Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 54 of 150

Ben and Al pulled the cart down the road at a steady pace. Al leaned into the shafts. Ben walked behind with the lantern low. The chest sat under grain sacks and a tarp. The border road was six miles out. But Ben still had no one waiting past the line. No buyer. No hiding place. The herbalist had sent word ahead through her runners, and any face at the crossing could be hers. Arriving with the chest was as bad as being caught with it. "I need a hole past the border," Ben said. "Somewhere the herbalist hasn't paid." Al kept pulling. "I fix things. I don't hide them." A figure stepped out from a stand of pines ahead. Ben's hand went to his knife. Then he saw the taped knee, the ponytail, the boots wrapped in cord. Crystal. She had left him the pot at the gap in the ridge weeks back. She had known his route before he did. Crystal held up a small wooden jar with the word JUMP burned into a plate on its side. She set it on the road. "Scent inside. Rub it on the tarp. Two hours' cover." Ben stopped the cart. "Why?" "You're carrying the whole set. Herbalist has a man at every gate on the border road. Not the west trail." "The west trail is a cliff." "Not all of it." She pointed with two fingers up the slope. "Old jumper's line. Plank bridge above the ravine. I use it." Al frowned. "A cart won't cross a plank." "Cart won't. Chest will. Two men, one rope." Ben looked at her taped knee. "You'll pull it across?" "I'll jump it across. You feed rope." Ben weighed it. The border road meant walking into the herbalist's net. The west trail meant one rope over a drop. He picked the drop. They pushed the cart up the slope in the dark. Crystal moved ahead on her strapped boots, quiet as a fox. At the ravine she tied one end of a coiled line to the chest and the other around her waist. She took three fast steps and jumped the gap. Her knee held. She landed, rolled, and pulled. Ben fed the rope. The chest slid onto the plank, dipped, then dragged across. Al braced the near end. When the chest hit the far side Crystal untied it and pointed down a dark path Ben could not see. "Stone barn. Half mile. Empty two years. No one's paid for it because no one knows it's there." Ben crossed the plank. Al stayed with the empty cart on the near side. "I'll take it back down the road," Al said. "Give them something to chase." Ben followed Crystal down the path. The chest rode her shoulder now. At the stone barn she set it inside a dry stall and stepped back. "Two days," she said. "Then it's your problem again." She walked out into the trees. Ben shut the barn door. The chest was across. He was hidden. But two days was all he had.