Bob, Son of Battle
Page 24
Chapter XXIV A SHOT IN THE NIGHT
IT was only three short weeks before Cup Day that one afternoon JimMason brought a letter to Kenmuir. James Moore opened it as the postmanstill stood in the door.
It was from Long Kirby--still in retirement--begging him for mercy'ssake to keep Owd Bob safe within doors at nights; at all events tillafter the great event was over. For Kirby knew, as did every Dalesman,that the old dog slept in the porch, between the two doors of the house,of which the outer was only loosely closed by a chain, so that theever-watchful guardian might slip in and out and go his rounds at anymoment of the night.
This was how the smith concluded his ill-spelt note: "Look out forM'Adam i tell you i _know_ hel tri at thowd un afore cup day--failin imyou if the ole dog's bete i'm a ruined man i say so for the luv o' Godkeep yer eyes wide."
The Master read the letter, and handed it to the postman, who perused itcarefully.
"I tell yo' what," said Jim at length, speaking with an earnestness thatmade the other stare, "I wish yo'd do what he asks yo': keep Th' Owd Unin o' nights, I mean, just for the present."
The Master shook his head and laughed, tearing the letter to pieces.
"Nay," said he; "M'Adam or no M'Adam, Cup or no Cup, Th' Owd Un has therun o' ma land same as he's had since a puppy. Why, Jim, the first nightI shut him up that night the Killer comes, I'll lay."
The postman turned wearily away, and the Master stood looking after him,wondering what had come of late to his former cheery friend.
Those two were not the only warnings James Moore received. Duringthe weeks immediately preceding the Trials, the danger signal wasperpetually flaunted beneath his nose.
Twice did Watch, the black cross-bred chained in the straw-yard, hurl abrazen challenge on the night air. Twice did the Master, with lantern,Sam'l and Owd Bob, sally forth and search every hole and corner on thepremises--to find nothing. One of the dairy-maids gave notice, avowingthat the farm was haunted; that, on several occasions in the earlymorning, she had seen a bogie flitting down the slope to the Wastrel--asure portent, Sam'l declared, of an approaching death in the house.While once a shearer, coming up from the village, reported having seen,in the twilight of dawn, a little ghostly figure, haggard and startled,stealing silently from tree to tree in the larch-copse by the lane. TheMaster, however, irritated by these constant alarms, dismissed the storysummarily.
"One thing I'm sartin o'," said he. "There's not a critter moves onKenmuir at nights but Th' Owd Un knows it."
Yet, even as he said it, a little man, draggled, weary-eyed, smearedwith dew and dust, was limping in at the door of a house barely a mileaway. "Nae luck, Wullie, curse it!" he cried, throwing himself into achair, and addressing some one who was not there--"nae luck. An' yet I'msure o't as I am that there's a God in heaven."
* * * * *
M'Adam had become an old man of late. But little more than fifty, yet helooked to have reached man's allotted years. His sparse hair was quitewhite; his body shrunk and bowed; and his thin hand shook like an aspenas it groped to the familiar bottle.
In another matter, too, he was altogether changed. Formerly, whateverhis faults, there had been no harder-working man in the country-side.At all hours, in all weathers, you might have seen him with his giganticattendant going his rounds. Now all that was different: he never put hishand to the plough, and with none to help him the land was left whollyuntended; so that men said that, of a surety, there would be a farm tolet on the March Mere Estate come Michaelmas.
Instead of working, the little man sat all day in the kitchen at home,brooding over his wrongs, and brewing vengeance. Even the SylvesterArms knew him no more; for he stayed where he was with his dog and hisbottle. Only, when the shroud of night had come down to cover him,he slipped out and away on some errand on which not even Red Wullaccompanied him.
* * * * *
So the time glided on, till the Sunday before the Trials came round.
All that day M'Adam sat in his kitchen, drinking, muttering, hatchingrevenge.
"Curse it, Wullie! curse it! The time's slippin'--slippin'--slippin'!Thursday next--but three days mair! and I haena the proof--I haena theproof!"--and he rocked to and fro, biting his nails in the agony of hisimpotence.
All day long he never moved. Long after sunset he sat on; long afterdark had eliminated the features of the room.
