Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [144]
‘How are your feet?’ he asked, noticing immediately that Sam was hobbling as he moved to get the coffee and sugar from his pack. ‘Have you got a blister?’
‘I expect so; my boots are rubbing on my ankles,’ Sam groaned.
‘Take them off and I’ll put a bandage round them,’ Jack said. ‘And you, Theo! How is that wound holding up?’
‘It’s not too bad, a few twinges, that’s all,’ Theo replied, tucking his hand inside his coat as if to check the scar hadn’t broken open.
‘I’ll check that too,’ Jack said. ‘But coffee first. Beth looks as if she’ll collapse if she doesn’t get some quickly.’
A lump came up in Beth’s throat for she didn’t understand how Jack had turned out to be such a caring man. From the little he’d told her about his childhood she knew it had been a harsh one, the kind you would expect to create an unfeeling brute.
∗
By the time they had reached the Scales, Beth was on the point of collapse. Every part of her ached, as if she’d been stretched on a medieval torture rack.
The sky was like lead, and she’d heard someone say they thought it would snow again soon. When she looked down the way they had come, the stream of climbers was just as long as it had been that morning, and she wondered at the insanity of it all.
She dimly heard Jack say they would pitch the tent for the night and then go to check if their packers had got everything up yet.
Beth crawled into the tent even before the boys had finished hammering the pegs into the frozen ground. Every inch of ground around the Scales was covered with tents, and the sound of hundreds of voices, complaining, arguing and calling to one another, made her want to cover her ears to shut them all out.
Somehow she managed to get the blankets out of their packs, but fell on to them before she could even straighten them out or attempt to light the lantern.
It was dark when the boys had got back from checking on their kit, and although Beth had heard their voices as they came into the tent, she hadn’t felt able to move or even open her eyes.
They camped at the Scales for three days because of a heavy snowfall. Others went on up the Golden Stairs regardless, but Jack thought it foolhardy, for someone had fallen and broken his leg, and had to be carried back down to Sheep Camp by Indian packers.
It was tedious huddling in the tent, but at least it gave them time to rest and gather themselves for the next gruelling part of the journey. The men Jefferson had warned her about were here at the Scales in force. They looked like bona fide stampeders, complete with backpacks and shovels, but the fires they lit, the hot drinks they offered the unwary were only to lure a few suckers into one of their pea-under-the-shell games. She recognized a few faces as being some of Soapy’s foot soldiers and guessed he would get a good rake-off from them. Theo sulked for some time when she told him how she knew the games were rigged, but at least that deterred him from allowing himself to be sucked in.
On the fourth morning Jack announced it was time to pack up the tent and go, even though the sky was heavy with more snow and the temperature had dropped even lower.
‘If we leave it any longer our goods will be buried under feet of snow at the top,’ he said with an anxious glance at the sky. ‘Besides, there’s never going to be a good day for going up those steps.’
Sam took the lead with his sledge strapped on top of his pack. Beth came next, with Jack behind her,