“I am going to kill him,” said Jeffrey under his breath, as he again fixed the sights of his rifle, this time full on the man’s breast.
A shot rang out in front somewhere. Rogers threw up his hands, took a half step forward, and fell on his face.
Jeffrey, his finger still clinging to the trigger which he had not pulled, ran forward to where the man lay.
He was lying face down, his arms stretched out wide at either side, his fingers convulsively clutching at tufts of grass.
He was dying. No need for a second look.
His hat had fallen off to a little distance. There was a clean round hole in the back of the skull. The close-cropped, iron grey hair showed just the merest streak of red.
Just out of reach of one of his hands lay a still flaming railroad torch, with which he had done his work.
Jeffrey peered through the wood in the direction from which the shot had come. There was no smoke, no noise of any one running away, no sign of another human being anywhere.
Away back of him he heard shots, one, two, 133 three; Stocking, probably, or some of the other men who must be in the neighbourhood, firing at other fleeing figures in the woods.
He grabbed the burning torch, pulled out the wick and stamped it into a patch of burnt ground, threw the torch back from the fire line, and started clubbing the fire out of the grass with the butt of his rifle.