For a goodish bit not one of us let on.  Then I heard Case begin to move nearer in the bush, but mighty careful.  The image had burned out; there were only a few coals left here and there, and the wood was main dark, but had a kind of a low glow in it like a fire on its last legs.  It was by this that I made out Case’s head looking at me over a big tuft of ferns, and at the same time the brute saw me and shouldered his Winchester.  I lay quite still, and as good as looked into the barrel:  it was my last chance, but I thought my heart would have come right out of its bearings.  Then he fired.  Lucky for me it was no shot-gun, for the bullet struck within an inch of me and knocked the dirt in my eyes.

Just you try and see if you can lie quiet, and let a man take a sitting shot at you and miss you by a hair.  But I did, and lucky too.  A while Case stood with the Winchester at the port-arms; then he gave a little laugh to himself, and stepped round the ferns.

“Laugh!” thought I.  “If you had the wit of a louse you would be praying!”

I was all as taut as a ship’s hawser or the spring of a watch, and as soon as he came within reach of me I had him by the ankle, plucked the feet right out from under him, laid him out, and was upon the top of him, broken leg and all, before he breathed.  His Winchester had gone the same road as my shot-gun; it was nothing to me — I defied him now.  I’m a pretty strong man anyway, but I never knew what strength was till I got hold of Case.  He was knocked out of time by the rattle he came down with, and threw up his hands together, more like a frightened woman, so that I caught both of them with my left.  This wakened him up, and he fastened his teeth in my forearm like a weasel.  Much I cared.  My leg gave me all the pain I had any use for, and I drew my knife and got it in the place.

“Now,” said I, “I’ve got you; and you’re gone up, and a good job too!  Do you feel the point of that?  That’s for Underhill!  And there’s for Adams!  And now here’s for Uma, and that’s going to knock your blooming soul right out of you!”

With that I gave him the cold steel for all I was worth.  His body kicked under me like a spring sofa; he gave a dreadful kind of a long moan, and lay still.

“I wonder if you’re dead?  I hope so!” I thought, for my head was swimming.  But I wasn’t going to take chances; I had his own example too close before me for that; and I tried to draw the knife out to give it him again.  The blood came over my hands, I remember, hot as tea; and with that I fainted clean away, and fell with my head on the man’s mouth.

When I came to myself it was pitch dark; the cinders had burned out; there was nothing to be seen but the shine of the dead wood, and I couldn’t remember where I was nor why I was in such pain nor what I was all wetted with.  Then it came back, and the first thing I attended to was to give him the knife again a half-a-dozen times up to the handle.  I believe he was dead already, but it did him no harm and did me good.