"Shoot!" Tot urged frantically.
The old Lancaster cracked like a giant's whip. Cat-Eye Mayfield dropped his rifle now. He turned a dumfounded, ashen face toward the two Singletons, and babbled something unintelligible. Then—although the bullet had only passed through the upper part of his right arm, thanks either to Providence or to a dimness in the old mountaineer's eyes—Mayfield sank to the stones. The sight of his own blood had made him limp.
The Prophet rose unsteadily. The strain on his feeble mind was telling. He stretched wide his lean arms, and the bright sun threw his shadow down the incline in the form of an inverted cross.
He called to the man in the Gate, "Come up here, Little Buck Wolfe," thickly, "and arrest me fo' mudder!"
VI
At the sound of the shot, Wolfe looked up quickly. He saw the gaunt old man go tottering to his feet, saw Tot standing with her hands clutching at her calico dress below her throat; but because of the creek's dashing he did not hear the Prophet's agonized cry. Wolfe dismounted, fastened his horse's reins to a sapling, and hurried up the rocky steep.
The young woman and her grandparent had come down to where Mayfield lay groaning.
"He hain't dead," said Tot. "He's jest bad hurt. And you'd shore better take him along to town with ye, Little Buck, and jail him, ef ye don't want to be ambushed some other time."
Poor old Grandpap Singleton fell to his knees beside the man he had shot. "He hain't dead!" he rejoiced. "He hain't dead!" His hands were clasped against his hollow breast. His joy was even more pathetic than his grief had been before it.