The Mapmakers' Race

by Eirlys Hunter

  “Slander!”

  Mr Molineux stood up. “We’ll see about that, Mr Cole. Is this Humphrey?” He strode over to the table and shook Humph’s shoulder. Humph sat up, looking confused and grumpy at being woken. Mr Molineux took his hand and yanked him up onto the dais.

  “Careful!” said Sal.

  “Quiet,” barked Mr Molineux. “This is a serious accusation. Tell me exactly what happened, little boy.”

  Humphrey stuck his thumb in his mouth, closed his eyes and leaned against Mr Molineux’s leg.

  “Don’t go back to sleep, Humph,” Beckett’s low voice cut through the clamour. “Tell them. Tell them about the bad man and the horse.”

  There was a lot of shushing, the marquee quietened, and everyone sat forward to listen.

  “We ain’t kidnappers!” snarled Cody Cole.

  Humph’s eyes popped open. “One of you is.” He looked around and pointed. “That one. That one who’s still got his hat on. He picked me up and rode me on his horse and tied me up and put me in his cave but I escaped and Francie helped me.”

  Cody Cole looked furious but managed a dismissive laugh. “Hokum! The boy’s listened to too many stories. None of my men has been anywhere near ’em.”

  Humphrey narrowed his eyes. Joe knew that look; he exchanged a hopeful glance with Francie, who had woken up and was listening with her hands clasped in front of her mouth.

  “Never?” said Humph.

  “None of them. Ever,” said Cody Cole.

  “Then how come I know that he—” Humph pointed at the man with the hat, “has freckles like a big H here?” He pointed to his forearm. “Which actually I know cos he had his arm around me on the horse and his sleeve was scrunched up and all I could see was a freckly H and lots of hairiness. And H is for Humphrey and H is for hair and for hat, which I know because I AM NEARLY FIVE AND I AM NOT STUPID!”

  “H is for home!” squawked Carrot, waking up and strutting across the table.

  “Pull back your sleeve! Reveal your arm!” demanded Miss Prowdy, but the man in the hat was already trying to get away. He didn’t have a chance. Lots of people launched themselves into his path and many voices shouted that he did indeed have an H in freckles.

  Then Joe noticed that Cody Cole was trying to slip towards the exit unnoticed.

  “Stop him! Stop him!” he shouted.

  And there were Agatha Amersham and Zinnia, Harriet and Daphne forming a solid wall in the doorway. Cody Cole tried to shove Zinnia out of the way but Agatha and Daphne grabbed an arm each and flipped him onto the floor. They pinned his arms, Joe and Beckett threw themselves onto his back and Daphne and Zinnia each sat on a kicking leg. Mr Molineux wrenched the bag of gold from his fingers.

  After Agatha and her team had been welcomed, and the Cowboys had been marched off to the lock-up, Joe found he wasn’t tired any more. Agatha’s team sat at the Santanders’ table and Joe cut chocolate cake for everyone.

  “Three cheers for Humph! What a great noticer you are!”

  Sal scooped him onto her lap and hugged him. “You’re a champion!”

  “Three cheers for Sal, too,” said Beckett.

  Sal flushed. “I hate being a tell-tale. But we’ve all done such hard things to get here. Those men were cruel and they cheated. They didn’t deserve a prize. And I remembered what you said about the ink. There’s no harm in asking.”

  They told the story to the women explorers, who were suitably shocked. Agatha was just starting to tell Sal about scholarships when the officials, who had been sitting with their heads together, stood up. Miss Prowdy tapped a spoon on a glass and called for silence again.

  “The next team to arrive were Sir Monty’s Mountaineers. However, only four of them crossed the finish line before sunset, which is less than half their team. So, the prize purse for the first—and only—team to arrive in sufficient numbers and without cheating goes to the Santander family. Congratulations, Santanders!”

  The whole marquee erupted in cheering.

  Miss Prowdy beckoned them all to come up to the dais and shook their hands. The crowd hushed. “These remarkable children have succeeded where the adults failed. Tell us, Sal, how did you do it?”

  Sal considered. “I think it’s because we’re a very good team. You know, we stuck together, and we helped each other.” She looked at Sir Monty and Keith Skinner. “We needed all of us, including Humphrey and even Carrot, our parrot. And we laughed a lot. And also,” she added, because she felt she should be as truthful as she could, “we were lucky.”

  Miss Prowdy said how delighted she was, and gave Sal the heavy bag of gold. Five hundred golden guineas!

