Then it came.
There was an Irish Challenger on the right side of the road, a woman in green and grey from one of the Galway outfits. She was standing up behind the petrol station wall with a bow, putting arrows into the British section in the field, arrow after arrow. Every one landed. She was very good.
She went down.
James saw it. She was standing, and then she was not. She went backward off the wall as if something had pulled her.
Then the sound came. It was the same one, the deep crack with the long thump behind it, rolling down off the hills.
"*Longbow! Longbow!*"
Two soldiers went toward her.
"*Stay down!*" The section commander. "*Nobody goes to her! Nobody stands up! Stay down!*"
They stayed down.
James stayed down too, behind the wall, with his hand on the stone.
Up the road, the British infantry were already getting up out of the ditch. They had been waiting for it.
---
They came down the road at the petrol station, at the place where she had been.
