Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle

by Alfred Ollivant

  It was obvious that each murder was the work of the same creature. Each was committed in the same way: one sheep killed, its throat torn to red ribbons, and the others untouched.

  Following Parson Leggy’s suggestion, the Squire brought in a bloodhound to track the Killer to his doom. Starting from a fresh-killed carcass at the One Tree Knowe, the hound followed the scent some distance in the direction of the Muir Pike; then was stopped by a little bustling brook, and never found it again. Afterward he became impossible to manage, and was of no further use. Then there was talk of asking Tommy Dobson and his pack of hounds to come over from Eskdale, but nothing came of that. The Master of the Border Hunt lent a couple of foxhounds, who did nothing; and there were a hundred other attempts and just as many failures. Jim Mason set a clever trap or two and caught his own bob-tailed tortoise-shell cat, along with a terrible scolding from his wife; Ned Hoppin sat up with a gun for two nights over a newly slain victim and Londesley of the Home Farm poisoned a carcass. But the Killer never returned to the kill, and went about in the midst of them all, carrying on his shameful business and laughing to himself all the while.

  Meanwhile, the Dalesmen raged and swore vengeance; their helplessness, their lack of success in finding him, and the loss of their sheep heated their anger to madness. And the most bitter part of it all was this—that though they could not unmask him, they were almost sure who the culprit was.

  Many a time was the Black Killer named by hushed voices in secret meetings; many a time did Long Kirby, as he stood in the Border Ram and watched McAdam and the Terror walk down the main street, nudge Jim Mason and whisper:

  “There’s the Killer—may his grave be a restless one!” To which practical Jim always made the same answer:

  “Ay, there’s the Killer; but where’s the proof?”

  And that was the main problem. There was hardly a man for miles around who doubted that the Tailless Tyke was guilty; but, as Jim said, where was the proof? They could only point to his well-deserved nickname; his evil reputation; and say that, magnificent sheepdog though he was, he was known to be rough with the sheep even in his work. Lastly, they would remark, with a meaningful look, that the Grange was one of the few farms that had so far escaped the menace. For along with their belief that the Black Killer was a sheepdog, they were sure that he would feel it a point of honor to spare his own master’s flock.

  They may, indeed, have been prejudiced in their opinion. For each had his own private grudge against the Terror; and almost every man some mark on his own body, or on his clothes, or on the body of his dog, left by that huge savage.

  Proof?

  “Why, he nearly killed my Lassie!” cries Londesley.

  “And he did kill the Wexer!”

  “And Wan Tromp!”

  “And just look at my poor old Venus!” says John Swan, and shows his lovely fighter, so battered you could hardly recognize her, but a fighter still.

  “That’s Red Wull—may his end be bloody!”

  “And he did such harm to my Rasper he couldn’t move for nearly three weeks!” continues Tupper, pointing to the scars, not yet healed, on the neck of his big bob-tailed sheepdog. “See this here—his work.”

  “And look here!” cries Saunderson, showing a ragged wound on Shep’s throat; “That’s the Terror—black be his fate!”

  “Ay,” says Long Kirby, swearing; “our tykes love him nearly as much as we do.”

  “Yes,” says Tammas. “Just you watch!”

  The old man slips out of the taproom; and in another moment, from the road outside comes a heavy, regular pat-pat-pat, as though some big creature is coming near, and, blending with the sound, little shuffling footsteps.

  In an instant, every dog in the room has risen to his feet and stands staring at the door with gloomy, glowing eyes; lips wrinkling, bristles rising, throats rumbling.

  An unsteady hand fumbles at the door; a shrill, thin voice calls, “Wullie, come here!” and the dogs move away, surly, to either side of the fireplace, tails down, ears back, still grumbling; showing both fear and passion.

  Then the door opens; Tammas enters, grinning; and each, after studying him for a moment, returns to lie down where he was before, in front of the fire.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Meanwhile, a change had come over McAdam, who seemed unaware of these suspicions. Whether it was because for some time now he had been hearing less about the best sheepdog in the North, or for some other, more mysterious reason, the fact was that he became his old self again. He talked on and on as cheerfully and bitterly as ever; and hardly an evening went by when he did not move Tammas almost to blows with his hints and his sly, sarcastic remarks.

