The man in the street near Peden's was the first to see and recognize him as he waited there on his horse in the pose of challenge, in the expectant, determined attitude of defense. This fellow yelled the alarm and charged, breakneck through the smoke, shooting as he came.
Morgan fired one shot, offhand. The charging horse reared, stood so a moment as rigidly as if fixed by bronze in that pose, its rider leaning forward over its neck. Then, in whatever terrible pang that such sudden stroke of death visits, it flung itself backward, the girths snapping from its distended belly. The rider was flung aside, where Morgan saw him lying, head on one extended arm, like a dog asleep in the sun.
The others came whooping their triumphant challenge and closed in on Morgan then, and the battle of his life began.
How many were circling him as he stood in the center of the square, or as close to the center as he could draw, near the courthouse steps, Morgan did not know. Some had come from behind the courthouse, others from the tame fight with the citizens back of the stores not yet on fire.
The dust that rose from their great tumult of charge and galloping attack, mingling with the smoke that trailed the ground, was Morgan's protection and salvation. Nothing else saved him from almost immediate death in the fury of their assault.
Morgan fired at the fleeting figures as they moved in obscurity through this stifling cloud, circling him like Indians of the plains, shouting to each other his location, drawing in upon him a little nearer as they rode. He turned and shifted, yet he was a target all too plain for anything he could do to lessen his peril.
A horse came plunging toward him through the blinding swirl, plain for a flash of wild-flying mane and tossing rein, its saddle empty, fleeing from the scene of fire-swept conflict as if urged on by the ghost of the rider it had lost.
Bullets clipped Morgan's saddle as the raiders circled him in a wild fête of shots and yells. One struck his rifle, running down the barrel to the grip like a lightning bolt, spattering hot lead on his hand; another clicked on the ornament of the Spanish bit, frightening his horse, before that moment as steady as if at work on the range. The shaken creature leaped, bunching its body in a shuddering knot. Blood ran from its mouth in a stream.
A shot ripped through the high cantle of the saddle; one seared Morgan's back as it rent his shirt. The horse leaped, to come down stiff-legged like an outlaw, bleeding head thrust forward, nose close to the ground. Then it reared and plunged, striking wildly with fore feet upon the death-laden air.