The Hill of the Red Fox (8 page)

It was the first newspaper I had seen since coming to Skye, and I picked it up and glanced at it. It was dated 1 July, the day after I had arrived at Achmore, and it was folded in such a way that a small paragraph under a single black heading caught my eye immediately. I read it quickly.

I carried the paper over to the lamp and read the last line again. I remembered only too well that clenching hand with the vivid red scar.

My head reeled. If the man with the scar was dead, who was the stranger who had visited the cottage in the middle of the night?

Hardly knowing what I was doing, I replaced the newspaper in the jacket pocket, and hurried into the safety of my bedroom.

I sat on top of the green mound of Cnoc an t-Sithein, wondering what to do.

It was midday, and the sun blazed down from a Mediterranean sky. Murdo Beaton had left for the hill with Caileag loping along at his heels, and Mairi and the
cailleach
were working at the peat stack.

All morning I had felt the need to get away by myself to try to sort out my tangled thoughts. After Murdo Beaton had left, saying he was going to take stock of the lambs, I slipped away.

The township cows and stirks were grazing all around me, and I watched a bunch of ewes with their lambs moving up and down by the drain under the dyke. They had wandered down from the hill, and were trying to find a break in the dyke in an attempt to regain the sweeter pasture of the crofts.

I was searching as desperately as the sheep, not for a gap in a dyke, but for a way out of my encircling troubles. Everything had seemed crystal clear until I read the paragraph in the folded newspaper. Now I was back where I had started, but the mystery had taken on a more sinister aspect with the death of the man with the scar.

He was the man who had been silenced, there could be no doubt about that. And whoever had shot him must be working in league with Murdo Beaton. What would the murderer do if he discovered that I carried a message from the man with the scar? Despite the heat of the sun I could not repress a shiver. Anyone desperate enough to commit murder would not shrink from it a second time in order to achieve his ends.

I had struggled on alone for too long; my only thought now was to whom should I tell my tale. I thought of Hector MacLeod, but he was an old man, and this was no undertaking for old men. I remembered what he had told me about Duncan Mòr. Big Duncan. Even
Roderick MacPherson’s laughing eyes sobered with respect when he spoke of him. Well then, Duncan Mòr it should be, I decided. Any action was better than tormenting myself with my own troubled thoughts.

I scrambled to my feet and tramped quickly over the moor in the direction of the river. The moor resembled an enormous basin, and when the ground dipped I lost sight of the river, but I carried on steadily until I came to a high wire fence. I crawled under the fence, crossed a rough cart track leading to the hill, and came up against a broad earthen dyke. The crofts of Mealt lay beyond, slopping gently to the river.

When I clambered up on top of the dyke, I saw Duncan Mòr’s house at once. It was a stone-built bungalow with a slated roof, facing east, and built close to the river bank. There was a walled garden in front of the house, and a man was sitting on the wall watching me. A big black and white collie started to bark furiously, and I heard the man say, “Quiet, Glen.”

I ran quickly down the croft and stopped a few feet from him. He slid off the wall and stood looking down at me. I had a sudden strange feeling, foolish as it may seem, that we had met before.

We stood there looking at one another, and I grew uneasy, waiting for him to speak. If I scowled — and he maintained I did — it was to cover my shyness at his silence.

He was easily the biggest man I had ever seen, but he was even taller than he looked for the great breadth of his shoulders took something from his height. He was wearing blue denim trousers supported by a broad leather belt, and I noticed the narrowness of his waist and the flatness of his stomach. The sleeves of his open-necked shirt were folded above the elbow, and whenever he moved his arm to brush away a fly, I could see the easy play of muscles beneath the brown skin. I knew that his eyes were on my own painfully thin arms, and I scowled harder than ever, and gazed stubbornly at my feet, determined not to be the first to speak.

“Aye, you are a Cameron, right enough,” he said at last, “a dour looking black beggar like your father before you, and like as not ye’re
as thrawn as he was.”

He had a deep, booming voice. The words seemed to rise from the depths of his diaphragm, gather volume in the great barrel of his chest, and be flung out on the air.

I took a deep breath and hoped he had not noticed the nervous clenching of my hands.

“Thrawn or not,” I said, “my name is Alasdair Cameron, and I am told you were a friend of my father’s.”

