Stranger at Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  All at once, as if to emphasize the heavy, ominous feeling that had descended upon them, a figure darted out onto the road from the very point in which they had been staring, coming it seemed directly from the trail down to the shore at Ramsey Head.

  Allison reined in the mare, and there beside them stood Jesse Cameron. She had been running and now stopped with her hand to her chest, trying to catch her breath again before she could speak.

  40

  Tragedy

  “Jesse!” exclaimed Logan. “What’s all the hurry?”

  “There’s been an accident,” she replied between gasps. “Some children were a playin’ in one o’ them sea caves on the Head. I don’t know what the parents was thinkin’ t’ let them oot on a day such as this. But one o’ them—young Harry Stewart—got himsel’ hurt an’ couldna climb oot. Alec happened t’ be at my place seein’ t’ one o’ my goats when the other young’un came fer help. Weel, he went doon t’ lend a hand. He was gone sae lang I went doon. An’ the cave they were in was all blocked up wi’ rocks!”

  “How—” asked Allison anxiously, “what do you mean?”

  “Looks like one o’ them tall pinnacles up above’t may hae been struck by that blast o’ lightnin’, an’ when it fell, it must hae dislodged the boulders that formed the walls o’ the cave. ’Tis all I can think o’. But Logan, man, they’re trapped inside. I’m goin’ t’ toon t’ get the others.”

  “How can you be certain it was the right cave?” Allison’s voice was shaky. Many new emotions were assailing her all at once.

  “The boy—oh, here he is noo—” A boy of about eleven came trotting out onto the road. He was smudged and wet and trembling with fear, exhaustion, and cold. Jesse put her thick arm around the child. “Tommy’s certain. An’ we’d hae seen them by noo. I’m sorry, Lady Allison. I canna believe otherwise.”

  “You think they might be . . .” Allison managed to say in a weak whisper, then stopped, swaying unsteadily in the saddle.

  Logan caught her and held her tightly with one arm. Then with his free hand he took charge of the reins.

  “Could you hear them?” he asked.

  “No,” Jesse answered, “but wi’ the wind an’ the noise o’ the sea, not t’ mention the solid rock blockin’ up the mouth o’ the cave, ’tis not surprisin’. There’s still reason t’ hope fer the best.”

  “You look spent already, Jesse,” said the practical Logan. “You best take the boy back to your place and we’ll ride for help.”

  “I’m going to my father,” said Allison firmly, and, springing back to life, she wrenched the reins from Logan and dug her heels into the bay.

  “Lass, ye canna do that,” Jesse called. “Yer mother’ll hae worry enough!”

  But it was too late. The riders were already well out of earshot, even if Allison had been listening. Jesse wasted no more time trying to yell after them. Perhaps the two young folks could do something while she went for help. In the meantime she hurried back down the hill to her house, deposited the boy, hastily saddled her own horse, and rode for town.

  Allison’s bay found the going slow down the trail to the neck connecting the Head to the mainland. From there the animal had to thread her way cautiously up the muddy incline of Ramsey Head. In summer, the terrain on this, the leeward side of the promontory, was green with heather and bracken, dotted here and there with a handful of trees, bent and contorted by the constant sea winds. But at this time of year the foliage was brown and wet, beaten down by the steady barrage of rain. From the bleak face of nature, it would have been difficult to surmise that spring had already come to this region—come, and then seemingly given way again to winter without a hint of anything in between.

  The horse was surefooted enough on this turf, but when they had climbed the path toward the seaward side, the hard and rocky surface, stripped of nearly all vegetation and slick with rain, became impossible to traverse. Several caves crowded this part of the promontory, some merely large crevices formed by the haphazard placement of boulders and cliffs, others extending well into the depths of the Head, bored through the rock over thousands of years by the constant contact with the sea. The floors of most were under water either part or all of the time, but there were a few high enough to remain snug and dry even at high tide. Those most challenging to Strathy’s children were the ones accessible during low tide, but whose floors sunk below the ocean’s surface as the tide came in.

  “We’ll have to leave the horse here,” she called back to Logan over her shoulder. Though he was only inches from her, the wind velocity forced her to yell in order to be heard.

