The Mapmakers' Race

by Eirlys Hunter

  “Hah. Maybe we can make some ink with buckleberries?”

  “Yes! Maybe we can,” said Joe.

  Sal gave him a withering look. “I was being sarcastic.”

  Sunset was noticeably earlier now, and sunrise later. When they made camp that night it was already dark. Joe lit the lantern so that Francie could draw, in pencil, and Beckett could see to cook.

  Humph licked his fingers. “I used to hate mushrooms. Now they’re my best.”

  “Six days to go,” said Sal. “How many dinners have we got left, Beckett?”

  “Three. And enough pugnut butter for one more lunch.” He looked around the forest floor, which was thick with leaves and pine needles. “We’ll all have to collect stones in the morning, for the catapult. Tomorrow I really, really need to kill something.”

  They made good progress the next day as a grassy bank ran above the river, almost like a road, surely perfect for a railway line. Sal groaned when she noticed broken branches, trampled bushes, and footprints in muddy patches.

  “Look. Everyone’s coming this way. Our route won’t be anything special, and they’re ahead of us.”

  Joe refused to be downcast. “But our maps are the best—even if they aren’t all in ink. Why don’t you ever think about the good things, instead of just the bad ones?”

  “Because I’m preparing myself not to be disappointed. Why are you such a ridiculous optimist?”

  “Because everything seems to work out in the end. In the last few days I’ve nearly drowned, I’ve fallen down a cliff and been stranded in a gorge, but I’m still here. Everything’s all right.”

  “Apart from being hungry.”

  That was true. His stomach hurt. “Apart from that.”

  “And having sore feet.”

  His feet were sore but not as sore as his knee. “And that.”

  Sal shivered. “And now it’s getting cold.”

  “Then put your jacket on.”

  The temperature was plummeting. They all pulled their extra layers out of their rucksacks. Sal’s arms were already in her jumper but her head was still outside when she noticed a dense black cloud billowing over the mountains and rushing to fill the sky.

  “Quick! Joe, Francie, the tarpaulin, shelter! Humph—with me, dry wood. Quick. Beckett—water.”

  No one argued. They scrambled further up the bank and under the trees and got to work. Beckett squinted at the river already dimpled with rain. Then he stripped off all his clothes except his underpants and snatched up the fishing rod and bucket. He looked like a wild two-toned animal as he ran towards the water, with his paper-white back and legs, and dark brown arms, neck and face.

  Joe and Francie rigged up a tent by tying one end of the rope to a tree, and the other to a bush that was growing out of a wall of rock. They threw the biggest tarpaulin over the rope, then stretched out the sides, and weighted its edges with stones, spreading the other tarpaulin under. The rain was pelting down by the time they all squashed onto the groundsheet with everything that needed to stay dry. The roof was just above their heads and there was only room for one person to move at a time. Sal crouched near the edge of the shelter, trying to coax a fire out of the wet wood, and coughing with the choking smoke. Carrot perched on Joe’s shoulder but kept flapping.

  “Stop it! There’s no room for wings in here.”

  “Stop it this minute!” Carrot squawked. “Stop it, stop it, stop it.”

  Joe cheered when Beckett stumbled up carrying five fat fish and the bucket full of water, but stopped cheering when he realised that Beckett’s fingers and lips were blue and he was shivering so violently he couldn’t speak.

  He took the bucket out of Beckett’s bloodless hands and Sal grabbed the fish, and between them they folded him up and squashed him into the shelter. Joe rubbed him with a dryish shirt, then pushed Beckett’s arms into his singlet, shirt, jersey and overcoat and coaxed his hands into gloves. Sal pulled her own woolly hat with earflaps over Beckett’s head and Joe uncurled Beckett’s legs enough to get socks onto his feet and shove his legs into his sleeping bag. The billy boiled and they helped him hold a warm mug of tea in his shaking hands.

  When Beckett’s teeth stopped chattering enough to talk, he told Francie how to wrap the fish in wet leaves and put them in the hot coals to cook.

  Joe breathed in the smell as he unwrapped his neat leaf parcel. “Oh, fantabulous fish. Fine fish. First prize fish. I thought you were going to make us eat seagull.”

