by John Buchan
“I’m sure papa will be delighted. You’re certain the noise won’t frighten the deer. You know the Piper’s Ring is in the forest.”
“Not in the least, my dear young lady. The reports will be very slight, scarcely louder than a rifle-shot. I ought to tell you that I am an old hand at explosives, for in my young days I mined in Colorado, and recently I have employed them in my Alaska researches... “
“If we go home now,” said Janet, rising, “we’ll just catch papa before he goes out. You’re very warm, Mr Bandicott, and I think you would be the better for a rest and a drink.”
“I certainly should, my dear. I was so eager to begin that I bolted my breakfast, and started off before Junius was ready. He proposes to meet me here.”
Benjie, left alone, wrought diligently at his heather roots, whistling softly to himself, and every now and then raising his head to scan the haugh and the lower glen. Presently a tall young man appeared, who was identified as the younger American, and who was duly directed to follow his father to the Castle. The two returned in a little while, accompanied by Agatha Raden, and, while the elder Mr Bandicott hastened to the Piper’s Ring, the young people sauntered to the Raden bridge and appeared to be deep in converse. “That twa’s weel agreed,” was Benjie’s comment. A little before one o’clock the party adjourned to the Castle, presumably for luncheon, and Benjie, whose noon-tide meal was always sparing, nibbled a crust of bread and a rind of cheese. In the afternoon Macpherson and one of the gillies strolled past, and the head-stalker proved wonderfully gracious, adjuring him, as Janet had done, to keep his eyes open and report the presence of any stranger. “There’ll be the three folk from Strathlarrig howkin’ awa there, but if ye see anybody else, away up to the house and tell the wife. They’ll no be here for any good.” Benjie promised fervently. “I’ve grand een, Mr Macpherson, sir, and though they was to be crawlin’ like a serpent I’d be on them.” The head-stalker observed that he was a “gleg one,” and went his ways.
Despite his industry Benjie was remarkably observant that day, but he was not looking for poachers. He had suddenly developed an acute interest in the deer. His unaided eyes were as good as the ordinary man’s telescope, and he kept a keen watch on the fringes of the great birch woods. The excavation at the Piper’s Ring kept away any beasts from the east side of the haugh, but on the west bank of the stream he saw two lots of hinds grazing, with one or two young stags among them, and even on the east bank, close in to the edge of the river, he saw hinds with calves. He concluded that on the fringes of the Raden the feeding must be extra good, and, as a steady west wind was blowing, the deer there would not be alarmed by Mr Bandicott’s quest. Just after he had finished his bread and cheese he was rewarded with the spectacle of a hummel, a great fellow of fully twenty stone, who rolled in a peat hole and then stood blowing in the shallow water as unconcerned as if he had been on the top of Carnmore. Later in the afternoon he saw a good ten-pointer in the same place, and a little later an eight-pointer with a damaged horn. He concluded that that particular hag was a favourite mud-bath for stags, and that with the wind in the west it was no way interfered with by the activities at the Piper’s Ring.
About four o’clock Benjie backed the old horse into the shafts, and jogged up the beech-avenue to Mrs Macpherson’s where he was stayed with tea and scones. There was a gathering outside the door of Macpherson himself and the two gillies, and a strange excitement seemed to have fallen on that stolid community. Benjie could not avoid — indeed, I am not sure that he tried to avoid — hearing scraps of their talk.
“I’ve been a’ round Carnmore,” said Alan, “and I seen some fine beasts. They’re mostly in a howe atween the two tops, and a man at the Grey Beallach could keep an eye on all the good ground.”
“Aye, but there’s the Carn Moss, and the burnheads — there will be beasts there too,” said James Fraser.
“There will have to be a man there, for him at the Grey Beallach would not ken what was happening.”
“And what about Corrie Gall?” asked Macpherson fiercely.
“Ye canna post men on Carnmore — they will have to keep moving; it is that awful broken ground.”
“Well, there’s you and me and James,” said Alan, “and there’s Himself.”
“And that’s the lot of us, and every man wanted.” said Macpherson.
“It’s what I was always saying — ye will need every man for Carnmore, and must let Carnbeg alone, or ye can watch Carnbeg and not go near Carnmore. We’re far ower few.”
“I was thinking,” said James Fraser, “that the youngest leddy might be watching Carnbeg.”
