Bob Son of Battle

A >> Alfred Ollivant >> Bob Son of Battle

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So he brushed his way along, and ever the night grew blacker;
until, from the swell of the ground beneath his feet, he knew
himself skirting the Giant's Chair.

Now as he sped along the foot of the rise, of a sudden there burst
on his ear the myriad patter of galloping feet. He turned, and at the
second a swirl of sheep almost bore him down. It was velvet-black,
and they fled furiously by, yet he dimly discovered, driving at their
trails, a vague hound-like form.

"The Killer, by thunder!" he ejaculated, and, startled though he
was, struck down at that last pursuing shape, to miss and almost
fall.

"Bob, lad!" he cried, "follow on!" and swung round; but in the
darkness could not see if the gray dog had obeyed.

The chase swept on into the night, and, far above him on the
hill-side, he could now hear the rattle of the flying feet. He started
hotly in pursuit, and then, recognizing the futility of following
where he could not see his hand, desisted. So he stood motionless,
listening and peering into the blackness, hoping Th' Owd Un was
on the villain's heels.

He prayed for the moon; and, as though in answer, the lantern of
the night shone out and lit the dour face of the Chair above him.
He shot a glance at his feet; and thanked heaven on finding the
gray dog was not beside him.

Then he looked up. The sheep had broken, and were scattered over
the steep hill-side, still galloping madly. In the rout one pair of
darting figures caught and held his gaze: the foremost dodging,
twisting, speeding upward, the hinder hard on the leader's heels,
swift, remorseless, never changing. He looked for a third pursuing
form; but none could he discern.

"He mun ha' missed him in the dark," the Master muttered, the
sweat standing on his brow, as he strained his eyes upward.

Higher and higher sped those tWo dark specks, far out-topping the
scattered remnant of the flock. Up and up, until of a sudden the
sheer Fall dropped its relentless barrier in the path of the fugitive.
Away, scudding along the foot of the rock-wall struck the familiar
track leading to the Scoop, and up it, bleating pitifully, nigh spent,
the Killer hard on her now.

"He'll doon her in the Scoop!" cried the Master hoarsely, following
with fascinated eyes. "Owd Un! Owd Un! wheer iver are yo' gotten
to?" he called in agony; but no Owd Un made reply.

As they reached the summit, just as he had prophesied, the two
black dots were one; and down they rolled together into the hollow
of the Scoop, out of the Master's ken. At the same instant the
moon, as though loth to watch the last act of the bloody play,
veiled her face.

It was his chance. "Noo!"--and up the hillside he sped like a young
man, girding his loins for the struggle. The slope grew steep and
steeper; but on and on he held in the darkness, gasping painfully,
yet running still, until the face of the Fall blocked his way too.

There he paused a moment, and whistled a low call. Could he but
dispatch the old dog up the one path to the Scoop, while he took
the other, the murderer's one road to safety would be blocked.

He waited, all expectant; but no cold muzzle was shoved into his
hand. Again he whistled. A pebble from above almost dropped on
him, as if the criminal up there had moved to the brink of the Fall
to listen; and he dared no more.

He waited till all was still again, then crept, cat-like, along the
rock-foot, and hit, at length, the track up which a while before had
fled Killer and victim. Up that ragged way he crawled on hands
and knees. The perspiration rolled off his face; one elbow brushed
the rock perpetually; one hand plunged ever and anon into that
naked emptiness on the other side.

He prayed that the moon might keep in but a little longer; that his
feet might be saved from falling, where a slip might well mean
death, certain destruction to any chance of succ~s. He cursed his
luck that Th' Owcl Un had somehow missed him in the dark; for
now he must trust to chance, his own great~ strength, and his good
oak stick. And he a~ climbed, he laid his plan: to rush in on the
Killer as he still gorged and grapple with him. If in the darkness he
missed--and in that narrow arena the contingency was
improbable--the murderer might still, in the panic of the moment,
forget the one path to safety and leap over the Fall to his
destruction.

