John MacNab (20 page)

Archie was wrinkling his brows.

‘It's all dashed ingenious, Charles, but do you think you have any real chance?'

‘Frankly, I don't,' was the answer. ‘The best we can hope for is to fail without being detected. I think there would be a far-away sporting chance if Macnicol could be tied up. That's what sticks in my gizzard. I don't see how it's possible to get a shot in the Sanctuary without Macnicol spotting it.'

Wattle Lithgow had returned, and caught the last words. He was grinning broadly.

‘I'm no positeeve but that Macnicol wull be tied up,' he observed. ‘Benjie's here, and he's brocht something wi' him.'

He paused for effect.

‘It's a dog – a wee, yelpin' dog.'

‘Whose dog?'

‘Leddy Claybody's. It seems that at Haripol her leddyship wears the breeks – that the grey mear is the better horse there – and it seems that she's fair besottit on that dog. Benjie was sayin' that if it were lost Macnicol and a'body about the place wad be set lookin' for't, and naething wad be thought of at Haripol till it was fund.'

Archie rose in consternation.

‘D'you mean to say – How on earth did the beast come here?'

‘It cam here wi' Benjie. It's fine and comfortable in a box in the stable ... I'm no just clear about what happened afore that, but I think Miss Janet Raden and Benjie gae'd ower to Haripol this afternoon and fund the puir wee beast lost in the wuds.'

Archie did not join in the laughter. His mind held no other emotion than a vast and delighted amazement. The lady who two days before had striven to lift his life to a higher plane, who had been the sole inspiration of his successful speech of yesterday, was now discovered conspiring with Fish Benjie to steal a pup.

Some men begin the day with loose sinews and a sluggish mind, and only acquire impetus as the hours proceed; others show a declining scale from the vigour of the dawn to the laxity of evening. It was fortunate for Lamancha that he belonged to the latter school. At daybreak he was obstinate, energetic, and frequently ill-tempered, as sundry colleagues in France and Palestine had learned to their cost; and it needed an obstinate man to leave Crask between the hours of five and six in the morning on an enterprise so wild and in weather so lamentable. For the rain came down in sheets, and a wind from the northeast put ice into it. He stopped for a moment on the summit of the Crask ridge, to contemplate a wall of driving mist where should have been a vista of the Haripol peaks. ‘This wund will draw beasts intil the Sanctuary without any help from Macnicol,' said Wattie morosely. ‘It's ower fierce to last. I wager it will be clear long afore night.'

‘It's the weather we want,' said Lamancha, cowering from the violence of the blast.

‘For the Sanctuary – maybe. Up till then I'm no sae sure. It's that thick we micht maybe walk intil a navvy's airms.'

The gods of the sky were in a capricious mood. All down the Crask hillside to the edge of the Doran the wet table-cloth of the fog clung to every ridge and hollow. The stream was in roaring spate, and Lamancha and Wattie, already soaked to the skin, forded it knee-high. They had by this time crossed the moor-road from Crask to Haripol, and marked the nook where in the lee of rocks and birches Archie was to be waiting with the Ford car. Beyond lay the long lift of land to the Haripol peaks. It was rough with boulders and heather, and broken with small gullies, and on its tangled face a man might readily lose himself. Wattie disliked the mist solely because it prevented him from locating the watchers, since his experience of life made him disinclined to leave anything to chance; but he had no trouble in finding his way in it. The consequence was that he took Lamancha over the glacis at the pace of a Gurkha, and in half an hour from the Doran's edge had him panting among the screes just under the Beallach which led to the Sanctuary. Somewhere behind them were the vain navvy pickets, happily evaded in the fog.

Then suddenly the weather changed. The wind shifted a point to the east, the mist furled up, the rain ceased, and a world was revealed from which all colour had been washed, a world as bleak and raw as at its first creation. The grey screes sweated grey water, the sodden herbage was bleached like winter, the crags towering above them might have been of coal. A small fine rain still fell, but the visibility was now good enough to show them the ground behind them in the style of a muddy etching.

The consequence of this revelation was that Wattie shuffled into cover. He studied the hillside behind him long and patiently with his glass. Then he grunted: ‘There's four navvies, as I mak out, but no verra well posted. We cam gey near ane o' them on the road up. Na, they canna see us here, and besides they're no lookin' this airt.' Lamancha tried to find them with his telescope, but could see nothing human in the wide sopping wilderness.

Wattie grumbled as he led the way up a kind
of nullah,
usually as dry as Arabia but now spouting a thousand rivulets, right into the throat of the Beallach. ‘It's clearin' just when we wanted it thick. The ways o' Providence is mysteerious . . . Na, na, there's nae road there. That's a fox's track, and it's the deer's road we maun gang. Stags will no climb rocks, sensible beasts ... The wind's gone, but I wish the mist wad come down again.'