  They dismounted and made their way along a narrow footpath skirting the circumference of the bluff some fifty feet above the water’s edge. In a few minutes they rounded a curve, reaching the outermost point of the promontory, and were suddenly met with the full force of the wind and the open expanse of the sea. The gray waters frothed white around the edges like the mouth of a mad dog. The rain-filled blasts lashed at Allison’s face, whipping her hair into a tangled mass about her head.

  “There it is!” shouted Allison, pointing to a spot some distance down the path below a steep grade. They could make out the scattered rubble on the ledge, broken shards from the larger rocks that had been dislodged. A spike of stone, larger than a tree, lay against the wall of the mountain as if some giant had leaned his walking stick against a garden wall. On closer inspection, Allison saw that the cave was indeed one of the rock crevices. When the spike had fallen, its movement had displaced the boulders forming the walls of the cave, as Jesse had described.

  Before they reached their destination, they had to traverse a steep descent which dropped about ten feet, where the trail had once been. Allison scrambled down with little difficulty, too intent on her father’s peril to pay the least attention to her own. But Logan, afraid for her safety, was paying closer attention to the dropoff to the sea fifty feet below, just beyond the ledge. Into his imagination came a vision of the legendary murderer flying off a spot just like this to his death on the sharp rocks below. Even as he shook his head to rid his mind of the ominous picture, his foot slipped, and he had to struggle and claw at the precarious surface to keep himself from falling. He let out an involuntary cry which, muffled by the gale, went unheard by Allison several feet ahead. With trembling knees he followed slowly, none too confident they could accomplish anything even if they could reach the cave alive, resisting the great urge to turn around and run.

  Slipping and sliding, and walking where possible, they made their way farther, till at last they neared the place where the cave-in had occurred. Still racing ahead, Allison began to yell for her father. But the wind carried her voice off as a vanishing puff of smoke.

  She came to the heap of rock and immediately began to tear at the jagged slab of stone with her bare hands. Seeing her pathetic gesture, Logan set his hands also to the task, but nothing budged, save a few inconsequential stones. Her bravado tempered somewhat, she looked helplessly at Logan. She didn’t have to speak for him to know what she was thinking. Even if the whole town turned out, they’d have difficulty moving these stones. And what good would the entire town do anyway? Only a handful of people could move about safely on the ledge that faced the cave.

  In an agony of despair Allison stood back and began pacing around the area. Where was everyone? Why was it taking them so long to get here? All at once her eyes filled with tears.

  “Daddy . . .” she murmured.

  It had been so long since she thought about him as she once had when a child, how much he meant to her, how she needed him. She had been so cold to him in recent times, so independent, so unfeeling. What would happen now if she never had the chance to make it up to him?

  “Oh, please . . . please,” she whispered, hardly realizing her distraught mind was forming a prayer for the first time in years, “please don’t let anything happen to him.”

  Logan went to her side.

  “You have to believe he’s safe
,” he said gently. “We’ll get him out.”

  “Oh, Logan,” she wailed, “I’m so afraid I won’t ever get a chance to tell him—”

  She could not go on. A sob choked out her words. She turned away, embarrassed at the show of emotion.

  Logan laid a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, but said nothing.

  “I’ve never been much of a daughter to him,” she blurted out, crying now. “I don’t think I’ve ever told him how proud I am to have him for my father.”

  “He must know.”

  “Oh, how could he know?” she wailed despondently. “I’ve let him think I’m ashamed of him because of his common birth. I’ve just been all mixed up, Logan,” she confessed. “Why, he’s better than a hundred highbred men together. It’s just that—” she sniffed and brushed a sleeve across her nose, all pretense at playing the sophisticated role now gone. “Oh, I was so blind . . . I’ve been so confused. Why did I treat him like that?”

  “Don’t think of it now,” said Logan lamely. He did not know any words of real comfort to give, so he settled for hollow phrases he had heard others give. Yet even as he spoke, he knew his words were empty, and wished he could offer more to soothe her aching heart. “It won’t be long until he’ll be right here next to you, and then you can make everything right.”