At length he reached the summit and paused to draw breath. The
black void before him was the Scoop, and in its bosom--not ten
yards away--must be lying the Killer and the killed.

He crouched against the wet rock-face and listened. In that dark
silence, poised 'twixt heaven and earth, he seemed a million
miles apart from living soul.

No sound, and yet the murderer must be there. Ay, there was the
tinkle of a dislodged stone; and again, the tread of stealthy feet.

The Killer was moving; alarmed; was off.

Quick!

He rose to his full height; gathered himself, and leapt.

Something collided with him as he sprang; something wrestled
madly with him; something wrenched from beneath him; and in a
clap he heard the thud of a body striking ground far below, and the
slithering and splattering of some creature speeding furiously
down the hill-side and away.

"Who the blazes?" roared he.

"What the devil?" screamed a little voice.

The moon shone out.

"Moore!"

"M'Adam!"

And there they were still struggling over the body of a dead sheep.

In a second they had disengaged and rushed to the edge of the Fall.
In the quiet they could still hear the scrambling hurry of the
fugitive far below them. Nothing was to be seen, however, save an
array of startled sheep on the hill-side, mute witnesses of the
murderer's escape.

The two men turned and eyed each other; the one grim, the other
sardonic: both dishevelled and suspicious.

"Well?''

Weel?"

A pause and, careful scrutiny.

"There's blood on your coat."

"And on yours~"

Together they walked hack into the little moon-lit hollow. There
lay the murdered sheep in a pool of blood. Plain it was to see
whence the marks on their coats came. M'Adam touched the
victim's head with his~ foot. The movement exposed its throat,.
With a shudder he replaced it as it was.

The two men stood back and eyed one another.

"What are yo' doin' here?"

"After the Killer. What are you?"

"After the Killer?"

"Hoo did you come?"

"Up this path," pointing to the one behind him. "Hoo did you?"

"Up this."

Silence; then again:

"I'd ha' had him but for yo'."

"I did have him, but ye tore me aff,"

A pause again.

"Where's yer gray dog?" This time the challenge was unmistakable.

"I sent him after the Killer. Wheer's your Red Wull?"

"At hame, as I tell't ye before."

"Yo' mean yo' left him there?" M'Adams' fingers twitched.

"He's where I left him."

James Moore shrugged his shoulders. And the other began:

"When did yer dog leave ye?"

"When the Killer came past."

"Ye wad say ye missed him then?"

"I say what I mean."

"Ye say he went after the Killer. Noo the Killer was here," pointing
to the dead sheep. "Was your dog here, too?"

"If he had been he'd been here still."

"Onless he went over the Fall!"

"That was the Killer, yo' fule."

"Or your dog."

"There was only one beneath me. I felt him."

"Just so," said M'Adam, and laughed. The other's brow contracted.

"An' that was a big un," he said slowly. The little man stopped his
cackling.

"There ye lie," he said, smoothly. "He was small."

They looked one another full in the eyes.

"That's a matter of opinion," said the Mas-. ter.

"It's a matter of fact," said the other. The two stared at one another,
silent and stern, each trying to fathom the other's soul; then they
turned again to the brink of the. Fall. Beneath them, plain to see,
was the splash and furrow in the shingle marking the Killer's line
of retreat. They looked at one another again, and then each
departed the way he had come to give his version of the story.

'If Th' Owd Un had kept wi' me, I should Iha' had him."

And-- "I tell ye I did have him, but James Moore :~~ulled me aff.
Strange, too, his dog not bein' --'him!"

Chapter XXII A MAN AND A MAID

IN the village even the Black Killer and the murder on the Screes
were forgotten in this new sensation. The mystery in which the
affair was wrapped, and the ignorance as to all its details, served to
whet the general interest. There had been a fight; M'Adam and the
Terror had been mauled; and David had disappeared--those were
the facts. But what was the origin of the affray no one could say.