At the top of the pass was a pad of flat ground, covered thick with the leaves of cloudberries. On the right rose the Pinnacle Ridge of Sgurr Dearg, in its beginning an easy scramble which gave no hint of the awesome towers which later awaited the traveller; on the left Sgurr Mor ran up in a steep face of screes. ‘Keep doun,' Wattie enjoined, and crawled forward to where two boulders made a kind of window for a view to the north.

The two looked down into three little corries which, like the fingers of a hand, united in the palm of a larger corrie, which was the upper glen of the Reascuill. It was a sanctuary perfectly fashioned by nature, for the big corrie was cut off from the lower glen by a line of boiler-plates like the wall of a great dam, down which the stream plunged in cascades. The whole place was loud with water – the distant roar of the main river, the ceaseless dripping of the cliffs, the chatter and babble of a myriad hidden rivulets. But the noise seemed only to deepen the secrecy. It was a world in monochrome, every detail clear as a wet pebble, but nowhere brightness or colour. Even the coats of the deer had taken on the dead grey of the slaty crags.

Never in his life had Lamancha seen so many beasts together. Each corrie was full of them, feeding on the rough pastures or among the boulders, drifting aimlessly across the spouts of screes below the high cliffs, sheltering in the rushy gullies. There were groups of hinds and calves, and knots of stags, and lone beasts on knolls or in mud-baths, and, since all were restless, the numbers in each corrie were constantly changing.

‘Ye gods, what a sight!' Lamancha murmured, his head at Wattle's elbow. ‘We won't fail for lack of beasts.'

‘The trouble is,' said Wattie, ‘that there's ower mony.' Then he added obscurely that ‘It might be the day o' Pentecost'.

Lamancha was busy with his glass. Just below him, not three hundred yards off, where the ravine which ran from the Beallach opened out into the nearest corrie, there was a group of deer – three hinds, a little stag, and farther on a second stag of which only the head could be seen.

‘Wattie,' he whispered excitedly, ‘there's a beast down there – a shootable beast. It's just what we're looking for . . . close to the Beallach.'

‘Aye, I see it,' was the answer. ‘And I see something mair. There's a man ayont the big corrie – d'ye see yon rock shapit like a puddock-stool? . . . Na, the south side o' the waterfall . . . Well, follow on frae there towards Bheinn Fhada – have ye got him?'

‘Is that a man?' asked the surprised Lamancha.

‘Where's your een, my lord? It's a man wi' grey breeks and a brown jaicket – an' he's smokin' a pipe. Aye, it's Macqueen. I ken by the lang legs o' him.'

‘Is he a Haripol gillie?'

‘He's the second stalker. He's under notice, for him and young Mr Claybody doesna agree. Macqueen comes frae the Lowlands, and has a verra shairp tongue. They was oot on the hill last week, and Mr Johnson was pechin' sair gaun up the braes, an' no wonder, puir man. He cries on Macqueen to gang slow, and says, apologetic-like, “Ye see, Macqueen, I've been workin' terrible hard the past year, and it's damaged my wund.” Macqueen, who canna bide the sight of him, says, “I'm glad to hear it, sir. I was feared it was maybe the drink.” Gey impident!'

‘Shocking.'

‘Weel, he's workin' off his notice ... I'm pleased to see him yonder, for it means that Macnicol will no be there. Macnicol' – Wattie chuckled like a dropsical corncrake – ‘is maist likely beatin' the roddydendrums for the wee dog. Macqueen is set there so as he can watch this Beallach and likewise the top of the Red Burn on the Machray side, which I was tellin' ye was the easiest road. If ye were to kill that stag doun below he could baith see ye and hear ye, and ye'd never be allowed to shift it a yaird . . . Na, na. Seein' Macqueen's where he is, we maun try the wee corrie right under Sgurr Dearg. He canna see into that.'

‘But we'll never get there through all those deer.'

‘It will not be easy.'

‘And if we get a stag we'll never be able to get it over this Beallach.'

‘Indeed it will tak a great deal of time. Maybe a' nicht. But I'll no say it's not possible . . . Onyway, it is the best plan. We will have to tak a lang cast roond, and we maunna forget Macqueen. I'd give a five-pun-note for anither blatter o' rain.'

The next hour was one of the severest bodily trials which Lamancha had ever known. Wattle led him up a chimney of Sgurr Mor, the depth of which made it safe from observation, and down another on the north face, also deep, and horribly loose and wet. This brought them to the floor of the first corrie at a point below where the deer had been observed. The next step was to cross the corrie eastwards towards Sgurr Dearg. This was a matter of high delicacy – first because of the number of deer, second because it was all within view of Macqueen's watch-tower.

