The three Hatfield men had crawfished back into a dense dewberry patch, while the three in the shop had crawled into the loft and hidden among the miscellaneous rubbish. As there was no more shooting, and as the Hatfields could be seen in the moonshine fleeing down the white road, the McGills decided to overtake them and wipe them from the earth, and the Courthouse now quickly disgorged its mob of eager, infuriated militants.

Regardless of ownership, men unhitched and mounted the first horse or mule they came upon. Old Eversole dashed across the street and banged on his store door for admittance. His women folks having barred and bolted the doors, he called loudly for his clerk, but Plunkett had disappeared. Presently a woman admitted him at the saloon door. He rushed into the bar and gulped down a glass of liquor—then, gathering all the cartridges he had in the place, he ran out and distributed them among the men.

Sap McGill and Orlick were astride their own mounts, and McGill was crying for the men to make greater haste. McGill rode a light dun animal, and Orlick a powerful dappled gray with a bobbed tail. With thirty-odd horsemen and twoscore or more rifle men afoot, they now dashed after their fleeing opponents, who made a dark splotch in the moonlit road far ahead.

This road ran straight until it reached the graveyard, where it made a short, sharp turn to the left, looping around the base of a hill that jutted outward. This abrupt turn in the road was directly opposite, and midway of the front length of the graveyard, which was elevated some fifteen feet above the road-bed and occupied the slope. Hatfield's horses were hitched just around the bend in the road. When the sixteen men were mounted, he ordered them back along the rail fence for a distance of fifty yards.

Buddy Lutts, clinging to his ready rifle, was eternally at Hatfield's heels. Johnse had ordered him back three times; now he took him by the collar and fairly dragged the protesting boy back and told the men to keep him there. Buddy's peaked face was flushed with a look that partially expressed the wild exultation that obsessed him. Hatfield mounted his piebald mare and, advancing, drew in close to the clay bank that jutted into the road, and here he waited, tense and rigid.

When he heard the clattering hoofbeats thundering down toward the graveyard, he urged his horse a few yards nearer the point, then with a Colt gun in either hand, his habitually smiling lips broke into a brutal grin, and his little reddish eyes snapped murderously.

The stillness was quickened again, on the brink of this Waterloo, with the stuttering wail of a screech-owl watching from the dead yard. Always wary, the McGill cavalcade drew up short at the bend and waited for their panting horde behind. Then they pushed boldly around the bend.

It was just then that the indescribable, tragic scene took place that stamped its grim memory ineffaceably in these mountains, and made a crimson stain on feudal history, known ever afterward, as the "graveyard massacre."

When Johnse Hatfield saw the noses of the McGill horses, he uttered a wild yell of triumph that pierced the far-reaching hills, and called up an invocation to the mute tombs above.

"Now drive 'em in, boys—drive th' wild hawgs in with th' old Scratch!" he yelled.

And in a trice, Hatfield had turned that hillside graveyard into a seething crucible, whose moulten maw opened and sucked the living in with the impotent smothered dead. Seemingly, every soul tethered in the confines of that silent dead-plot came to quick ghostly life, and pushed up out of the ground into the moonlight, wielding a lance of darting, destructive lightning. Up from a hundred sodden graves, a hundred human forms sprang, and the tombstones belched out liquid death. And the May night was ruptured with a deluge of gun-shots, and harried with a chaos of curses, and death-groans, and the frenzied squealing of horses. And the air was rife with a pungent odor, not unlike brimstone, as over this seething disaster the powder vapor lifted and arose against the moon mist, studded and starred with spurting tongues of alternate flame, and twisted an ephemeral arch that, seemingly, framed the gates of hell.

The McGills afoot had some show at seeking cover and retreat, but not so the horsemen. They became inextricably jammed into the narrow turn in the road, and the harder they struggled to turn about, or go forward, the more entangled they became. To jump from their mounts in this instant of turmoil and surprise meant sure death.

Into this struggling, tangled mass of plunging, besmeared horses, and fighting, snarling, bleeding men, Johnse Hatfield had plunged his own horse, followed by his ferocious riders, now blind-mad with the lust of battle. And all the while the lead rained down from the graveyard without cessation.

Hatfield had only one object in view now. He knew that the old coward, Eversole, was not there. He had seen the sheriff go down, and knew that he was under the horses. In the rise and fall of the conflict, he could not locate Sap McGill, but he did see Orlick, and Orlick saw him at the same time, and tried vainly and frantically to force his horse out of the mÊlÉe.

As Hatfield forged his way nearer and nearer, Orlick raised his pistol and fired at him. But at that instant a horse reared between them, and the animal received the ball in the head and fell back against Johnse's mount, knocking it to its knees. When Hatfield saw Orlick again, he was on the outer edge of the combat, and would have been away had not a man seized Orlick's bridle and held on. Johnse saw him fire in the man's face, and saw the man's head disappear.

Free at last, Orlick turned and drove his horse up the road toward town like the wind. Hatfield now stabbed his horse cruelly, and forced it up, over and through the fighting mass, and followed Orlick, leaving the battle behind. But Orlick's horse was a swift and powerful animal, and Hatfield lost ground.

