Bob Son of Battle

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*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

Bob Son of Battle

by Alfred Ollivant

CONTENTS

PART I THE COMING OF THE TAILLESS TYKE
Chapter I. The Gray Dog
Chapter II. A Son of Hagar
Chapter III. Red Wull
Chapter IV. First Blood

PART II THE LITTLE MAN
Chapter V. A Man's Son
Chapter VI. A Licking or a Lie
Chapter VII. The White Winter
Chapter VIII. M'Adam and His Coat

PART III THE SHEPHERDS' TROPHY
Chapter IX. Rivals,
Chapter X. Red Wull Wins
Chapter XI. Oor Bob,
Chapter XII. How Red Wull Held the Bridge
Chapter XIII. The Face in the Frame

PART V OWD BOB 0' KENMUIR

PART IV THE BLACK KILLER
Chapter XIV. A Mad Man
Chapter XV. Death on the Marches,
Chapter XVL. The Black Killer
Chapter XVII. A Mad Dog
Chapter XVIII. How the Killer was Singed
Chapter XIX. Lad and Lass
Chapter XX. The Snapping of the String
Chapter XXI. Horror of Darkness
Chapter XXII. A Man and a Maid
Chapter XXIII. Th' Owd Un
Chapter XXIV. A Shot in the Night
Chapter XXV. The Shepherds' Trophy

PART VI THE BLACK KILLER

Chapter XXVI. Red-handed
Chapter XXVII. For the Defence
Chapter XXVIII. The Devil's Bowl
Chapter XXIX. The Devil's Bowl
Chapter XXX. The Tailless Tyke at Bay

PART I THE COMING OF THE TAILLESS TYKE

Chapter I. THE GRAY DOG

THE sun stared brazenly down on a gray farmhouse lying, long
and low in the shadow of the Muir Pike; on the ruins of peel-tower
and barmkyn, relics of the time of raids, it looked; on ranges of
whitewashed outbuildings; on a goodly array of dark-thatched
ricks.

In the stack-yard, behind the lengthy range of stables, two men
were thatching. One lay sprawling on the crest of the rick, the
other stood perched on a ladder at a lower level.

The latter, small, old, with shrewd nut-brown countenance, was
Tammas Thornton,, who had served the Moores of Kenmuir for
more than half a century. The other, on top of the stack, wrapped
apparently in gloomy meditation, was Sam'l Todd. A solid Dales--
man, he, with huge hands and hairy arms; about his face an
uncomely aureole of stiff, red hair; and on his features,
deep-seated, an expression of resolute melancholy.

"Ay, the Gray Dogs, bless 'em!" the old man was saying. "Yo'
canna beat 'em not nohow. Known 'em ony time this sixty year, I
have, and niver knew a bad un yet. Not as I say, mind ye, as any on
'em cooms up to Rex son o' Rally. Ah, he was a one, was Rex!
We's never won Cup since his day."

"Nor niver shall agin, yo' may depend," said the other gloomily.

Tammas clucked irritably.

"G'long, Sam'! Todd!" he cried, "Yo' niver happy onless yo'
making' yo'self miser'ble. I niver see sich a chap. Niver win agin?
Why, oor young Bob he'll mak' a right un, I tell yo', and I should
know. Not as what he'll touch Rex son o' Rally, mark ye! I'm niver
saying' so, Sam'l Todd. Ah, he was a one, was Rex! I could tell yo'
a tale or two o' Rex. I mind me boo--"

The big man interposed hurriedly.

"I've heard it afore, Tammas, I welly 'aye," he said.

Tammas paused and looked angrily up.

"Yo've heard it afore, have yo', Sam'l Todd?" he asked sharply.
"And what have yo' heard afore?"

"Yo' stories, owd lad--yo' stories o' Rex son o' Rally."

"Which on' em

"All on 'em, Tammas, all on 'em--mony a time. I'm fair sick on 'em,
Tammas, I welly am," he pleaded.

The old man gasped. He brought down his mallet with a vicious
smack.

"I'll niver tell yo' a tale agin, Sam'l Todd, not if yo' was to go on yo'
bended knees for't.

Nay; it bain't no manner o' use talkin'. Niver agin, says I."