One or two of the Dalesmen had, indeed, a shrewd suspicion.
Tupper looked guilty; Jem Burton muttered, "I knoo hoo 'twould
be"; while as for Long Kirby, he vanished entirely, not to reappear
till three months had sped.

Injured as he had been, M'Adam was yet sufficiently recovered to
appear in the Sylvester Arms on the Saturday following the battle.
He entered the tap-room silently with never a word to a soul; one
arm was in a sling and his head bandaged. He eyed every man
present critically; and all, except Tammas, who was brazen, and
Jim Mason, who was innocent, fidgeted beneath the stare. Maybe
it was well for Long Kirby he was not there.

"Onythin' the matter? " asked Jem, at length, rather lamely, in view
of the plain evidences of battle.

"Na, na; naethin' oot o' the ordinar'," the little man replied,
giggling. "Only David set on me, and me sleepin'. And," with a
shrug, "here I am noo." He sat down, wagging his bandaged head
and grinning. "Ye see he's sae playfu', is Davie. He wangs ye o'er
the head wi' a chair, kicks ye in the jaw, stamps on yer wame, and
all as merry as May." And nothing further could they get from him,
except that if David reappeared it was his firm resolve to hand
him over to the police for attempted parricide.

'Brutal assault on an auld man by his son!'

'Twill look well in the Argus; he! he! They couldna let him aff
under two years, I'm thinkin'."

M'Adam's version of the affair was received with quiet incredulity.
The general verdict was that he had brought his punishment
entirely on his own head. Tammas, indeed, who was always rude
when he was not witty, and, in fact, the difference between the two
things is only one of degree, told him straight: "It served yo' well
reet. An' I nob'but wish he'd made an end to yo'."

"He did his best, puir lad," M'Adam reminded him gently.

"We've had enough o' yo'," continued the uncompromising old
man. "I'm fair grieved he didna slice yer throat while he was at it."
At that M'Adam raised his eyebrows, stared, and then broke into a
low whistle.

"That's it, is it?" he muttered, as though a new light was dawning
on him. "Ah, noo I see."

The days passed on. There was still no news of the missing one,
and Maggie's face became pitifully white and haggard.

Of course she did not believe that David had attempted to murder
his father, desperately tried as she knew he had been. Still, it was a
terrible thought to her that he might at any moment be arrested;
and her girlish imagination was perpetually conjuring up horrid
pictures of a trial, conviction, and the things that followed.

Then Sam'l started a wild theory that the little man had murdered
his son, and thrown the mangled body down the dry well at the
Grange. The story was, of course, preposterous, and, coming from
such a source, might well have been discarded with the ridicule it
deserved. Yet it served to set the cap on the girl's fears; and she
resolved, at whatever cost, to visit the Grange, beard M'Adam, and
discover whether he could not or would not allay her gnawing
apprehension.

Her intent she concealed from her father, knowing well that were
she to reveal it to him, he would gently but firmly forbid the
attempt; and on an afternoon some fortnight after David's
disappearance, choosing her opportunity, she picked up a
shawl, threw it over her head, and fled with palpitating heart out of
the farm and down the slope to the Wastrel.

The little plank-bridge rattled as she tripped across it; and she fled
faster lest any one should have heard and come to look. And,
indeed, at the moment it rattled again behind her, and she started
guiltily round. It proved, however, to be only Owd Bob, sweeping
after, and she was glad.

"Comin' wi' me, lad?" she asked as the old dog cantered up,
thankful to have that gray protector with her.

Round Langholm now fled the two conspirators; over the
summer-clad lower slopes of the Pike, until, at length, they
reached the Stony Bottom. Down the bramble-covered bank of the
ravine the girl slid; picked her way from stone to stone across the
streamlet tinkling in that rocky bed; and scrambled up the opposite
bank.