  One evening at the Sylvester Arms, old Jonas Maddox asked him who he thought the Killer might be.

  “I have my suspicions, Mr. Maddox; I have my suspicions,” the little man answered, wagging his head knowingly and giggling. But they could not get more than that from him. A week later, however, he was asked:

  “And what are you thinking about this Black Killer, Mr. McAdam?” And this time he answered earnestly:

  “Why black? Why black more than white—or gray, shall we say?” Luckily for him, however, the Dalesmen are as slow to understand as they are slow to speak.

  David, too, noticed the difference in his father, who nagged at him now with all the old spirit. At first he was glad of the change, for he preferred this open, direct warfare to the quiet hatred of earlier times. But soon he almost wished the earlier times back again; for the older he grew, the more difficult it was for him to stay calm during the constant quarreling.

  There was one reason he was truly pleased with the changed situation; he believed that, for now at least, his father had given up any evil plans he might have cherished against James Moore; those sneaking night visits to Kenmuir had, he hoped, come to an end.

  Yet Maggie Moore, if she had been on speaking terms with him, could have told him this was not so. For, one night, when she was alone in the kitchen, she had looked up suddenly and had seen, to her horror, a dim, moonlike face glued against the windowpane. In the first mad panic of the moment she almost screamed, and she dropped her work; then—true Moore that she was—she controlled herself and sat pretending to work on, yet still watching all the while.

  It was McAdam, she knew: the face pale in its framework of black; the hair lying damp and dark on his forehead; and the white eyelids blinking, slow, regular, horrible. She thought of the stories she had heard of his sworn vengeance on her father, and her heart stood still, though she never moved. At last, with a gasp of relief, she saw that the eyes were not directed at her. Cautiously following their gaze, she saw that they rested on the Shepherds’ Trophy; and they remained fixed on the Cup and motionless, while she sat still and watched.

  An hour, it seemed to her, went by before those eyes shifted their direction and wandered around the room. For a second they rested on her; then the face drew back into the night.

  Maggie told no one what she had seen. Knowing very well how terrible her father was when angry, she judged it wiser to keep silence. While as for David McAdam, she would never speak to him again!

  And not for a moment did that young man suspect where his father was coming from when, on that night, McAdam returned to the Grange, chuckling to himself. Lately, David had been growing used to these fits of silent humor that seemed to have no obvious cause; and when his father began giggling and muttering to Red Wull, at first he paid no attention.

  “He, he! Wullie. Perhaps we’ll beat him yet. There’s many a slip twixt Cup and lip—eh, Wullie, he, he!” And he talked about the wicked and how they would come to a bad end, always concluding with the same words: “He, he! Wullie. Perhaps we’ll beat him yet.”

  He continued on this subject until David lost his patience and asked roughly:

  “Who is it you’re mumbling about? Who is it you’ll beat, you and yer Wullie?”

  The boy’s tone was as scornful as his words. He had long ago
put aside any hint of respect for his father.

  McAdam only rubbed his knees and giggled.

  “Just listen to the dear lad, Wullie! Listen how pleasantly he speaks to his old dad!” Then, turning on his son, and grinning at him: “Who is it, ye ask? Who else should it be but the Black Killer? Who else would I be wishing to hurt?”

  “The Black Killer!” echoed the boy, and looked at his father in amazement.

  Now David was almost the only man in Wastrel-dale who declared that Red Wull was not the Killer. “Nay,” he said once; “he’d kill me, given half a chance, but a sheep—no.” Yet, though this was his own opinion, he knew very well what others were saying, and was therefore astonished by his father’s remark.

  “The Black Killer, is it? What d’you know about the Killer?” he asked.

  “Why do they call him black, I’d like to know? Why black?” the little man asked, leaning forward in his chair.

  Now David, when he was in the village, might deny that Red Wull had anything to do with the crimes, but when he was at home he liked to drop clever hints that Red Wull was indeed involved in them.

  “What color would you like him to have, then?” he asked. “Red, yellow, muck-dirt?”—and he stared meaningfully at the Tailless Tyke, who was lying at his master’s feet. The little man stopped rubbing his knees and looked at the boy. David shifted uneasily beneath that dim, steady gaze.