"I niver askt yo'," declared honest Sam'l. "Nor it wouldna ha' bin no
manner o' use if yo' had," said the other viciously. "I'll niver tell yo'
a tale agin if I was to live to be a hunderd."

"Yo'll not live to be a hunderd, Tammas Thornton, nor near it,"
said Sam'l brutally.

"I'll live as long as some, I warrant," the old man replied with
spirit. "I'll live to see Cup back i' Kenmuir, as I said afore."

"If yo' do," the other declared with emphasis, "Sam'l Todd niver
spake a true word. Nay, nay, lad; yo're owd, yo're wambly, your
time's near run or I'm the more mistook."

"For mussy's sake hold yo' tongue, Sam'l Todd! It's clack-clack all
day--" The old man broke off suddenly, and buckled to his work
with suspicious vigor. "Mak' a show yo' bin workin', lad," he
whispered. "Here's Master and oor Bob."

As he spoke, a tall gaitered man with weather-beaten face, strong,
lean, austere, and the blue-gray eyes of the hill-country, came
striding into the yard. And trotting soberly at his heels, with the
gravest, saddest eyes ever you saw, a sheep-dog puppy.

A rare dark gray he was, his long coat, dashed here and there with
lighter touches, like a stormy sea moonlit. Upon his chest an
escutcheon of purest white, and the dome of his head showered, as
it were, with a sprinkling of snow. Perfectly compact, utterly lithe,
inimitably graceful with his airy-fairy action; a gentleman every
inch, you could not help but stare at him--Owd Bob o' Ken-muir.

At the foot of the ladder the two stopped. And the young dog,
placing his forepaws on a lower rung, looked up, slowly waving
his silvery brush.

"A proper Gray Dog!" mused Tammas, gazing down into the dark
face beneath him. "Small, yet big; light to get about on. backs o'
his sheep, yet not too light. Wi' a coat hard a-top to keep oot
Daleland weather, soft as sealskin beneath. And wi' them sorrerful
eyes on him as niver goes but wi' a good un. Amaist he minds me
o' Rex son o' Rally."

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" groaned Sam'l. But the old man heard him
not.

"Did 'Enry Farewether tell yo' hoo he acted this mornin', Master?"
he inquired, addressing the man at the foot of the ladder.

"Nay," said the other, his stern eyes lighting.

"Why, 'twas this way, it seems," Tammas continued. "Young bull
gets 'isseif loose. somegate and marches oot into yard, o'erturns
milkpail, and prods owd pigs i' ribs. And as he stands lookin' about
un, thinking' what he shall be up to next, oor Bob sees un 'An' what
yo' doin' here, Mr. Bull?' he seems to say, cockin' his ears and
trottin' up gay-like. Wi' that bull bloats fit to bust 'isseif, lashes wi's
tail, waggles his head, and gets agate o' chargin' 'im. But Bob
leaps oot o' way, quick as lightnin' yet cool as butter, and when he's
done his foolin drives un back agin."

"Who seed all this?" interposed Sam'l, sceptically.

" 'Enry Farewether from the loft. So there, Fat'ead!" Tammas
replied, and continued his tale. "So they goes on; bull chargin' and
Bob drivin' un back and back, hoppin' in and oot agin, quiet as a
cowcumber, yet determined. At last Mr. Bull sees it's no manner o'
use that gate, so he turns, rares up, and tries to jump wall. Nary a
bit. Young dog jumps in on un and nips him by tail. Wi' that, bull
tumbles down in a hurry, turns wi' a kind o' groan, and marches
back into stall, Bob after un. And then, dang me!"--the old man
beat the ladder as he loosed off this last titbit,--" if he doesna sit'
isseif i' door like a sentrynel till 'Enry Farewether cootn up. Hoo's
that for a tyke not yet a year?"

Even Sam'l Todd was moved by the tale.

"Well done, oor Bob!" he cried.

"Good, lad!" said the Master, laying a hand on the dark head at his
knee.

"Yo' may well say that," cried Tanitnas in a kind of ecstasy. "A
proper Gray Dog, I tell yo'. Wi' the brains of a man and the way of
a woman. Ah, yo' canna beat 'em nohow, the Gray Dogs o'
Kenmuir!"