“Aye, James” — this satirically from Macpherson—”and how would the young leddy be keeping a wild man from killing a stag and getting him away?”
“‘Deed, I don’t ken,” said the puzzled James, “without she took a gun with her and had a shot at him.”
Benjie drove quietly to Inverlarrig for his supply of fish, and did not return to his head-quarters in the Wood of Larrigmore till nearly seven o’clock. At eight, having cooked and eaten his supper, he made a simple toilet, which consisted in washing the fish-scales and the stains of peat from his hands, holding his head in the river, parting his damp hair with a broken comb, and putting over his shoulders a waterproof cape, which had dropped from some passing conveyance and had been found by him on the road. Thus accoutred, he crossed the river and by devious paths ascended to Crask.
He ensconced himself in the stable, where he was greeted sourly by the Bluidy Mackenzie, who was tied up in one of the stalls. There he occupied himself in whistling strathspeys and stuffing a foul clay pipe with the stump of a cigar which he had picked up in the yard. Benjie smoked not for pleasure, but from a sense of duty, and a few whiffs were all he could manage with comfort. The gloaming had fallen before he heard his name called, and Wattie Lithgow appeared. “Ye’re there, ye monkey? The gentlemen are asking for ye. Quick and follow me. They’re in a awfu’ ill key the nicht and maunna be keepit waitin’.”
There certainly seemed trouble in the smoking-room when Benjie was ushered in. Lamancha was standing on the hearth-rug with a letter crumpled in his hand, and Sir Archie, waving a missive, was excitedly confronting him. The other two sat in arm-chairs with an air of protest and dejection.
“I forgot all about the infernal thing till I got Montgomery’s letter. The 4th of September! Hang it, my assault on old Claybody is timed to start on the 5th. How on earth can I get to Muirtown and back and deliver a speech, and be ready for the 5th? Besides, it betrays my presence in this part of the world. It simply can’t be done... and yet I don’t know how on earth to get out of it? Apparently the thing was arranged months ago.”
“You’re for it all right, my son,” cried Sir Archie, “and so am I. Here’s the beastly announcement. ‘A Great Conservative Meeting will be held in the Town Hall, Muirtown, on Thursday, September 4th, to be addressed by the Right Hon. the Earl of Lamancha, M.P., His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Dominions. The chair will be taken at 3 p.m. by His Grace the Duke of Angus, K.G. Among the speakers will be Colonel Wavertree, M.P., the Hon. W.J. Murdoch, Ex-Premier of New Caledonia, and Captain Sir Archibald Roylance, D.S.O., prospective Conservative candidate for Wester Ross.’ Oh, will he? Not by a long chalk! Catch me going to such a fiasco, with Charles hidin’ here and the show left to the tender mercies of two rotten bad speakers and a prosy chairman.”
“Did you forget about it too?” Leithen asked.
“‘Course I did,” said Archie wildly. “How could I think of anything with you fellows turnin’ my house into a den of thieves? I forgot about it just as completely as Charles, only it doesn’t matter about me, and it matters the devil of a lot about him. I don’t stand an earthly chance of winnin’ the seat, if, first of all, I mustn’t canvass because of smallpox, and, second, my big meetin’, on which all my fellows counted, is wrecked by Charles playin’ the fool.”
Lamancha’s dark face broke into a smile.
>
“Don’t worry, old chap. I won’t let you down. But it looks as if I must let down John Macnab, and just when I was gettin’ keen about him... Hang it, no! There must be a way. I’m not going to be beaten either by Claybody or this damned Tory rally. Ned, you slacker, what’s your advice?”
“Have a try at the double event,” Leithen drawled. “You’ll probably make a mess of both, but it’s a sporting proposition.”
Archie’s face brightened. “You don’t realise how sportin’ a proposition it is. The Claybodys will be there, and they’ll be all over you — brother nobleman, you know, and you goin’ to poach their stags next day! Hang it, why shouldn’t you turn the affair into camouflage? ‘Out of my stony griefs Bethel I’ll raise,’ says the hymn... We’ll have to think the thing out ve-ry carefully. — Anyway, Charles, you’ve got to help me with my speech. I don’t mind so much lyin’ doggo here if I can put in a bit of good work on the 5th... Now, Benjie my lad, for your report.”
