Bob Son of Battle

A >> Alfred Ollivant >> Bob Son of Battle

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"Ye murderin' devil, wad ye duar touch ma Wullie?" yelled
M'Adam, and, breaking away, pursued hotly down the hill; for the
gray dog had picked up the puppy, like a lancer a tent-peg, and was
sweeping on, his captive in his mouth, toward the stream.

Behind, hurried James Moore and Sam'l, wondering what the issue
of the comedy would be. After them toddled old Tammas,
chuckling. While over the yard-wall was now a little cluster of
heads: 'Enry, oor Job, Maggie and David, and Vi'let Thornton, the
dairy-maid.

Straight on to the plank-bridge galloped Owd Bob. In the middle
he halted, leant over, and dropped his prisoner; who fell with a
cool plop into the running water beneath.

Another moment and M'Adam had reached the bank of the stream.
In he plunged, splashing and cursing, and seized the struggling
puppy; then waded back, the waters surging about his waist, and
Red Wull, limp as a wet rag, in his hand. The little man's hair was
dripping, for his cap was gone; his clothes clung to him, exposing
the miserableness of his figure; and his eyes blazed like hot ashes
in his wet face.

He sprang on to the bank, and, beside himself with passion, rushed
at Owd Bob.

"Curse ye for a--"

"Stan' back, or yo'll have him at your throat!" shouted the Master,
thundering up. "Stan' back, I say, yo' fule!" And, as the little man
still came madly on, he reached forth his hand and hurled him
back; at the same moment, bending, he buried the other hand deep
in Owd Bob's shaggy neck. It was but just in time; for if ever the
fierce desire of battle gleamed in gray eyes, it did in the young
dog's as M'Adam came down on him.

The little man staggered, tottered, and fell heavily. At the shock,
the blood gushed from his nose, and, mixing with the water on his
face, ran down in vague red streams, dripping off his chin; while
Red Wull, jerked from his grasp, was thrown afar, and lay
motionless.

"Curse ye!" M'Adam screamed, his face dead-white save for the
running red about his jaw. "Curse ye for a cowardly Englishman!"
and, struggling to his feet, he made at the Master.

But Sam'l interposed his great bulk between the two.

"Easy, little mon," he said leisurely, regarding the small fury
before him with mournful interest. "Eli, but thee do be a little
spit-cat, surely!"

James Moore stood, breathing deep, his hand still buried in Owd
Bob's coat.

"If yo'd touched him," he explained, "I conidna ha' stopped him.
He'd ha' mauled yo' afore iver I could ha' had him off. They're bad
to hold, the Gray Dogs, when they're roosed."

"Ay, ma word, that they are!" corroborated Tammas, speaking
from the experience of sixty years. "Once on, yo' canna get 'em
off."

The little man turned away.

"Ye're all agin me," he said, and his voice shook. A pitiful figure
he made, standing there with the water dripping from him. A red
stream was running slowly from his chin; his head was bare, and
face working.

James Moore stood eyeing him with some pity and some
contempt. Behind was Tammas, enjoying the scene. While Sam'l
regarded them all with an impassive melancholy.

M'Adam turned and bent over Red Wull, who still lay like a dead
thing. As his master handled him, the button-tail quivered feebly;
he opened his eyes, looked about him, snarled faintly, and glared
with devilish hate at the gray dog and the group with him.

The little man picked him up, stroking him tenderly. Then he
turned away and on to the bridge. Half-way across he stopped. It
rattled feverishly beneath him, for he still trembled like a palsied
man.

"Man, Moore!" he called, striving to quell the agitation in his
voice--" I wad shoot yon dog."

Across the bridge he turned again. "Man, Moore!" he called and
paused. Ye'll not forget this day." And with that the blood flared up
a dull crimson into his white face.

PART II THE LITTLE MAN

Chapter V. A MAN'S SON

THE storm, long threatened, having once burst, M'Adam allowed
loose rein to his bitter animosity against James Moore.

