“Wait, Humph. Stop.”
Francie pointed through the trees. Sal hushed the boys and they moved forward together cautiously. The voices got louder, and angrier, and when they rounded a bend in the river they found themselves in a campsite. Rolled-up tents and bundles of belongings were strewn around and five of Monty’s men stood by a smouldering fire looking furious. Four mechanical horses stood nearby with their heads hanging down between their front legs.
Carrot flew down to perch on one of them. “Chin up, shoulders back!”
The men stopped arguing with each other and turned on the Santanders instead.
“It’s the ruddy kids!”
“They did it!” A bald man with a badly sunburned head started towards them. “What the blazes have you done with them?”
“I’ll have your guts for garters, you ruddy saboteurs,” barked another man, stabbing his pipe towards each of them in turn.
Francie let go of the donkeys and crouched down with her hands over her ears. Sal hated seeing Francie distressed, and her shoulders came up round her ears like a bull about to charge.
“Don’t you dare shout at us!” she roared. “We haven’t done anything. And we don’t want to have anything to do with you. Come on!”
She grabbed Humphrey’s hand and hurried past the men. The others tried to follow, but a third man stood in their way. He had a very red face, his sleeves were rolled up and his braces dangled, and he was panting as if he’d been running.
“Thief!” He grabbed Beckett by the neck of his shirt. “This is my dress shirt and my top hat! Ruddy thieving jackanapes.”
“He isn’t!” Humph broke free of Sal’s hand and whacked the man’s leg with his stick. “We found them. You throwed them away with your dead horse.”
That made the rest of the men laugh, in a mean, sneering sort of way. “That’s true, Gervais, your horse ‘died’. You couldn’t control it, could you?”
Gervais looked as if he were about to explode but he let Beckett go.
A man with an enormous moustache, who hadn’t spoken yet, put a monocle in one eye as he approached Beckett. “Look here. Not a thief. Gervais abandoned his gear so, you know, fair’s fair. But we’ve got a more serious problem. A sabotage problem.” He stood very close to Beckett and bent his head so they were almost nose-to-nose. His voice became an icy hiss.
“Thing is, someone’s stolen our keys. What do you know about it?”
“Keys?” Beckett took a step back. “What kind of keys?”
The man narrowed his eyes. “Winding keys. Gone.”
Sal was interested despite herself. “Is that how the horses are powered? I wouldn’t have thought you could get enough torque, but I did wonder…”
“Oh, for God’s sake, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH OUR KEYS?” bellowed the bald, sunburned man.
Beckett shrugged. “If someone took them, it wasn’t us.”
The one called Gervais turned on the other men. “I told you, didn’t I?” He laughed a bitter, snorting laugh. “I said. It’s a Cowboy job. These kids aren’t the competition—and they were way behind us. It’s that blasted Cody Cole trying to stop us.”
The anger seemed to go out of the men. They returned to the problem of how to get the horses going.
“Can’t you use one of the other horses’ keys?” Joe suggested. “They can’t be that far ahead.”
“We are waiting,” hissed the icy man, “for such a key to be brought to us so we may continue.”
“Unless each horse has an individual key. Not interchangeable,” Sal pointed out.
“That would be a problem, all right,” said Beckett happily. He gave Francie a hand up and led her past the men.
“You’d all have to walk. As I have to.” Gervais sounded pleased.
“Well, good luck and all that.” Sal sidled out of the men’s reach.
“What nobs!” said Joe, when they were out of earshot.
Sal felt very cheered to know that at least part of Monty’s team was behind them. But she was confused. “Those men are rich and posh. How come they’re so stupid?”
“Money’s got more to do with luck than brains,” said Beckett. “And my mother says that nobs have often had the brains bred out of them. Like pocket dogs, or some racehorses.”
They were even more cheerful when Beckett pointed to a cluster of very tall pines ahead.
“You know what they are?”
“Trees?” suggested Humphrey.
