Champion, with a curse at himself for having only a knife and a derringer, flew up a stair and into the Courier office.
"Lend me something to shoot with, Jeff-Jack, the Yahoos are after John March."
Ravenel handed from a desk-drawer, that stood open close to his hand, a six-shooter. Champion ran down-stairs. Ravenel stepped, smiling, to a window.
March had turned his back and was putting up the sign, pressing the nails into their former places with his thumb. Men all about were peeping from windows and doors. Champion ran to the nearest tree in the square and from behind it peered here and there to catch sight of the dismounted horseman, who was stealing back to his gun.
"Keep me well covered, you lean devil," growled John to Enos, "or I'll shoot you without warning!" Working left-handed, he dropped the thumb-tack. With a curse between his teeth he stooped and picked it up, but could not press it firmly into place. He leaned his rifle against the door-post, drew the revolver and used its butt as a hammer. Champion saw an elbow bend back from behind a tree. The mountaineer's brother had recovered his gun and was aiming it. The captain fired and hit the tree. March whirled upon Enos with the revolver in his face, the drunkard flinched violently when not to have flinched would have saved both lives, and from the tree-trunk that Champion had struck a rifle puffed and cracked. March heard the spat of a bullet, and with a sudden horrid widening of the eyes Enos fell into his bosom.
"Great God! Enos, your brother didn't mean to——"
The only reply was a fixing of the eyes, and Enos slid through his arms and sank to the pavement dead.
Champion had tripped on a root and got a cruel fall, losing his weapon in a drift of leaves; but as the brother of Enos was just capping his swiftly reloaded gun—
"Throw up your hands!" cried Parson Tombs, laying his aged eye along the sights of March's rifle; the hands went up and in a moment were in the clutch of the town marshal, while a growing crowd ran from the prisoner and from Champion to John March, who knelt with Parson Tombs beside the dead man, moaning,
"O good Lord! good Lord! this needn't 'a' been! O Enos, I'd better 'a' killed you myself! O great God, why didn't I keep this from happening, when I——"