The patter of cheery feet rang out on the plank-bridge over the
stream below them. Tammas glanced round.

"Here's David," he said. "Late this mornin' he be."

A fair-haired boy came spurring up the slope, his face all aglow
with the speed of his running. Straightway the young dog dashed
off to meet him with a fiery speed his sober gait belied. The two
raced back together into the yard.

"Poor lad!" said Sam'l gloomily, regarding the newcomer.

"Poor heart!" muttered Tammas. While the Master's face softened
visibly. Yet there looked little to pity in this jolly, rocking lad with
the tousle of light hair and fresh, rosy countenance.

"G'mornin', Mister Moore! Morn'n, Tammas! Morn'n, Sam'l!" he
panted as he passed; and ran on through the hay-carpeted yard,
round the corner of the stable, and into the house.

In the kitchen, a long room with red-tiled floor and latticed
windows, a woman, white-aproned and frail-faced, was bustling
about her morning business. To her skirts clung a sturdy,
bare-legged boy; while at the oak table in the centre of the room a
girl with brown eyes and straggling hair was seated before a basin
of bread and milk.

"So yo've coom at last, David!" the woman cried, as the boy
entered; and, bending, greeted him with a tender, motherly
salutation, which he returned as affectionately. "I welly thowt yo'd
forgot us this mornin'. Noo sit you' doon beside oor Maggie." And
soon he, too, was engaged in a task twin to the girl's.

The two children munched away in silence, the little bare-legged
boy watching them, the while, critically. Irritated by this prolonged
stare, David at length turned on him.

"Weel, little Andrew," he said, speaking in that paternal fashion in
which one small boy loves to address another. "Weel, ma little lad,
yo'm coomin' along gradely." He leant back in his chair the better
to criticise his subject. But Andrew, like all the Moores, slow of
speech, preserved a stolid silence, sucking a chubby thumb, and
regarding his patron a thought cynically.

David resented the expression on the boy's countenance, and half
rose to his feet.

"Yo' put another face on yo', Andrew Moore," he cried
threateningly, "or I'll put it for yo'."

Maggie, however, interposed opportunely.

"Did yo' feyther beat yo' last night?" she inquired in a low voice;
and there was a shade of anxiety in the soft brown eyes.

"Nay," the boy answered; "he was a-goin' to, but he never did.
Drunk," he added in explanation.

"What was he goin' to beat yo' for, David?" asked Mrs. Moore.

"What for? Why, for the fun o't--to see me squiggle, "the boy
replied, and laughed bitterly.

"Yo' shouldna speak so o' your dad, David," reproved the other as
severely as was in her nature.

"Dad! a fine dad! I'd dad him an I'd the chance, " the boy muttered
beneath his breath. Then, to turn the conversation:

"Us should he startin', Maggie," he said, and going to the door.
"Bob! Owd Bob, lad! Ar't coomin' along?" he called.

The gray dog came springing up like an antelope, and the three
started off for school together.

Mrs. Moore stood in the doorway, holding Andrew by the hand,
and watched the departing trio.

"'Tis a pretty pair, Master, surely," she said softly to her husband,
who came up at the moment.

"Ay, he'll be a fine lad if his feyther'll let him," the tall man
answered.

"Tis a shame Mr. M'Adam should lead him such a life," the
woman continued indignantly. She laid a hand on her husband's
arm, and looked up at him coaxingly.

"Could yo' not say summat to un, Master, think 'ee? Happen he'd
'tend to you," she pleaded. For Mrs. Moore imagined that there
could be no one but would gladly heed what James Moore, Master
of Kenmuir, might say to him. "He's not a bad un at bottom, I do
believe," she continued. "He never took on so till his missus died.
Eh, but he was main fond o' her."

Her husband shook his head "Nay, mother," he said "'Twould nob'
but mak' it worse for t' lad. M'Adam'd listen to no one, let alone
me." And, indeed, he was right; for the tenant of the Grange made
no secret of his animosity for his straight-going, straight-speaking
neighbor.

Owd Bob, in the mean time, had escorted the children to the
larch-copse bordering on the lane which leads to the village. Now
he crept stealthily back to the yard, and established himself behind
the water-butt.

