Williams spoke first:
“Sam Johnson, you sent for me, and I've come.”
The Sheriff answered firmly, “I did!”
Their hands went up, and crack! crack! crack! in quick succession, three or four or five reports—I don't know how many. At the first shots the Sheriff fell forward on his face. Williams started to run along the side-walk; the groups of men at the corner, through whom he must pass, closed together; then came another report, and at the same moment he stopped, turned slowly half round, and sank down in a heap like an empty sack.
I hurried to him; he had fallen almost as a tailor sits, but his head was between his knees. I lifted it gently; blood was oozing from a hole in the forehead. The men were about me; I heard them say:
“A derned good shot! Took him in the back of the head. Jarvis kin shoot!”
I rose to my feet. Jarvis was standing inside the fence supported by some one; blood was welling from his bared left shoulder.
“I ain't much hurt,” he said, “but I guess the Sheriff's got it bad.”
The men moved on, drawing me with them, through the gate to where the Sheriff lay. Martin turned him over on his back. They opened his shirt, and there on the broad chest were two little blue marks, each in the centre of a small mound of pink flesh.