  “I’m so glad you brought the fishing rod,” said Sal. “Are you warm now?”

  Beckett nodded.

  “I didn’t used to like fish, but now I do,” said Humph when he’d picked every last flake from the skeleton in his bowl. “Fish and mushrooms. And look—I’ve made an H with the bones.”

  “Only five days left to go,” said Sal.

  Joe was exhausted, but his knee throbbed and he couldn’t get to sleep. Ma had told them never to touch the canvas when it was raining, because the rain would leak straight through. But the night was pitch black and he couldn’t see where the side of the tarpaulin sagged down next to him, so he lay still, and concentrated on not rolling over. He listened to the rain pouring off the tarpaulin into the overflowing bucket outside, and the wind bashing branches together, and the miserable sniffling of the sad, wet donkeys, for a very long time.

  They woke soaking wet and very cold. A new stream had decided that the quickest way downhill was directly through their shelter, and seemed to be exploring the possibility of growing into a pond. The rain had stopped but the air was damp and water dripped from the leaves and branches overhead. They pulled their rain capes on.

  “Keep up, dawdlers,” Carrot ordered from Beckett’s shoulder.

  “Next time I come this way, I’ll be in a train,” said Beckett, sploshing through yet another stream. “Did you know that some trains have bedrooms in them, Humphrey?”

  Humph shook his head. “No. We came on a train. There were only seats and a sliding door. But it could climb.”

  “The really grand trains have sleeping cars. Little bedrooms with beds with soft mattresses and clean sheets. And your own washbasin. An attendant comes and fills it with hot water. And there’s a dining room with tables and chairs, and every table has a cloth on it and a lamp hanging above it, and the best silver cutlery.”

  “And you’ll cook the dinner.”

  “I will! You can come on the train if you like.”

  “Let’s all come!” said Humphrey. “What will train dinner be?”

  “Ham and baked potatoes,” suggested Sal.

  “Leek and potato soup, and then lamb chops,” Joe said. “And Francie wants strawberries.” Francie nodded.

  “What about me? What about what I want?”

  “What do you want, Humph?”

  “Ice cream and Christmas cake and peppermint creams and chewy toffee and Ma’s fudge.”

  “Sounds good.” Joe took Humph’s hand and jumped him over a puddle.

  “And white bread toast with butter and honey.”

  “The best breakfast there is.”

  When Beckett spotted a pugnut tree they all diverted into the forest to look for nuts, so they were well hidden when a member of Monty’s Mountaineers jogged along the riverbank, rain-wet hair plastered to his head.

  “That’s the one who had a monocle,” Joe whispered. “D’you think it was him who stranded me on that ledge?”

  Then a few minutes later they saw the one called Gervais puff past in pursuit.

  “Or could have been him.”

  Much later, when the rain had stopped and the bucket was half full of nuts, another of Monty’s men limped by, and some way behind him, another, also limping.

  They waited, but there was no sign of Baldy.

  Not long after that, they climbed over a spur and saw two mechanical horses lying with their hooves in the air at the bottom of a gully. Gervais and Monocle-Man were below them, clambering down towards the wrecked horses.


  “That’s quite sad,” said Joe. “They were so beautiful. I wonder what happened to their riders.”

  “That’s at least seven of Monty’s men who’ve parted company with their horses,” said Beckett thoughtfully. “That’s a fair number. Some teams will do anything to make sure they win, regardless. And some of them aren’t very far away.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A BOOT UNDER A BUSH

  Sal hoped their camp was far enough into the forest that their fire wouldn’t be seen. She left the others cracking nuts and followed the stream down to the river. She walked along the river bank looking and listening, and sniffing the air because she could smell smoke. Which team was it? And where were they?

  It was nearly dark and she was about to turn back when she heard voices singing, up the hill under the trees. She crept towards them. Cody Cole and the Cowboys were sitting around their campfire singing a song about being careful not to love anyone because love only ties you down. She hid behind a tree. When the song finished they stood up and stretched.

  “Four days to go, men,” said Cody Cole. The flames lit their faces from below, making them look ferocious and ghoulish.