The two often met. For the little man frequently returned home
from the village by the footpath across Kenmuir. It was out of his
way, but he preferred it in order to annoy his enemy and keep a
watch upon his doings.

He haunted Kenmuir like its evil genius. His sallow face was
perpetually turning up at inopportune moments. When Kenmuir
Queen, the prize short-horn heifer, calved unexpectedly and
unattended in the dip by the lane, Tammas and the Master,
summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running up to find the
little man leaning against the stile, and shaking with silent
merriment. Again, poor old Staggy, daring still in his dotage, took
a fall while scrambling on the steep banks of the Stony Bottom.
There he lay for hours, unnoticed and kicking, until James Moore
and Owd Bob came upon him at length, nearly exhausted. But
M'Adam was before them. Standing on the far bank with Red Wull
by his side, he called across the gulf with apparent concern: "He's
bin so sin' yesternight." Often James Moore, with all his great
strength of character, could barely control himself.

There were two attempts to patch up the feud. Jim Mason, who
went about the world seeking to do good, tried in his shy way to
set things right. But M'Adam and his Red Wull between them soon
shut him and Betsy up.

"You mind yer letters and yer wires, Mr. Poacher-Postman. Ay, I
saw 'em baith: th' am doon by the Haughs, t'ither in the Bottom.
And there's Wullie, the humorsome chiel, havin' a rare game wi'
Betsy." There, indeed, lay the faithful Betsy, suppliant on her back,
paws up, throat exposed, while Red Wull, now a great-grown
puppy, stood over her, his habitually evil expression intensified
into a fiendish grin, as with wrinkled muzzle and savage wheeze
he waited for a movement as a pretext to pin: "Wullie, let the leddy
be--ye've had yer dinner."

Parson Leggy was the other would-be mediator; for he hated to see
the two principal parishioners of his tiny cure at enmity. First he
tackled James Moore on the subject; but that laconic person cut
him short with, "I've nowt agin the little mon," and would say no
more. And, indeed, the quarrel was none of his making.

Of the parson's interview with M'Adam, it is .enough to say here
that, in the end, the angry old minister would of a surety have
assaulted his mocking adversary had not Cyril Gilbraith forcibly
withheld him.

And after that the vendetta must take its course unchecked.

David was now the only link between the two farms. Despite his
father's angry commands, the boy clung to his intimacy with the
Moores with a doggedness that no thrashing could overcome. Not
a minute of the day when out of school, holidays and Sundays
included, but was passed at Kenmuir. it was not till late at night
that he would sneak back to the Grange, and creep quietly up to his
tiny bare room in the roof--not supperless, indeed, motherly Mrs.
Moore had seen to that. And there he would lie awake and listen
with a fierce contempt as his father, hours later, lurched into the
kitchen below, lilting liquorishly:

"We are na Lou, we're nae that Lou,
But just a drappie in our e'e;
The cock may craw, the day may daw',
And ay we'll taste the barley bree!"

And in the morning the boy would slip quietly out of the house
while his father still slept; only Red Wull would thrust out his
savage head as the lad passed, and snarl hungrily.

Sometimes father and son would go thus for weeks without sight
of one another. And that was David's aim--to escape attention. It
was only his cunning at this game of evasion that saved him a
thrashing.

The little man seemed devoid of all natural affection for his son.
He lavished the whole fondness of which his small nature
appeared capable on the Tailless Tyke, for so the Dales-men called
Red Wull. And the dog he treated with a careful tenderness that
made David smile bitterly.

The little man and his dog were as alike morally as physically they
were contrasted. Each owed a grudge against the world and was
determined to pay it. Each was an Ishmael among his kind.

You saw them thus, standing apart, leper-like, in the turmoil of
life; and it came quite as a revelation to happen upon them in some
quiet spot of nights, playing together, each wrapped in the game,
innocent, tender, forgetful of the hostile world.

