Jack did not see the boy till he felt the ball crush into his side. Then all the old, desperate, revengeful instinct of the outlaw leaped into his eyes as he quickly turned his unerring pistol on the object from whence the flash came. Never had he aimed so accurately, so carefully, for he felt his own life going out, and this--this was his last shot--to kill. But the object kneeling among the dead arose with a smile of revengeful triumph and stood up calmly under the aim of the great pistol, his fair hair flung back, his face lit up with the bravery of all the Travises as he shouted: "Take that--damn you--from a Travis!" And when Jack saw and understood, a smile broke through his bloodshot, vengeful eyes as starlight falls on muddy waters, and he turned away his death-seeking aim, and his mouth trembled as he said: "Why--it's--it's the Little 'Un! I cudn't kill him--" and he clutched at the cotton-bale as he went down, falling--and Captain Tom grasped him, letting him down gently. CHAPTER XXIV THE ATONEMENT And now no one stood between the prisoner and death but the old preacher and the tall man in the uniform of a Captain of Artillery. And death it meant to all of them, defenders as well as prisoners, for the mob had increased in numbers as in fury. Friends, kindred, brothers, fathers--even mothers and sisters of the dead were there, bitter in the thought that their dead had been murdered--white men, for one old negress. In their fury they did not think it was the law they themselves were murdering. The very name of the law was now hateful to them--the law that had killed their people. Slowly, surely, but with grim deadliness they laid their plans--this time to run no risk of failure. There was a stillness solemn and all-pervading. And from the window of the jail came again in wailing uncanny notes:-- "I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger, I can tarry, I can tarry but a night--" It swept over the mob, frenzied now to the stillness of a white heat, like a challenge to battle, like the flaunt of a red flag. Their dead lay all about the gate of the rock fence, stark and still. Their wounded were few--for Jack Bracken did not wound. They saw them all--dead--lying out there dead--and they were willing to die themselves for the blood of the old woman--a negro for whom white men had been killed. But their wrath now took another form. It was the wrath of coolness. They had had enough of the other kind. To rush again on those bales of cotton doubly protected behind a rock fence, through one small gate, commanded by the fire of such marksmen as lay there, was not to be thought of. They would burn the jail over the heads of its defenders and kill them as they were uncovered. A hundred men would fire the jail from the rear, a hundred more with guns would shoot in front. It was Jud Carpenter who planned it, and soon oil and saturated paper and torches were prepared.