Free Caravan to Vaccares by Alistair MacLean Page A

limestone boulders his loss of balance passed the point of no return and he fell, rolling diagonally downhill, trying frantically and with a total lack of success to brake himself. The braking was done for him, violently and painfully, by the first of the boulders with which he came into contact and it was his right knee that took the major brunt of the impact.
    He was sure he had smashed the knee-cap for when he tried to rise his leg just gave under him and he sat down again. A second time he tried it and this time with a little more success: the third time he made it and he knew the knee-cap had just been momentarily paralysed. Now it felt merely numb although he knew it must hurt badly later and would be severely bruised. He hobbled on his way through the thinning scattering of boulders at about half the best speed he could normally have made for the knee kept collapsing under him as if it had a will of its own.
    A puff of white smoke flew off from a boulder just in front of him and the sound of the shot was almost simultaneous. Ferenc had anticipated too well. Bowman didn’t try to take cover because Ferenc could see where he was and had Bowman tried to hide Ferenc would just have walked down to the place of concealment and put the pistol to his head to make quite sure that he didn’t miss. Bowman made off down the slope, twisting and doubling among the rocks to throw Ferenc off aim, not even trying to locate where his pursuers were for the knowledge would have been useless to him anyway. Several shots came close, one kicking up a small cloud of soil at his right foot, but the combination of his swerving run and the fact that Ferenc had himself to dodge in and out among the rocks must have made him an almost impossible target. Besides, to shoot accurately downhill is notoriously difficult at the best of times. In between the shots Bowman could hear the sound of their pounding footsteps and he knew they were gaining on him: but still he didn’t look round for if he were going to be shot through the back of the head he felt he’d just as soon not know about it in advance.
    He was clear of the rocks now and running straight over the hard-packed earth towards the railed entrance to the village. Ferenc, closing up and also running straight, should have had his chance then but the firing had stopped and Bowman could only assume that he had run out of ammunition. He might well, Bowman realized, carry a spare magazine but if he did he would have been hard put to it to reload on the dead run.
    Bowman’s knee was hurting now but, contradictorily, it was bearing up much better. He glanced behind. His pursuers were still gaining, but more slowly. Bowman passed through the railed upper entrance to the village and ran down to the fork where he had hesitated on the way up. The two gypsies were not yet in sight but the sound of their running feet was clear. They would expect him, Bowman hoped, to continue out through the lower entrance to the village, so he turned left down the short road that led to the old battlements of the town. The road debouched into a small square, a cul-de-sac, but he was past caring about that. He registered the fact, without knowing why, that an ancient wrought-iron cross stood in the centre of the square. To the left was an equally ancient church, facing it was a low wall with apparently nothing beyond it and, between church and wall, a high fence of vertical rocks with deep man-made apertures cut into it, for reasons that couldn’t be guessed at.
    He ran across to the low rock and peered over it. It was certainly no low rock on the other side: it dropped almost two hundred feet to what looked like scrub trees at the foot.
    Ferenc had been cleverer than Bowman thought he would have been. He was still peering over the wall when he heard the sound of running feet approaching the square, one set of feet: they’d split up to investigate both avenues of escape. Bowman straightened and