The two were never separated except only when M'Adam came
home by the path across Kenmuir. After that first misadventure he
never allowed his friend to accompany him on the journey through
the enemy's country; for well he knew that sheep-dogs have long
memories.

To the stile in the lane, then, Red Wull would follow him. There
he would stand, his great head poked through the bars, watching
his master out of sight; and then would turn and trot, self-reliant
and defiant, sturdy and surly, down the very centre of the road
through the village--no playing, no enticing away, and woe to that
man or dog who tried to stay him in his course! And so on, past
Mother Ross's shop, past the Sylvester Arms, to the right by
Kirby's smithy, over the Wastrel by the Haughs, to await his master
at the edge of the Stony Bottom.

The little man, when thus crossing Ken-muir, often met Owd Bob,
who had the free run of the farm. On these occasions he passed
discreetly by; for, though he was no coward, yet it is bad,
single-handed, to attack a Gray Dog of Kenmuir; while the dog
trotted soberly on his way, only a steely glint in the big gray eyes
betraying his knowledge of the presence of his foe. As surely,
however, as the little man, in his desire to spy out the nakedness of
the land, strayed off the public path, so surely a gray figure,
seeming to spring from out the blue, would come fiercely, silently
driving down on him; and he would turn and run for his life, amid
the uproarious jeers of any of the farm-hands who were witness to
the encounter.

On these occasions David vied with Tammas in facetiousness at
his father's expense.

"Good on yo', little un!" he roared from behind a wall, on one such
occurence.

"Bain't he a runner, neither?" yelled Tammas, not to be outdone.
"See un skip it--ho! ho!"

"Look to his knees a-wamblin'!" from the Jon, I'd wear petticoats."
As he spoke, a swinging box on the ear nearly knocked the young
reprobate down.

"D'yo' think God gave you a dad for you to jeer at? Y'ought to be
ashamed o' yo'self. Serve yo' right if he does thrash yo' when yo' get
home." And David, turning round, found James Moore close
behind him, his heavy eyebrows lowering over his eyes.

Luckily, M'Adam had not distinguished his œOfl's voice among the
others. But David Iearcd he had; for on the following morning the
little man said to him:

"David, ye'll come hame immediately after school to-day."

"Will I?" said David pertly.

''Ye will.

"Why?"

"Because I tell ye to, ma lad"; and that was all the reason he would
give. Had he told the simple fact that he wanted help to drench a
"husking" ewe, things might have gone differently. As it was,
David turned away defiantly down the hill.

The afternoon wore on. Schooltime was long over; still there was
no David.

The little man waited at the door of the Grange, fuming, hopping
from one leg to the other, talking to Red Wull, who lay at his feet,
his head on his paws, like a tiger waiting for his prey.

At length he could restrain himself no longer; and started running
down the bill, his heart burning with indignation.

"Wait till we lay hands on ye, ma lad," he muttered as he ran.
"We'll warm ye, we'll teach ye."

At the edge of the Stony Bottom he, as always, left Red Wull.
Crossing it himself, and rounding Langholm How, he espied James
Moore, David, and Owd Bob walking away from him and in the
direction of Kenmuir. The gray dog and David were playing
together. wrestling, racing, and rolling. The boy had never a
thought for his father.

The little man ran up behind them, unseen and unheard, his feet
softly pattering on the grass. His hand had fallen on David's
shoulder before the boy had guessed his approach.

"Did I bid ye come hame after school, David?" he asked,
concealing his heat beneath a suspicious suavity.

"Maybe. Did I say I would come?"

The pertness of tone and words, alike, fanned his father's
resentment into a blaze. In a burst of passion he lunged forward at
the boy with his stick. But as he smote, a gray whirlwind struck
him fair on the chest, and he fell like a snapped stake, and lay, half
stunned, with a dark muzzle an inch from his throat.

