Then, abruptly, his legs crumpled beneath him. He sagged and swayed for an instant; there was a ghastly, ragged, spongy gap between his shoulders.
Then, with a crash, the mighty form sank to the altar, and lay there motionless upon its back, legs close together, the arms stretched straight outward from the body.
Burton mopped his wet features and eyed his awful work without emotion.
A little the hard-breathing man-hunter pondered. Then, having taken a fresh quid of tobacco, he levied upon his strength and lifted the body from the pulpit, and placed it upon a bench. He wiped the blood from his clothes and shoes and, rolling his handkerchief into a ball, tossed it away.
The red blood had crawled upward and touched the old man's hoary crown. It had traveled downward toward his heavy boots. It had followed the coat-sleeves of his two sprawling arms.
And now that the body had been taken away, the vermilion imprint of a ragged, dripping cross was clearly etched upon the smooth pine of the unpainted altar.
When the crash of the gun had died away, Lem raised his head and peered over the log toward the church, expecting to see his father emerge. He waited several seconds. He wondered why the old man did not call. He yearned for his own gun now, inside the church.
Then he lay down behind the log again with a sober fear creeping upon him. Then he remembered whose son he was, and almost snickered aloud at his fears. The boy could not conceive any odds that his father, Cap Lutts, could not vanquish. His thoughts flew backward to the valorous achievements of his parent.
Now he crawled to the end of the log and peered again toward the church door. He told himself that the old man would come out of that door where he had gone in. He knew that the old man would come out of the church dragging the revenuer after him--hauling the thing as he had seen him haul a half-dead, struggling bear.
Presently he spied a yellowish-white vapor trailing out of the church door into the lifeless air. Instinct told him that it was not his father's gun that had spoken. He started to his feet.
A terrible, sickening apprehension filtered into his numbed senses. Then, weaponless and forgetful of the prowess of the uncanny man-tiger within, the boy grabbed a huge wooden mallet near by and rushed inside.