CHAPTER V
Hardcastle found no partridge in the long pasture that led to Draycott’s farm; but a hare got up under his feet as he neared the gate. Most shots came easily to Hardcastle, but from boyhood’s days a hare had roused always the same surprise, with its lopping stride that seemed slow and bulky, disguising a strong wind’s speed.
He missed now with the first barrel—at simple range—and puss got into a scrub of hazels that climbed the hillside. When she ran through it, brown against the grey rocks above, she was out of range to all but the most sanguine fancy. Hardcastle gave her the left barrel at a venture, and his heart warmed as he saw her sprawl every way at once and lie still against the rocks.
When he went to pick her up and found her shot cleanly through the head, he took it for a good omen. Long hazards seemed to be his luck, and he needed many kinds of luck these days.
Old Michael Draycott was sitting up in the great four-poster bed when Hardcastle went in. The man’s apple-red face was paler than its wont, but his eyes were keen and shrewd as ever.
“I’ll know more than you before so very long,” was Draycott’s greeting.
“You know more already, Michael—the ways of sheep, and land tending, and things I learned from you as a lad.”
“Aye, and I could still teach you summat about horses and dogs, though you’ll differ as to that. But I wasn’t thinking of such matters. Before long I’ll take a journey no man knows t’other side of—and in a twinkling I’ll be wiser than all Logie-side. I’m not afraid, you’ll know—I’m just in a fret to be gone, and know what lies beyond, and be master of you all.”
“You’ll not be master yet, for you’re not within sight of dying, Michael.”
“You were always very free with your opinions. Why shouldn’t I die, with all my bones a-tremble, and a wambling back and front of me?”
“Because your father lived to ninety, and you’re a lad of sixty-five. He’d think shame of you to creep over the Border at your time of day.”
“There’s sense in that,” Michael agreed, with a hard, wheezy laugh. “Come to think of it, there’s a good deal of sense. I never thought of it in that way.”
“I’ve left a hare in your porch, against the time you’re needing a sturdy meal.”
“It’ll have to hang for a week or more before it’s ripe, but thank you all the same,” said Michael, wistfully. “I own that the thought of it gets me back to this side o’ things again. You jug a hare, if it’s to be treated right, and run a pint of staunch port wine into the stour of it, and thank the God who made you for the dish.”
“So you needn’t make your will just yet?”
“Ah, but I must, though I’m feeling stronger every minute since you came. It’s this way, Master. I never wedded, as you know—thanks be for the escapement. All the kin I have is a nephew that’s gone oversea, and a niece that’s pretending to be a lady in London town. If I knew which I hated most, I’d will all I have to t’ other.”
“Then leave it over, Michael, till you’ve got your strength back.”
“Maybe I might. But I’ve one thing to say to you, Hardcastle of Logie. They put a token on my gate last night, because I was tenant to you.”
“That carries to us all,” said the Master, hard and wary on the sudden.
“Have you thought what it means?”
“Yes. I’m cold when I think of it—for myself, but more for you of Logie-side.”
“Now listen. I built this snug fortune o’ mine from naught at all, as you might say, and thrived on sheep and cattle, thinking of little else. But I wouldn’t have built it unless I’d payed tribute to the Lost Folk, same as my father did before me.”
“My own father never had that failing,” said Hardcastle, stating a fact and proud of it.
“The Wilderness was not so strong then. Staunch as he was, he’d have sung to another tune these days. They out-number us, I tell you.”
“He’d have sung to the same tune—but with a lustier voice because the odds were bigger.”
The apple-red was glowing again in Draycott’s cheeks. His fancied ailments were forgotten. “So you take no shame to spread fire and murder through the country-side?”
“I take pride for holding my own ground.”
“Aye, stubborn, like all you Hardcastles; but lord help me to guess where pride comes in.”
“What do you pay in tribute now? Twice what it was in my father’s time—and so on till you’d have been beggared, you tax-paying folk. That’s where pride comes in, Michael. I’m glad to have set war between this and the Wilderness.”
Michael Draycott was prone to coddle his fancied illnesses, but under the foible lay a heart quick to answer real trouble when it came. He got out of bed with a speed astonishing in a sick man no longer young, and stood there in his nightshirt, fronting Hardcastle.
“There’ll not be many with you among the lazy men of Logie—but there’ll be me for one. While I get my breeches on, will you pass word to the kitchen that I’m roaring for a meal?”
For the first time since they set a token on his gate, the Master laughed, from his heart upward. Michael had salted the coming days with humour, and it went with him as he halted at the kitchen door, and saw inside a red-haired lass who was baking an apple-pie.
“The master is crying out for breakfast, Susan.”
She turned a scared face to him. “He was dying awhile since,” she stammered.
“He was; but now he’s alive again, like the rest of us. You’ll get used to these recoveries when you’ve been longer in the house.”
With that he was gone; and humour stayed with him as he went down the pasture and out into the highroad. Nita was finishing her basket when he reached the bridge that girdled Crooning Water, and she glanced at him with innocent, grey eyes.
“You are going home to Logie?” she asked. “You’ll have news of a friend there.”