All this while Buddy Lutts had been busy. He had climbed to the top of a clay bank, forty feet above, and was sharp-shooting with telling effect. Looking down in the moon mist upon the struggle, it was hard for him to distinguish the enemy from his own people, but every time he saw a man break away and run back toward the town, he knew it to be a McGill and he fired with careful aim.

It was while thus engaged that the boy discerned Orlick's big gray leap out and gallop toward town. Buddy raised his rifle and pulled the trigger, but there was no report. His gun was empty. While he was fumbling nervously in his haste to reload, he saw the piebald break out and dash up the road, and he knew that Johnse was after Orlick. When Buddy had loaded the rifle, he crept along the brow of the hill and started to run after Hatfield. He had not gone far when he came unexpectedly upon four men. The boy, startled, jerked his rifle to his shoulder, when the men in his path threw up their hands, one holding a white handkerchief above his head and calling upon the boy not to shoot.

Ignoring their friendly overtures, Buddy circled around them and ran onward at top speed toward town. The men were Logan and the three newspaper reporters, following the progress of the fight at the risk of their lives. Johnse Hatfield already had five bullets in his body and was bleeding profusely, but he spurred ahead unmindful of his wounds, keeping the fleeing gray in sight.

When Orlick turned the corner and vanished, Johnse called upon his mare for all the speed that was in her. As he made the corner and swerved to the right past Eversole's store, old Hank jumped out and fired upon him. The ball broke Johnse's left arm and his pistol slipped from a nerveless hand to the ground.

Undaunted, and without slacking his pace, Hatfield wheeled in the saddle and fired two quick shots with his right. He saw old Eversole pitch headlong into the horse-trough. Because of a line of trees that cast a black shadow along the main street, he could not now see Orlick's gray, but he could hear the tattoo of the horse's hoofs. Determined to overtake this traitor, Hatfield urged his mare to her utmost. In a few seconds the big gray came out into the moonlight again, and Hatfield saw that Orlick was headed for the river.

As Hatfield divined Orlick's intentions, a savage joy stirred within him and mitigated the torture of a shattered arm and other bodily wounds. He knew that if Orlick attempted to ford that swift, roaring river that he (Hatfield) would get the shot for which he thirsted and, as he spurred his horse after Orlick and felt his strength fast failing him, he fought this weakness off with a mighty will, buoyed up with the thought of how he would at last take toll from this traitor for his part in the killing of old Captain Lutts.

As Johnse flew along, he saw the gray disappear down the river bank. The next minute he was surprised to see the horse plunging back up into sight. Then the horse pivoted and went down again. Then back up the bank he lunged a second time, and Hatfield could hear Orlick cursing the animal, and he knew that for some reason the horse had balked and would not take to the water.

A shock of delight instilled new strength into Hatfield, whose blood had been ebbing away for the past three-quarters of an hour. At this particular spot on the river bank there were no trees, and the rim of the river was destitute of rocks sufficiently large to offer protection for a man's form. But, standing back from the road and some four hundred feet distant from the river bank, there was a deserted old shack with sagging porch and dismantled windows. And just outside the broken picket fence at the near corner of the yard there stood a huge chestnut tree with a thick body.

While Orlick was wrangling with his refractory horse, his actions made it plain to Hatfield that he had marked that tree. Then, evidently despairing of controlling the stubborn animal, he slid to the ground, obviously bent upon making the shelter of the chestnut. Hatfield now bore down upon him, swerving to the right of the road to thwart Orlick's attempt to reach the tree. Whereupon Orlick ran back and along the bank, and dropped in the high weeds.

Hatfield, weak and totally exhausted from pain and loss of blood, now stopped his horse and fell out of the saddle. He gripped his Colt and tottered toward the spot where he had last seen Orlick, but he knew that Orlick would not be on that exact spot. He knew that the man was bellying away like a snake through the grass somewhere. Knowing that he would not last much longer, and desperate in his eagerness to flush Orlick, he stumbled recklessly about through high weeds with his gun out before him and his eyes darting here and there.

Suddenly Orlick jumped up fifty feet to the right in the direction of the chestnut tree and fired. Hatfield also fired at the same time. The two reports seemed to consolidate and make a single echo that quivered across the river. Hatfield pulled the trigger again, but it only clicked emptily and did not respond. Orlick was still upright, but motionless. Hatfield wondered why he did not shoot. Orlick's shot had struck him in the arm that already hung useless and limp at his side. He stood watching him curiously. Then he saw Orlick thrust his gun in its holster and sit down on the ground, as if to rest. He held this position for several seconds—then lay back slowly, flat on his back.

Hatfield suspected Orlick of treachery and hastily proceeded to break his gun with his good hand. This he contrived to do, and while he was fumbling for cartridges, of which he had a countless number, a blinding faintness seized him and, thinking that he was falling backward into the river, he threw up his good arm suddenly to catch his balance. The gun flew out of his grasp and rolled down the embankment.

The next instant he fell forward and lay still on his face in the weeds.