At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [115]
They were seventy yards away when the plane exploded. The blast knocked all of them off their feet, scorching them with its heat.
Joseph sat up slowly, at first his vision obscured by the tops of the corn. Then he saw the flames and the black column of smoke going up.
“Thanks,” Vine said hoarsely from beside him. “Thanks, old fellow. Wouldn’t have liked to be in that. Bit of a mess, eh?” His face revealed a pain so intense he could barely keep consciousness.
A couple of yards away an elderly man rose to his feet, muttering expletives in French. He was gray-haired, his shoulders sagging, and the stubble of a beard darkened his chin. He shook his head and looked regretfully at the scorched and trampled field, then he turned to Vine and apologized in broken English.
Vine was lying on his back. He looked crumpled, smaller. His eyes were closed, and it seemed as if the agony of his leg had finally overtaken him.
A broad-shouldered, handsome woman—possibly the old man’s daughter—staggered to her feet, yanking her skirt out of her way impatiently. She was clicking with her tongue, her face anxious.
Joseph spoke to her in French. “We need to stop the bleeding, and see if we can splint where the bone is broken,” he said urgently. “I expect there’ll be an army hospital not far away, but he’ll die if we don’t do that much immediately.”
“Yes, yes,” she agreed. “It looks bad. Poor man. And you, are you all right?”
“Fine. Only a few bruises,” Joseph replied. “He made a good job of landing. Sorry about your field.”
She waved her hand, as if dismissing the subject. Then she looked up in the sky where they could just make out the tangle of planes wheeling around each other. “Circus of the Red Baron!” she said disgustedly. “I suppose you are lucky to get out alive.”
Joseph remembered the red triplane. He had actually taken a shot at it himself! Even hit a piece off the tail. Manfred von Richthofen—but he would have time to think about that later. Now they must look after Vine.
It was an arduous job, but one at least that Joseph was accustomed to. With the help of the French farmer and his daughter—as she proved to be—they splinted Vine’s leg and then stopped the worst of the bleeding, at least for the moment. Then they put him in the one decent wagon left and hitched up the ancient horse.
It took them two hours of driving along mud-rutted lanes to get Vine to the French military field hospital behind the lines, but he was still alive—and conscious again—by then. The surgeon looked at the leg and said he thought he could save it.
“Thanks,” Vine said when he was alone with Joseph, after the farmer and his wife had gone. He was lying in a hospital cot, a sheet up to his neck. “Good luck in finding your fellows. Tell them from me they’d better come home and face the music. They owe you that.”
“They owe you that,” Joseph corrected him. “I’ll be sure to tell them so. Good luck.”
Vine’s face tightened in momentary pain, then relaxed again into a smile. “I expected you to say ‘God be with you, my son,’ or something of that sort.”
“God be with you,” Joseph replied wryly. “I trust God. It’s the luck I’m a bit dubious about!”
He went to the commanding officer of the section, no more than half a mile from the hospital.
“We’ll find someone to give you a lift back to your regiment, Captain,” he said in excellent English. He was a slender man with a dark, intelligent face. He had an air of weary resignation, but he was unfailingly courteous.
“Thank you, sir,” Joseph replied, also in English. “But I was making my way to Switzerland, or at least in that direction.” And he explained his errand, showing him Colonel Hook’s letter as proof. Without it he could hardly expect anyone to think him other than a deserter himself. He said that the men were wanted for the murder