The suspicion that McAdam was planning some dark mischief against James Moore was somewhat confirmed in that, several times in the cold, dusky January afternoons, a sly little figure was reported to have been seen lurking among the farm buildings of Kenmuir.
Once, Sammel Todd caught the little man skulking in the woodshed. Sammel picked him up bodily and carried him down the slope to the Wastrel, shaking him gently as he went.
Across the stream he set him down on his feet.
“If I catches you prowling around the farm again, little man,” he scolded, holding up a threatening finger, “I’ll take you and drop you in the Sheep wash, I warn you fair. I’d have done it now if you’d been a bigger and younger man. But there!—you’re such a scrappety little bit of a person. Now, run away home.” And the little man crept silently away.
For a time he did not return to the farm. Then, one evening when it was almost dark, James Moore, walking around to check the outbuildings, felt Owd Bob stiffen against his side.
“What’s up, lad?” he whispered, stopping; and, laying his hand on the dog’s neck, felt a ruff of rising hair beneath it.
“Steady, lad, steady,” he whispered; “what is it?” He peered forward into the gloom; and after a time made out a familiar little figure huddled in the gap between two haystacks.
“It’s you, isn’t it, McAdam?” he said, and, bending, seized a lock of Owd Bob’s coat in an iron grip.
Then, in a great voice, moved to rare anger: “Out of here before I do you harm, you miserable spying creature!” he roared. “You wait till dark comes to hide you, you coward, before you dare come crawling around my house, frightening the women-folk and up to your devilish deeds. If you have anything to say to me, come like a man in the open day. Now get off with you, before I lay hands on you!”
He stood there in the dusk, tall and strong, a terrible figure, one hand pointing to the gate, the other still grasping the gray dog.
The little man scurried away in the half-light, and out of the yard.
On the plank-bridge he turned and shook his fist at the darkening house.
“Curse you, James Moore!” he sobbed, “I’ll get even with you yet.”
CHAPTER 15
Death on the Marches
ON TOP of this, there was an attempt to poison the Owd One—or at any rate there was no other way of explaining what happened.
In the dead of the night, on a night that would not soon be forgotten, James Moore was waked by a low moaning beneath his room. He leapt out of bed and ran to the window to see his favorite, the Owd One, with his dark head down, the proud tail for once lowered, the supple legs wooden, heavy, unnatural—altogether pitiful.
In a moment he was downstairs and out to help his friend. “Whatever is it, Owd One?” he cried in anguish.
At the sound of that dear voice the dog tried to struggle to him, could not, and fell, whimpering.
In a second the Master was by his side, examining him tenderly, and crying for Sammel, who slept above the stables.
There was every symptom of foul play: the tongue was swollen and almost black; the breathing difficult; the body twitched horribly; and the soft gray eyes all bloodshot and straining in agony.
With the help of Sammel and Maggie, first pouring medicine down his throat and then giving him a stimulant to speed up his heart rate, the Master managed to keep him alive for the moment. And soon Jim Mason and Parson Leggy, hurriedly summoned, came running as fast as they could to the rescue.
Prompt and extreme action saved the victim—but only just. For a time, the best sheepdog in the North was pawing at the Gate of Death. In the end, as the gray dawn broke, the danger passed.
The attempt to strike out at him, if that was what it was, aroused passionate indignation in everyone for miles around. It seemed like the climax of the excitement that had been brewing for so long.
There was no sign of the culprit; there wasn’t a clue that might lead them to the criminal, so cleverly had he carried out his foul deed. But though there was no proof, there was also no doubt in anyone’s mind about who had done it.
At the Sylvester Arms, Long Kirby asked McAdam directly for his explanation of the matter.
“How do I account for it?” the little man exclaimed. “I don’t account for it at all.”
“Then how did it happen?” asked Tammas sharply.
