Fear and a suffocating weakness began to dull his brain, he could not see. The sagging pain in his breast ate up his strength. With a desperate effort he pulled the handkerchief from his throat and thrust it inside his shirt against the wound. He dug his heels into Red's side, urging her on.
A diffused glow of lights loomed before him. As if wakening from a nightmare in which he had been struggling to get forward and was held back by mysterious, unknown forces, he realised that they were the lights of the shanty.
The mare carried him on into the stable yard. The welcome yelp of dogs greeted his ears. He flung off her, staggered across the yard and burst open the back door. He was conscious of Farrel and Deirdre springing towards him, of Steve behind them. Then surging darkness, the swirling tides of dreamless darkness that had been pressing close to him all the way, closed over him. For a moment he struggled against them, trying to speak. A few muttered, incoherent words were all Deirdre and the Schoolmaster caught.
He pitched forward.
Deirdre ran to him. The Schoolmaster helped her to lift Davey over on his back. She moistened his lips with the spirit that Steve brought quickly.
"There's blood on him, father," she cried. There was no tremor in her voice, only a tense anxiety.
Farrel told her what to do, to cut away Davey's shirt where the blood oozed on it. Steve went for water and rags as she did so. The flickering light of the candle the Schoolmaster held, showed the broken and blackened flesh.
"He's been shot ... it's a slug made that mark," Steve gasped when he saw it.
When he had put a basin of cold water beside her, she laid soaked rags on the wound. The shock brought Davey a moment of consciousness. He moaned, stirring with pain. His eyes opened. He saw Deirdre's face above his and the Schoolmaster bending over him.
He stared at them unseeingly. Then the mists cleared from his brain. "I'm all right," he muttered, "all right...."