“Queen Pines,” said Beckett. “And what do you find under Queen Pines?”
He scuffled in the pine needles.
“Mushrooms!” he crowed, waving a fungus as big as his hand. “And unlike pugnuts, they don’t need cracking.”
In just a few minutes they’d found enough mushrooms to fill the bucket.
“You’re quite sure they’re okay to eat?” asked Sal. “How can you tell?”
Beckett showed her how to check the gills under the cap. “We pick them every summer and dry them for the winter. Eat them until we bust.”
That night they had a mushroom and pugnut stew, and it tasted meaty, thick and delicious.
“I wouldn’t mind eating that every day for the rest of my life,” said Joe.
“There’s enough for tomorrow,” said Beckett.
“Just imagine if you hadn’t come with us,” said Sal.
“I know,” said Beckett. “Eight days to go.”
The route ahead was straightforward: down the valley. But the ground became marshy and every path Joe made seemed to lead them knee-deep into bog. The railway would need firmer ground. When they found a dry hillock the others decided to stay put and bring the maps up to date. Joe could go ahead and find the route and they’d follow his silks in a couple of hours.
So Joe left the river and set off for higher ground, up over a spur and down the other side. But he soon found himself in a marsh again, with reeds and ponds and mud stretching into the distance to the left and right and straight ahead.
“Back again,” he said to Carrot.
“Again, again,” said Carrot.
Joe backtracked, untying his silks as he retraced his route: up the hill into a patch of gnarly old forest, back past the spruce that was leaning on a suswatch, past the beech tree with a hole right through its middle—and then the silks stopped.
Pa’s voice in his head reminded him: take it slowly, spiral out, keep the last silk in sight, but he still couldn’t see another one. And then the last one was out of sight too, and nothing was familiar. But there was a strange smell of burning leaves in the air. A camp fire? No. Pipe smoke.
Some of Monty’s men must be nearby.
He tried all the tricks Pa had told him but he couldn’t find his silks again. He was lost. Pa had warned him this might happen. He must use his compass and he’d eventually come across his trail of silks, then all he’d have to do is look for footprints and donkey tracks to know whether the others were ahead or behind.
Out of the corner of his eye he spotted something orange through the leaves. He hurried towards it—was it a leaf? No. A silk, and there was another. South-west, that was right. But the trees here weren’t familiar. He must have forgotten. The ground sloped steeply; he was in a gorge. On? Or back? He had to hurry, he’d wasted so much time. Straight on was the right direction, according to his compass, and he hated having to backtrack, so he scrabbled down through the trees towards another flash of orange. Then the slope became really steep. Too steep for a track. He should really clamber all the way back up, but he was tired, and suppose this was a place where a bridge could go straight across? He ought to check it out, using the rope.
He looped the rope around a tree and gradually lowered himself down its length until he landed on a ledge. He could hear rushing water. He left the rope hanging and pushed the bushes aside, and there was the river. It filled the gorge; there was no crossing it, and nowhere to go. A bridge could easily take the railway over the top, but he’d have to climb back up to get out.
&nbs
p; But the rope was no longer looped around anything; it lay sprawled across the ledge at his feet. It hadn’t fallen by itself. Someone had thrown it down. The same someone who had moved his silks. A pipe-smoking saboteur.
Joe angrily coiled the rope and shoved it into his pack.
He hauled himself up onto the saplings that grew out of the bottom of the cliff, but then there was nothing. Nothing to hold onto, nowhere to put his feet, and the cliff-face just crumbled away under his hands.
He was almost crying with frustration. There had to be another way out.
Water was smashing and boiling through the narrow gap between the rocks. He could see a place downstream where huge boulders stuck up above the river; he might be able to step from one to the next. But there was a jungle of bramble bush growing down the cliff that he had to hack through first. He unbuckled the slasher from the back of his rucksack—slashing was exactly what he felt like doing.
“Scoundralous scanderoons.” Slash.
“Rapacious rapparees.” Smash.
