, taking due account of the possible creaking-of unsteady rails.
"I'd love ter see men enabled ter confidence ther co'te ergin," said Parish Thornton, answering his old guest after a long and meditative silence. "Hit would ease a heap of torment. Up ter now they've hed ter trust tha'r rifle-guns."
As he spoke his eyes went to the wall by the door where during these weeks of disuse his own rifle had stood leaning, and his wife smiled as her glance followed his. She was thinking that soon both his arms would be strong enough to use it again, and she was happy that he would need it only for hunting.
The man outside had by this time gained the dooryard and stood beside the tree trunk where the shadow was deepest. He raised his long barrel and steadied it against the bark, not knowing that as coincidence would have it the metal rested against those initials which had been carved there generations before, making of the tree itself a monument to the dead.
Through the raised window he could see two heads in the lamplight; those of Parish Thornton and his wife, and it was easy to draw his sights upon the point just below the left shoulder blade of the man's back. Old Man Rowlett sat too far to one side to be visible.
High in the top of the walnut a shattered branch had hung in a hair balance since the great storm had stricken it. High winds had more than once threatened to bring this dead wood down, yet it had remained there, out of reach and almost out of sight but still precariously lodged.
The wind to-night was light and capricious, yet it was just as the man, who was using that tree as an ambush, established touch between finger and trigger, that the splintered piece of timber broke away from its support and ripped its way noisily downward until a crotch caught and held it. Startled by that unexpected alarm from above, given as though the tree had been a living sentinel, the rifleman jerked his gun upward as he fired.
The bullet passed through the window to bury itself with a spiteful thud in the wall above the hearth. Both men and the woman came to their feet with astonished faces turned toward the window.
Parish Thornton reached for the pistol which he had laid on the mantel, but before he had gained the door he saw Dorothy flash past him, seizing his rifle as she went, and a few seconds later he heard the clean-lipped snap of its voice in a double report.
"I got him," panted the young woman, as her husband reached her side. "Git down low on ther ground!" She did likewise as she added in a guarded whisper, "I shot at his legs, so he's still got his rifle an' both hands. He drapped right thar by ther fence."