yarn sock falling down into the wrinkled and gaping top of
an ancient congress gaiter.

From out of the woods came Anse Dugmore, bareheaded, crusted to his
knees with dried mud and wet from the rain that had been dripping down
since daybreak. A purpose showed in all the lines of his slouchy frame.

Pegleg jerked his rifle up, but he was hampered by the boy's arms about
his middle and by his insecure perch upon the peaks of the slab-sided
mule. The man afoot fired before the mounted enemy could swing his
gunbarrel into line. The bullet ripped away the lower part of Pegleg's
face and grazed the cheek of the crouching youngster behind him. The
white-eyed nephew slid head first off the buck-jumping mule and
instantly scuttled on all fours into the underbrush. The rifle dropped
out of Trantham's hands and he lurched forward on the mule's neck,
grabbing out with blind, groping motions. Dugmore stepped two paces
forward to free his eyes of the smoke, which eddied back from his
gunmuzzle into his face, and fired twice rapidly. The mule was bouncing
up and down, sideways, in a mild panic. Pegleg rolled off her, as inert
as a sack of grits, and lay face upward in the path, with his arms wide
outspread on the mud. The mule galloped off in a restrained and
dignified style until she was a hundred yards away, and then, having
snorted the smells of burnt powder and fresh blood out of her nostrils,
she fell to cropping the young leaves off the wayside bushes, mouthing
the tender green shoots on her heavy iron bit contentedly.

For a long minute Anse Dugmore stood in the narrow footpath, listening.
Then he slid three new shells into his rifle, and slipping down the bank
he crossed the creek on a jam of driftwood and, avoiding the roads that
followed the little watercourse, made over the shoulder of the mountain
for his cabin, two miles down on the opposite side. When he was gone
from sight the nephew of the dead Trantham rolled out of his hiding
place and fled up the road, holding one hand to his wounded cheek and
whimpering. Presently a gaunt, half-wild boar pig, with his spine arched
like the mountains, came sniffing slowly down the hill, pausing
frequently to cock his wedge-shaped head aloft and fix a hostile eye on
two turkey buzzards that began to swing in narrowing circles over one
particular spot on the bank of the creek.

The following day Anse sent word to the sheriff that he would be coming
in to give himself up. It would n