How he played and how he laughed; how he teased old Whitecap
till that gray gander all but expired of apoplexy and impotence;
how he ran the roan bull-calf, and aroused the bitter wrath of a
portly sow, mother of many, is of no account.

At last, in the midst of his merry mischief-making, a stern voice
arrested him.

"Bob, lad, I see 'tis time we lamed you yo' letters."

So the business of life began for that dog of whom the simple
farmer-folk of the Daleland still love to talk,--Bob, son of Battle,
last of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.

Chapter II. A SON OF HAGAR

It is a lonely country, that about the Wastreldale.

Parson Leggy Hornbut will tell you that his is the smallest church
in the biggest parish north of the Derwent, and that his cure
numbers more square miles than parishioners. Of fells and ghylls it
consists, of becks and lakes; with here a scattered hamlet and there
a solitary hill sheep-farm. It is a country in which sheep are
paramount; and every other Dalesman is engaged in that
profession which is as old as Abel. And the talk of the men of the
land is of wethers and gimmers, of tup-hoggs, ewe tegs in wool,
and other things which are but fearsome names to you and me; and
always of the doings or misdoings, the intelligence or stupidity, of
their adjutants, the sheep-dogs.

Of all the Daleland, the country from the Black Water to
Grammoch Pike is the wildest. Above the tiny stone-built village
of Wastrel-- dale the Muir Pike nods its massive head. Westward,
the desolate Mere Marches, froni which the Sylvesters' great estate
derives its name, reach away in mAe on mile of sheep infested,
wind-swept moorland. On the far side of the Marches is that twin
dale where. flows the gentle Silver Lea. And it is there in the
paddocks at the back of the Dalesman's Daughter, that, in the late
summer months, the famous sheep-dog Trials of the North are
held. There that the battle for the Dale Cup, the world-known
Shepherds' Trophy, is fought out.

Past the little inn leads the turnpike road to the market-centre of
the district--Grammoch-town. At the bottom of the paddocks at
the back of the inn winds the Silver Lea. Just there a plank bridge
crosses the stream, and, beyond, the Murk Muir Pass. crawls up
the sheer side of the Scaur on to the Mere Marches.

At the head of the Pass, before it debouches. on to those lonely
sheep-walks which divide. the two dales, is that hollow,
shuddering with gloomy possibilities, aptly called the Devil's.
Bowl. In its centre the Lone Tarn, weirdly suggestive pool, lifts its
still face to the sky. It was beside that black, frozen water, across.
whose cold surface the storm was swirling in white snow-wraiths,
that, many, many years ago (not in this century), old Andrew
Moore-came upon the mother of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.

In the North, every one who has heard of the Muir Pike--and who
has not?--has heard. of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir, every one who
has heard of the Shepherd's Trophy--and who has not?--knows
their fame. In that country of good dogs and jealous masters the
pride of place has long been held unchallenged. Whatever line may
claim to follow the Gray Dogs always lead the van. And there is a
saying in the land: "Faithfu' as the Moores and their tykes."

On the top dresser to the right of the fireplace in the kitchen of
Kenmuir lies the family Bible. At the end you will find a loose
sheet-- the pedigree of the Gray Dogs; at the beginning, pasted on
the inside, an almost similar œheet, long since yellow with age--the
family register of the Moores of Kenmuir.

Running your eye down the loose leaf, once, twice, and again it
will be caught by a small red cross beneath a name, and under the
cross the one word "Cup." Lastly, opposite the name of Rex son of
Rally, are two of those proud, tell-tale marks. The cup referred to
is the renowned Dale Cup--Champion Challenge Dale Cup, open
to the world. Had Rex won it but once again the Shepherds'
Trophy, which many men have lived to win, and died still striving
after, would have come to rest forever in the little gray house
below the Pike.

It was not to be, however. Comparing the two sheets, you read
beneath the dog's name a date and a pathetic legend; and on the
other sheet, written in his son's boyish hand, beneath the name of
Andrew Moore the same date and the same legend.

From that day James Moore, then but a boy, was master of
Kenmuir.

So past Grip and Rex and Rally, and a hundred others, until at the
foot of the page you come to that last name--Bob, son of Battle.