  “Oh, Logan,” she cried, “if only I could do something now!” She turned her face back toward the rock wall and shouted with all her might, “Daddy, can you hear me!”

  41

  Rescue

  Alec lay sprawled on the bare rock in pitch darkness. A trickle of blood ran out of a deep gash on his head.

  At last he tried to move, slowly and painfully. His head may have been the most seriously injured, but his shoulder and foot had also been grazed by the falling rock. Feeling a sharp throb in his head, he brought his hand to the wound and felt the sticky moistness of blood. He could see nothing around him and might reasonably have feared blindness until his eyes adjusted and he began to distinguish dim shadows.

  “Harry!” he called, thinking of the boy the moment his head began to clear.

  “I’m here, Mr. MacNeil.”

  “Are ye safe, boy?”

  “Aye, sir. ’Tis jist my leg hurts sorely.”

  “Stay where ye are, Harry, an’ I’ll get t’ ye.”

  Alec rolled over and attempted to pull himself up. He barely reached his knees when everything solid seemed to melt from under him and he crumbled back to the ground. “’Tis goin’ t’ take me a minute or twa, lad. Can ye wait?”

  “Aye, sir,” said the boy, but his voice trembled with each word. “Mr. MacNeil, do ye think we’re stuck in here fore’er?”

  “Not a bit o’ it, lad,” Alec replied as buoyantly as he could make his voice sound. “We’ll be oot o’ here afore supper. Jesse will get help an’ they’ll clear away the rock before we know it.” He paused, then added, trying to conceal his concern, especially with the rising tide in the back of his mind, “Hoo lang hae I been lyin’ here, lad?”

  “A powerful lang time, sir. I thought ye was—” Harry’s voice broke, and the remainder of his thought hardly needed to be spoken. Then he added in a tearful rush, “Oh, I’m glad I’m na here alane!”

  “Noo, lad,” said Alec, “ye wouldna hae been alane whate’er had happened. Our Lord’s here wi’ ye—wi’ us both, lad. He’ll ne’er leave us alane—ye ken that, dinna ye, lad?”

  “Aye, sir, but I’m guessin’ I forgot for a bit.”

  Alec’s smile was unseen in the darkness, but it could be heard in his gentle words. “I’m thinkin’ the Lord understan’s that. But let’s remember t’ remin’ one another o’ it.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Harry.

  “I’m comin’ t’ ye noo,” said Alec, praying silently for strength.

  He crawled along the floor of the cave for a foot or two until he came to an upright wall. He could not tell if it was the wall of the cave or merely a section of the rubble that had shut them in. At least it was solid enough to hold his weight. Groping at one protruding rock after another, he pulled himself to a standing position. Everything spun before him, and he felt fresh blood flow into his eyes, obscuring what little vision he had. He wiped a hand across his eyes, then steadied himself for a moment before beginning to inch his way along the wall toward the boy’s voice. His foot throbbed, seemingly in rhythm with the ache in his head. He must have twisted it during the fall.

  It took him five long, torturous minutes to reach Harry. When he finally did so, he nearly collapsed on the ground beside him. He rested a moment, then tried to examine the boy’s leg.

  It was a definite break, but there was little he could do. It was a wonder the poor boy had not yet fainted from shock. His medical instinct forced him to make some attempt to help, no matter how feeble it turned out to be. But he had not even come across a piece of driftwood he could use as a splint. He lurched to his feet, and, after instructing Harry to keep perfectly still, began groping about the cave. Vagrants and wanderers often camped out around here. Perhaps some sticks from an old campfire might be lying around.

  After some searching, his hands lit upon several pieces of charred wood. They were irregular, and it took some skill to suit them to his purpose. But with the aid of his shirt, torn into strips, he made them work. He had made better splints for injured kittens, but at least the boy’s every movement would not incapacitate him.

  When he had done all he could do medically, he turned his attention to their plight. After loosening a few of the smaller stones and forcing his shoulder several times against the large ones, he realized there was no way a single man, especially an injured one, was going to be able to begin to budge the debris. Not a man given to fits of hopelessness, he limped back and forth across their narrow prison for several minutes, thinking and praying, wishing there were something he could do. Strong as his faith was, it was agony to Alec MacNeil simply to sit and wait for the hand of the Lord to act, without being able to participate in the process himself.