“I don’t believe it happened at all,” the little man replied. “I believe James Moore is lying—as he always does.” Whereupon they immediately hurled him out the door; for Red Wull was not with him, for once.
Now, that afternoon will be remembered for three reasons. First, because, as has been said, McAdam was alone. Second, because, a few minutes after he was thrown out, the window of the taproom was opened suddenly from outside, and the little man looked in. He did not say a word, but those dim, smoldering eyes of his wandered from face to face, resting for a second on each, as if to burn them into his memory. “I’ll remember ye, gentleman,” he said at last quietly, shut the window, and was gone.
Third, for a reason that will now be told.
Though ten days had passed since the attempt on his life, the gray dog was still not his old self. He had attacks of shivering; his liveliness seemed to have drained away; he easily became tired, and, courageous dog that he was, he would never admit it. At last, on this day, James Moore, leaving the dog behind, had gone over to Grammoch-town to ask the advice of Dingley, the vet. On his way home, he met Jim Mason accompanied by his new dog Gyp, in no way the equal of the faithful Betsy, at the Dalesman’s Daughter. Together they started on the long tramp home over the Marches. And that journey should be marked with a red stone to show the special place it has in this story.
All day long, the hills had been bathed in a dense fog. All day long, there had been a steady drizzle along with it; and in the distance, the wind had moaned, threatening a storm. The darkness of the day was deepened by the gloom of the falling night as the three began climbing up the Murk Muir Pass. By the time they came out into the Devil’s Bowl, it was altogether black and blind. But the threatening wind had gone, leaving utter stillness; and they could hear the splash of an otter on the far side of the Lone Tarn as they walked around the edge of that dismal lake. When, after some time, they had climbed the last steep rise up to the Marches, a breath of soft air struck them lightly, and the curtain of fog began drifting away.
The two men walked steadily on through the heather with that long stride which is so natural to the people of the moors and the highlands. They talked only a little, for they were quiet by nature: a word or two about sheep and the coming season, when the lambs would be born; after that, the approaching Trials; the Shepherds’ Trophy; Owd Bob and the attempt on his life; and from that to McAdam and the Tailless Tyke.
“D’you believe McAdam had a hand in it?” the postman was asking.
“Nay; there’s no proof.”
“Except that he’s wild to get rid of the Owd One before Cup Day.”
“Him or me—it makes no difference.” For a dog is not allowed to compete for the Trophy if it has changed owners during the six months before the competition. And this is true even if the change is only from father to son after the death of the father.
Jim looked curiously at his companion.
“D’you think it’s come to that?” he asked.
“What?”
“Why—murder.”
“Not if I can help it,” the other answered grimly.
The fog had cleared away by now, and the moon was up. To their right, at the top of a rise some two hundred yards away, a small grove of trees stood out black against the sky. As they passed it, a blackbird flew up screaming, and a pair of wood pigeons winged noisily away.
“Hullo! Listen to that yammering!” muttered Jim, stopping; “and at this time of night, too!”
Some rabbits, playing in the moonlight on the outskirts of the woods, sat up, listened, and hopped back into the safety of the trees. At the same moment
, a big hill-fox glided out of the underbrush. He stole a step forward and halted, listening with one ear back and one paw raised; then ran silently away in the gloom, passing close to the two men and yet not noticing them.
“What’s up, I wonder?” said the postman thoughtfully.
“The fox started them clackering, I suppose,” said the Master.
“Not him; he was scared out of his skin,” the other answered. Then, in tones of quiet excitement, with his hands on James Moore’s arm: “And look, there’s my Gyp telling us to come on!”
There, indeed, at the top of the rise beside the trees, was the little mongrel, now looking back at his master, now creeping stealthily forward.
“My word! There’s something wrong yonder!” cried Jim, and jerked the mailbags off his shoulder. “Come on, Master!”—and he set off running toward the dog; while James Moore, himself excited now, followed with the nimbleness of a younger man.