From the very first the young dog took t& his work in a manner to
amaze even James Moore. For a while he watched his mother,
Meg, at her business, and with that seemed to have mastered the
essentials of sheep tactics.

Rarely had such fiery ‚lan been seen on the sides of the Pike; and
with it the young dog combined a strange sobriety, an admirable
patience, that justified, indeed, the epithet. "Owd." Silent he
worked, and resolute; and even in those days had that famous trick
of coaxing the sheep to do his wishes;--blending, in short, as
Tammas put it, the brains of a man with the way of a woman.

Parson Leggy, who was reckoned the best judge of a sheep or
sheep-dog 'twixt Tyne and Tweed, summed him up in the one
word "Genius." And James Moore himself, cautious man, was
more than pleased.

In the village, the Dalesmen, who took a personal pride in the Gray
Dogs of Kenmuir, began to nod sage heads when "oor" Bob was
mentioned. Jim Mason, the postman, whose word went as far with
the villagers as Parson Leggy's with the gentry, reckoned he'd
never seen a young un as so took his fancy.

That winter it grew quite the recognized thing, when they had
gathered of a night round the fire in the Sylvester Arms, with
Tammas in the centre, old Jonas Maddox on his right, Rob
Saunderson of the Holt on the left, and the others radiating away
toward the sides, for some one to begin with:

"Well, and what o' oor Bob, Mr. Thornton?"

To which Tammas would always make reply:

"Oh, yo' ask Sam'l there. He'll tell yo' better'n me, "--and would
forthwith plunge, himself, into a yarn.

And the way in which, as the story proLeeded, Tupper of
Swinsthwaite winked at Ned Hoppin of Fellsgarth, and Long
Kirby, the smith, poked Jem Burton, the publican, in the ribs, and
Sexton Ross said, "Ma word, lad!" spoke more eloquently than
many words.

One man only never joined in the chorus of admiration. Sitting
always alone in the background, little M'Adam would listen with
an incredulous grin on his sallow face.

"Oh, ma certes! The devil's in the dog! It's no cannie ava!" he
would continually exclaim, as Tammas told his tale.

In the Daleland you rarely see a stranger's face. Wandering in the
wild country about the twin dales at the time of this story, you
might have met Parson Leggy, striding along with a couple of
varmint terriers at his heels, and young Cyril Gilbraith, whom he
was teaching to tie flies and fear God, beside him; or Jim Mason,
postman by profession, poacher by predilection, honest man and
sportsman by nature, hurrying along with the mail-bags on his
shoulder, a rabbit in his pocket, and the-faithful Betsy a yard
behind. Besides these you might have hit upon a quiet shepherd
and a wise-faced dog; Squire Sylvester, going his rounds upon a
sturdy cob; or, had you been lucky, sweet Lady Eleanour bent upon
some errand of mercy to one of the many tenants.

It was while the Squire's lady was driving through the village on a
visit* to Tammas's slobbering grandson--it was shortly after Billy
Thornton's advent into the world--that little M'Adam, standing in
the door of the Sylvester Arms, with a twig in his mouth and a
sneer fading from his lips, made his ever-memorable remark:

"Sail!" he said, speaking in low, earnest voice; " 'tis a muckle
wumman."

was this visit which figured in the Grammochtown Argus (local
and radical) under the heading of "Alleged Wholesale Corruption
by Tory Agents." And that is why, on the following market day,
Herbert Trotter, journalist, erstwhile gentleman, and Secretary of
the Dale Trials, found himself trying to swim in the public
horsetrough.

"What? What be sayin', mon?" cried old Jonas, startled out of his
usual apathy.

M'Adam turned sharply on the old man.

"I said the wumman wears a muckle hat!" he snapped.

Blotted out as it was, the observation still remains--a tribute of
honest admiration. Doubtless the Recording Angel did not pass it
by. That one statement anent the gentle lady of the manor is the
only personal remark ever credited to little M'Adam not born of
malice and all uncharitableness. And that is why it is ever
memorable.