“
A dhuine dhuine,
” he cried. “I saw Alasdair Dubh in the dark scowl of you, and I growled, to see if the London life had taken the Hielan’ blood from you, and you stood your ground like a man.”

He stepped forward and gripped my shoulders, and I was forced to look in his eyes. They were grey eyes, set wide apart, and I noticed with a start of surprise that his hair was grey too, lying close to his head in tight curls. His body was the body of a young man, and for all his grey hair there was something about his face that would never age like the face of other men.

“Aye, I was your father’s friend,” he said, “and it is the hard task you have before you to live up to that brave man.”

No man had ever spoken to me like that before. Sometimes, usually on Remembrance Day, Aunt Evelyn would dab her eyes and say something about “your poor brave father,” and although I knew it was wrong of me, I felt embarrassed, and made some excuse to leave the room. On such days, my mother stayed in her room all day, and she never said anything at all. But it was different the way Duncan Mòr spoke, looking me straight in the eye, and speaking the words in his loud, ringing voice.

I felt his strong fingers probing my shoulders.

“The good Hielan’ bone is there,” he went on, “and if the bone is right the flesh and muscle will come in the Lord’s good time. It is wonderful what hill air and sun, on top of a bowl o’ brose in the morning, will do for a man. Sit you down, Alasdair Beag. It is high time you and me had a crack together.”

We sat with our backs to the garden wall, watching the lazy flow of the river to the sea. Achmore Lodge was hidden from view, but I
could see the break in the cliffs where the river tumbled down the gorge to the sea.

I heard the sound of a car and looked up with surprise. A Land Rover was jolting over the rough track to the hill. The driver was wearing dark glasses, and a white haired man sat beside him. Two other men in tweeds were in the back.

“That’s a party from the Lodge,” said Duncan Mòr. “The fellow with the white hair is Major Cassell and the other two will be guests I suppose. They will be after trying the loch for trout.” He chuckled. “It would scunner you to see some of those lads from the south, Alasdair. Many’s the time I’ve seen them wi’ gear costing a small fortune; hollow glass rods, Ambidex Reels, nylon lines, cast pouches and boxes o’ flies, and some o’ them there not fit to catch a cold, let alone a good brown trout.”

I laughed with him, and asked who Major Cassell was.

“Major Cassell has taken the Lodge,” Duncan Mòr replied. “A naturalist, but a nice enough man by all accounts. I’m told he thinks nothing of sitting up all night on the rocks just to watch a bird nesting. Still, it takes all sorts to make a world, and he does no harm, poor man.”

“Is he the landlord?” I asked.

“Well, in the old days it was always the laird who stayed at the Lodge,” he answered, “but the Board of Agriculture’s your landlord today. St Andrew’s House, Edinburgh. Believe me, there’s some thrawn beggars in the Board, but mind you, the crofter is far better off than he was in the old days.”

Duncan Mòr went on to talk of sheep and cattle, and fishing in the hill lochs and poaching salmon on wet dark nights. He told me of the feats of strength of my grandfather, in the days when there was no road from Portree, and everything had to be brought in by boat to Rudha nam Braithrean; of how he had once carried a boll of meal on his back all the way up the steep cliff from Rudha nam Braithrean to Achmore without pausing to rest on the way.

He had me laughing and talking, with no thought that a short time ago we had been strangers, and when he said quietly, “What has the Red Fellow been up to?” it was not like disclosing confidences
to a stranger.

“But how did you know?” I stammered.

“There was black trouble in the face of you before you spoke a word,” he answered, “and if there is trouble in Achmore look no further than that sly fox of a Murdo Ruadh.”

There was one question, above all others, I had to ask.

“Was he a friend of my father’s?” I wanted to know.

“
A Thighearna bheannaichte
,” Duncan Mòr exclaimed. “Murdo Ruadh a friend of Alasdair Dubh! If the big black fellow were here this day he would take Murdo Ruadh by his long neck, and throw him out of Achmore.” He brooded in silence for a while, then added, “Not that I am against Mistress Cameron. She was not to know the man at all, at all.”

“But what has my mother got to do with it?” I asked.

“Well, it was herself gave him the croft,” he replied, “and him always grumbling about the big rent he was paying. Mind you, I know the fly tongue of the man, and I know Mistress Cameron would not be the one to be charging a big rent.”

“But he has never paid any rent,” I said hotly.

Duncan Mòr sat bolt upright.