  At length, so that his agitation would not further upset the boy, he sat down once more next to Harry, reaching his arm around him to give the child both warmth and comfort. There was nothing else to do but to wait and pray, and give what strength he could to the frightened child.

  When he started awake after some time, he wasn’t certain if the sounds he heard were from his dreams or from somewhere beyond the blackness. He cocked his head and listened intently.

  There it was again! A high-pitched sound, almost like the wail of the wind, yet there was a desperate human quality about it. He jumped up, forgetting his injured foot, and nearly fell again to the ground. Supporting himself as best he could, he hobbled as quickly as his head and foot would allow to the mouth of the cave.

  The sound came again, more distinct now, yet seemingly still as part of his dream. Yet he was almost certain he could make out the single unlikely word:

  Daddy!

  He shouted out a reply, and Harry’s small voice joined his own. “We’re here! We’re all right!”

  ———

  The sound of her father’s voice filled Allison with an unabashed and childlike joy such as she had not recently allowed herself to feel.

  “He’s safe!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around Logan and squeezing him as if he had been the object of her anxieties. The tears were flowing freely now, but she seemed unconcerned and did not try to hide them. She stood back, looked into his eyes, laughed with relief, then embraced him again.

  All at once a loud clamor reached them from above the wail of the wind. It was the approach of the rescue party. Logan and Allison fell apart awkwardly, trying quickly to regain their composure. But Allison hardly cared what the others might think. In a single bound, she had, for the moment at least, moved beyond that. Her embarrassed reaction was merely a response of habit, and now as the men came, she ran toward them with an uncharacteristic exuberance. For the first time in her life she realized how glad she was to see men
of this sort, men like her father, men of brawn, men of loyalty to their kind, the kind of men her arrogant eyes had always been blind to. Suddenly, the inner door of her spirit was flung open to the truth that her parents and great-grandparents had always stressed, that the simple and common people of the valley of Strathy embodied the true and lasting Stonewycke heritage. How glad she was that these men came to rescue her father, not the smooth-of-speech, silky-of-dress, dainty-of-hand Charles Fairgates she had known.

  Seven men appeared around the bend in the path, each a shining specimen of Port Strathy’s manhood. Burly and muscular, they represented the fishing and farming communities. They carried rope, picks, crowbars, long lengths of metal pipes, and anything else they thought might aid in the excavation.

  “Oh, thank you! thank you!” cried Allison. “Do hurry. They’re all right . . . I heard them!”

  Dislodging the great stone spar that had caused the mishap in the first place proved rather a simple matter when eight strong backs, including Logan’s, were thrust against it. With a booming crash which rose even above the din of wind and waves, the spar tumbled to the sea.

  But the boulders blocking the entrance were another matter. Six of the men climbed to a point above the cave, and, using pipes and crowbars as levers, attempted to separate the largest of the rocks. They inched it slowly apart, but before an opening even six inches had been made, the strength of the laborers gave out and the rocks snapped back together.

  “We’ll ne’er be able t’ keep the rocks open lang enough fer them t’ crawl through!” yelled Jimmy MacMillan from his perch overhead.

  Logan, waiting below, shook his head in despair. The thing looked so hopeless! Glancing around, his eyes focused on a foot-long length of pipe lying on the ground where one of the men had abandoned it. He ran to it, caught it up, and hurried back to the site.

  “I have an idea,” he shouted. “Spread the rocks apart again. I’ll try to wedge this pipe between them!”

  Again the men set their shoulders to the bars, this time with yet greater determination, and again the rocks were pried apart—five, six, seven inches. Logan could hear Alec and Harry shouting encouragement from deep within the cavity. He scrambled toward the small opening, placing himself in the middle of the temporary breach they had made, and gripped the pipe firmly in his fingers, waiting for the exact moment when the pipe could be wedged in perpendicularly so that it would hold the rocks apart. No one needed to tell him that if the men above lost their traction, or if the pipe proved inadequate, his arm, and perhaps half his body, would be crushed in an instant.