The Kelpie's Pearls

by Mollie Hunter

  She started off back the way she had come, and though it was light enough now to see her way, she was so tired that she stumbled as she went. She was so tired, in fact, that she went a bit wrong in her direction and it was not till she had been walking for a while that she realized she would come in sight of her house further up the burn than she had intended. However, she was too relieved at getting over the part of the spell she had done and too concerned with the business of throwing away the stick to let the mistake in direction worry her.

  Meanwhile, things had not gone quite so well with Alasdair the Trapper as they had with her, although it had seemed at first that they would. There were any number of big boulders in and around the burn, and being a strong man he had soon gathered plenty to build a high enough wall for his dam. It was when he waded into the water to put them in position that the trouble started.

  He needed both hands to hold the big boulders and so he had no way of steadying himself on the bed of pebbles worn smooth and slippery with the swift flow of the water. With the first of the big stones in his hands he slipped and fell full-length in the water, cracking his knee hard against a jutting rock as he fell.

  He got to his feet, spluttering and shaking the water out of his hair and groaning at the jar of pain that shot down his leg. The boulder had rolled downstream but he set his teeth against the pain, limped down and got it and put it in position. Then out on to the bank for the next one he went, his ears straining for sounds from the tent in case all the splashing had wakened the professor and his men.

  Nobody stirred there and Alasdair heaved the next stone into position, crawling into the water with it so that he wouldn't lose his footing again. Half-a-dozen more of the big boulders and the groundwork of the dam was in position, but by the time this was done he was shivering in his soaked clothes and his fingers were numb with cold. He could hardly feel the smaller stones he fitted on top of the big ones, and when it came to plugging the cracks that were left, the pebbles slipped from his frozen fingers and kept falling back into the bed of the burn.

  But the Trapper was a stubborn man and a greedy one, forbye. He meant to get the pearls whatever the cost and so he laboured on at chinking the dam. The sky began to lighten in the east and the water-level behind the dam was rising. All it needed now was packing with divots of grass from the bank.

  Alasdair scrambled up the bank for his spade, never noticing in his haste the big trail of bramble in his way. His foot caught in it and he crashed to the ground with the hand that was grasping the side of the bank doubled under him. Pain pierced his forearm and he rolled over with a gasp. The sharp skinning-knife that he carried always at his belt had been jerked half out of its sheath as he fell and the blade had gone deep into his forearm.

  Now, you could accuse the Trapper of a lot of bad things and be right in what you said, but being a coward wasn't one of them. He looked at the blood welling from the deep gash in his arm and he looked at the lightening sky and he made his choice.

  If he stopped to bandage his arm now he would not be able to finish the dam before daybreak. There was still enough water seeping through to keep the kelpie's pool half-full and that meant he would have to wait another twenty-four hours to get the pearls, for the professor would use every minute of daylight there was for his spying on the loch.

  He jumped to his feet, seized his spade and hacked away at the bank. The blood from his arm ran down the spade and dripped on to the grass but he cut and hacked away like a madman and paid no heed to it. The pile of divots grew till there was enough for his purpose. He gathered them in his arms, jumped down into the bed of the burn, packed them tight against the trickles of water—and the dam was finished!

  Alasdair climbed wearily out on to the bank then, and the thought in his mind was that if any man had earned the pearls it was himself. He picked up his spade and stumbled over to the rock where he had slept the day before, and there he sat down and groped for his handkerchief to tie up his arm. The rim of the sun came over the horizon just as he was pulling the knot of the bandage tight with his teeth and his good hand and a few minutes later the flap of the tent was drawn aside and the professor stepped out.

  He stood looking down to the loch for a minute and then he walked over to the burn. He saw the dam, stared at it in a puzzled way, and looked all around as if he was looking for a sign of who had built it. Alasdair was keeping well down behind his rock, of course, and the professor caught never a glimpse of him, but suddenly he started and bent down for a close look at the dam. He had seen the blood-stains on the divots of grass.