  “Well?” he said at last gruffly.

  The little man giggled, and his two thin hands went back to what they had been doing before.

  “Maybe his poor old fool of a dad knows more than the dear lad thinks, ay, or wishes—eh, Wullie, he, he!”

  “Then what is it you do know, or think you know?” David asked, irritated.

  The little man nodded and chuckled.

  “Nothing at all, laddie, nothing worth mentioning. Only perhaps the Killer’ll be caught before too long.”

  David smiled in disbelief, wagging his head doubtfully.

  “You’ll catch him yourself, I suppose, you and yer Wullie? Take a chair out on the Marches, whistle a while, and when the Killer comes, why! put a pinch of salt on his tail—if he has one.”

  At the last words, heavily emphasized by David, the little man stopped his rubbing as though he’d been shot.

  “What d’ye mean by that?” he asked softly.

  “What d’yo’ think?” the boy replied.

  “I don’t know for sure,” the little man answered; “and it’s perhaps just as well for you, dear lad”—in a falsely loving tone—“that I don’t.” He began rubbing and giggling again. “It’s a grand thing, Wullie, to have a dutiful son; a sharp lad who has no silly sense of shame about sharpening his wits at his old dad’s expense. And yet, despite our comical lad there, perhaps we will have a hand in catching the Killer, you and I, Wullie—he, he!” And the great dog at his feet wagged his stump of a tail in reply.

  David rose from his chair and walked across the room to where his father sat.

  “If you know such a mighty heap of things,” he shouted, “maybe you’ll just tell me what you do know!”

  McAdam stopped stroking Red Wull’s massive head, and looked up.

  “Tell ye? Ay, who should I tell if not my dear David? Tell? Ay, I’ll tell ye this”—with a sudden snarl of bitterness—“that you’d be the very last person I would tell.”

  CHAPTER 17

  A Mad Dog

  DAVID and Maggie, meanwhile, were drifting farther and farther apart. He now thought the girl took too much responsibility for the household; that she went too far in playing the part of woman and mother. Once, on a Sunday, he caught her drilling Andrew in his Bible verses. He watched the two of them through a crack in the door, and listened, laughing to himself, to her simple teaching. At last his laughter grew so loud that she looked up, saw him, rose immediately to her feet, crossed the room, and shut the door, rebuking him with such sweet dignity that he crept away feeling decently ashamed, for once. And the incident only added to his anger.

  And so he was rarely at Kenmuir, and more often at home, quarreling with his father.

  Since the day, two years before, when the boy had helped to take the Cup away from him, father and son had been as though charged with electricity, contact between them might result at any moment in a shock and a flash. This was the result not of a single moment but of years.

  Lately the contest had become distinctly fiercer; for McAdam noticed that his son was at home more often, and commented on the fact in his usual spirit of playful mockery.

  “What’s come over ye, David?” he asked one day. “Yer old dad’s in danger of feeling flattered at your graciousness. Is it that James Moore won’t have you at Kenmuir anymore, afraid ye’ll steal the Cup from him, as ye stole it from me? Or what is it?”

  “I thought I could maybe keep an eye on the Killer if I stayed here,” David answered, gazing at Red Wull.

  “Ye’d do better at Kenmuir—eh, Wullie!” the little man replied.

  “Nay,” the other answered, “he’ll not go to Kenmuir. There’s the Owd One to see to him there at night.”

  The little man whipped around.

  “Are ye so sure he is there at night, my lad?” he asked with slow meaningfulness.

  “He was there when someone—I didn’t say who, though I have my thoughts—tried to poison him,” sneered the boy, mimicking his father’s manner.

  McAdam shook his head.

  “If he was poisoned, and now I think maybe he was, he didn’t pick it up at Kenmuir, I tell ye that,” he said, and marched out of the room.

  In the meantime, the Black Killer went on with his bloody business unrestrained. The public, always greedy for a new sensation, took up the subject. In several of the larger daily newspapers, articles on the “Agrarian Outrages” appeared, followed by numerous letters from readers. There were sharp differences of opinion; each correspondent had his own theory and his own solution of the problem; and each grew indignant as his were rejected in favor of another’s.

  The Terror had already lasted two months when lambing time came and matters became still more serious.