"Git back, Bob!" shouted James Moore, hurrying up. "Git back, I
tell yo'!" He bent over the prostrate figure, propping it up
anxiously. "Are yo' hurt, M'Adam? Eh,

A stranger might well have mistaken the identity of the boy's
father. For he stood now, holding the Master's arm; while a few
paces above them was the little man, pale but determined, the
expression on his face betraying his consciousness of the irony of
the situation.

"Will ye come hame wi' me and have it noo, or stop wi' him and
wait till ye get it?" he asked the boy.

"M'Adam, I'd like yo' to--"

"None o' that, James Moore.--David, what d'ye say?"

David looked up into his protector's face. "Yo'd best go wi' your
feyther, lad," said the Master at last, thickly. The boy hesitated,
and clung tighter to the shielding arm; then he walked slowly over
to his father.

A bitter smile spread over the little man's face as he marked this
new test ci? the boy's obedience to the other.

"To obey his frien' he foregoes the pleasure o' disobeyin' his
father," he muttered. "Noble!" Then he turned homeward, and the
boy followed in his footsteps.

James Moore and the gray dog stood looking after them.

"I know yo'll not pay off yer spite agin me on the lad's head,
M'Adam," he called, almost appealingly.

"I'll do ma duty, thank ye, James Moore, wi'oot respect o' persons,"
the little man cried back, never turning.

Father and son walked away, one behind the other, like a man and
his dog, and there was no word said between them. Across the
Stony Bottom, Red Wull, scowling with bared teeth at David,
joined them. Together the three went up the bill to the Grange.

In the kitchen M'Adam turned.

"Noo, I'm gaein' to gie ye the gran'est thrashin' ye iver dreamed of.
Tak' aff yer coat!"

The boy obeyed, and stood up in his thin shirt, his face white and
set as a statue's. Red Wull seated himself on his haunches close by,
his ears pricked, licking his lips, all attention.

The little man suppled the great ash-plant in his hands and raised
it. But the expression on the boy's face arrested his arm.

"Say ye're sorry and I'll let yer a.ff easy."

"I'll not."

"One mair chance--yer last! Say yer 'shamed o' yerself'!"

"I'm not."

The little man brandished his cruel, white weapon, and Red Wull
shifted a little to obtain a better view.

"Git on wi' it," ordered David angrily.

The little man raised the stick again and-- threw it into the farthest
corner of the room.

It fell with a rattle on the floor, and M'Adam turned away.

"Ye're the pitifulest son iver a man had," he cried brokenly. "Gin a
man's son dinna haud to him, wha can he expect to?--no one. Ye're
ondootiful, ye're disrespectfu', ye're maist ilka thing ye shouldna
be; there's but ae thing I thocht ye were not--a coward. And as to
that, ye've no the pluck to sa)ye're sorry when, God knows, ye
might be. I canna thrash ye this day. But ye shall gae nae mair to
school. I send ye there to learn. Ye'll not learn--ye've learnt
naethin' except disobedience to me-ye shall stop at hame and
work."

His father's rare emotion, his broken voice and working face,
moved David as all the stripes and jeers had failed to do. His
conscience smote him. For the first time in his life it dimly dawned
on him that, perhaps, his father, too, had some ground for
complaint; that, perhaps, he was not a good son.

He half turned.

"Feyther--"

"Git oot o' ma sight!" M'Adam cried.

And the boy turned and went.

Chapter VI. A LICKING OR A LIE

THENCEFORWARD David buckled down to work at home, and
in one point only father and son resembled--industry. A drunkard
M'Adam was, but a drone, no.

The boy worked at the Grange with tireless, indomitable energy;
yet he could never satisfy his father.

The little man would stand, a sneer on his face and his thin lips
contemptuously curled, and flout the lad's brave labors.

Is he no a gran' worker, Wullie? 'Tis a pleasure to watch him, his
hands in his pockets, his eyes turned heavenward!" as the boy
snatched a hard-earned moment's rest. "You and I, Wullie, we'll
brak' oorsel's slavin' for him while he looks on and laffs."

And so on, the whole day through, week in, week out; till he
sickened with weariness of it all.