"They're all agin us, Wullie. It's you and I alane, lad. M'Adam's to bebeat somehow, onyhow; and Moore's to win. So they've settled it, andso 'twill be--onless, Wullie, onless--but curse it! I've no theproof!"--and he hammered the table before him and stamped on the floor.
At midnight he arose, a mad, desperate plan looming through his fuddledbrain.
"I swore I'd pay him, Wullie, and I will. If I hang for it I'll be evenwi' him. I haena the proof, but I _know_--I _know_!" He groped his wayto the mantel piece with blind eyes and swirling brain. Reaching upwith fumbling hands, he took down the old blunderbuss from above thefireplace.
"Wullie," he whispered, chuckling hideously, "Wullie, come on! You andI--he! he!" But the Tailless Tyke was not there. At nightfall he hadslouched silently out of the house on business he best wot of. So hismaster crept out of the room alone--on tiptoe, still chuckling.
The cool night air refreshed him, and he stepped stealthily along,his quaint weapon over his shoulder: down the hill; across the Bottom;skirting the Pike; till he reached the plank-bridge over the Wastrel.
He crossed it safely, that Providence whose care is drunkards placinghis footsteps. Then he stole up the slope like a hunter stalking hisprey.
Arrived at the gate, he raised himself cautiously, and peered over intothe moonlit yard. There was no sign or sound of living creature. Thelittle gray house slept peacefully in the shadow of the Pike, allunaware of the man with murder in his heart laboriously climbing theyard-gate.
The door of the porch was wide, the chain hanging limply down, unused;and the little man could see within, the moon shining on the iron studsof the inner door, and the blanket of him who should have slept there,and did not.
"He's no there, Wullie! He's no there!" He jumped down from the gate.Throwing all caution to the winds, he reeled recklessly across the yard.The drunken delirium of battle was on him. The fever of anticipatedvictory flushed his veins. At length he would take toll for the injuriesof years.
Another moment, and he was in front of the good oak door, battering atit madly with clubbed weapon, yelling, dancing, screaming vengeance.
"Where is he? What's he at? Come and tell me that, James Moore! Comedoon, I say, ye coward! Come and meet me like a man!
Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots wham Bruce has aften led-- Welcome to your gory bed Or to victorie!'"
The soft moonlight streamed down on the white-haired madman thunderingat the door, screaming his war-song.
The quiet farmyard, startled from its sleep, awoke in an uproar. Cattleshifted in their stalls; horses whinnied; fowls chattered, aroused bythe din and dull thudding of the blows: and above the rest, loud andpiercing, the shrill cry of a terrified child.
Maggie, wakened from a vivid dream of David chasing the police, hurrieda shawl around her, and in a minute had the baby in her arms and wascomforting her--vaguely fearing the while that the police were afterDavid.
James Moore flung open a window, and, leaning out, looked down on thedishevelled figure below him.
M'Adam heard the noise, glanced up, and saw his enemy. Straightway heceased his attack on the door, and, running beneath the window, shookhis weapon up at his foe.
"There ye are, are ye? Curse ye for a coward! curse ye for a liar! Comedoon, I say, James Moore! come doon--I daur ye to it! Aince and for a'let's settle oor account."
The Master, looking down from above, thought that at length the littleman's brain had gone.
"What is't yo' want?" he asked, as calmly as he could, hoping to gaintime.
"What is't I w
ant?" screamed the madman. "Hark to him! He crosses me inilka thing; he plots agin me; he robs me o' ma Cup; he sets ma son aginme and pits him on to murder me! And in the end he--"
"Coom, then, coom! I'll--"
"Gie me back the Cup ye stole, James Moore! Gie me back ma son ye'vetook from me! And there's anither thing. What's yer gray dog doin'?Where's yer--"
The Master interposed again:
"I'll coom doon and talk things over wi' yo'." he said soothingly. Butbefore he could withdraw, M'Adam had jerked his weapon to his shoulderand aimed it full at his enemy's head.
The threatened man looked down the gun's great quivering mouth, whollyunmoved.
"Yo' mon hold it steadier, little mon, if yo'd hit!" he said grimly."There, I'll coom help yo'!" He withdrew slowly; and all the time waswondering where the gray dog was.
In another moment he was downstairs, undoing the bolts and bars of thedoor. On the other side stood M'Adam, his blunderbuss at his shoulder,his finger trembling on the trigger, waiting.
