Sticky straightened abruptly. His face, dripping with perspiration and taut with fatigue, bore a look of resolution so intense it startled Kate. “No, let’s go now. We can’t afford to rest.”
Sticky’s tone struck Reynie just as his expression had struck Kate, and when Reynie looked up wonderingly he noticed something missing. “Sticky, what happened to your spec-tacles?”
“They fell off and slid down an embankment. I didn’t want to waste time going after them. Never mind, I can see well enough to see we have a long way to go.” He took one of the sledge grips in a hand already raw from pulling. “I’m ready when you are.”
Reynie, who didn’t feel ready in the least, wiped his brow and made an effort to stand up straight, while Kate drew her shoulders back, suddenly encouraged by Sticky’s display of fortitude. “Where did all this toughness come from?” she asked.
Sticky gave her a weak smile. “I’ve been saving it up.”
“Well, now was the perfect time to spend it,” said Kate, impressed.
Indeed, over the long, grueling trek across the plain, Sticky gave all of them hope. It was Reynie who’d had the idea and Kate who’d plotted their course, but it was Sticky who sacrificed the most — and in the process inspired the others to greater effort. His skinny frame quaked with exhaustion, sweat streamed from his head, and more than once his legs wobbled and went out from under him, but each time he rose, collected himself, and set to the task again with a fierceness they’d never seen. The fact was that Sticky had finally been given a chance to make up for his errors — a chance to get his friends out of danger — and he was passionately determined to succeed, no matter the cost to himself.
When Reynie slipped, Sticky helped him up. When Kate uncharacteristically despaired aloud at their progress, Sticky assured her they would make it, and somehow managed to double his efforts. Time and again his body faltered; time and again Sticky hauled himself up and pressed on. It was a noble thing to behold, and as the group at long last drew near the forest, Reynie found himself thinking that even if they were caught, he was grateful to have seen Sticky at his finest.
“We’re actually going to make it,” said Constance incredulously, and it was true — their pace had slowed to a crawl, and the boys’ hands were blistered and bleeding, but they lacked just a few yards until they could leave the exposed plain for the shelter of the forest.
“Of course we’ll make it,” Kate wheezed as she strained forward. “We just need to . . . Hey, what’s that?”
The others saw it, too, a lumpy black object on the ground ahead. The object blended in almost perfectly with the rocky ground, and because of the mists they hadn’t seen it until they were almost upon it. It wasn’t a large rock, or even a group of rocks, but appeared to be a long, shallow pile of mud — though where such a lot of mud would have come from was impossible to guess. And then, as the children came closer, they saw that the object was Milligan.
Kate cried out and stumbled forward, landing on her knees beside her father, who had opened his eyes at the sound of her voice. As she wiped mud from his face and begged him to tell her he was all right, Milligan gave her a relieved smile. “Now that I see
Milligan groaned, then whispered hoarsely, “Better stop hugging me, Katie-Cat. Afraid I’ll black out again. From the pain, you know. It’s considerable.”
Kate had drawn back with a horrified expression. “Oh! I’m so sorry! How badly are you hurt? Did you really fall off a cliff ?”
“Jumped, actually,” said Milligan.
“But how did you get here, then? McCracken said you must have broken every bone in your body!”
“Not all of them,” Milligan muttered. (He seemed to be trying not to move his mouth very much.) “And I got here by dragging myself, mostly. I was on my way to save you.” He swiveled his eyes toward the other children and Mr. Benedict on the sledge. “Is everyone all right, then? How is Mr. Benedict?”
For a moment Kate couldn’t answer. She simply shook her head and stared. Now that she’d gotten over the shock of discovering Milligan here, she was coming to realize just how bad he looked. She’d seen him in a frightful condition before — in fact it was only a year ago that she’d seen him covered in mud just like this, and injured as well — but this was much worse. He looked as though he’d been trampled by a stampede. His face was so bruised and swollen with hornet stings he was scarcely recognizable; his shirt and trousers were in tatters; his hat and jacket were gone . . . and yet he’d been coming to save her. Kate took his hand and held it, noticing as she did so the handcuff and short length of chain dangling from it. She felt anger swelling up inside her.
Milligan winced, and Reynie, standing behind Kate, gently reminded her not to squeeze.
“Mr. Benedict’s all right,” Kate said, easing Milligan’s hand back to the ground. “We’re all fine. But how did you survive if you fell — I mean jumped — into a ravine?”
Milligan swallowed with some difficulty and said, “The bottom was all mud. I’d been there earlier looking for the cave, so I knew.”
“But McCracken said it was more than fifty feet down!”
“Well . . . I was able to slow myself a bit by dragging along the face of the cliff, and of course I had to land just so . . .” Milligan winced again, though no one had touched him, and his breath came in ragged bursts. “Still, I’m afraid in the darkness I . . . slightly misjudged the distance.”
“Kate,” Reynie murmured. “We need to get him into the trees.”
“Right! Okay, Milligan, we’re going to lift you onto the sledge and —”
Milligan made a noise of dissent. “Listen, Kate, I think I’m going to . . .” he swallowed “. . . black out again, so listen carefully. Leave me — cover me with pebbles or something if you must — and make for the bay. You can’t escape if you’re dragging me, and I am ordering you to escape, do you hear? Go now . . . leave me behind . . . That’s an order, so don’t even think —” Milligan abruptly closed his eyes and fell silent.
“Can’t
“Let’s get him onto the sledge,” Sticky said, coming around to help lift. “I assume we’re disobeying his order.”