Lamancha had followed in his time many stalkers, but he had never seen an artist who approached Wartie in skill. The place was littered with hinds and calves and stags, the cover was patchy at the best, and the beasts were restless. Wherever a route seemed plain the large ears and spindle shanks of a hind appeared to block it. Had he been alone Lamancha would either have sent every beast streaming before him in full sight of Macqueen, or he would have advanced at the rate of one yard an hour. But Wartie managed to move both circumspectly and swiftly. He seemed to know by instinct when a hind could be bluffed and when her suspicions must be laboriously quieted. The two went for the most part on their bellies like serpents, but their lowliness of movement would have been of no avail had not Wartie, by his sense of the subtle eddies of air, been able to shape a course which prevented their wind from shifting deer behind them. He well knew that any movement of beasts in any quarter would bring Macqueen's vigilant glasses into use.

Their task was not so hard so long as they were in hollows on the corrie floor. The danger came in crossing the low ridge to that farther corrie which was beyond Macqueen's ken, for, as they ascended, the wind was almost bound to carry their scent to the deer through which they had passed. Wattie lay long with his chin in the mire and his eyes scanning the ridge till he made up his mind on his route. Obviously it was the choice of the least among several evils, for he shook his head and frowned.

The ascent of the ridge was a slow business, and toilful. Wattie was clearly following an elaborate plan, for he zigzagged preposterously, and would wait long for no apparent reason in places where Lamancha was held precariously by half a foothold and the pressure of his nails. Anxious glances were cast over his shoulder at the post where Macqueen was presumably on duty. The stalker's ears seemed of an uncanny keenness, for he would listen hard, hear something, and then utterly change his course. To Lamancha it was all inexplicable, for there appeared to be no deer on the ridge, and the place was so much in the lee that not a breath of wind seemed to be abroad to carry their scent. Hard as his condition was, he grew furiously warm and thirsty, and perhaps a little careless, for once or twice he let earth and stones slip under his feet.

Wattie turned on him fiercely. ‘Gang as if ye was growin',' he whispered. ‘There's beasts on a' sides.'

Sobered thereby, Lamancha mended his ways, and kept his thoughts rigidly on the job before him. He crept docilely in Wattle's prints, wondering why on a little ridge they should go through exertions that must be equivalent to the ascent of the Matterhorn. At last his guide stopped. ‘Put your head between thae rashes,' he enjoined. ‘Ye'll see her.'

‘See what?' Lamancha gasped.

‘That dour deevil o' a hind.'

There she was, a grey elderly beldame, with her wicked pucklike ears, aware and suspicious, not five yards off.

‘We canna wait,' Wattie hissed. ‘It's ower dangerous. Bide you here like a stone.'

He wriggled away to his right, while Lamancha, hanging on a heather root, watched the twitching ears and wrinkled nozzle . . . Presently from farther up the hill came a sharp bark, which was almost a bleat. The hind flung up her head and gazed intently . . . Five minutes later the sound was repeated, this time from a lower altitude. The beast sniffed, shook herself, and stamped with her foot. Then she laid back her ears, and trotted quietly over the crest.

Wattie was back again by Lamancha's side. ‘That puzzled the auld bitch,' was his only comment. ‘We can gang faster now, and God kens we've nae time to loss.'

As Lamancha lay panting at last on the top of the ridge he looked down into the highest of the lesser corries, tucked right under the black cliffs of Sgurr Dearg. It was a little corrie, very steep, and threaded by a burn which after the rain was white like a snow-drift. Vast tumbled masses of stone, ancient rockfalls from the mountain, lay thick as the cottages in a hamlet. At first sight the place seemed to be without deer. Lamancha, scanning it with his glass, could detect no living thing among the debris.

Wattie was calling fiercely on his Maker.

‘God, it's the auld hero,' he muttered, his eyes glued to his telescope.

At last Lamancha got his glasses adjusted, and saw what his companion saw. Far up the corrie, on a patch of herbage – the last before the desert of the rocks began – stood three stags. Two were ordinary beasts, shootable, for they must have weighed sixteen or seventeen stone, but with inconsiderable heads. The third was no heavier, but he had a head like a blasted pine – going back fast, for the beast was old, but still with thirteen clearly marked points and a most noble spread of horn.

‘It's him,' Wattie crooned. ‘It's the auld hero. Fine I ken him, for I seen him on Crask last back-end rivin' at the stacks. There's no a forest hereaways but they've had a try for him, but the deil's in him, for the grandest shots aye miss. What's your will, my lord? Dod, if John Macnab gets yon lad, he can cock his bonnet.'

‘I don't know, Wattie. Is it fair to kill the best beast in the forest?'

‘Keep your mind easy about that. Yon's no a Haripol beast. He's oftener on Crask than on Haripol. He's a traiveller, and in one season will cover the feck o' the Hielands. I've heard that oreeginally he cam oot o' Kintail. He's terrible auld – some says a hundred year – and if ye dinna kill him he'll perish next winter, belike, in a snaw-wreath, and that's a puir death to dee.'