At the top she halted and looked back. The smoke from Kenmuir
was winding slowly up against the sky; to her right the low gray
cottages of the village cuddled in the bosom of the Dale; far away
over the Marches towered the gaunt Scaur; before her rolled the
swelling slopes of the Muir Pike; while behind-- she glanced
timidly over her shoulder--was the hill, at the top of which
squatted the Grange, lifeless, cold, scowling.

Her heart failed her. In her whole life she had never spoken to
M'Adam. Yet she knew him well enough from all David's
accounts-- ay, and hated him for David's sake. She hated him and
feared him, too; feared him mortally--this terrible little man. And,
with a shudder, she recalled the dim face at the window, and
thought of his notorious hatred of her father. But even M'Adam
could hardly harm a girl coming, broken-hearted, to seek her lover.
Besides, was not Owd Bob with her?

And, turning, she saw the old dog standing a little way up the hill,
looking back at her as though he wondered why she waited. "Am I
not enough?" the faithful gray eyes seemed to say.

"Lad, I'm fear'd," was her answer to the unspoken question.

Yet that look determined her. She clenched her little teeth, drew
the shawl about her, and set off running up the hill.

Soon the run dwindled to a walk, the walk to a crawl, and the
crawl to a halt. Her breath was coming painfully, and her heart
pattered against her side like the beatings of an imprisoned bird.
Again her gray guardian looked up, encouraging her forward.

"Keep close, lad," she whispered, starting forward afresh. And the
old dog ranged up beside her, shoving into her skirt, as though to
let her feel his presence.

So they reached the top of the hill; and the house stood before
them, grim, unfriendly.

The girl's face was now quite white, yet set; the resemblance to her
father was plain to see. With lips compressed and breath
quick-coming, she crossed the threshold, treading softly as though
in a house of the dead. There she paused and lifted a warning
finger at her companion, bidding him halt without; then she turned
to the door on the left of the entrance and tapped.

She listened, her head buried in the shawl, close to the wood
panelling. There was no answer; she could only hear the drumming
of her heart.

She knocked again. From within came the scraping of a chair
cautiously shoved back, followed by a deep-mouthed cavernous
growl.

Her heart stood still, but she turned the handle and entered, leaving
a crack open behind.

On the far side the room a little man was sitting. His head was
swathed in dirty bandages, and a bottle was on the table beside
him. He was leaning forward; his face was gray, and there was a
stare of naked horror in his eyes. One hand grasped the great dog
who stood at his side, with yellow teeth glinting, and muzzle
hideously wrinkled; with the other he pointed a palsied finger at
her.

"Ma God! wha are ye?" he cried hoarsely.

The girl stood hard against the door, her fingers still on the handle;
trembling like an aspen at the sight of that uncannie pair.

That look in the little man's eyes petrified her: the swollen pupils;
lashless lids, yawning wide; the broken range of teeth in that
gaping mouth, froze her very soul. Rumors of the man's insanity
tided back on her memory.

"I'm--I---" the words came in trembling gasps.

At the first utterance, however, the little man's hand dropped; he
leant back in his chair and gave a soul-bursting sigh of relief.

No woman had crossed that threshold since his wife died; and, for
a moment, when first the girl had entered silent-footed, aroused
from dreaming of the long ago, he had thought this shawl-clad
figure with the pale face and peeping hair no earthly visitor; the
spirit, rather, of one he had loved long since and lost, come to
reproach him with a broken troth.

"Speak up, I canna hear," he said, in tones mild compared with
those last wild words.

"I--I'm Maggie Moore," the girl quavered.

"Moore! Maggie Moore, d'ye say?" he cried, half rising from his
chair, a flush of color sweeping across his face, "the dochter o'
James Moore?" He paused for an answer, glowering at her; and she
shrank, trembling, against the door.

The little man leant back in his chair. Gradually a grim smile crept
across his countenance.