Some twenty yards from the lower edge of the grove, on the far side of the ridge, a tiny brook babbled through its bed of peat moss. The two men, as they came over the top of the rise, saw a flock of black-faced mountain sheep clustered in the dip between the woods and the stream. They stood pressed close together facing half toward the woods, half toward the men, their heads up, their eyes glaring, handsome as sheep look only when alarmed.
At the top of the ridge, the two men came to stop beside Gyp. The postman stood with his head a little forward, listening hard. Then he dropped down in the heather like a dead man, pulling the other with him.
“Down, man!” he whispered, clutching at Gyp with his other hand.
“What is it, Jim?” asked the Master, now thoroughly on the alert.
“Something’s moving in the woods,” the other whispered, listening with ears as sharp as a weasel’s.
So they lay without moving for a while; but no sound came from the grove of trees.
“Maybe it was nothing,” the postman admitted finally, peering cautiously around. “And yet I thought—I don’t really know what I thought.”
Then, getting up on his knees suddenly with a hoarse cry of terror: “Save us! What’s that over there?”
Then for the first time the Master raised his head and saw, lying in the gloom between them and the dense ranks of sheep, a still, white heap.
James Moore was a man of action, not words.
“Enough waiting!” he said, and sprang forward, his heart pounding.
The sheep stamped and shuffled as he came, and yet did not scatter.
“Ah, thanks be!” he cried, dropping beside the motionless body; “It’s only a sheep.” As he spoke, his hands wandered skillfully over the body. “But what’s this?” he called. “She was as fit as I am. Look at her fleece—crisp, close, strong; feel the flesh—firm as a rock. And no bones broken, not a scratch on her body as small as a pin could make. She’s as healthy as a man—yet dead as mutton!”
Jim, still trembling from the horror of his fear, came up and kneeled beside his friend. “Ah, but there’s been something wicked going on here!” he said; “I think those sheep have been badly scared, and not so long ago.”
“Sheep-murder, sure enough!” the other answered. “Not the work of any fox—this is a full-grown, twice-sheared ewe that could almost knock an ox down.”
Jim’s hands traveled from the body to the dead creature’s throat. He cried out.
“By gob, Master! Look you there!” He held his hand up in the moonlight, and it dripped red. “And warm still! Warm!”
“Tear some bracken, Jim!” ordered the other, “and set it alight. We must see to this.”
The postman did as asked. For a moment the fern smoldered and smoked, then the flame ran crackling along and shot up in the darkness, weirdly lighting the scene: to the right, the low woods, a block of solid blackness against the sky; in front, the wall of sheep, staring out of the gloom with bright eyes; and in the center, that motionless white body, with the kneeling men and the mongrel sniffing hesitantly around.
The men examined the victim carefully. The throat, and only the throat, had been hideously torn apart; from the raw wounds, the flesh hung in ugly shreds; on the ground all around were pitiful little dabs of wool, apparently wrenched off in the struggle; and, crawling among the roots of the ferns, a snake-like track of red led down to the stream.
“The work of a dog, no question about that,” said Jim at last, after a close inspection.
“Ay,” declared the Master with slow emphasis, “and a sheepdog, too, and an experienced one, or I’m no shepherd.”
The postman looked up.
“Why’s that?” he asked, puzzled.
“Because,” the Master answered, “the one that did this killed for blood—and for blood only. If it had been any other dog—greyhound, bull, terrier, or even a young sheepdog—d’you think he’d have stopped after one? Not he; he’d have gone through them, and be chasing them, most likely, nipping them, pulling them down, till he’d maybe killed half o’ them. But the one that did this killed for blood, I say. He got it—killed just this one, and never touched the others, d’you see, Jim?”
The postman whistled, long and low.
“It’s just what old Wrottesley used to tell about,” he said. “I never more than half believed him then—I do now, though. D’you remember what the old lad used to tell, Master?”
James Moore nodded and spoke.
