brambles that scratched and grabbed at them, then bursting into small isolated clearings encircled by a thick, tall wall of dark green fir trees.
Julian stopped in one of them and turned to look downhill, through a gap in the trees towards the clearing. He could see the Day-Glo colours of their tents clustered together in the middle, and amongst them the darker, navy- blue anoraks of Shepherd and Barns. They seemed in no immediate hurry to pursue; instead Barns was picking through his backpack, and Shepherd was slowly scanning the hillside, a hand cupped over his eyes to keep out the low-angle glare of the morning sun. Suddenly his other hand shot up and pointed directly towards them. He heard the distant bark of the man’s voice a second later.
‘Shit!’ snapped Julian. ‘He’s spotted us.’
‘Jules,’ Rose whispered, ‘look at us.’ She pointed at her anorak and his. One was lemon yellow, the other orange. ‘We’ve got to lose these.’
‘You’re right.’
They pushed their way out of the clearing back into dense foliage, and there, hidden from view for the moment, they shed their anoraks. He tucked his into a small bundle and pushed it under his jumper, creating a pregnant bulge.
‘We need to hang onto them,’ he said. ‘It gets cold at night.’ She nodded and did likewise.
‘Okay, then,’ he said, gasping for air after the last few minutes of exertion. ‘You’re better with directions — which way?’
Rose nodded up hill. ‘That way is west, I think… and perhaps we’ll get a signal on your BlackBerry at the top.’
‘Right.’
They pushed on again, stopping to rest momentarily in a small rock-strewn glade a few minutes later. Julian looked back down at the camp clearing and saw the dark outlines of both men walking calmly across it, towards them and the tree line.
‘They’ve stopped fucking around down there, now. They’re coming for us.’
She turned to look. ‘Can they find us?’
Julian shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s possible we’ve left tracks behind us that could be followed… shit, what do I know? I doubt it, though.’
‘Yeah,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not like he’s some Indian master-tracker, right?’
He watched them as they disappeared from view beneath the forest canopy below to begin their ascent up the hillside, towards them. He didn’t like the calm, unhurried way they had made their way out of the clearing. If Shepherd’s body language said anything, it was: I know exactly where you two are, and I’m coming for you.
‘Let’s just hope not.’ He grabbed her heaving shoulder. ‘Come on! Let’s move.’
Rose nodded wordlessly. They turned and continued scrambling uphill.
An hour later, the trees thinned out before them and they found themselves standing in the open, three- quarters of the way up one of the bare peaks that looked down on the valley in which they’d camped. Above them, dry brown tufts of grass gradually gave way to a sharp and steepening slope of bare rock that rose to culminate in a jagged horizon.
Rose sighed with relief to see a break in the peaks to their right, a quarter of a mile along the side of the slope — a narrow pass.
‘There,’ she said, pointing to it. ‘I guess that’ll take us into the next valley.’
Julian nodded as he pulled out his BlackBerry and tried for a signal.
‘Anything?’ Rose asked hopefully.
He shook his head.
‘Let’s go,’ she rasped between breaths. ‘Maybe we’ll pick up a signal on the other side.’
The pass was little more than a modest gulch, hacked like the very first cut of an axe into a tree trunk. It was just about wide enough that a 4x4 might have made it through, if it weren’t for the many fractured boulders and slides of rubble that clattered noisily and shifted unnervingly beneath their feet.
The sun was high in the sky as they emerged and looked down on a much broader valley.
‘Anything now?’ asked Rose.
Julian snapped his phone shut and shook his head. ‘No.’
She scanned the world below looking for some sign of civilisation — even an empty road would have been worth heading for. Then she spotted it.
‘Look!’
Julian followed her finger. ‘What is that?’
A wide, shallow, slow-moving river wound its way westward down the valley, and on a major horseshoe bend in the river, they could see a row of squat wooden buildings.
‘Looks like some kind of logging camp,’ said Rose. ‘Abandoned, though, do you think?’
‘Yeah.’
‘We should still make for that. There might be something there. There might be someone there.’
Julian nodded.
CHAPTER 82
2 November, 1856
‘My God! Keats, you’re alive!’ cried Ben. The old guide clung to the shoulder of Broken Wing as they hobbled out of the woods into the open. Ben rushed towards them, the gut-wrenching, plummeting sensation of fear he’d been experiencing a moment earlier replaced by an energetic surge of relief.
‘Oh bloody Christ!’ he yelled with a grin smeared across his face, as his feet carried him across the snow towards them. ‘I thought only the three of us had managed to esc-’
Then his eyes took in the pertinent detail. A broad strip of Keats’s long-faded, polka-dot shirt was crudely wrapped around his waist, soaked with his blood and almost as dark as ink. Keats looked up at Ben; his face, normally the rich golden tan of worn saddle leather, was now ashen.
Broken Wing helped him across to the fire, then gently laid him down. Keats groaned with the pain, holding his hands protectively against the front of his body. Several new dark blotches of crimson bloomed across the material, as beneath the wrap a large wound flexed and opened.
Ben looked up at the Shoshone, his face a question mark. Broken Wing understood and uttered a rapid burst of Ute, gesturing back at the dark apron of trees from which they’d emerged, his hands telling a story Ben couldn’t quite decipher.
Something back in there did this to Keats.
Ben needed to know more. ‘Keats, what happened?’
The old man breathed deeply, gathering his wits and what was left of his failing strength. ‘I seen it, Lambert. I seen the fuckin’ thing,’ he gasped desperately. His eyes, normally narrow flinty slits, were wide and dilated with fear. They flickered from Ben to the trees then back again.
‘Seen what?’
Keats puffed clouds and clenched his eyes shut, grimacing at the pain from his torso. Ben noticed there was even more blood coming down his left leg, soaking through the deerskin. A torn gash in the worn hide above his knee revealed a protruding tatter of bloodied skin.
Ben knelt down beside him, knowing instinctively there was not a lot his medical knowledge could do for the old man.
‘Let me have a look at this for you. The bandage needs re-wrapping. ’
Keats shook his head vigorously. ‘Leave it be!’ He held a hand out. ‘Only thing holdin’ me in one piece is this here bandage. ’ He looked down at it and grimaced. ‘You loosen that an’ everythin’ inside’ll come tumblin’ out.’
Ben suspected it was the same kind of wound he’d seen on the Paiute boy who had carried Emily into the camp. The same deep, horizontal gash that would have lacerated the organs, opened up the stomach lining and intestines, spilling digestive acids and faecal matter inside him. Even if he could completely staunch the flow of blood now, Keats was going to die painfully from the internal damage.