The little Scotsman with the sardonic face had been the tenant of
the Grange these many years; yet he had never grown acclimatized
to the land of the Southron. With his shrivelled body and weakly
legs he looked among the sturdy, straight-limbed sons of the
hill-country like some brown, wrinkled leaf holding its place midst
a galaxy of green. And as he differed from them physically, so he
did morally.

He neither understood them nor attempted to. The North-country
character was an unsolved mystery to him, and that after ten years'
study. "One-half o' what ye say they doot, and they let ye see it;
t'ither half they -disbelieve, and they tell ye so," he once said. And
that explained his attitude toward them, and consequently theirs
toward him.

He stood entirely alone; a son of Hagar, mocking. His sharp, ill
tongue was rarely still, and always bitter. There was hardly a. man
in the land, from Langholm How to the market-cross in
Grammoch-town, but had at one time known its sting, endured it in
silence,--for they are slow of speech, these men of the fells and
meres,--and was nursing his resentment till a day should bring that
chance which always comes. And when at the Sylvester Arms, on
one of those rare occasions when M'Adam was not present,
Tammas summed up the little man in that historic phrase of his,
"When he's drunk he's wi'lent, and when he bain't he's wicious,"
there was an applause to gratify the blas‚ heart of even Tammas
Thornton.

Yet it had not been till his wife's death that the little man had
allowed loose rein to his ill-nature. With her firmly gentle hand no
longer on the tiller of his life, it burst into. fresh being. And alone
in the world with David, the whole venom of his vicious
temperament was ever directed against the boy's head. It was as
though he saw in his fair-haired son the unconscious cause of his
ever-living sorrow. All the more strange this, seeing that, during
her life, the boy had been to poor Flora M'Adam as her heart's
core. And the lad was growing up the very antithesis of his father.
Big and hearty, with never an ache or ill in the whole of his sturdy
young body; of frank, open countenance; while even his speech
was slow and burring like any Dale-bred boy's. And the fact of it
all, and that the lad was palpably more Englishman than Scot--ay,
and gloried in it--exasperated the little man, a patriot before
everything, to blows. While, on top of it, David evinced an
amazing pertness fit to have tried a better man than Adam
M'Adam.

On the death of his wife, kindly Elizabeth Moore had, more than
once, offered such help to the lonely little man as a woman only
can give in a house that knows no mistress. On the last of these
occasions, after crossing the 'Stony Bottom, which divides the two
farms, and toiling up the hill to the Grange, she had met M'Adam
in the door.

"Yo' maun let me put yo' bit things straight .for yo', mister," she
had said shyly; for she feared the little man.

"Thank ye, Mrs. Moore," he had answered with the sour smile the
Dalesmen knew so well, "but ye maun think I'm a waefu' cripple."
And there he had stood, grinning sardonically, opposing his small
bulk in the very centre of the door.

Mrs. Moore had turned down the hill, abashed and hurt at the
reception of her offer; and her husband, proud to a fault, had
forbidden her to repeat it. Nevertheless her motherly heart went
out in a great tenderness for the little orphan David. She knew well
the desolateness of his life; his father's aversion from him, and its
inevitable consequences.

It became an institution for the boy to call every morning at
Kenmuir, and trot off to the village school with Maggie Moore.
And soon the lad came to look on Kenmuir as his true home, and
James and Elizabeth Moore as his real parents. His greatest
happiness was to be away from the Grange. And the ferret-eyed
little man there noted the fact, bitterly resented it, and vented his
ill-humor accordingly.

It was this, as he deemed it, uncalled-for trespassing on his
authority which was the chief cause of his animosity against James
Moore. The Master of Kenmuir it was at whom he was aiming
when he remarked one day at the Arms: "Masel', I aye prefaire the
good man who does no go to church, to the bad man who does. But
then, as ye say, Mr. Burton, I'm peculiar."

The little man's treatment of David, exaggerated as it was by eager
credulity, became at length such a scandal to the Dale that Parson
Leggy determined to bring him to task on the matter.

Now M'Adam was the parson's pet antipathy. The bluff old
minister, with his brusque manner and big heart, would have no
truck with the man who never went to church, was perpetually in
liquor, and never spoke good of his neighbors. Yet he entered upon
the interview fully resolved not to be betrayed into an unworthy
expression of feeling; rather to appeal to the little man's better
nature.

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