“That’s it. I’ve never seen anything like it before, myself, but I heard my granddad talk about it many times. An old dog’ll get a craving for sheep’s blood, just the same as a man does for drink; he creeps out at night, runs far away, hunts his sheep, pulls it down, and satisfies the craving. And he never kills more than just that one, they say, for he knows the value of sheep same as you and me. He has his gallop, satisfies his thirst, and then he makes off for home again, maybe twenty miles away, and no one suspects a thing in the morning. And on it goes, till he comes to a bloody death, the murdering traitor.”
“If he does!” said Jim.
“And he does, they say, almost always. For he gets bolder and bolder the longer he’s not caught, until one fine night a bullet pierces a hole in him. And some man has the surprise of his life when they bring his best dog home in the morning, dead, with the sheep’s wool still sticking in his mouth.”
The postman whistled again.
“It’s what old Wrottesley would tell exactly. And he’d say, if you remember, Master, that the dog would never kill his own master’s sheep—like he had a conscience.”
“Ay, I’ve heard that,” said the Master. “Strange, too, with him being such a bad creature!”
Jim Mason stood up slowly.
“Truly,” he said, “I wish the Owd One was here. Maybe he’d show us something!”
“I wish he was, pore old lad!” said the Master.
As he spoke, there was a crash in the woods above them; it sounded as though some big body were bursting furiously through the underbrush.
The two men rushed to the top of the rise. In the darkness they could see nothing; but, standing still and holding their breaths, they could hear the faint sound, growing fainter, of some creature galloping away over the wet moors.
“That’s him! That’s no fox, I’ll swear. And a mighty big one, too—just listen to him!” cried Jim. Then, to Gyp, who had rushed off in hot pursuit: “Come back, you chunk-head. What use are you against a galloping hippopotamus?”
Gradually the sounds died away, and vanished entirely.
“That’s him, the devil!” said the Master at last.
“Nay; the devil has a tail, they do say,” replied Jim thoughtfully. For already the light of suspicion was pointing its red glare.
“Now I suppose we’re in for bloody times among the sheep, for a while,” said the Master, as Jim picked up his bags of letters.
“Better a sheep than a man,” answered the postman, again.
CHAPTER 16
The Black Killer
THAT, as James Moore
had predicted, was only the first of a long series of such solitary crimes.
Those who have not lived in a lonely place like the countryside around the Muir Pike, where sheep are the most important thing and every other man is in the sheep-herding profession, can barely imagine what a sensation this caused. In marketplace, tavern, or cottage, the subject of conversation was always the latest sheep-murder and the yet-undiscovered criminal.
Sometimes there would be a quiet spell, and the shepherds would begin to breathe more freely. Then there would come a stormy night, when the skies were veiled in the cloak of crime, and the wind moaned, rising and falling over ponds and frontier lands, and another victim would be added to the growing list.
It was always black nights like these, nights of wind and weather, when no one roamed outdoors, that the murderer chose for his bloody work; and that was how he became known from the Red Screes to the Muir Pike as the Black Killer. In the Daleland they still call a wild, wet night “A Black Killer’s Night”; for they say: “His ghost’ll be out tonight.”
There was hardly a farm in the countryside that had not been marked with the seal of blood. Kenmuir escaped, and the Grange; Rob Saunderson at the Holt, and Tupper at Swinsthwaite; and they were about the only lucky ones.
As for Kenmuir, Tammas declared with a certain grim pride: “He knows better’n to come where the Owd One be.” At which McAdam was overcome by a fit of private laughter, rubbing his knees and cackling insanely for a half hour afterward. And as for the luck of the Grange—well, there was a reason for that, too, so the Dalesmen said.
Though the area of crime stretched from the Black Water to Grammoch-town, twenty or so miles, there was never a sign of the criminal. The Killer did his bloody work with a thoroughness and a devilish cunning that made it impossible to find him out.
Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle Page 12
