about three o'clock in the
evening
`` Therefore and accordingly , no sooner did I hear the news about the dare which the Tatums had sent to the Stackpoles than I said to myself that it looked like here was my fitting chance to even up my grudge with Jess Tatum and yet at the same time not run the prospect of being known to be mixed up in the matter and maybe getting arrested , or waylaid afterwards by members of the Tatum family or things of such a nature . Likewise I figured that with a general amount of shooting going on , as seemed likely to be the case , one shot more or less would not be noticed , especially as I aimed to keep out of sight at all times and do my work from under safe cover , which it all of it turned out practically exactly as I had expected . So I took a rifle which I owned and which I was a good shot with and I privately went down through the bottoms and came out on the creek bank in the deep cut right behind Stackpole Brothers ' gristmill . I should say offhand this was then about three o'clock in the evening . I was ahead of time , but I wished to be there and get everything fixed up the way I had mapped it out in my mind , without being hurried or rushed . `` The back door of the mill was not locked , and I got in without being seen , and I went upstairs to the loft over the mill and I went to a window just above the front door , which was where they hoisted up grain when brought in wagons , and I propped the wooden shutter of the window open a little ways . But I only propped it open about two or three inches ; just enough for me to see out of it up the road good .