Drax kills Stevens

Henry Drax mistakenly shoots Stevens while waiting in a timber yard to kill Patrick Sumner. The episode turns Drax’s planned attack into a fatal error: he believes he has hit his quarry, but discovers that the dead man is Stevens, and Sumner remains hidden nearby. Drax’s intoxication and consuming thirst frame the misidentification as a consequence of his compromised state, while the reversal leaves Sumner able to strike back.

Setting and Intended Target

Drax waits alone in a shadowed timber yard, where a storage shed runs along one side and a ramshackle cabin stands at the far end. Broken bottles, crates, and planking litter the ground. He has brandy with him and drinks as he waits. His attention is fixed on Sumner: Drax intends to shoot the surgeon when he enters the yard, without warning or conversation. He expects the others to talk and plan, but regards himself as the person who will carry out the killing.

The attack is connected to Jacob Baxter’s efforts to have Sumner killed. Drax knows that Baxter expects Sumner to pursue him and refers to the possibility that Baxter will hire someone to look for him in Canada. Instead of waiting for that pursuit, Drax prepares to kill Sumner immediately. His confidence in the plan is practical rather than reflective: he checks his revolver, counts on having enough ammunition, and chooses a position by the gate where he expects his target to arrive.

The Shot and Mistaken Identity

Drax’s preparations are already unstable. When he opens the revolver’s cylinder, bullets fall to the ground. He loses one while trying to retrieve them, staggers, and sees the yard and moon sway. Although his mouth fills with vomit, he swallows it and drinks again. He believes that the remaining bullets are sufficient, because he expects to need only one for Sumner. The scene establishes a stark contrast between the precision his plan requires and the physical impairment he displays.

As the moon disappears behind clouds, the yard becomes harder to see. Hearing men approach, Drax stands, cocks the revolver, and aims toward the gate. Two figures enter side by side, visible to him only as dark, indistinct shapes. He fires at the figure on the left. The man falls, and Drax approaches to determine whether he is dead. After lighting a match, Drax recognizes him as Stevens, not Sumner. His intended killing has become an unintended death, and his mistake leaves the person he meant to shoot unaccounted for.

Search and Confrontation

Drax understands that Sumner has not escaped through the gate. The yard’s high walls, topped with broken glass, make that route unlikely in his estimation, so he concludes that Sumner must still be inside. He calls out to the surgeon and challenges him to come forward, claiming that this is an opportunity to capture him. Drax even places his gun on the ground and raises his hands, offering an unarmed fight while acknowledging that he has been drinking. No one answers, and the darkness gives him no sign of movement.

After waiting, Drax retrieves the revolver and walks toward the cabin. Its door is half open, and its front and side windows are broken. He knows that the first shot may have been heard and fears that delay will cost him his chance to kill Sumner. Yet he does not know where Sumner is concealed. The search brings him to the cabin threshold, where Sumner is waiting with a rusted saw blade. Sumner strikes Drax as he enters and kills him. Drax’s mistaken shot at Stevens therefore does not remove his target; instead, it leads him to continue searching in the same yard where Sumner remains concealed.

Consequences and Significance

The episode reverses the control Drax believes he has over the encounter. He arrives with a firearm, a chosen position, and a simple plan, but his drinking, the dimness, and the indistinct figures at the gate turn his attack against the wrong man. His subsequent challenge cannot draw Sumner into the open, and his search carries him into the cabin where Sumner can attack him. The sequence links Drax’s error directly to his exposure, without suggesting that the mistake itself was deliberate.

Stevens’s death is a consequence of Drax’s attempt to kill Sumner, while Sumner’s survival preserves the confrontation between the two men long enough for Sumner to kill Drax. The scene also makes Drax’s earlier self-assurance look precarious: he treats violence as a task he can execute cleanly, but cannot reliably identify his target. The movement from waiting at the gate to searching the cabin turns the planned ambush into a failed pursuit, and the episode ends with Drax dead rather than Sumner.