In his darkest hours David thought sometimes to run away. He was
miserably alone on the cold bosom of the world. The very fact that
he was the son of his father isolated him in the Daleland. Naturally
of a reserved disposition, he had no single friend outside Kenmuir.
And it was only the thought of his friends there that witheld him.
He could not bring himself to part from them; they were all he had
in the world.

So he worked on at the Grange, miserably, doggedly, taking blows
and abuse alike in burning silence. But every evening, when work
was ended, he stepped off to his other home beyond the Stony
Bottom. And on Sundays and holidays--for of these latter he took,
unasking, what he knew to be his due-- all day long, from
cock-crowing to the going down of the sun, he would pass at
Kenmuir. In this one matter the hoy was invincibly stubborn.
Nothing his father could say or do sufficed to break him of the
habit. He endured everything with white-lipped, silent
dogged-ness, and still held on his way.

Once past the Stony Bottom, he threw his troubles behind him
with a courage that did him honor. Of all the people at Kenmuir
two only ever dreamed the whole depth of his unhappiness, and
that not through David. James Moore suspected something of it all,
for he knew more of M'Adam than did the others. While Owd Bob
knew it as did no one else. He could tell it from the touch of the
boy's hand on his head; and the story was writ large upon his face
for a dog to read. And he would follow the lad about with a
compassion in his sad gray eyes greater than words.

David might well compare his gray friend at Kenmuir with that
other at the Grange.

The Tailless Tyke had now grown into an immense dog, heavy of
muscle and huge of bone. A great bull head; undershot jaw, square
and lengthy and terrible; vicious, yellow-gleaming eyes; cropped
ears; and an expression incomparably savage. His coat was a
tawny, lion-like yellow, short, harsh, dense; and his back, running
up from shoulder to loins, ended abruptly in the knob-like tail. He
looked like the devil of a dogs' hell. And his reputation was as bad
as his looks. He never attacked unprovoked; but a challenge was
never ignored, and he was greedy of insults. Already he had nigh
killed Rob Saunderson's collie, Shep; Jem Burton's Monkey fled
incontinently at the sound of his approach; while he had even
fought a round with that redoubtable trio, the Vexer, Venus, and
Van Tromp.

Nor, in the matter of war, did he confine himself to his own kind.
His huge strength and indomitable courage made him the match of
almost anything that moved. Long Kirby once threatened him with
a broomstick; the smith never did it again. While in the Border
Ram he attacked Big Bell, the Squire's underkeeper, with such
murderous fury that it took all the men in the room to pull han off.

More than once had he and Owd Bob essayed to wipe out mutual
memories, Red Wull, in this case only, the aggressor. As yet,
however, while they fenced a moment for that deadly throat-grip,
the value of which each knew so well, James Moore had always
seized the chance to intervene.

"That's right, hide him ahint yer petticoats," sneered M'Adam on
one of these occasions.

"Hide? It'll not be him I'll hide, I warn you, M'Adam," the Master
answered grimly, as he stood, twirling his good oak stick between
the would-be duellists. Whereat there was a loud laugh at the little
man's expense.

It seemed as if there were to be other points of rivalry between the
two than memories. For, in the matter of his own business--the
handling of sheep--Red Wull bid fair to be second only throughout
the Daleland to the Gray Dog of Kenmuir. And M'Adam was
patient and painstaking in the training of his Wullie in a manner to
astonish David. It would have been touching, had it not been so
unnatural in view of his treatment of his own blood, to watch the
tender carefulness with which the little man moulded the dog
beneath his hands. After a promising display he would stand,
rubbing his palms together, as near content as ever he was.

"Weel done, Wullie! Weel done. Bide a wee and we'll show 'em a
thing or two, you and I, Wullie.

"'The wand's wrack we share o't,
The warstie and the care o't.'

For it's you and I alane, lad." And the dog would trot up to him,
place his great forepaws on his shoulders, and stand thus with his
great head overtopping his master's, his ears back, and stump tail
vibrating.

