And still the boy stood holding his pistol, stunned, frigid, numbed—pointing at the stars.
Silently he brought his arm and weapon down. He heard only shouts of the mob as they rushed against the jail, and then, high above it, the words of the blacksmith, whom he loved so well: “Stand back—all; Me—me alone, shoot—me! I who have so often killed the law, let me die for it.”
And then came to the boy's ears the terrible staccato cough of the two Colts pistols whose very fire he had learned to know so well. And he knew that the blacksmith alone was shooting—the blacksmith he loved so—the marksman he worshipped—the man who had saved his life—the man who had just shot his father.
Richard Travis sat up with an effort and looked at the boy standing by him—looked at him with frank, kindly eyes,—eyes which begged forgiveness, and the boy saw himself there—in Richard Travis, and felt a hurtful, pitying sorrow for him, and then an uncontrolled, hot anger at the man who had shot him out of the saddle. His eyes twitched wildly, his heart jumped in smothering beats, a dry sob choked him, and he sprang forward crying: “My father—oh, God—my poor father!”
Richard Travis looked up and smiled at him.
“You shoot well, my son,” he said, “but not quick enough.”
The boy, weeping, saw. Shamed,—burning—he knelt and tried to staunch the wound with a handkerchief. Travis shook his head: “Let it out, my son—let it out—it is poison! Let it out!”
Then he lay down again on the ground. It felt sweet to rest.
The boy saw his blood on the ground and he shouted: “Blood,—my father—blood is thicker than water.”
Then the hatred that had burned in his heart for his father, the father who had begot him into the world, disgraced, forsaken—the father who had ruined and abandoned his mother, was turned into a blaze of fury against the blacksmith, the blacksmith whom he had loved.