Benjie, not without a certain shyness, cleared his throat and began. He narrated how, following his instructions, he had secured Macpherson’s permission to cut heather for besoms on the Raden haugh. He had duly taken up his post there, had remained till four o’clock, and had seen such and such people and heard this and that talk. He recounted what he could remember of the speeches of Macpherson and the gillies.
“They’ve got accustomed to the sight of you, I suppose,” Palliser-Yeates said at length.
“Aye, they’re accustomed right enough. Both the young lady and Macpherson was tellin’ me to keep a look-out for poachers.” Benjie chuckled.
“Then to-morrow you begin to move up to the high ground by the Carnmore peat-road. Still keep busy at your besoms. You understand what I want you for, Benjie? If I kill a stag I have to get it off Glenraden land, and your old fish- cart won’t be suspected.’
“Aye, I see that fine. But I’ve been thinkin’ that there’s maybe a better way.”
“Go ahead, and let’s have it.”
Benjie began his speech nervously, but he soon warmed to it, and borrowed a cigar-box and the fire-irons to explain his case. The interest of his hearers kindled, until all four men were hanging on his words. When he concluded and had answered sundry questions, Sir Archie drew a deep breath and laughed excitedly.
“I suppose there’s nothing in that that isn’t quite cricket... I thought I knew something about bluff, but this — this absolutely vanquishes the band. Benjie, I’m goin’ to have you taught poker. You’ve the right kind of mind for it.”
CHAPTER 5. THE ASSAULT ON GLENRADEN
Shortly after midnight of the 28th day of August three men foregathered at the door of Macpherson’s cottage, and after a few words took each a different road into the dark wastes of wood and heather. Macpherson contented himself with a patrol of the low ground in the glen, for his legs were not as nimble as they once had been and his back had a rheumaticky stiffness. Alan departed with great strides for the Carnbeg tops, and James Fraser, the youngest and the leanest, set out for Carnmore, with the speed of an Indian hunter... Darkness gave place to the translucence of early dawn: the badger trotted home from his wanderings: the hill-fox barked in the cairns to summon his household: sleepy pipits awoke: the peregrine who lived above the Grey Beallach drifted down into the glens to look for breakfast: hinds and calves moved up from the hazel shows to the high fresh pastures: the tiny rustling noises of night disappeared in that hush which precedes the awakening of life: and then came the flood of morning gold from behind the dim eastern mountains, and in an instant the earth had wheeled into a new day. A thin spire of smoke rose from Mrs Macpherson’s chimney, and presently the three wardens of the marches arrived for breakfast. They reported that the forest was still unviolated, that no alien foot had yet entered its sacred confines. Herd-boys, the offspring of Alan and James Fraser, had taken up their post at key-points, so that if a human being was seen on the glacis of the fort the fact would at once be reported to the garrison.
“I’m thinkin’ he’ll no come to-day,” said Macpherson after this third cup of tea. “It will be the morn. The day he will be tryin’ to confuse our minds, and that will no be a difficult job wi’ you, Alan, my son.”
“He’ll come in the da-ark,” said Alan crossly.
“And how would he be gettin’ a beast in the dark? The Laird was sayin’ that this man John Macnab was a gra-and sportsman. He will not be shootin’ at any little staggie, but takin’ a sizeable beast, and it’s not a howlet could be tellin’ a calf from a stag in these da-ark nights. Na, he will not shoot in the night, but he might be travellin’ in the night and gettin’ his shot in the early mornin’.”
“What for,” Alan asked, “should he not be havin’ his shot in the gloamin’ and gettin’ the beast off the ground in the da-ark?”
“Because we will be watchin’ all hours of the day. Ye heard what the Laird said, Alan Macdonald, and you, James Fraser. This John Macnab is not to shoot a Glenraden beast at all, at all, but if he shoots one he is not to move it one foot. If it comes to fightin’, you are young lads and must break the head of him. But the Laird said for God’s sake you was to have no guns, but to fight like honest folks with your fists, and maybe a wee bit stick. The Laird was sayin’ the law was on our side, except for shootin’... Now, James Fraser, you will take the outer marches the day, and keep an eye on the peat-roads from Inverlarrig, and you, Alan, will watch Carnbeg, and I will be takin’ the woods myself. The Laird was sayin’ that it would be Carnmore the man Macnab would be tryin’, most likely at skreigh of day the morn, and he would be hidin’ the beast, if he got one, in some hag, and waitin’ till the da-ark to shift him. So the morn we will all be on Carnmore, and I can tell you the Laird has the ground planned out so that a snipe would not be movin’ without us seein’ him.”