  Alasdair watched him, grinning in spite of the pain in his arm at the puzzled expression on the professor's face, but the grin faded from his face as he saw someone coming across the hill a little way up the burn from him. It was a woman—an old woman, thought Alasdair, seeing the shawl round her head and the slow, stooping walk. The old woman came nearer and he saw that it was Morag.

  A dozen thoughts flashed through his mind and the foremost of them was Where has she been? What has she been doing? But before he could make up his mind what to do the professor had seen Morag too and was hurrying up the hill, waving and shouting to attract her attention.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Storm

  IT was lucky for Morag after all that she had come out further up the burn than she had intended for of course the water had stopped flowing now below the point where the Trapper had dammed it. She saw the professor and heard him shouting to her just as she was about to cast the rowan stick into the burn. Quickly she tossed it in and said softly,

  'Rowan tree, harm not me.

  On my foes this storm shall be.'

  The stick floated off as she spoke and with a great sigh of relief that it was all over, Morag turned and waited for the professor to come up to her.

  Now the professor had been doing a bit of thinking up there in his tent and it seemed to him that he might have been a bit hasty in calling Morag a humbug because, after all, she had seen the monster, and so, seeing that it was part of his job with the expedition to collect as many first-hand accounts of the creature as he could, he had decided it would do no harm to have a talk with her and listen to what she had to say.

  'Providing,' he said to himself, 'that she doesn't start any of this nonsense about kelpies. I've no time to be bothered with fairy-tales!'

  Well, he said all this as politely as he could when he got near enough to Morag to talk to her. She listened to him and said never a word till he was finished. Then, instead of talking about the monster, she said,

  'Professor, there is going to be a storm. I think you would be better away from this hill.'

  'A storm!' said he, looking round at the blue sky and the sun shining on the hill. 'My good woman, there's no sign of a storm!'

  'There will be a storm within the hour,' said Morag flatly.

  The professor looked at her as if he thought she was mad—which indeed he might be excused for thinking—but as he stood there staring, a black cloud came over the sun and a cold wind blew suddenly out of the east.

  'The storm is coming,' Morag warned him again.

  'But how did you know?' demanded the professor, for there was no denying now that the sky was taking on all the signs of a storm.

  'I know because it was me that raised it,' said Morag.

  'What!' shouted the professor, not believing the evidence of his own ears. 'You what?' he shouted again, turning his jacket-collar up as the wind brought rain whistling round his neck.

  'I raised it,' repeated Morag calmly.

  The whole sky had darkened now and the rain was beginning to pelt down.

  'I raised it with a spell to drive all those strangers off the hillside and get peace for myself again.'

  'You're crazy!' the professor screamed above the howling of the wind.

  'I am not,' said Morag, and the professor noticed that he could hear her clearly though she spoke as quietly and calmly as before. And another curious thing he noticed. His own j
acket was rapidly becoming soaked by the rain but Morag's dress and shawl were completely dry. The wisps of hair sticking out from her shawl were not even lifted by the wind that roared past his ears. He started to say something, changed his mind, and without another word started back down the hill to his tent as fast as he could go, with a look very like fear on his face.

  A great gust of wind nearly carried him off his feet when he was half-way there, and as he stumbled about trying to get his balance again he saw his tent flap loose and break away from its ropes and the men who had been sleeping in it scrambling about in a great deal of confusion and alarm as the storm struck them.

  All over the hill-side, drenched and scurrying figures were slackening tent-ropes and rescuing things that had been left to lie outside in the days of fine weather, and all the time the rain got heavier, the wind blew stronger, and the thunder began to crack and roll as if the sky was splitting. And Morag walked quietly homewards through all the confusion and calmly got on with the business of making the tea and boiling an egg for her breakfast.

  From behind his rock where he lay clutching his wounded arm, the Trapper watched her go and cursed his luck as he saw the level of the water in the burn rising. An hour of this rain, he reckoned, and the dam he had spent the whole night building would be swept away!

