The sun in the grass was bright as a wet diamond, green and gold and silver, and on a brisk, noisy day like this it dazzled a body. Chester's wind had left him when he hit the ground. He would have jumped down when he heard the shot, anyhow, but actually, he had fallen, he thought, or at least half-way. The horse had spooked and reared, and now he'd run. Chester's back was wet. He listened. No other shot came. He couldn't hear them talking from up here by the lip of the gully, and without being able to see them any longer, it was like they'd never been there. Like it had only ever been just him and the wind.

Chester heard his name. The marshal was shouting, but it was far off.

"I'm alright," he said.

"Chester!" he heard again.

Chester tried once more, but all he could do was wheeze. He had to work to breathe, so he did, for a few minutes. And even as his lungs softened up again his ears were ringing, and even as the breeze combed the grass and the sun shone gaily on he felt doomy, like he did when he was too hot to sleep and too tired to get up, or crowded by drunks he admired. It didn't make sense, not just over some noise, but he felt it thick in his throat. And he was inclined to trust such feelings. He got up on his hands and knees and peered over the edge before he could think about what he might see.

They were gone. Lowrey and Mr. Dillon and that man who'd come were nowhere in sight. Maybe they'd gone to the shanty, but that was on the far side of a thicket, and he couldn't see.

Chester couldn't seem to make himself stand, so he skidded over to a scrub oak he might lean on and lay against it in the brush, out of breath from nothing. He looked at his front and felt his back, and realized the wetness was blood. That sorry old pilgrim had really shot to hit. Chester was frankly shocked. Shocked and offronted. That man had no cause to shoot him. He'd had no cause to shoot at all. Anybody who would shoot a stranger like that, from too far to see him plainly, ought not to be allowed a gun, not that you could allow or disallow any man a gun if he wasn't murdering somebody. Chester was starting to overthink his breathing.

The sodbuster's bullet had opened him up in the side and gone out right through the back, and he was bleeding. But nobody else had been shot. No other shots were fired. So wherever it was they'd gone, Mr. Dillon would come by and fetch him. Chester rubbed his hands over his eyes and sighed. The grass hissed gently all around.

An Indian from the East once told him how when an animal is hurt, he presses his wound to the Earth and lets the sod heal him, and how people are meant to do that, too, but they didn't and now the Earth doesn't love us any longer and trees would soon begin to die from the top down. Chester wasn't sure about that, but he felt, anyway, for some dirt. He balled up his shawl and stuck it, shaking, where he estimated the bullet had gone out. He wrapped his coat hard around him and lay down flat. It was better than sitting, anyway. He wrapped his arms around himself and pretended there was somebody else around.

He felt a wave of cloying heat pass over him, and then it was different.

Chester hadn't cried since he was twelve years old, not really, but he suddenly felt he might start at any moment. It was a feeling like rage or hunger, it couldn't be helped–it was blood, not sorrow. So he was bleeding a lot. He was sweating his shirt straight through. But the bullet was out. It was good, wasn't it, that the bullet wasn't in there?

And how could he not have felt it? Chester had been shot before not nearly so bad and he'd sure noticed then. He thought of the hole all the way through him, thought how some air or a stick or a worm could go in him and come out the other side, and it made him want to yell out in revulsion, to hit himself against something, anything. It was disgusting. It was like those dreams where you come upon a horror and your throat gets caught, if he could only shout, it wouldn't–it helped if you could shout–

Chester decided to sing a song, or say a song, to pass the time until they came back.

Lowe Bonnie, Lowe Bonnie, was a hunting young man

and a-hunting he did ride

With his hunting horn slung 'round his neck

And his crossbow by his side...

Some time later, he came to the end. His eyes pulsed and fizzed, like they were being pressed on.

How can I live? How can I live?

You've wounded me so deep

I think I see mine own heart's blood

A-pooling o'er my feet.

Perhaps he'd have done better to try O, Susanna. Chester wanted a bath. A cool one. And for Doc to come. Was Doc coming? Chester dragged an arm up over his eyes and lay it there. Or Miss Kitty. She would hold onto him if he was hurt like this. Chester didn't wish Miss Kitty would grab hold of him on an everyday basis. He just wished anyone would right now, and she would, if it would help. So would Doc, at least by, say, the shoulder. So would most anyone, probably, if he looked like he was dying. Acid stillness was piling up in his arms and legs, but he dared not shake it away. He dared not move if it meant moving his middle. The wound itself was finally beginning to ache now, hard, in a cold and needling way.

He'd been bled by a doctor and it had made him sick, but not so sick as this, and nobody was around to keep him from going on bleeding. He tried harder to press himself into the ground. He didn't want to die like this, just on some stranger's fool impulse. He didn't want to die any which way. He took his arm off his face. The dark was making him dizzy. He squinted at the sun and calculated it to be about four-thirty. He wondered if he'd see the sunset.

Chester realized he was going to bleed to death. Out here on the prairie where you'd think nobody had ever been.