"Now drive 'em in, boys—drive th' wild hawgs in with th' old Scratch!" he yelled.
And in a trice, Hatfield had turned that hillside graveyard into a seething crucible, whose moulten maw opened and sucked the living in with the impotent smothered dead. Seemingly, every soul tethered in the confines of that silent dead-plot came to quick ghostly life, and pushed up out of the ground into the moonlight, wielding a lance of darting, destructive lightning. Up from a hundred sodden graves, a hundred human forms sprang, and the tombstones belched out liquid death. And the May night was ruptured with a deluge of gun-shots, and harried with a chaos of curses, and death-groans, and the frenzied squealing of horses. And the air was rife with a pungent odor, not unlike brimstone, as over this seething disaster the powder vapor lifted and arose against the moon mist, studded and starred with spurting tongues of alternate flame, and twisted an ephemeral arch that, seemingly, framed the gates of hell.
The McGills afoot had some show at seeking cover and retreat, but not so the horsemen. They became inextricably jammed into the narrow turn in the road, and the harder they struggled to turn about, or go forward, the more entangled they became. To jump from their mounts in this instant of turmoil and surprise meant sure death.
Into this struggling, tangled mass of plunging, besmeared horses, and fighting, snarling, bleeding men, Johnse Hatfield had plunged his own horse, followed by his ferocious riders, now blind-mad with the lust of battle. And all the while the lead rained down from the graveyard without cessation.
Hatfield had only one object in view now. He knew that the old coward, Eversole, was not there. He had seen the sheriff go down, and knew that he was under the horses. In the rise and fall of the conflict, he could not locate Sap McGill, but he did see Orlick, and Orlick saw him at the same time, and tried vainly and frantically to force his horse out of the mêlée.
As Hatfield forged his way nearer and nearer, Orlick raised his pistol and fired at him. But at that instant a horse reared between them, and the animal received the ball in the head and fell back against Johnse's mount, knocking it to its knees. When Hatfield saw Orlick again, he was on the outer edge of the combat, and would have been away had not a man seized Orlick's bridle and held on. Johnse saw him fire in the man's face, and saw the man's head disappear.
Free at last, Orlick turned and drove his horse up the road toward town like the wind. Hatfield now stabbed his horse cruelly, and forced it up, over and through the fighting mass, and followed Orlick, leaving the battle behind. But Orlick's horse was a swift and powerful animal, and Hatfield lost ground.
All this while Buddy Lutts had been busy. He had climbed to the top of a clay bank, forty feet above, and was sharp-shooting with telling effect. Looking down in the moon mist upon the struggle, it was hard for him to distinguish the enemy from his own people, but every time he saw a man break away and run back toward the town, he knew it to be a McGill and he fired with careful aim.
It was while thus engaged that the boy discerned Orlick's big gray leap out and gallop toward town. Buddy raised his rifle and pulled the trigger, but there was no report. His gun was empty. While he was fumbling nervously in his haste to reload, he saw the piebald break out and dash up the road, and he knew that Johnse was after Orlick. When Buddy had loaded the rifle, he crept along the brow of the hill and started to run after Hatfield. He had not gone far when he came unexpectedly upon four men. The boy, startled, jerked his rifle to his shoulder, when the men in his path threw up their hands, one holding a white handkerchief above his head and calling upon the boy not to shoot.
Ignoring their friendly overtures, Buddy circled around them and ran onward at top speed toward town. The men were Logan and the three newspaper reporters, following the progress of the fight at the risk of their lives. Johnse Hatfield already had five bullets in his body and was bleeding profusely, but he spurred ahead unmindful of his wounds, keeping the fleeing gray in sight.