  “No stopping the Cowboys,” said one.

  “Whatever it takes,” said another.

  “Victory at any cost, boys. All together now,” said Cody. They put their right hands into a stack. “Victory at any cost.”

  “Cowboy victory!” they called together and raised their fists into the air.

  Sal shivered. When the men had all settled down on their bedrolls she stole away but was startled to hear more voices whispering in front of her. She stopped, but something was breathing right beside her. Then a quiet whinny. She had nearly bumped into a Cowboy’s horse.

  A twig cracked. A horse? No. The whispering people were now just behind her. The only safe place was up, so she felt for a branch and pulled herself into a tree. She pressed herself against the trunk and breathed again. She’d had a lot of experience of hiding in trees when Pa or Ma called her and she wanted to be left alone to read or think; for some reason, when adults are looking for someone they almost never look upwards.

  The whispering men came right underneath her. There were three of them; one had a shuttered lantern. They reeked of tobacco. Monty’s Mountaineers. Her first thought was that they were planning to hurt the horses. But no. They fussed around untying the horses’ tethers and hissing at each other. Then they led the horses quietly away.

  Sal waited a few minutes and slid down. It was completely dark and she hadn’t a clue how to get back to the others. Out of the trees and towards the river—but which way was that?

  As soon as she’d stumbled a safe distance from the Cowboys’ camp, Sal paused and ran her fingers over some tree trunks. The side the moss was growing on was north—towards the sea. Soon the slope helped too; the right way was down. After that she heard the river. Then she was out from under the trees and there was a little light from the stars and the moon to help her find her way back along the river bank.

  She was just wondering how on earth she’d know which of the many little streams she was crossing was the one that led up to their campsite in the forest when she heard a whistle, and Joe popped up from behind a bush.

  “Beckett went up and down the river looking for you. And Humph cried,” he said.

  Sal was very sorry that the others had been worried. “Thanks for waiting for me.” She held onto the hem of his jersey and let him lead her under the dark trees to the glow of their fire. “Is there any dinner left?”

  Humph was asleep, but Beckett put another log on the fire and Francie’s anxious face shone out of the darkness. Sal thought Beckett was going to snap at her but he just looked relieved and passed her a bowl of cold rice with nuts and wild sorrel chopped into it, which she wolfed down. And in between mouthfuls she told them what she’d seen and heard, and they listened with growing excitement.

  Joe nudged Beckett. “We can still be first! We might not have the best maps if they mind about pencil but we can win!”

  “Maybe.” Beckett nodded slowly. “If the Cowboys waste time fighting with Monty’s men, we might be able to overtake both of them. Tortoise and hare. I wonder where the Solemns and the Women Explorers are?”

  “Four days to go,” said Sal.

  They hadn’t gone far the next morning when they heard a gunshot. They looked at each other and dragged the donkeys further under the trees.

  “They could have been shooting a pigeon for dinner. Or a rabbit,” suggested Joe. He hoped they were.

  “I don’t care if they shoot each other, just so long as no one sees us and decides to sabotage us again,” said Beckett. “We’ve got to be the invisible tortoises.”

  “What is a tortoise?” asked Humphrey.

  “Shh—” said Sal.

  A horse and rider pounded along the riverbank, quickly followed by another. The second rider slowed, raised a revolver, fired at the first man then galloped after him.

  Joe ran to see. “He got away!”

  “That was a Cowboy with the revolver,” said Beckett, “so they’ve got at least one horse back.”

  They came to a river that flowed into the Golden River—a tributary too wide and fast-flowing to cross, so they had to follow it upstream. It was frustrating to be going in the wrong direction and uphill again. Joe kept scrambling down the bank to see if he could see a crossing place but the river was running through a gorge.

  Sal took bearings from a hill on the other side. “The railway can go straight over here but we might have to go hours round. So annoying.”

  Humph threw a stone down the hill. “I’m going to call it ‘Very Stupid and Annoying River’.”

  “Let’s hope it turns out to be too short to write its whole name on the map,” said Joe.

  “It is,” said a voice. “Only a few minutes further to a crossing place.”