Again old bitterness soured laughter and all else in Hardcastle. “The Wilderness teaches most trades, Nita. You’re for telling the future nowadays—silver in your parlour, and promise of a dark lady coming?”
“I’m for telling the present. The friend is no lady, dark or fair—and he’s waiting for you at the gate.”
Hardcastle forgot her, forgot even the sharp, slender plough she had driven across his life, breaking it up. He came to Logie Brigg, and feet of the marching men sounded in his ears as he strode up the hill to Logie. In their day fight was easy—march, and camp, and straightforward ding of blows when battle came—but this modern warfare thrust on him was a stealthy matter, hard to wage. The old days were better.
And now Hardcastle heard not only the tread of feet, but song of the battle-men as they went to whatever chanced. They did not pick their road, as he was asking to choose it now, did not fall to dreaming of warfare that had been. The ruts and the hardships had been different then; but the call to conquer them was the same.
Hardcastle did not know himself in this mood. His fore-elders were intent about him—brave, brawny folk who compassed Logie, a regiment of fighting men. And so in great heart he climbed the hill, and came to his gate, and found a message scrawled in chalk.
Hemlock grows in the Wilderness.
That was all, till he tried to open the gate, and felt a weight against it. He put an impatient shoulder to the topmost bar, and there inside lay Roy, a dead thing with no joy of welcome. Froth of the death-throes flecked his jaws and his gold-brown hide. He had watched for the Master faithfully, and for reward lay here.
A silence came to Hardcastle, and a great sickness—sickness of heart, that is the worst to bear. He could not believe for awhile that this comrade had gone before his time. He had reared him as a puppy—a ball of golden fluff that played strange antics—had nursed him through distemper and trained him to the gun. As if he stood at the graveside of a familiar friend, long thoughts went racing down the years. He recalled the very smell of the heather when grouse swept cluttering up the moor, the crisp, frosty silence as they waited for the wild-duck to come over. They had roused all Logie-land together, good weather and foul, and had tramped home with happy weariness.
The trouble went deep. Roy had slept outside his bedroom door, had been the first to welcome him when he got up for the day’s business, the last to wag his tail in token of good-night. And Roy had gone. His body was here—but what of the eager spirit, the loyalty that never faltered, the eyes that spoke because the tongue was dumb? Many had failed Hardcastle in his time, but never Roy.
No longer since than yesterday, Roy had been with him up the pastures, and now he was away to some far land. What land? With the question came a swift, wayward hope that he had found moors out yonder, and birds rising to the gun, and wind among the brackens—a faith that they would rejoin each other later on, when his time came to die.
Nothing could ease grief of this sort but remembrance of the second token on his gate. Hemlock grew in the Wilderness, and they had poisoned the thing he loved best in the world—the friend that Nita, weaving her basket where the Brigg crossed Crooning Water, had told him would be waiting. And now little, crimson lines began to dance before his eyes, and widened swiftly till he saw nothing but a sheet of fiery red, and behind it the styes where the Lost Folk housed themselves. It was battle-sunrise, drinking up the fears of generations; and many never had known it, from Flodden’s day to this.
Causleen, spent with watching by the long-settle where her father lay in deep sleep at last, had come out for a breath of this clean, upland air. She would go to the gate, and a little beyond, maybe—but not far away from the sick man who might need her at any moment.
She got no further than the gate. Her sympathy was quick for dogs; and, seeing Roy there in all his dead, silent disarray, she knelt beside him and hid a sudden rush of tears in the coat that had been warm yesterday, when he growled at her coming and afterwards gave friendship.
“He was so brave and bonnie—and he’s gone,” she said, glancing up between wet lashes.
“Roy needs no praise,” growled Hardcastle, roughened by his loss. “If you’d known him as I did, you’d let your tongue be still.”
Her pride took fire. From the first he had been surly and resentful of her coming. Yet her feet dragged, as she left him with his dead. She halted and glanced back; and there was Hardcastle, his shoulders bowed with sorrow.
“Ah, you cared for him,” she said, her voice low with pity.
“Cared? He was all left to care for, except Logie.”
CHAPTER VI
They were gathering their sheep from the fells under Pengables, to bring them down into the warmer lands below. To a stranger it would have seemed odd that so many shepherds, and master-farmers with their hinds, should have chosen the same day. The farmers, indeed, might have done the work at haphazard, choosing a time here and there as occasion served; but their shepherds lived nearer the fell-tops where true weather-lore was taught by countless little signs and tokens. And the shepherds had decreed that within eight-and-forty hours the wind hounds of the north would be driving snow before them.
The Logie country, if it guessed what was to come, made merry with the time left it. Quiet wisps of cloud lay bosomed on a sky of blue. The belt of woodland under Pengables—larches, pines and rowans, their feet set deep in the heather—glowed in the hot sun glare with rich array of russet and amber, and wide-flung crimson—the riot of it all subdued by the still majesty of the pines, who kept their burnished livery secure against all onset of the seasons.