Every branch of bramble he hauled out of the way was another of Monty’s men lying bleeding and begging for mercy at his feet.
“Contemptible clotmongers.” Crash.
It took ages to clear a way along the ledge, and when he got past, scratched and bleeding, he saw it was no good. The gap between the rocks was too big to leap. And even if he could have crossed the river, there was nowhere to land. A few bushes clung to the cliff-face, which looked just as steep as the side he was on.
Joe was furious with himself for not turning back when he could. But he was even more furious with Monty’s men who had stranded him with a torrent below, a cliff above, scratch-arm behind and no way out. And it was getting dark. No one would find him now. He would have to spend the night on the ledge, alone.
He tied one end of the rope around the saplings, and the other around his middle, just in case he rolled in his sleep, then he wriggled into his sleeping bag and tried to make himself comfortable. On rocks. With an empty, growling stomach.
Joe thought about Francie. She’d know he was still alive and she’d make sure Sal knew too, but that wouldn’t stop Sal being worried. She’d worry about him being lost and worry about not getting to the finishing line in time. Humph would be desperate: first his father disappears, then his mother, and now his brother. He thought about the stones digging into his back and the bliss of a fat mattress. He wondered whether the others would decide to stay put, or set off to search for him in the morning. He thought about the mushroom and pugnut stew that the others would be eating, and he even thought fondly about porridge.
He thought about Ma. Where was she now? Maybe she’d hired herself a strong horse and ridden day and night in hot pursuit. He hoped she hadn’t because how would she cross that river on her own? And what if she met the bear? He hoped that she’d trusted them to get to New Coalhaven and travelled the long way around by boat. Maybe she’d be waiting for them.
And Pa. How many months had he been gone? Joe had lost track. But worse, much worse, was that his memory of him was fading. For the first time ever, he couldn’t make Pa’s face float in front of his closed eyelids. He could describe him in words: dark curly hair beginning to go a bit grey; bushy eyebrows, a full beard and moustache that hid his mouth, but you could still see his smile because it crinkled up his cheeks and creased his eyes. Which were brown. But the picture was blurred. He couldn’t see Pa’s smile any more.
Ma was all movement: pot on the fire, pass the spoon, washing basket down, kindling up, wipe Humph’s face, stir the pot … but Pa was almost still. One thing at a time; no hurry. He’d collect up the boots, the cloth, the brush, the grease pot, the bucket of warm water, the soap. Then he’d sit on the step, take out the laces, wipe off the dirt, rub in the grease, brush it into the stitching, turn the boot, check the sole, put it down gently, take up its twin, until twelve clean boots stood in a line. Next, he’d wash the laces and pull each one through his fingers to squeeze out the water before threading them back criss-cross. Somehow the ends always came out the same length.
They wouldn’t win anything now. Beckett’s family would probably starve. Sal would have to go into service as a housemaid—which she’d do really badly so everyone would always be cross with her. Francie would get a job as an artist but she’d have no one to love her and look after her. And Pa would stay lost forever, and it would be all Joe’s fault.
Or maybe the others would just go on without him, and he’d starve to death on this ledge. Serve him right.
He curled up in his sleeping bag and cried. Then his quiet sobbing turned into a howl and he heard the echo of his howl bounce back at him, over the noise of the river. He sat up and howled louder, then louder still, like a wolf. He howled until he had no more breath. Then he wiped his eyes and saw moonlight slanting into the gorge and washing over the far cliff. The river was dark below him but the water that splashed up gleamed, and the pale bark of the birch trees sliced the cliff-face opposite with shimmering cuts of silver.
He blew his nose on the tail of his shirt and had a drink of water, and was about to lie down again when he saw a shape on the rocks on the other side of the river. Sitting on its haunches, facing him, was a great silvery wolf. It didn’t move but just twitched its ears and listened. It looked at him, and he looked back. Then it stood up and stretched and walked a few paces. As it turned, it looked at him again, then trotted up a path that slanted up the side of the cliff. Its silvery coat flashed between the darkness of bushes as it rose away to the left, until it was above the gorge. It paused at the top, silhouetted on the skyline, sang a long swooping note, then disappeared into the moonlit night.