“Murdo Ruadh has never paid any rent?” he repeated.

I shook my head.

“Then how did he get the croft?”

“He wrote a letter to my mother after she had gone back to London,” I explained, “and said he was a good friend of my father’s and my father had told him he could have the croft as long as we were away.”

Duncan Mòr sprang to his feet, his great fists knotting. A hot flush crimsoned the brown of his cheeks, and I could see the working of a vein in his forehead. I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel. Never had I seen a man so angry.

Without a word, he started off across the croft. I ran after him and caught his arm.

“Where are you going?” I cried.

“Where do you think I am going?” he retorted savagely. “I am
going to get my hands on that long
cratur
and break every bone in his miserable body.”

I knew it was no idle boast, as I watched the muscles bunching on his powerful forearm when he ground his first into the palm of his hand.

“But there is more to it than the croft,” I said wildly. “A man has been murdered and there is something hidden on the Hill of the Red Fox and if they find that I’ve got the message …”

I broke off to draw breath, and my excitement had the effect of cooling him down. He put an arm round my shoulder and led me back to the wall and we sat down again.

“A story should start at the beginning, Alasdair Beag,” said Duncan Mòr calmly. “Now then, let me be hearing it.”

I told him everything that had happened from the time I had first seen the man with the scar clutching the bar outside the window of my compartment, to the whispered conversation I had overheard. He listened in silence, slicing a coil of thick, black tobacco with quick, dexterous strokes of his knife, shredding the tobacco in his hands, and filling his pipe.

I told him how I had thought that the message must have been intended for Murdo Beaton, and that the man outside the cottage was the man with the scar. I did not disguise the fears I had known, thinking that they intended to silence me, and I described my consternation at finding the newspaper and reading that the man with the scar had been murdered.

When I had finished, I was surprised — and, to be truthful, annoyed — to see that Duncan Mòr was smiling.

He took his pipe from his mouth, and said, “And you have kept all this to yourself all this time?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to conceal my dismay at his cool reception of my story.

“You were afraid that something might happen to you?” he went on.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“But you never showed the message to another living soul?”

“No.”

“How old are you,
a bhalaich
?” he asked.

“Nearly thirteen,” I said.

Duncan Mòr sat forward, resting his chin on his hands, wrapped in a brooding silence.

After a while, he took out a large khaki handkerchief and blew his nose several times.

Not looking at me at all, he said, “My, what would I give to have the big black fellow here this day.”

“You believe me, don’t you?” I said sharply.

His big brown hand covered mine for a moment, and he said, “Surely, I believe you, Alasdair Beag, but you are too like your father,
an duine bochd
.” He smiled, showing even white teeth. “You must give me time to get used to being an old man, and not a boy any longer.”

“Well, what are we to do?” I demanded. “Who do you think was the man who came to see Murdo Beaton?”

Duncan Mòr stroked his chin.

“Likely enough, it would be the fellow with the bright blue eyes. It follows, do you see? Remember the words you heard —
Lochailort
and
Silenced
. Well, the bold fellow pulled the communication cord and got off the train near Lochailort, and I don’t doubt but that he silenced your man with the scar. Then he came to the house to tell Murdo Ruadh.”

“But how would he know his way to Achmore and why didn’t he try to question me?” I said.

“Think,” said Duncan Mòr quietly. “If the man with the scar hid the address label on your case, the other fellow would have no idea where you were bound for. But like as not Murdo Ruadh has been mixed up with him since a while back. Aye, I’ll warrant it is not the first time that he has had a crack with Blue Eyes.”

“But how do you know?” I insisted.

“Och, I’ve known for a while back that the Red Fellow was up to his long neck in some dark doings,” he answered guardedly.

“But what can it be?” I asked.

“I don’t rightly know,” he said, tapping his pipe stem against clenched teeth.

I thought of the rest of the conversation I had overheard.

“What about midnight Saturday?” I said. “It’s Saturday today. What do you think they are going to do?”

Duncan Mòr’s grey eyes regarded me steadily.

“Whatever happens this night,” he said slowly, “don’t be thinking ye’re going to be stravaiging around the countryside, because you’re not. And why this Saturday? Blue Eyes might have arranged to meet the Red Fellow next Saturday.”

I knew he was putting me off, and I said quickly, “You know well enough that if anything happens it will be tonight.”