  A reporter from the Gazette asked a beaming Sal what they were going to do with the money.

  “We’re going to look for our father,” she told him. “And our mother. We’re going to find our parents.”

  Mrs Baddeley’s spare room had two big feather beds, and a trundle bed for Humph.

  “Oh, bliss,” murmured Sal as she snuggled down beside Francie, with the bag of gold between them. “I’m buying everyone a feather bed if there’s any money left over.”

  “A telescope,” said Joe.

  “New boots,” said Beckett.

  “Sausages,” mumbled Humphrey.

  “Do you remember wishing on the new moon a month ago?” said Joe. “Humph wanted a story and he got his wish, and Francie wanted to touch snow. Beckett wanted the railway to go to his village. Three wishes out of five. Not bad. No more days to go.”

  Joe slept and slept, until the smell of new-baked bread penetrated his dreams and he opened his eyes. Bright sun streamed through the curtains. There was Humph, eyes shut, thumb in. There was Beckett’s hair sticking up above the sheet. There was Sal, lying on her back, but no Francie.

  Heart thumping, he padded down the stairs and found his way to the kitchen.

  And there was Francie, in one of Mrs Baddeley’s enormous nighties, and she was sitting on Ma’s lap!

  Joe threw himself at his mother and they clung together, laughing and crying in a three-way hug. Then the others heard the noise and piled in, everyone squealing and exclaiming.

  “Oh, my giddy aunt!” said Mrs Baddeley, dabbing at her face with a dishcloth. “We’ve not had this much excitement since the goat got on the roof!”

  Then Humphrey noticed what Mrs Baddeley was making. “Pancakes!”

  They explained to Ma that they had a lot of catch-up eating to do, and tucked into lunchtime breakfast.

  “I was so worried,” she said. “You had no money for food.”

  “But we had Beckett,” said Joe, “And now we all know how to make bread and porridge and lots of things.”

  Ma hugged Beckett. She kept shaking her head and her eyes watered.

  “A woman in Grand Prospect tried to make us pay for food she said you’d ordered. She shouted and spat at us,” said Sal, “but I promised her you’d pay.”

  “I saw her and I paid her.”

  “Thank goodness! That was my last worry.”

  “Oh, Sal!” Ma squeezed her hand.

  Carrot flew in through the back door and landed on Ma’s shoulder. She pecked her cheek. “How you, Missus?”

  “So glad to see you, Carrot!” Ma stroked Carrot’s back.

  “She saved Joe’s life,” said Beckett. “She’s a champion life-saving parrot.”

  Ma pulled out her hanky and had a good blow.

  “What happened to you?” asked Sal through a mouthful of pancake.

  Ma told how it had taken her many days to get to Grand Prospect, only to discover that they’d gone on without her.

  “I was so scared,” she said. “I kept imagining you falling off cliffs, or drowning, or getting lost or hypothermia.”

  “That all happened,” said Beckett, “except Joe only nearly drowned.”

  “And we only nearly got eaten by a bear,” said Sal.

  “Oh, my word!” Mrs Baddeley hugged her tea towel to her chest.

  “And Hump
h was kidnapped, and Francie was unconscious,” said Joe.

  Ma shook her head in horror. “But you got here! Are you really all right? Really? I’m so proud of you. All of you.”

  “We got here, and we won!” said Joe. “Five hundred golden guineas.”

  “What?!” Ma’s mouth fell open and she looked around at the others to see if he was teasing her.

  “It’s true.” Sal wiped a trickle of syrup off her chin. “I thought they’d have told you already. We’ve got a bag of gold upstairs.”

  “Now we can go and look for Pa,” said Humph.

  Ma shook her head and wiped her eyes with her knuckles. “What extraordinary children.”

  “What did you do when you found we’d started the race without you?” asked Joe.

  “I went as far as Beckett’s village and heard about the donkeys and which way you’d gone. But Beckett’s mother said you were very organised and being sensible, and by then you were over a week ahead of me. So,” she drank some tea, “I decided to trust you. I went back to Grand Prospect and took a berth on a ship going to New Coalhaven. But a terrible storm blew up. The ship was blown so far off course that we’ve only just got here, many days late. I was sure you’d all be blown right off the mountains.”

  “We nearly were, but Humph spotted a cave just in time,” said Joe.

  Humphrey was concentrating on spreading strawberry jam right to the edges of a slice of fresh bread. Ma hugged him. “Clever, clever Humphrey!”

  “There were bats in it,” said Humph.

  “We watched whole trees blow past,” said Sal. “It was the craziest thing.”

