by John Buchan
That night after dinner, while the rain beat on the windows, John Macnab was hard at work. The map was spread out on the table, and Lamancha prepared the orders for the coming action. If we would understand his plan, it is necessary to consider the nature of the terrain. The hill behind Crask rises to a line of small cliffs not unlike a South African Kranz, and through a gap in the line runs a moorland track which descends by the valley of the Doran till it joins the main road from Inverlarrig almost at Haripol gates. The Doran glen — the Crask march is the stream — is a wide hollow of which the north side is the glacis of the great Haripol peaks. These are, in order from west to east, Stob Ban, Stob Coire Easain, Sgurr Mor, and the superb tower of Sgurr Dearg. Seen from the Crask ridge the summits rise in cones of rock from a glacis which at the foot is heather and scrub and farther up steeps of scree and boulders. Between each peak there is a pass leading over to the deep-cut glen of the Reascuill, which glen is contained on the north by the hills of Machray forest.
It was certain that the navvy cordon would be an outer line of defence, outside the wilder ground of the forest. Wattie expounded it with an insight which the facts were to justify. “The men will be posted along the north side o’ the Doran, maybe halfway up the hill — syne round the west side o’ Stob Ban and across the Reascuill at the new fir plantin’ — syne up the Machray march along the taps o’ Clonlet and Bheinn Fhada. They can leave out Sgurr Dearg, for ye’d hae to be a craw to get ower that side o’t. By my way o’ thinkin’, they’ll want maybe three hundred to mak a proper ring, and they’ll want them thickest on the Machray side where the ground is roughest. North o’ the Doran it’s that bare that twa-three men could see the whole hill-side, and Macnicol’s no the ane to waste his folk. The easy road intil the Sanctuary is frae Machray up the Reascuill, and the easy way to get a beast out wad be by the way o’ the Red Burn. But the navvies will be as thick as starlin’s there, so it’s no place for you and me, my lord.”
The Haripol Sanctuary lay at the headwater of the Reascuill, between what was called the Pinnacle Ridge of Sgurr Dearg and the cliff of Sgurr Mor. As luck would have it, a fairly easy path, known generally as the Beallach, led from it to the glen of the Doran. It was clear that Lamancha must enter from the south, and, if he got a stag, remove it by the same road.
“I’ll get ye into the Sanctuary, never fear,” said Wattie grimly, “There’s no a navvy ever whelpit wad keep you and me out. But when we’re there, God help us, for we’ll hae Macnicol to face. And if Providence is mercifu’ and we get a beast, we’ve the navvies to get it through, and that’s about the end o’t. Ye canna mak yoursel’ inconspicuous when ye’re pu’in at a muckle stag.”
“True,” said Lamancha, “and that’s just where Mr Palliser-Yeates comes in ... John, my lad, your job is to be waiting on the Doran side of the Beallach, and if you see Wattie and me with a beast, to draw off the navvies in that quarter. You had better move west towards Haripol, for there’s better cover on that side. D’you think you can do it? You used to have a pretty gift of speed, and you’ve always had an uncommon eye for ground.”
Palliser-Yeates said modestly that he thought he was up to the job, provided Lamancha did not attract the prior notice of the watchers. Once the pack got on his trail, he fancied he could occupy their attention for an hour or two. The difficulty lay in keeping Lamancha in view, and for that purpose it would be necessary to ensconce himself at the very top of the Beallach, where he could have sight of the upper Sanctuary.
To Leithen fell the onerous task of creating a diversion on the other side of the forest. He must start in the small hours and be somewhere on the Machray boundary when Lamancha was beginning operations. There lay the most obvious danger-point, and there the navvies would probably be thickest on the ground. At all costs their attention — and that of any Haripol gillies in the same quarter — must be diverted from what might be happening in the Sanctuary. This was admittedly a hard duty, but Leithen was willing to undertake it. He was not greatly afraid of the navvies, who are a stiff-jointed race, but the Haripol gillies were another matter. “You simply must not get caught,” Lamancha told him. “If you’re hunted, make a bee-line north to Machray and Glenaicill — the gillies won’t be keen to be drawn too far away from Haripol. You won the school mile in your youth, and you’re always in training. Hang it all, you ought to be able to keep Claybody’s fellows on the run. I never yet knew a gillie quick on his feet.”
“That’s a pre-war notion,” said Palliser-Yeates. “Some of the young fellows are uncommon spry. Ned may win all right, but it won’t be by much of a margin.”
The last point for decision was the transport of the stag. The moor-road from Crask was possible for a light car with a high clearance, and it was arranged that Archie should take the Ford by that route and wait in cover on the Crask side of the Doran. It was a long pull from the Beallach to the stream, but there were tributary ravines where the cover was good — always presuming that Palliser-Yeates had decoyed away the navvy guard.
“Here’s the lay-out, then,” said Lamancha at last. “Wattie and I get into the Sanctuary as best we can and try for a stag. If we get him, we bring him through the Beallach; John views us and shows himself, and draws off the navvies, whom we assume to be few at that point. Then we drag the beast down to the Doran and sling it into Archie’s car. Meanwhile Ned is on the other side of the forest, doing his damnedest to keep Macnicol busy... That’s about the best we can do, but I needn’t point out to you that every minute we’re taking the most almighty chances. We may never get a shot. Macnicol may be in full cry after us long before we reach the Beallach. The navvies may refuse to be diverted by John, or may come back before we get near Archie’s car... Ned may pipe to heedless ears, or, worse still, he may be nobbled and lugged off to the Haripol dungeons... It’s no good looking for trouble before it comes, but I can see that there’s a big bank of it waiting for us. What really frightens me is Macnicol and the gillies at the Sanctuary itself. This weather is in our favour, but even then I don’t see how they can miss hearing our shot, and that of course puts the lid on it.”
A time-table was drawn up after much discussion. Leithen was to start for Machray at 3 a.m., and be in position about 8. Lamancha and Wattie, about the latter hour, would be attempting to enter the Sanctuary by the Beallach. Palliser-Yeates must be at his post not later than 9, and Archie with the car should reach the Doran by 10. The hour of subsequent happenings depended upon fate; the thing might be over for good or ill by noon, or it might drag on till midnight.
When the last arrangements had been settled Lamancha squared his back against the mantelpiece and looked round on the company.
“Of course we’re all blazing idiots — the whole thing is insanity — but we’ve done the best we can in the way of preparation. The great thing is for each of us to keep his wits about him and use them, for everything may go the opposite way to what we think. There’s no ‘according to Cocker’ in this game.”
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.”
Wattie 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 a
nd 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.
CHAPTER 11. HARIPOL — THE MAIN ATTACK
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 north-east 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 hill- side 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 Ghurka, 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 hill-side 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 Wattie’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. Wattie 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 Wattie 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 Wattie 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 Wattie, 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.