You saw them at their best when thus together, displaying each his
one soft side to the other.

From the very first David and Red Wull were open enemies: under
the circumstances, indeed, nothing else was possible. Sometimes
the great dog would follow on the lad's heels with surly, greedy
eyes, never leaving him from sunrise to sundown, till David could
hardly hold his hands.

So matters went on for a never-ending year. Then there came a
climax.

One evening, on a day throughout which Red Wull had dogged
him thus hungrily, David, his work finished, went to pick up his
coat, which he had left hard by. On it lay Red Wull.

"Git off ma coat!" the boy ordered angrily. marching up. But the
great dog never stirred: he lifted a lip to show a fence of white,
even teeth, and seemed to sink lower in the ground; his head on
his paws, his eyes in his forehead.

"Come and take it!" he seemed to say.

Now what, between master and dog, David had endured almost
more than he could bear that day.

"Yo' won't, won't yo', girt brute!" he shouted, and bending,
snatched a corner of the coat and attempted to jerk it away. At that,
Red Wull rose, shivering, to his feet, and with a low gurgle sprang
at the boy.

David, quick as a flash, dodged, bent, and picked up an ugly stake,
lying at his feet. Swinging round, all in a moment, he dealt his
antagonist a mighty buffet on the side of the head. Dazed with the
blow, the great dog fell; then, recovering himself, with a terrible,
deep roar he sprang again. Then it must have gone hard with the
boy, fine-grown, muscular young giant though he was. For Red
Wull was now in the first bloom of that great strength which
earned him afterward an undying notoriety in the land.

As it chanced, however, M'Adam had watched the scene from the
kitchen. And now he came hurrying out of the house, shrieking
commands and curses at the combatants. As Red Wull sprang, he
interposed between the two, head back and eyes flashing. His
small person received the full shock of the charge. He staggered,
but recovered, and in an imperative voice ordered the dog to heel.

Then he turned on David, seized the stake from his hand, and
began furiously belaboring the boy.

"I'll teach ye to strike--a puir--dumb--harrnless--creetur, ye--cruel--
cruel---lad!" he cried. "Hoo daur ye strike--ma----Wullie? yer--
father's----Wullie? Adam--M 'Adam's--Red Wull?" He was panting
from his exertions, and his eyes were blazing. "I pit up as best I
can wi' all manner o' disrespect to masel'; but when it comes to
takin' ma puir Wullie, I cantia thole it. Ha' ye no heart?" he asked,
unconscious of the irony of the question.

"As much as some, I reck'n," David muttered.

"Eh, what's that? What d'ye say?"

"Ye may thrash me till ye're blind; and it's nob'but yer duty; but if
only one daurs so much as to look at yer Wullie ye're mad," the
boy answered bitterly. And with that he turned away defiantly and
openly in the direction of Kenmuir.

M'Adam made a step forward, and then stopped.

"I'll see ye agin, ma lad, this evenin','' he cried with cruel
significance.

"I doot but yo'il be too drunk to see owt-- except, 'appen, your
bottle," the boy shouted back; and swaggered down the hill.

At Kenmuir that night the marked and particular kindness of
Elizabeth Moore was too much for the overstrung lad. Overcome
by the contrast of her sweet motherliness, he burst into a storm of
invective against his father, his home, his life--everything.

"Don't 'ee, Davie, don't 'ee, deane!" cried Mrs. Moore, much
distressed. And taking him to her she talked to the great, sobbing
boy as though he were a child. At length he lifted his face and
looked up; and, seeing the white, wan countenance of his dear
comforter, was struck with tender remorse that he had given way
and pained her, who looked so frail and thin herself.

He mastered himself with an effort; and, for the rest of the
evening, was his usual cheery self. He teased Maggie into tears;
chaffed stolid little Andrew; and bantered Sam'l Todd until that
generally impassive man threatened to bash his snout for him.

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