  The hour came and went, and still the rain poured down. The divots tamped between the stones were washed away. The stones began to rock before the rushing force of the water. One toppled and broke free. A gush of water flowed through the gap it made, and as Alasdair stood there soaked to the skin and watching his dam crumble and topple altogether, the level of water in the kelpie's pool rose till the pearls were hidden again as deep as they had ever been.

  When the Trapper saw this such a passion of rage gripped him that he started hurling big stones into the pool, quite forgetting in his temper about his wounded arm. Well, of course, this made it start bleeding all over again, and when Alasdair came to his senses and saw how the blood was pouring out of his arm he was frightened out of his wits in case he would bleed to death.

  He took to his heels and ran for dear life to Morag's house.

  'Let me in, Mistress MacLeod!' he roared, hammering on the door with his good hand. 'Let me in before I bleed to death on your doorstep!'

  The roaring and hammering brought Morag to her window with a frightened expression on her face, but as soon as she realized that Alasdair was hurt she opened the door to him and very quickly had his arm bandaged up as neatly as he could have had it done in a hospital. She had no sympathy for him, though, after the way he had behaved.

  'I'll be bound this is all your own fault, Alasdair,' she said as she poured him a cup of tea.

  'It was an accident,' Alasdair said sullenly. 'I slipped and fell on my skinning-knife when I was building a dam to drain the kelpie's pool.'

  'So that's what you've been up to!' said Morag. 'Well, you can rest assured you've had all your trouble for nothing, my fine fellow, for there's no dam will stand up to the weight of water that's coming down the burn now!'

  'I know that better than you,' Alasdair snarled. 'Haven't I just seen my dam crumble before my eyes?' He drank his tea and said, 'Just you wait though, mistress. I'll build another dam, and this time I won't have the bad luck to have it swept away by a storm.'

  'It's not you will decide that,' Morag told him, but he was not listening to her.

  'I'd best stay here till the storm's over,' he decided, watching the rain stream down the window.

  'You will not!' said Morag sharply. 'The storm will last for three days and you're not staying in my house for three hours, never mind three days!'

  Alasdair jumped to his feet and stood towering over her. 'How do you know the storm will last three days?' he demanded. 'How can you tell?'

  Morag jumped to her feet too and faced up to him. 'Don't you try to bully me, Trapper,' she cried, 'and me after tying your arm up as good as a nurse in the hospital! Mind your own business!'

  'This storm's come between me and my pearls!' shouted Alasdair. 'That makes it my business, and either you're guessing it will last three days or you're telling lies!'

  'I don't need to guess and I never told a lie in my life,' Morag said scornfully. 'I know the storm will last for three days because I raised it with a spell that lasts for three days. Now be off with you!'

  'You raised the storm?' Alasdair said stupidly. Fear flashed up in his eyes and he backed away from her with a face gone as grey as ashes. 'You're a witch!' he whispered, stepping back as if the floor had turned to tar and was sticking to the sole of his boots.

  Morag looked at him steadily. 'I'm an old woman that's tired of greedy folk like yourself and curious folk like those that have been pestering me,' she said. 'Call me what you like so long as you leave me alone.'

  Still Alasdair backed away till he was near enough the door to make a grab for the latch. 'You are a witch!' he shouted as he jerked it open.

  'Don't come back then!' Morag shouted after him.

  As her voice came echoing to him through the wind and the rain Alasdair 'made horns'—as the country people call the sign that wards off the evil eye; that is, he clenched his right fist with the first and fourth fingers sticking out and pointing in Morag's direction. Then he stumbled away across the soaking grass and heather and on to the road, fear driving him all the time like a whip on his back. What with the wind lashing at him, however, and the rain beating cold on his head, his fear of Morag soon turned to black, bitter anger against her and schemes of revenge began to go through his head.