  It was Agatha Amersham. And there were the other members of the Association of Women Explorers. Their camp was colourful, with a row of stripy stockings hanging like flags from a line strung between their two small tents. One woman was sitting on a blanket with a bandaged foot stretched out in front of her. Another was brushing their horse, whose leg was also bandaged, and the fourth one was tending the fire under a steaming billy. She looked up at the new arrivals.

  “Good heavens, it’s the children!” She left the fire and crossed the grass to peer short-sightedly at them through her glasses. “Well done, well done. Sit down, rest your legs. My goodness, I think this might be a hot chocolate moment, don’t you, Agatha?”

  “Excellent suggestion,” said Agatha. “Mugs out, everyone.”

  There really was hot chocolate. The short-sighted woman, called Daphne, broke a wedge of chocolate into each cup and topped it with hot water and white powder, which she explained was dried milk.

  Joe had never drunk hot chocolate before. It was glorious. He tried to sip it slowly to make it last.

  “This is my best ever, ever, ever,” said Humph, grinning under a chocolate moustache.

  Beckett asked what had happened to their horse and whether it was badly injured.

  Agatha frowned. “Someone, we know not who, hurt our beloved Boudica.”

  “Two nights ago, someone came into our camp, sliced through her halter and stole Boudica,” said Daphne. “We searched and searched and eventually Harriet here found her halfway down that bank with an injured leg. We managed to haul her up but in the process Harriet fell and sprained her ankle badly.”

  “Idiotic thing to do,” said Harriet.

  “Heroic,” said Agatha. “If you hadn’t risked your life we’d never have got Boudica out alive, would we, Zinnia?”

  “Boudica will recover,” said Zinnia, “but it will be a couple of weeks before she can walk far. Nothing to be done but make a comfortable camp and wait.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Sal, and told the women about the war between the Cowboys and Sir Monty’s team.

  “So
it’s Monty’s team who are the horse thieves.” Agatha snorted. “I despise people who would allow a defenceless animal to be hurt in order to gain an advantage.”

  Carrot, who’d been pecking about in the firewood pile, flew onto Agatha’s hat and dropped a large green caterpillar onto the brim. Joe tried not to laugh.

  Francie rummaged in the first-aid bag and found Ma’s pot of salve.

  “It’s magic,” said Humph.

  “It really is.” Joe held out his hands. “Just a few days ago I fell down a cliff and my hands were pulped. Now look.”

  He wiggled his fingers to prove they still worked, as they were far too dirty to see any scabs and bruises.

  Zinnia took the salve and her eyes welled with tears. “Can you really spare it?”

  “Of course we can,” said Sal. “It works on humans and horses both. You’ll probably be able to walk again tomorrow or the day after, Harriet.”

  The women said how grateful they were.

  Beckett cleared his throat and turned to Agatha. “Excuse me for asking, ma’am, but would you, by any chance, be able to spare us a little ink?”

  *

  “They were so kind,” said Sal as they splashed over the river at the crossing place that Agatha Amersham had shown them. “And they stuck together.”

  “They could have abandoned Harriet and Boudica and raced on,” said Joe. “Cody Cole would have. And Monty.”

  “I’m going to have hot chocolate every day when I’m rich,” said Humph dreamily.

  “And we have ink!” said Sal. “That was very clever of you, Beckett.”

  Beckett’s ears turned pink. “Well, there’s no harm in asking, is there?”

  When they reached the point on the opposite side of the gorge that she’d marked as the place for a bridge across Very Stupid and Annoying River, Sal stopped to measure and Francie inked in the map. Joe and Beckett persuaded Humph to stay with the mapmakers and they went on ahead. Beckett took the bucket, determined to find something to cook for dinner, and Joe took the slasher to clear a path through the undergrowth, which was much thicker on this side of the valley. Except he didn’t need to, because they soon came across a ready-made path that was going in exactly the right direction. Beckett thought it must have been trampled by animals—bears perhaps, or wild pigs—though they couldn’t see any spoor or scraps of fur on the bark of trees. Joe held the slasher tightly, just in case they met something fierce. Beckett had his catapult and knife at the ready in the hope that the path had been made by a wild boar; he talked of roast pork and described how to make delicious crackling.