Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 132 of 150

Ben woke to Joe shaking his shoulder. Gray light showed at the window. The fox was already up, ears flat. Joe's voice was low. "Runner came through Payne's camp an hour ago. Foreman found a boot print in the rubble and matched it to the tread you left at the shed last week. They sent word south. Hunters will be here by noon." Ben sat up. The cottage was too obvious now. A boot print he had not thought to smear. He lifted the flagstone and took out the coin. He put the fox in the sack under his coat. He had until noon to be gone and to leave nothing that named him. Lolly stood in the doorway, wet to the knees. "Which road?" Ben shook his head. Payne's people watched the north road. The plague road ran west into the crew's own camp. South was open ground. East went nowhere he knew. He needed a hole, not a road. "There's the burned place on the rise," Lolly said. "Nobody goes near it. Roof gone, walls black. Payne's men think it's cursed." Ben knew the shell she meant. A scorched frame at the edge of the pines, beams still standing, cracks glowing at dawn from a fire that had never quite died in the sill. He had passed it twice and looked away both times. That was the point. If he had looked away, so would a hunter. They moved fast. Joe wiped the flagstone and scattered ash on the floor. Lolly dragged a bench across the boot marks by the door. Ben carried the coin and the fox. Millie met them at the tree line with a bundle of straw for damping. They reached the burned house before the sun cleared the ridge. Inside, the floor was soft with char. Ben found a dry pocket under the fallen chimney stone where the heat still held. He wedged the coin sack there and set the fox in the straw beside it. The fox did not hum. The wood was miles away in Eileen's cart. It only watched him. Ben went back out and walked his own tracks backward to the road, then off into the creek. Joe followed with a branch to sweep the last prints. Lolly waded ahead to break the scent. At noon the hunters came up the road in a line of six. Ben watched from the trees above the burned house. Two rode to the cottage. Two went to the ruin. Two stood at the fork and looked at the scorched shell on the rise. One spat. They turned their horses and rode past it without slowing. Ben let out the breath he had been holding since dawn. The cottage was lost. The coin was safe. The fox was safe. He had a burned wall between him and the men who wanted him, and a day to decide where to run next.