then collapsed on the rocky bank. Zoe caught up after a few minutes, and then he willed himself to keep moving. The ground sloped sharply back up from the river. Then, at the top of the next rise, Alex took the binoculars from the bag and rested on a rock to scan the valley below. ‘There it is,’ she said happily.
Despite the pain and exhaustion, Ben noticed the spectacular view from up here. Open prairie stretched for miles in front of them, and the early afternoon sun was sparkling off the snow on the distant mountain peaks. Alex handed him the binocs, and he focused on the rambling range of farm buildings a mile away across the waving grassland. The place looked like a typical small hill farm, with assorted barns and horses grazing behind white- painted fences.
‘I don’t see anyone about,’ he said. ‘But there’s smoke coming from the chimney.’
‘Let’s get down there and take a look,’ Alex replied.
It took another forty-five minutes of painfully slow progress to reach the farm. They walked inside the gate and followed a dusty path between run-down timber outbuildings towards the house. Ben rested against a fencepost while Zoe hovered uncertainly in the background and Alex approached the farmhouse. One window was boarded over and the porch steps were worm-eaten and supported on bricks.
She thumped on the door. ‘Hello? Anybody around?’ There was no answer. She stepped back from the house, gazing up at the windows, then shrugged back at Ben.
The sun was hot and high above them now, and he shielded his eyes from it as he scanned around the farmstead.
Then he saw the body.
The old man was lying in the long grass a hundred yards from one of the horse paddocks. Ben and Alex hurried over to him. She kneeled down next to the limp figure in the worn-out jeans and red check shirt and felt for a pulse. ‘He’s alive,’ she said. Ben fetched a pitcher of water from the nearby paddock and splashed some of it on the old man’s face. He groaned, blinked and tried to sit up. His hair and beard were long and white, and his face was tanned to leather. He winced in pain and grabbed his ankle. Ben saw that it was badly swollen.
‘Damned colt there pulled me off my feet,’ the old man said, pointing. In the paddock, a young chestnut looked up from his grazing and gazed across at them, trailing his lungeing rope from his halter.
‘Don’t try to talk,’ Alex said to the old man. ‘We’ll get you in out of the sun.’
They helped the old man up the broken-down porch steps and into the farmhouse. The house was cool inside and smelled faintly damp. Through a shady hallway was a sitting room with wallpaper hanging off the walls and a low couch that looked as if it had been there since the fifties. They laid him down. Ben wiped the sweat out of his eyes and gently peeled back the old man’s trouser leg. ‘Looks to be just a bad sprain,’ Alex said, peering down at it.
‘Mighty glad you folks turned up,’ the old man said. ‘Don’t get a lot of visitors out here.’ His wrinkled eyes focused on Ben’s bloody shirt, but he said nothing. He extended his hand. ‘Riley Tarson’s the name.’
‘Ben Hope. This is Alex.’
Zoe had wandered into the house, standing idly watching from a distance.
‘What about this little lady?’ Riley asked. ‘She got a name?’
‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘Trouble.’ He eased off the old man’s boot, then turned to Alex. ‘I think I saw some comfrey growing outside in the yard. You know how to make a decoction? That’ll help ease the swelling.’
‘No need,’ Riley said. ‘Ira keeps a jar of some damned Indian potion on the kitchen shelf.’
‘Ira?’
‘He helps out on the farm. Ain’t here, though. Rode out two days ago to chase up a missing steer. Not been back since.’
‘I’ll see if I can find the jar,’ Alex said. Zoe trailed after her.
Riley eyed Ben carefully. ‘You’re a little out of your way, mister. It’s my guess you’re no ordinary travellers.’
‘You guessed right,’ Ben said.
‘And I guess that chopper earlier was out looking for you. Right about that too?’
Ben said nothing.
Riley’s old face creased into a grin. ‘I know what them helicopters are. I got no love for no G-men.’
‘They’re CIA,’ Ben said quietly. ‘They’re looking for us.’
‘I have no problem with that, son. If you was fixing to harm me or rob me, you’d have done it by now. I don’t know your business, and the less I know the less I have to tell. A man’s actions is all I care about.’ Riley grunted. ‘Now, the sonofabitch in the helicopter, he came down low while I was lying there in the dirt. Saw me and just smiled and flew off. If you hadn’t showed up, I wouldn’t have made it through till morning. So you ask me to pick sides, I won’t be picking his and that’s for sure.’
Alex came back into the room, holding a big jar full of greenish lotion. Ben examined it. ‘That’s comfrey, all right,’ he said. ‘It’ll help.’ He smeared it over the swollen ankle, then immobilised the foot with the cushion, rolling it carefully around and strapping it up with tape. ‘You need to rest up a while,’ he told Riley.
‘You don’t look too good yourself,’ the old man said. ‘I seen gunshot wounds before.’
Ben felt suddenly faint again. The old man’s lips were moving, but all he could hear was a rumbling echo in his ears. The room began to spin, and then he was dimly aware of Alex’s cry as he crashed to the floor.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Consciousness came and went. Like a slow-motion strobe effect, there were periods of blackness where he drifted and floated for what seemed like eternity. In between were bursts of sound and light and activity. He was dimly aware of climbing the stairs, an arm around Alex’s neck as she supported him. Then a room. A bed. The feel of crisp sheets against his skin. Blood on white cotton. Alex bending over him, her face looming large, concern showing in her eyes. He blacked out again.
When he opened his eyes, the red light of dawn was creeping across the wooden floor of the unfamiliar room. He blinked and tried to lift his head off the pillow. His shoulder was freshly bandaged. There was pain, but it felt different.
He felt for the ring around his neck. It was gone.
He looked around him. He was in a large bedroom, simple and traditional. In stark contrast to the downstairs, the room was clean and tidy, as though it was never used. He was in a brass-framed double bed, covered with a patchwork quilt. There was a wash basin in the corner, and on the wooden rocking chair next to his bed were fresh clothes, a blue denim shirt and clean jeans, neatly folded. Carefully placed on top of the clothes was the gold wedding ring with its leather thong.
Alex was next to him. She was slumped across the bed, her tousled hair across the quilt, one arm draped over his legs. He wondered how long she’d been watching over him before she gave in to sleep.
She stirred and opened her eyes, looking directly at him. She seemed to have that ability, which he’d only seen in wild animals and trained soldiers, to go from a dead sleep to a state of perfect alertness, with none of the yawning puffy-eyed waking-up stages in between. She smiled and sat up on the bed. She’d changed out of her woolly jumper and was wearing a farmer’s chequered shirt a size too big and knotted at the waist.
‘Welcome back to the land of the living,’ she said.
‘You did it?’
She nodded. ‘I had to go in deep, but it came out clean. It didn’t hit any bone. It flattened a little but didn’t mushroom. No fragmentation.’ She reached for a tin cup on the bedside table and rattled it. He looked inside at the crumpled bullet rolling around in the bottom. It looked small and innocuous now.
‘You saved my life,’ he said. ‘That’s twice now. I have some catching up to do.’
She took the cup from his hand and pressed cool fingers gently to his brow ‘You’re still burning hot. Get some rest.’
He lay back against the pillow. ‘We have to get moving.’
‘Not for a few days. Riley says we can stay here as long as we need.’
‘How is he?’
‘Sleeping. He’ll be fine.’ She smiled. ‘He seems to think you and I are an item.’