  At the foot of the hill he saw a Land Rover and a trailer standing outside the house where Torquil and the Woman lived, and the two of them busy helping the driver of it to load the trailer with turnips. The man would likely be taking them into the town to sell, thought Alasdair, and he decided to seize the chance of a lift so that he could go to see a doctor about his arm. Thinking the way he did about Morag he was half-afraid by this time that she might have poisoned it with the dressing she had put on the wound!'

  'Well, Alasdair,' the Woman greeted him when he stopped at the gate, 'it's terrible weather that's in it, eh?' Then she saw his arm and exclaimed, 'Dear to goodness, Trapper, what's come over your arm?'

  She was a tall stringy woman with big hands and big feet, and dressed as she was with a man's boots on her big feet and a big waterproof cape covering her from the rain that plastered her grey hair to her face, she was not a bonny sight. However, her concern for Alasdair was kindly enough and he would have made her a civil reply if Torquil had not come up with a load of turnips just at that moment.

  Alasdair knew all about Torquil and his animals. Roaming the hill the way he did on his trapping rounds there was not much that missed him and many a time he had seen Torquil crouched quiet beside a nest or lair, or working away at cleaning his cages in the burn beside Morag's house with Dondo perching on his head or Polar lying across his shoulder. The sight of the boy now, and him so friendly with Morag, brought back all his anger against her.

  'Never mind my arm,' he said sourly. 'It's yourself you should be worrying about before that witch, Morag MacLeod, puts the evil eye on you and your house.'

  The driver of the Land Rover straightened up at this with his mouth open in alarm and Torquil threw down his load of turnips, his face flaming scarlet.

  'I'll punch your head if you speak like that of Mistress MacLeod!' he shouted.

  He doubled up his fists and glowered at Alasdair but the Woman caught him by the shoulder and swung him round to face her.

  'What do you know of the cailleach?' she demanded. 'Did I not order you not to go near her house?'

  'He was not heeding you,' Alasdair put in maliciously before Torquil could answer. 'He is as thick as thieves with her. They're two of a kind, they are, talking away to ferrets and rabbits and birds and such-like as if they were Christian creatures like ourselves!'

  Even the Woman's bony grasp on his shoulder could not stop Torquil now.
Beside himself with rage he shouted, 'I would rather be her kind than your kind, Trapper, for she has a heart and you have none!'

  This time it was the Woman who cut in on Alasdair before he could reply. 'What are you talking about, Trapper?' she demanded. 'What has Torquil been up to?'

  'Be quiet, you!' Torquil commanded Alasdair fiercely. 'I will tell her myself.'

  He put the Woman's hand from his shoulder so that he could stand upright and speak with dignity, for though he had disobeyed her he was not ashamed of what he had done. She listened to him speaking and said never a word until he had finished telling her how Morag had given his animals a refuge. But when he told her that he had seen the kelpie too and began to defend Morag against all the things that were said about her, she interrupted him.

  'The old woman has addled your wits with her spells and charms,' she said firmly. 'I will get the minister to say a prayer over you and put all this heathen nonsense out of your head.'

  'You will need to put more than one prayer between you and the witch,' Alasdair said. 'This storm is of her doing too—she told me so herself not an hour ago. She said that she had raised it with a spell and that it would last for three days.'

  'Lord save us!' cried the Woman, and 'Liar!' cried Torquil, both in the one breath, and 'Into the house with you,' the Woman commanded Torquil before he could say anything else. 'I'll deal with you as soon as I get this load of turnips away. Into the house!'

  She turned to the driver who had been standing like a man struck dumb while all this was going on and began to give him orders about his load, and Torquil went slowly towards the house. Behind him he heard the voices of the other three raised in argument, with Alasdair's voice getting louder and louder until it beat down the sound of the other two.

  'I will settle the question, you'll see!' he was bawling. 'As soon as this storm is over I am going back up the hill and I'll blow the kelpie's pool sky-high—with dynamite!'