"Weel, Maggie Moore," he said, halfamused, "ony gate ye're a
good plucked tin." And his wizened countenance looked at her
almost kindly from beneath its dirty crown of bandages.

At that the girl's courage returned with a rush. After all this little
man was not so very terrible. Perhaps he would be kind. And in the
relief of the moment, the blood swept back into her face.

There was not to be peace yet, however. The blush was still hot
upon her cheeks, when she caught the patter of soft steps in the
passage without. A dark muzzle flecked with gray pushed in at the
crack of the door; two anxious gray eyes followed.

Before she could wave him back, Red Wull had marked the
intruder. With a roar he tore himself from his master's restraining
hand, and dashed across the room.

"Back, Bob!" screamed Maggie, and the dark head withdrew. The
door slammed with a crash as the great dog flung himself against
it, and Maggie was hurled, breathless and white-faced, into a
corner.

M'Adam was on his feet, pointing with a shrivelled finger, his face
diabolical.

"Did you bring him? did you bring that to ma door?"

Maggie huddled in the corner in a palsy of trepidation. Her eyes
gleamed big and black in the white face peering from the shawl.

Red Wull was now beside her snarling horribly. With nose to the
bottom of the door and busy paws he was trying to get out; while,
on the other side, Owd Bob, snuffling also at the crack, scratched
and pleaded to get in. Only two miserable wooden inches
separated the pair.

"I brought him to protect me. I--I was afraid."

M'Adam sat down and laughed abruptly.

"Afraid! I wonder ye were na afraid to bring him here. It's the first
time iver he's set foot on ma land, and 't had best be the last" He
turned to the great dog. "Wullie, Wullie, wad ye?" he called.
"Come here. Lay ye doon--so--under ma chair--good lad. Noo's no
the time to settle wi' him"--nodding toward the door. "We can wait
for that, Wullie; we can wait." Then, turning to Maggie, "Gin ye
want him to mak' a show at the Trials two months hence, he'd best
not come here agin. Gin he does, he'll no leave ma land alive;
Wullie'll see to that. Noo, what is 't ye want o'me?"

The girl in the corner, scared almost out of her senses by this last
occurrence, remained dumb.

M'Adam marked her hesitation, and grinned sardonically.

"I see hoo 'tis," said he; "yer dad's sent ye. Aince before he wanted
somethin' o' me, and did he come to fetch it himself like a man?

Not he. He sent the son to rob the father." Then, leaning forward in
his chair and glaring at the girl, "Ay, and mair than that! The night
the lad set on me he cam' "--with hissing emphasis--" straight from
Kenmuir!" He paused and stared at her intently ,and she was still
dumb before him. "Gin I'd ben killed, Wullie'd ha' bin disqualified
from competin' for the Cup. With Adam M'Adam's Red Wull oot o'
the way--noo d'ye see? Noo d'ye onderstan'?

She did not, and he saw it and was satisfied. What he had been
saying she neither knew nor cared. She only remembered the
object of her mission; she only saw before her the father of the
man she loved; and a wave of emotion surged up in her breast.

She advanced timidly toward him, holding out her hands.

"Eh, Mr. M'Adam," she pleaded, "I come to ask ye after David."
The shawl had slipped from her head, and lay loose upon her
shoulders; and she stood before him with her sad face, her pretty
hair all tossed, and her eyes big with unshed tears--a touching
suppliant.

"Will ye no tell me wheer he is? I'd not ask it, I'd not trouble yo',
but I've bin waitin' a waefu' while, it seems, and I'm wearyin' for
news o' him."

The little man looked at her curiously. "Ah, noo I mind me, "--this
to himself. "You' the lass as is thinkin' o' marryin' him?"

"We're promised," the girl answered simply.

"Weel," the other remarked, "as I said afore, ye're a good plucked
un." Then, in a tone in which, despite the cynicism, a certain
indefinable sadness was blended, "Gin he mak's you as good
husband as he mad' son to me, ye'll ha' made a maist remairkable
match, my dear."