The silver wolf had come to find him, had come to show him he wasn’t trapped. There was a secret path up the cliff—if he could cross the river.
Seven days to go.
Joe tumbled into a deep sleep. He dreamed he was under water, unable to breathe, being swept along with his hair floating all around him like seaweed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FANTABULOUS FISH
Joe woke shivering, just as the dark night became the grey dawn. He knew exactly what he had to do. He chopped down all the saplings he could reach, and one at a time he stripped their branches with his slasher and lowered the trunks across the river. Just one sapling would be too skinny to take his weight, but many together might be strong enough to make a bridge. On Joe’s side they rested on the ledge. On the other side he manoeuvred them into a crevice between two boulders, which was as close as he could get to where the wolf had sat. He cut a bit off his precious coil of rope and tied the trunks together on his side so they wouldn’t splay out. There were seven saplings altogether. He couldn’t tie the far side, but they were firmly wedged together between the rocks. Carrot watched him knot the rope, then she flew to the other side of the river and hopped along a boulder.
Success or a watery death. There was no way of testing the bridge—he’d just have to try it. The water boomed ferociously below him as he crept out onto the bundle of trunks on his hands and knees. The bark was already soaked, and slippery, and hard to grip as he inched along. His arms and chest were saturated and he could barely see for spray. One hand, one knee, other hand, other knee.
He knelt on something sharp and pain shot down his leg. His whole body wobbled. He’d banged that knee when he fell and it had only just stopped hurting; now it was agony. He made himself move again.
The wood under his right hand bent, and cracked; he shifted his weight off it just as the sapling gave way, and grabbed for another trunk. He tried to crawl faster but his hand slipped forward and he nose-dived onto bark. More haste, less speed said his father’s voice. Carefully. Then his foot was pushing off a slippery rock, his hand grasping for a root, a branch, and he was hauling himself, shaking, on to the safety of the wolf’s hidden path.
He found the others in the middle of the day. They’d stopped when the silks ran out and lit a big fire so he could see the smoke. They ha
d saved him his share of the stew.
“Francie kept showing us that you were all right, last night,” said Sal. “But she woke up this morning, crying and sweaty—she’d had a terrible dream. Show him, Francie.”
Francie showed him two pencil drawings. There was Joe with his curly hair sitting on a raft on a river, but in the second picture Joe was hanging under the raft with his hair floating all around like seaweed.
Joe swallowed his mouthful. “Were you frightened for long?”
She waved her hand. No. And showed him the next page: there was Joe crawling across a bridge made of saplings.
“Amazing!” Did she just know that’s how he’d do it? Or was it her idea to make a bridge like that and she’d somehow sent him the thought? Sometimes Joe wondered whether he and Francie really were two separate people. Mostly, he hoped they were.
“Those men are evil. I can’t believe they’d strand you like that. They knew we had nothing to do with their stupid keys,” Beckett said, not for the first time. “We need to watch out.”
When they started up again, Humph trailed behind. He hadn’t said anything to Joe.
“What’s the matter, Humpty-Dumpty?”
“He’s sulking,” said Sal, “because I shouted at him. We had a disaster.” Sal bent to lift the altimeter over a fern. “Humphrey? Tell Joe.”
Humphrey sidled up to Joe. “I’m glad you aren’t dead.”
“Me too. So what happened?”
“My foot had an accident. And the ink all tipped out. AND I SAID SORRY.”
He glared at Sal and raced off.
“Now we have no ink, so Francie can’t finish the maps. So this expedition is probably pointless, unless we somehow manage to finish first.”
“Oh.” Joe tried to think of a way in which this might not be a total disaster. “Maybe we can give them pencil maps and promise to finish them later?”
The Mapmakers' Race Page 12
