Free Air Ambulance by Jean S. Macleod

and Ginger carried Ronald between them easily enough once they had reached the beach, and she could only trudge behind them and pray that he would live.
    Subconsciously her mind filled with all the odd little things he had ever said to her, his sarcasm and the idle quips he made, the sting of which was obliterated by his laughter. He wasn’t really hard-boiled and cynical, she thought. Not deep down. He wore it as an armour because of what had happened in the past.
    And the past was here. Here on Heimra Beag, where fate had now forced him to play the role of trespasser.
    The two men laid their heavy burden down on the edge of the machar in the shelter of a ridge of rough grass, and Fergus Blair began his examination. It was as thorough as he could make it in the circumstances, and when he stood up he looked straight at Alison.
    “I’ve given him a shot of morphine which will last him till we can get him to shelter,” he said. “He’s quite badly broken up.”
    She drew her breath in but did not speak, waiting for him to tell her what to do.
    “We must find some sort of improvised stretcher in case there are other internal injuries,” he added. “You’d better come with me. I think we can leave MacLean in charge here till we get back.”
    “But ...”
    The protest she had tried to make died on her lips as the sand and the sea and the angry, violent sky swam dizzily before her eyes, but she knew that she must not faint—not now, when Ronald Gowrie’s life hung so precariously in the balance.
    “I—can follow you,” she said, biting her teeth into her lower lip.
    For a moment longer he searched her pale face for the signs of collapse, and then he led her gently by the arm over the rough grass and the clumps of little, half-awakened flowers that edged the shore.
    “Where were you going?” he asked.
    He was making conversation to help her to cover the distance to their destination and she was determined not to fail him.
    “To Benbecula. There was an emergency.”
    “Did MacLean manage to get word back to his base?”
    “I think so. I think Ron knew we would have to come down even before we knew we were near Heimra. We had to fly high and ice began to form on the wings, forcing us down.”
    “But what about the de-icing system, the rubber affairs on the edge of the wings?”
    “Something went wrong. Perhaps it was the rain freezing so quickly as it touched us.”
    She shivered involuntarily, and his fingers tightened over her arm.
    “They’ll send out another plane.” He looked up towards the northwest, where already the clouds were beginning to disperse. “All this is clearing up.”
    Alison did not think it was clearing. The day seemed to be growing steadily darker, but she stumbled on by his side. Strange, she thought, how much confidence he gave her. His strength seemed to reach out and buoy her up. The pain in her side had intensified, stabbing relentlessly, but she could not tell him about it. Not yet. He would leave her somewhere, and go back for Ronald. That was the important thing.
    They came to a road, a narrow, winding pathway across low fields, rising at last to a gently-wooded slope. She felt as if she had been walking for hours, and she had been answering his questions automatically for the past five minutes.
    “I’m going to leave you here, at the lodge, for the present,” he told her. “You’ll be all right. I’ll get someone to look after you.”
    “Please don’t worry. Please go back as quickly as you can.” Her lips had gone dry, and she had to force the words out. When they came to a high iron gate she almost stumbled against it.
    Blair caught her, lifting her bodily for the second time and striding with her into the lodge.
    “Mrs. Cameron!” he called through the half-open door, and instantly a small, dark-haired woman came from an inner room. She gasped something in Gaelic, and held the door wide. “There’s been an accident,” Blair explained. “A plane has come down