  Beckett and Joe wandered up the road behind Sal, and Francie and Humph trailed behind them, wearing seaweed crowns. They’d been to the beach. It was too cold and dirty for swimming but they’d built a sand tower, dug a moat, and messed around for the whole afternoon. It had been good to get away from the noise of the town and curious people, and even from the watchful eyes of Ma for a little while. She kept wanting to brush their hair. She even talked of starting lessons again.

  Beckett loved his shiny new boots but Joe’s new trousers and shirt were still uncomfortably stiff. Tomorrow he and Francie and Beckett were going to fetch the donkeys from the farm and Joe planned to wear his old clothes. He couldn’t wait to be off walking again. After that, Beckett and the donkeys would be getting a boat back to Brightwater Village, which everyone was sad about. Mr Arbuckle would be happy to see his donkeys, though. And surprised. And Beckett’s family would be excited to see him. They’d be astonished when he showed them his new purse full of gold.

  “What will you buy first?” Joe asked Beckett.

  “First off?” Beckett tipped back his top hat. “Tools and materials to mend our house. Then a milk cow, and then? Then, I’m going to buy a traction engine.”

  “But they’re so noisy!” said Joe.

  “They’re noisy machines that can do anything. When the railway building begins, I’ll rent it out to the railway company then my family will always have money.”

  Joe marvelled. Beckett was already thinking of the time beyond tomorrow.

  “There are visitors,” Sal warned them from the gate.

  Two people were bustling up Mrs Baddeley’s path, calling out to Ma who was sitting in the sun on the veranda.

  It was Miss Prowdy, looking excited, and Mr Molineux, puffed up with importance. Ma shook hands with them; Francie hid behind Ma’s chair.

  “News!” said Miss Prowdy, stroking the mayoral chain. “Extraordinary news. You—”

  “Are winners!” interrupted Mr Molineux. “The Santander team were first home. But now you have also been declared winners of the best route. Furthermore, your maps and accompanying drawings are apparently exemplary. My surveyor is of the belief that your route is as well considered as any he has ever seen, and the railway company will be adopting it in its entirety. In total, you have won three thousand five hundred golden guineas.”

  “Guineas!” shrieked Carrot, flying in circles.

  “Yes! The railway will go through my village!” Beckett sat down with a bump on the step.

  “Three cheers for us!” Joe grabbed Humph’s hands and swung him round and round, laughing and kicking his legs out.

  “If we give Mr Arbuckle a hundred, and you get a quarter, you’ll get eight hundred and fifty guineas, Beckett,” said Sal.

  “Shouldn’t it be a fifth? Anyway,” Beckett said slowly, “it’s all thanks to Francie, really. Her maps are a miracle of pencil work. And Sal’s clever calculations. And Joe’s route-finding.”

  “And your cooking. We’d never have survived without you being in charge of food,” said Sal.

  Ma drew Francie out from behind the chair and hugged her close. She dripped tears into Francie’s hair. “That’s an unimaginable amount of money. It was our last chance, but now—well, anything is possible.”

  “Question is, is it enough money to buy some mountains as well as going to find Pa?” said Joe. “I don’t know how much mountains cost, but me and Francie would like to buy some, so that they don’t all get dug up for gold, and coal, and roads and towns. Some of them can stay like they are for the eagles and the bears.”

  “And the silver wolf,” said Humphrey, stretching his arms out wide. “We mustn’t ever forget the silver wolf.”

  For Madoc and Etta, with love

  Print edition first published in 2018 by Gecko Press

  This edition first published in 2018 by Gecko Press

  PO Box 9335, Marion Square, Wellington 6141, New Zealand

  office@geckopress.com

  Text © Eirlys Hunter 2018

  Illustrations © Kirsten Slade 2018

  © Gecko Press Ltd 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted or utilised in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Distributed in New Zealand by Upstart Distribution upstartpress.co.nz

  Distributed in Australia by Scholastic Australia scholastic.com.au

  Distributed in the UK by Bounce Sales & Marketing bouncemarketing.co.uk

  Gecko Press acknowledges the generous support of Creative New Zealand

  Edited by Jude Watson

  Design and typesetting by Katrina Duncan

  Printed in China by Everbest Printing Co. Ltd,

  an accredited ISO 14001 & FSC certified printer

  ISBN: 978-1-776572-03-8

  Ebook ISBN’s 978-1-776572-45-8 (upub); 978-1-776572-46-5 (mobi); 978-1-776572-44-1(pdf ebook)

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