Conditions underfoot were satisfactory. The prevailing westerly winds sweeping round the corner of the barn had cleared away all leaves and debris. I cautiously disengaged and crawled back through the darkness of the copse parallel to the northern wall. When I was out of all possible sight I crossed the open strip to the wall itself, and began to work my way back along it towards the corner. There I was behind his position. It would be a longish shot — for that light — across the bare ground, but I reckoned I should have time to aim carefully.
Hugging the wall, I peered round the northwest corner of the barn. I could not see him. I came to the conclusion that he must be standing up against the trunk of the tree.
He fired. The shot struck me full in the forehead. I was sure of that, yet the body refused to believe that it was dead. It scuttled away like a rat, back along the wall, and staggered into the safety of the trees. I think it even turned and twisted among them to throw off pursuit. It dropped behind some low, black thing, while the person carried in this automaton of terrified muscles put his hand to his forehead and collapsed.
I have the impression that my unconsciousness was not total; if it was, then there is some primitive savior in the damaged animal watching on its behalf until the higher nervous centers regain control. Something must have been listening, for I knew that St. Sabas had not followed me. That something, when I was capable of checking intuition, was right. There was no sound at all of riding boots shuffling lightly over leaves.
I raised my face just off the ground and took my hand away from my forehead. Immediately blood poured over my eyelids. Very delicately and still wondering, I dabbled in the mess. There was no hole in the skull.
Then what had happened? It seemed likely that I had forgotten dawn and misjudged the light. St. Sabas, taking an occasional look behind him, had seen my head peering round the corner of the barn with insolent over-confidence against the streak of eastern sky. He had missed —but either the bullet ricocheting off the wall or a chunk of stone dislodged by it had plowed across my forehead. I tried to get the flap of scalp back into position and bandage it with a handkerchief. I could not lift my hands behind my head to tie a knot. Again I fainted.
When I drifted back to consciousness the light was growing gray — still a dark gray, but where there were trees one behind another I could distinguish them all as separate. I was lying behind a fallen branch and easily to be seen if St. Sabas looked for me. I could not understand why he was not on me already. He need not even use his last shot. A boot would do.
It was an effort to remember that he was human, that he had no power to follow scent or see in the dark. Of course his right game was to wait another ten minutes for a little more light and crouch over the blood trail which would lead him to me.
I remembered beasts from my shooting days before the war which I never found. Did they die or did they recover? They had a better chance of escaping than I. Often the loose skin, stretched by running, no longer corresponded with the hole in the flesh, and the blood trail petered out. Then the brown eyes, dull with pain and fear, must often have watched me pass the cover — likely as not another fallen branch — and go ignorantly away.
The light grew. St. Sabas could see the blood now whenever he chose to look. There must be little pools of it, not just traces on grass and leaf. A scalp wound, when fresh, is the messiest of all.
At last I heard him. He was still opposite the western side of the barn and trying to choke down a fit of coughing — which, earlier, would have killed him. The effort he made reminded me that in his eyes I was still dangerous.
I had forgotten that he too was wounded, once if not twice. That was the likeliest reason why he had not charged out after me when I was hit; he was thankful for a rest. Whether dying or not, at any rate I was out of action. He could be sure that this time I was not bluffing. With a bit of luck I might be blind. But meanwhile I still had two rounds in the magazine.
He was right. I was not harmless at all, and if I could lie up safely a little longer I might still have a last spring in me. Through all these minutes of half-conscious self-pity I had been identifying myself with some harmless creature dying defenseless in the forest. But it was I who was the wounded tiger, not he. I raised my head for the first time and looked round. My fallen branch gave no cover for even half-light, and the patches of blood must point straight at it.
Was it possible to change position? If I were going to try, I must begin at once. I could not. The thought of any physical action was so repugnant that I welcomed excuses. I should faint in the open. I should leave such a trail that it was futile to hide myself. In imagination I could see him bobbing intently from tree to tree until he reached … but until he reached whatever I wanted him to reach, of course!
It was a grim and cruel thought from which to recover morale. Yet that was its effect. If I could find the strength to lay a blood trail which led past the barrel of the Mauser, I and my future were safe.
I looked round for some shelter, not too far away, into which I could reasonably have stumbled at the end of my first blind rush. There were two possibles. One was a bit of broken wall near the edge of the windbreak; the other, a little hollow which might once have taken the overflow of the spring. Neither was any use for defense, but both had to be approached closely before St. Sabas could see whether my body was lying on the ground.
To one or the other I had to make a followable trail. When he came across the matted blood and leaves behind the branch where I had collapsed, it must be clear to him in what direction I had crawled on. Whether I chose wall or hollow, he would not walk straight up to it, but would try to work his way round and take a look from any convenient cover.
I could not distinguish clearly all the details of gray mass. I was looking, however, into a part of the copse to the right of the central clearing which I had reconnoitered carefully on my first arrival at the barn in some previous existence and into which I had dodged when escaping from St. Sabas’s mounted attack. So the blurred picture, though without detail, made sense.
The hollow was very simple to outflank, and if he were reasonably careful while engaged in stalking it I had no chance of ambushing him. The wall was more promising. There were two low bramble bushes on the edge of the windbreak which commanded it. The way to put a last shot into an old goat lying helpless behind the wall was to pass round the outside of the copse, re-enter it and look down on him between or over the brambles.
That was all right so far as it went. Yet the plan was no more than a sick man’s dream unless I could find the strength to carry it out. I raised myself to hands and knees. They did not belong to me, but they worked.
I had to cover thirty flat and simple yards over a sparse carpet of last year’s fallen leaves. I assured myself that it was easy, provided I took it slowly and remembered to collapse quietly. The handkerchief had adhered to my forehead. To pull it off was the hardest task. I was absurdly terrified of the result, and my hand twice refused to do it.
The final jerk overdid the job. When I started to crawl the blood trail was spectacular. I forced myself to remember that it was only a surface cut, that one could lose pints of blood and that all I had lost probably didn’t add up to one. I tried to convince myself that this fast dripping had nothing to do with my weakness and that I was just suffering from concussion. That —a purely mental thing — ought to be under the control of the will, and it had to be if I wanted to live.