"No," said the girl, with drooping head. "He stepped out from behind the
rock where he was hidin', an' he pulled the trigger of his rifle. But
luck was dead against us that day. Wet powder--somethin'--nobody knows
what. The gun did not go off. Before he got it well down from his
shoulder so's to find out what it was that ailed it, Lem Lindsay was
upon him like a mountain lion--an' he laid him thar beside my daddy. He
didn't mean that there should be no witnesses."

She paused so long that Layson was about to speak, feeling the silence
troublesome and painful, but before he had decided what to say in
comment on a tale so dreadful, she went on:

"He didn't mean there should be no witnesses, Lem Lindsay didn't, but as
it happened there was two. My mother, me clasped in her arms, had stole
after my daddy, fearin' that somethin' wicked would come out o' that
there meetin' with his old-time enemy. She spoke up sudden, an'
surprised th' murderer, standin' there by th' two poor men he'd killed.
At first it scared him. I can't remember everythin' about that awful
day, but I can see Lem Lindsay's face as she screamed at him, just as
plain this minute as I seed it then. I'll never forget that look if I
live a thousand years!

"At first he was struck dumb, but then that passed. He give a yell of
rage an' started toward us on th' run. She jumped, with me a-hinderin'
her. Like a mountain deer she run, in spite of that. She was lighter on
her feet than he was upon his, an' soon outdistanced him. He hadn't
stopped to pick his rifle up--he only had th' knife he'd done th'
killin' with, so he couldn't do what he'd 'a' liked to done--shoot down
a woman an' a baby!