Maggie fired in a moment.

"A good feyther makes a good son," she answered almost pertly;
and then, with infinite tenderness, "and I'm prayin' a good wife'll
make a good husband."

He smiled scoffingly.

"I'm feared that'll no help ye much," he said.

But the girl never heeded this last sneer, so set was she on her
purpose. She had heard of the one tender place in the heart of this
little man with the tired face and mocking tongue, and she
resolved to attain her end by appealing to it.

"Yo' loved a lass yo'sel' aince, Mr. M'Adam," she said. "Hoo would
yo' ha' felt had she gone away and left yo'? Yo'd ha' bin mad; yo'
know yo' would. And, Mr. M'Adam, I love the lad yer wife loved."
She was kneeling at his feet now with both hands on his knees,
looking up at him. Her sad face and quivering lips pleaded for her
more eloquently than any words The little man was visibly
touched.

"Ay, ay, lass, that's enough," he said, trying to avoid those big
beseeching eyes which would not be avoided.

"Will ye no tell me?" she pleaded.

"I canna tell ye, lass, for why, I dinna ken," he answered
querulously. In truth, he was moved to the heart by her misery.

The girl's last hopes were dashed. She had played her last card and
failed. She had clung with the fervor of despair to this last
resource, and now it was torn from her. She had hoped, and now
there was no hope. In the anguish of her disappointment she
remembered that this was the man who, by his persistent cruelty,
had driven her love into exile.

She rose to her feet and stood back.

"Nor ken, nor care!" she cried bitterly.

At the words all the softness fled from the little man's face.

"Ye do me a wrang, lass; ye do indeed," he said, looking up at her
with an assumed ingenuousness which, had she known him better,
would have warned her to beware. "Gin I kent where the lad was
I'd be the vairy first to let you, and the p'lice, ken it too; eh, Wullie!
he! he!" He chuckled at his wit and rubbed his knees, regardless of
the contempt blazing in the girl's face.

"I canna tell ye where he is now, but ye'd aiblins care to hear o'
when I saw him last." He turned his chair the better to address her.

"Twas like so: I was sittin' in this vairy chair it was, asleep, when
he crep' up behind an' lep' on ma back. I knew naethin' o't till I
found masel' on the floor an' him kneelin' on me. I saw by the look
on him he was set on finishin' me, so I said--"

The girl waved her hand at him, superbly disdainful.

"Yo' ken yo're lyin', ivery word o't," she cried.

The little man hitched his trousers, crossed his legs, and yawned.

"An honest lee for an honest purpose is a matter ony man may be
proud of, as you'll ken by the time you're my years, ma lass."

The girl slowly crossed the room. At the door she turned.

"Then ye'll no tell me wheer he is?" she asked with a
heart-breaking trill in her voice.

"On ma word, lass, I dinna ken," he cried, half passionately.

"On your word, Mr. M'Adamt" she said with a quiet scorn in her
voice that might have stung Iscariot.

The little man spun round in his chair, an angry red dyeing his
cheeks. In another moment he was suave and smiling again.

"I canna tell ye where he is noo," he said, unctuously; "but aiblins,
I could let ye know where he's gaein' to."

"Can yo'? will yo'?" cried the simple girl all unsuspecting. In a
moment she was across the room and at his knees.

"Closer, and I'll whisper." The little ear, peeping from its nest of
brown, was tremblingly approached to his lips. The little man lent
forward and whispered one short, sharp word, then sat back,
grinning, to watch the effect of his disclosure.

He had his revenge, an unworthy revenge on such a victim. And,
watching the girl's face, the cruel disappointment merging in the
heat of her indignation, he had yet enough nobility to regret his
triumph.

She sprang from him as though he were unclean.

"An' yo' his father!" she cried, in burning tones.

She crossed the room, and at the door paused. Her face was white
again and she was quite composed.

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