had washed down the slope against the bottom of it in past rains. The interior was gloomy and smelled of old dust and dried manure and straw. Narrow shafts of sunlight slanted in through cracks in the wall, illuminating the dust motes hanging suspended in the lifeless air. My shoes made no sound on the springy footing. There were some empty stalls on the right, and about half-way back, against the left wall, was the ladder going up into the hayloft. There was an opening about three feet square above it, the top rung of the ladder gilded by a shaft of sunlight coming in through one of the holes in the roof. I stepped over in the dead silence and mounted it.
My head was just coming up into the opening, my eyes level with the last rung of the ladder, when my breath sucked inwards and the skin tightened up, cold and hard, between my shoulderblades. In the thick coating of dust there, where the puddle of sunlight was striking the top of the two-by-four, were the fresh imprints of four fingers and part of the palm of a hand. I threw my feet out into space, pushing against the rung above as if I were trying to shove myself downwards through clinging mud or tar, and for one awful fraction of a second I seemed to be hanging suspended in the air, unable to fall, like a balloon half filled with helium, and then the gun crashed behind me, paralyzing my eardrums. Pain like a hot icepick sliced across the top of my head and the air was filled with dust and flying splinters, and then I was falling at last, turning a little and trying to swim downwards into the gloom below me and away from that deadly shaft of sunlight. I landed on my feet, but off-balance, and fell backwards and rolled, all in one continuing motion, and as my feet went up and over and I was staring in horror at the opening above me, I saw the bent, denim-clad leg and the knee in the shaft of yellow light, and the beefy hand, and the searching twin barrels of the gun, still swinging.
I was over and down, then, with my knees under me, pushing up, and turning, and the gun crashed again. I felt the knife edge of pain once more, this time along my left arm from shoulder to elbow, as the shot string raked the powdery manure and dust and exploded it into the air about my head and into my eyes. I was blinded. I came on erect and crashed into the wall, and fell again. I pushed up, and staggered, tearing at my face with one hand to get my eyes clear, and felt the stickiness of blood mixed with the dust, but I could see a little, enough to make out the narrow oblong of light that marked the door. But even as I whirled and plunged towards it I heard the sharp metallic click of ejectors above me and then the thump as he closed the breech of the reloaded gun, and at the same time the swift and deadly rustling of dry hay as he ran towards the front of the loft. I was trapped.
While I was squeezing myself through the half-blocked door he would be right above me, leaning out of that opening with the shotgun barrels less than six feet above my head. He’d cut me in two, like cheese under an axe blade. I veered and slammed against the wall with a hand to stop myself from going on into the opening and being blown to pieces. I whirled. There was no other way out, and all he had to do was jump to the ground and come in after me.
Then my mind began functioning a little better, and I realized there had to be another way out somewhere because he hadn’t come in at the front. I was running even as I heard the heavy thud of his feet against the ground outside the door, and was already three-quarters of the way to the rear wall when the light cut off behind me and I knew he had made it and was squeezing through the doorway with his gun. But there was no sign of a door or opening of any kind ahead of me. And I was already past the ladder. Before I could turn and make it up into the loft