  It was bad enough to lose one sheep, often the finest in the pack; but in order to kill one, the Killer hunted the whole flock, and scared the woolly mothers-about-to-be almost out of their fleeces. This was ruinous for the small farmers and difficult even for the bigger ones.

  Such a dismal season had never been known before; the curses were loud, the vows of revenge were deep. Many a shepherd at that time patrolled all night long with his dogs, only to find in the morning that the Killer had given him the slip and brought destruction to some distant part of his flock.

  It was heartbreaking work; especially since the proof seemed as far off as ever, while there was still the same positive certainty as to the identity of the criminal.

  Long Kirby, indeed, grew quite daring, and went so far as to say, once, to the little man: “And d’you think the Killer is a sheepdog, McAdam?”

  “I do,” the little man replied firmly.

  “And that he’ll spare his own sheep?”

  “Never a doubt of it.”

  “Then,” said the smith with a nervous chuckle, “it must be either you or Tupper or Saunderson.”

  The little man leaned forward and tapped the other man on the arm.

  “Or Kenmuir, my friend,” he said. “Ye’ve forgot Kenmuir.”

  “So I have,” laughed the smith, “so I have.”

  “Then don’t forget it a second time,” the other continued, still tapping. “I’d remember Kenmuir, d’ye see, Kirby?”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  It was about the middle of the lambing time, when the Killer was working his worst, that the Dalesmen had a shocking glimpse of Adam McAdam as he might be, if he were ever wounded through his Wullie.

  It came about this way: It was market day in Grammoch-town, and in the Border Ram old Rob Saunderson was the center of interest. For on the previous night Rob, who till then had esc
aped harm, had lost a sheep to the Killer; and—far worse—his flock of Herwicks, many carrying lambs, had been made to gallop, with disastrous results.

  The old man, with tears in his eyes, was telling how on four nights that week he had been up with Shep to stand guard; and on the fifth, worn out from working day and night, he had fallen asleep at his watch. He had slept only a little while; yet when he woke at dawn and hurried to make the rounds, he soon came upon a slaughtered sheep and the pitiful remains of his flock. Remains, indeed! For on all sides of him were cold little lambs and their mothers, dead and dying of exhaustion and their premature labor—a slaughter of the innocents.

  The Dalesmen were clustered around the old shepherd, listening with darkly threatening faces, when a dark gray head peered in at the door and two sad eyes rested for a moment on the speaker.

  “Talk o’ the devil!” muttered McAdam, but no man heard him. For Red Wull, too, had seen that sad face, and, rising from his master’s feet, had leaped with a roar at his enemy, knocking over Jim Mason like a bowling pin in the fury of his charge.

  In a second, every dog in the room, from the battered Venus to Tupper’s big Rasper, was on his feet, bristling to attack the tyrant and take revenge for past injuries, if the gray dog would only lead the way.

  It was not to be, however. For Long Kirby was standing at the door with a cup of hot coffee in his hand. Barely had he greeted the gray dog with—

  “Hullo, Owd One!” when hoarse yells of “Watch out, lad! The Terror!” mingled with Red Wull’s roar.

  Half turning, he saw the great dog leaping to the attack. Right away he flung the boiling contents of his cup full in that raging face. The burning liquid splashed against the huge bull-head. Blinding, bubbling, burning, it did its evil work well; nothing escaped that merciless stream. With a cry of agony, half bellow, half howl, Red Wull stopped short in his charge. From outside, the door was banged shut; and again the duel was postponed. While inside the taproom a huddle of men and dogs were left alone with a madman and a madder brute.

  Blind, crazed, in pain, the Tailless Tyke thundered around the little room gnashing his teeth, snapping, overturning one thing after another: men, tables, chairs were tipped off their legs as though they were little toys. He spun around like a monstrous top; he banged his tortured head against the wall; he burrowed into the hard floor. And all the while McAdam trotted after him, laying hands upon him only to be flung aside as a terrier flings a rat. Now up, now down again, now tossed into a corner, now dragged along the floor, yet always following on and crying to him in pleading tones, “Wullie, Wullie, let me come to ye! Let yer man help ye!” and then, with a scream and a murderous glance, “By God, Kirby, I’ll deal with you later!”