"Hi, Master! Stop, or yo're dead!" roared a voice from the loft on theother side the yard.
"Feyther! feyther! git yo' back!" screamed Maggie, who saw it all fromthe window above the door.
Their cries were too late! The blunderbuss went off with a roar,belching out a storm of sparks and smoke. The shot peppered the doorlike hail, and the whole yard seemed for a moment wrapped in flame.
"Aw! oh! ma gummy! A'm waounded A'm a goner! A'm shot! 'Elp! Murder! Eh!Oh!" bellowed a lusty voice--and it was not James Moore's.
The little man, the cause of the uproar, lay quite still upon theground, with another figure standing over him. As he had stood, fingeron trigger, waiting for that last bolt to be drawn, a gray form,shooting whence no one knew, had suddenly and silently attacked him frombehind, and jerked him backward to the ground. With the shock of thefall the blunderbuss had gone off.
The last bolt was thrown back with a clatter, and the Master emerged. Ina glance he took in the whole scene: the fallen man; the gray dog; thestill-smoking weapon.
"Yo', was't Bob lad?" he said. "I was wonderin' wheer yo' were. Yo'came just at the reet moment, as yo' aye do!" Then, in a loud voice,addressing the darkness: "Yo're not hurt, Sam'l Todd--I can tell thatby yer noise; it was nob'but the shot off the door warmed yo'. Coom awaydoon and gie me a hand."
He walked up to M'Adam, who still lay gasping on the ground. The shockof the fall and recoil of the weapon had knocked the breath out of thelittle man's body; beyond that he was barely hurt.
The Master stood over his fallen enemy and looked sternly down at him.
"I've put up wi' more from you, M'Adam, than I would from ony otherman," he said. "But this is too much--comin' here at night wi' loadedarms, scarin' the wimmen and childer oot o' their lives, and I canbut think meanin' worse. If yo' were half a man I'd gie yo' the finestthrashin' iver yo' had in yer life. But, as yo' know well, I could nomore hit yo' than I could a woman. Why yo've got this down on me yo' kenbest. I niver did yo' or ony ither mon a harm. As to the Cup, I've gotit and I'm goin' to do ma best to keep it--it's for yo' to win it fromme if yo' can o' Thursday. As for what yo' say o' David, yo' know it's alie. And as for what yo're drivin' at wi' yer hints and mysteries, I'veno more idee than a babe unborn. Noo I'm goin' to lock yo' up, yo're notsafe abroad. I'm thinkin' I'll ha' to hand ye o'er to the p'lice."
With the help of Sam'l he half dragged, half supported thestunned little man across the yard; and shoved him into a tinysemi-subterraneous room, used for the storage of coal, at the end of thefarm-buildings.
"Yo' think it over that side, ma lad," called the Master grimly, as heturned the key, "and I will this." And with that he retired to bed.
* * * * *
Early in the morning he went to release his prisoner. But he was aminute too late. For scuttling down the slope and away was a littleblack-begrimed, tottering figure with white hair blowing in the wind.The little man had broken away a wooden hatchment which covered amanhole in the wall of his prison-house, squeezed his small bodythrough, and so escaped.
"Happen it's as well," thought the Master, watching the flying figure.Then, "Hi, Bob, lad!" he called; for the gray dog, ears back, tailstreaming, was hurling down the slope after the fugitive.
On the bridge M'Adam turned, and, seeing his pursuer hot upon him,screamed, missed his footing, and fell with a loud splash into thestream--almost in that identical spot into which, years before, he hadplunged voluntarily to save Red Wull.
On the bridge Owd Bob halted and looked down at the man struggling inthe water below. He made a half move as though to leap in to the rescueof his enemy; then, seeing it was unnecessary, turned and trotted backto his master.
"Yo' nob'but served him right, I'm thinkin'," said the Master. "Likeas not he came here wi' the intent to mak' an end to yo.' Well, afterThursday, I pray God we'll ha' peace. It's gettin' above a joke." Thetwo turned back into the yard.
But down below them, along the edge of the stream, for the second timein this story, a little dripping figure was tottering homeward. Thelittle man was crying--the hot tears mingling on his cheeks withthe undried waters of the Wastrel--crying with rage, mortification,weariness.