Wheeling, he rushed toward the jail, but met the mob pouring panic-stricken back with white faces, blanched with fear.
Jack Bracken stood alone on the barricade, shoving more cartridges into his pistol chambers.
The boy, blinded, weeping, hot with a burning revenge, stumbled and fell twice over dead men lying near the gateway. Then he crawled along over them under cover of the fence, and kneeling within twenty feet of the gate, fired at the great calm figure who had driven the mob back, and now stood reloading.
Jack did not see the boy till he felt the ball crush into his side. Then all the old, desperate, revengeful instinct of the outlaw leaped into his eyes as he quickly turned his unerring pistol on the object from whence the flash came. Never had he aimed so accurately, so carefully, for he felt his own life going out, and this—this was his last shot—to kill.
But the object kneeling among the dead arose with a smile of revengeful triumph and stood up calmly under the aim of the great pistol, his fair hair flung back, his face lit up with the bravery of all the Travises as he shouted:
“Take that—damn you—from a Travis!”
And when Jack saw and understood, a smile broke through his bloodshot, vengeful eyes as starlight falls on muddy waters, and he turned away his death-seeking aim, and his mouth trembled as he said:
“Why—it's—it's the Little 'Un! I cudn't kill him—” and he clutched at the cotton-bale as he went down, falling—and Captain Tom grasped him, letting him down gently.