‘So there’s a sort of scholarly rivalry between you?’
Bastian nodded. ‘And there is money at stake. If the petroglyphisn’tfound, Austin’s work is likely to win the prize, rather than mine. If itis, the money may come here. There’s a lot of good that can be done with that money.’
‘Then we must find it!’ said Cass and left Bastian to his rice and chicken carcasses. Friendly seemed to thrive on what anyone in England would think of as lethal for dogs.
Having Bastian ready to help was one thing, Cass discovered, but there was still so much to do, she didn’t have a minute for map tracing. Supplies were still coming in from other islands and had to be organised and delivered. She loved driving Bastian’s pick-up and was learning her way around the local roads as they were cleared. She was also getting to know the locals, and while she couldn’t always understand them the first time they spoke, she got it the second time. She felt part of the rescue team now. She had also learnt how to be useful in the kitchen even when Delphine wasn’t there.
She hardly saw Ranulph and although they shared a room at night, they both fell into bed exhausted so they didn’t really talk. He was involved in rebuildinglocal houses. It turned out he’d had a job on a building site as a student. Cass still felt a bit tongue-tied around him and longed to just feel normal again.
A couple of days after Cass had spoken to Bastian, things became a bit less busy. Neither Bastian nor Austin were at home and Cass had delivered a lot of provisions to people in the morning, so she decided to devote the afternoon to the map.
She had just got herself set up in Bastian’s study, with everything laid out on the desk, including tracing paper, when Ranulph came in, panting hard. ‘There’s been a landslip. Some kids were playing and the ground just disappeared from under them. I’ve come to get rope. Could you bring one of the first aid kits and follow me?’
Cass rushed after him, hardly able to keep up. He got into a green pick-up truck she hadn’t seen before and she hurled herself into the passenger seat beside him. ‘Do we have to go far?’ she asked.
‘It’s quite close by, thank goodness. The land slipped, sending one lad to the bottom of the valley pretty quickly. He’s making a lot of noise so I think he must be fairly OK. I need you to patch him up. I have to get the other two who are still at the top of the slip but who might come crashing down at any moment.’
‘Oh God, Ranulph. Will you be able to do that?’
‘I hope so,’ said Ranulph. ‘I’ve done a bit of climbing and have been out a couple of times with the Mountain Rescue team at home. Only practice runs, but it all helps.’
They arrived at the mudslide where there was asmall crowd of anxious adults waiting. To Cass’s huge relief, the slide wasn’t particularly high, but she realised there must be a huge weight of earth waiting to collapse still further.
‘I have first aid!’ she said gaily, approaching the adults as if a well-applied sticking plaster might cure the problem.
The boy, who looked about fifteen, was with the adults and did have a cut on his leg, but it wasn’t bad and now he’d had a chance to recover a bit from his fall, he was calm as she opened sachets of saline solution and cleaned the wound before applying some butterfly closures.
While she was concentrating on doing this, she was aware that behind her, Ranulph was climbing carefully up the edge of the landslip where the other boys were crouching. She gathered from the people around her he had to go that way as it would take hours to approach the boys from behind the landslip and there might not be much time before more mud and rocks came rocketing downwards.
She had complete confidence in Ranulph, of course she had, but she was glad of an excuse not to watch him climb a wall of soil that could collapse at any moment.
She decided she should still go on chatting and joking with her patient even after she’d heard roars of delight which indicated Ranulph had got to the top.
But eventually she had to turn and watch. Someone had fashioned short wooden stakes which Ranulph had hammered into the earth and put rope round sohe could travel across towards the two remaining teenagers. Obviously accustomed to climbing, he made the crossing quite quickly and persuaded one to come to him. Then, holding on to the rope, the boy was able to traverse across to safety. Encouraged by seeing his friend reach the other side, the second boy made the same journey. Then, just at the end, when Ranulph was coming back, one of the stakes pulled out of the soil sending him crashing down.
Cass suppressed a scream. Both boys were safe, clinging to some tree roots, but Ranulph had ended up at the bottom of the mud slip. She realised that the loose soil could tumble down on top of him, burying him, at any moment.
Cass shut her eyes. The crowd around her were gasping and exclaiming in horror.
‘Is he alive?’ she asked no one in particular.
Someone put their hand on her arm. ‘He’s alive. He’s hurt, bleeding, but alive. You might need some of those fancy plasters for his leg though.’ Cass looked up to see the mother of the boy she had patched up. She looked concerned but not horror-stricken.
Then a man came to her. ‘Hurry! Bring your kit. We’ve pulled him out of danger but Ranulph is bleeding.’
A few minutes later, Cass found herself at Ranulph’s side without knowing how she got there.
He was lying on a bit of plastic tarpaulin and one glance at his leg told Cass that butterfly closures would not be enough. He smiled weakly.
‘What a nuisance. I sliced my leg open on somegalvanise. There must have been a banana shed caught in the landslip.’ He gave a rallying look, as if she was the one in need of support. ‘Just clean me up and get me back to the house. Someone there will be able to fix me up.’
A quick glance at Ranulph’s leg gave Cass a glimpse of subcutaneous fat and something that might have been bone. It didn’t take her long to take a mental register of who might be able to ‘fix Ranulph up’ and conclude that it was her.
‘I think I’m probably your best bet for now,’ she said. She glanced down at his leg. ‘Let’s get you back to the house. I can’t clean this here.’
She bandaged his leg as well as she could and then turned to the many people around them. ‘Can we get him to Bastian’s?’
It didn’t take long before a stretcher was made and Ranulph was lifted on to it. He seemed in good spirits, for which Cass was extremely grateful. She might be able to deal with a bad cut if she had to, but if an infection set in, it would be beyond her capabilities.