The early morning broadened into day, and the glen slept in the windless heat of late August. Janet Raden, sauntering down from the Castle towards the river about eleven o’clock, thought that she had never seen the place so sabbatically peaceful. To her unquiet soul the calm seemed unnatural, like a thick cloak covering some feverish activity. All the household were abroad since breakfast — her father on a preliminary reconnaissance of Carnmore, Agatha and Mr Junius Bandicott on a circuit of Carnbeg, while the gillies and their youthful allies sat perched with telescopes on eyries surveying every approach to the forest. The plans seemed perfect, but the dread of John Macnab, that dark conspirator, would not be exorcised. It was she who had devised the campaign, based on her reading of the enemy’s mind; but had she fathomed it, she asked herself? Might he not even now be preparing some master-stroke which would crumble their crude defences? Horrible stories which she had read of impersonation and the shifts of desperate characters recurred to her mind. Was John Macnab perhaps old Mr Bandicott disguised as an archaeologist? Or was he one of the Strathlarrig workmen?
She walked over the moor to the Piper’s Ring and was greeted by a mild detonation and a shower of earth. Old Mr Bandicott, very warm and stripped to his shirt, was desperately busy and most voluble about his task. There was no impersonation here, nor in the two fiery-faced labourers who were burrowing their way towards the resting-place of Harald Blacktooth. Nevertheless, her suspicion was not allayed, she felt herself in the antechamber of plotters, and looked any moment to see on the fringes of the wood or on the white ribbon of road a mysterious furtive figure which she would know for a minion of the enemy.
But the minion did not appear. As Janet stood on the rise before the bridge of Raden with her hat removed to let the faint south-west wind cool her forehead, she looked upon a scene of utter loneliness and peace. The party at the Piper’s Ring were hidden, and in all the green amphitheatre nothing stirred but the stream. Even Fish Benjie and his horse had been stricken into carven immobility. He had moved away from the road a few hundred yards into the moor, not far from the waterside, and his little figure, as he whittled at his brooms, appeared from where Janet stood to be as moti
onless as a boulder, while the old grey pony mused upon three legs as rapt and lifeless as an Elgin marble. The two seemed to have become one with nature, and to be as much part of the sleeping landscape as the clump of birches whose leaves did not even shimmer in that bright silent noontide.
The quiet did something to soothe Janet’s restlessness, but after luncheon, which she partook of in solitary state, she found it returning. A kind of folie de doute assailed her, not unknown to generals in the bad hours which intervene between the inception and execution of a plan. She had a strong desire to ride up to Crask and have a talk with Sir Archie, and was only restrained by the memory of that young man’s last letter, and the hint it contained of grave bodily maladies. She did not know whether to believe in these maladies or not, but clearly she could not thrust her company upon one who had shown a marked distaste for it... Yet she had her pony saddled and rode slowly in the direction of Strathlarrig, half hoping to see a limping figure on the highway. But not a soul was in sight on the long blinding stretch or at the bridge where the Crask road started up the hill. Janet turned homeward with a feeling that the world had suddenly become dispeopled. She did not turn her head once, and so failed to notice first one figure and then another, which darted across the high road, and disappeared in the thick coverts of the Crask hill-side.
At the Castle she found Agatha and Junius Bandicott having tea, and presently her father arrived in a state of heat and exhaustion. Stayed with a whisky-and-soda, Colonel Raden became communicative. He had been over the high tops of Carnmore, had visited the Carn Moss, and Corrie Gall, had penetrated the Grey Beallach, had heard the tales of the gillies and of the herd-boys in their eyries, and his report was “all clear.” The deer were undisturbed, according to James Fraser, since the morning. Moreover, the peat-road from Inverlarrig had relapsed owing to recent rains into primeval bog which no wheeled vehicle and few ponies could traverse. The main fortress seemed not only unassailed but unassailable, and Colonel Raden viewed the morrow with equanimity.