All the land was filled with uproar—dogs barking their throats hoarse, sheep crying witless and forlorn, men cursing ewes and dogs and neighbour-folk in rich upland speech. When each shepherd had only his own ewes to look after, and his own dog to work them, they went silently about the business, save for a whistle or a quiet call. But now the dogs were mad with rivalry. The sudden busy-ness of these quiet fells was to them what market day in Shepperton meant to the shepherds when they went there once in a while and were amazed by the town’s confusion.
Shepherd Brant, a great leader of dogs and ewes, began at last to get order out of havoc, and all was going well when Michael Draycott—he that was lying on his death-bed a fortnight since, till Hardcastle persuaded him to get out of it—came driving a flock of three-score down the lane the bracken-sledges took. They came plump into a company that Brant was shepherding along the track to Logie, and a bleak-witted cry went up to heaven from two hundred sheep that turned all ways at once.
Brant took command in earnest now. “Durn you, Michael, will you leave shepherding to shepherds. What’s the use of you, quavering with a stick and walking as if your toes were on hot bricks? A figure of fun, I call you.”
“I’ll leave it to you gladly, Brant,” chuckled Michael, the sweat dripping from his cheery face. “For my part I’ve had enough and to spare of the game.”
“Then get a hand into the collar of that fool-dog of yours, and see how mine has learned to work.”
Michael obeyed. Brant and he were old enough in friendship to make small account of plain speech between them, and the farmer watched the other’s dog at work with growing approbation—watched him as he drove some of the ewes in front, thrust others aside, getting his own and those that did not matter into two companies.
“A gift, I call it—a fair marvel,” he muttered, talking to the dog he held by the collar. “See ’em at it—Brant and his snod-haired collie. We’re a rough couple, lad, when it comes to rounding sheep up.”
The flocks were separate at last, and Brant’s dog padded up and down with restless question what was asked of him.
“Home to Logie,” said the shepherd, “I’ll follow soon.”
Michael grew wide-eyed with wonderment as he saw the ewes go down the slope, the collie shepherding a straggler now and then with quiet persuasion.
“He can do almost aught but talk, Brant.”
“And does it better for that lack,” said the shepherd, filling his pipe. “Dogs have the pull of us there. They work instead of talking. Lordie, it’s been a warm job, this.”
“Thanks to you shepherds. What fool’s tale did you come telling, about north wind and snow?” put in Geordie Wiseman, sauntering to join them from a neighbouring farm lane.
“Bide a day or two, and you’ll learn. For myself, I’m glad of a breathing-time, while Scamp yonder takes ’em home to Logie.”
“You haven’t a pup of his fathering, Brant?”
“I have, as it happens, but I’d never trust him to your lowland training,” growled Brant.
The shepherd fell into great moodiness, till Michael rallied him.
“What’s gone amiss?”
“Storm’s gone amiss,” snapped Brant. “Scamp does well enough—a good second of the twins I reared—but Storm was known from this to Carlisle for what he was—the best dog in the north for sheep. And now he’s tasted flesh, and no cure for him but the barrels of a gun.”
“A rare dog,” assented Wiseman, “but too clever, as you might say. He went past himself. You’ve not chanced on him yet, I take it?”
“Not I. I begin to fancy he’s savaging another man’s flocks by now.”
Storm, if they had known it, was watching them from above, where he lay coiled in a clump of bracken under Pengables. For a week and a day, since Hardcastle first gave him house-room, he had roamed at large, raiding and sleeping and skulking by turns; and, as he came warily across the moor this morning, the uproar from the fells below roused ancient memories. With slow craftiness, his body crouched to take advantage of such cover as rocks and heather gave him, he had wormed his way to the foot of Pengables, and now looked on, an outlaw, at the work speeding forward.
He had shared that work in other years, had heard men praise him, had seen his fellow-dogs give jealous homage to his fame. And now he lay here, with the blood of a late-slain ewe scarce dried on his rough muzzle. None praised him to-day. He had lost repute, and every hand was turned against him—even Brant’s, his old master; and across Storm’s hard, relentless eyes there stole a mist of grief. That weakness passed. The wolf-lust in him blazed afresh, kindled in the old-time of his ancestors. He remembered last night’s slaughter—the mad joy of killing, just for slaughter’s sake. He thought of the night to come. Then he turned three times in his bracken lair, and his head dropped on his forepaws. For he was full fed and sleepy.
Over the same moor that Storm had crossed, Hardcastle of Logie came from business he had at Nether Helstone. They liked to have him with them at the ewe-gathering, and he was later than he had meant; but for all that he halted when he reached the grim rockpile of Pengables, set four-square like a fortress on the hill-top. He, too, was looking down on a remembered scene, as Storm had done, and with a sense of utter loneliness.
He watched the wild gathering-scene below—the sheep scampering every way at once, the dogs half-crazied, the men who seemed, most of them, little surer of their wits. Then he saw order come from the bedevilment, till at last the whole of the wide fells below him took moving shape. There was no longer a waste of close-cropped pastures. It was hidden by long, swaying flocks that glided to their lowland shelter-fields.
As the grey sheep moved through the day’s heat, the sweat of their fleeces rose to a sunlight that turned it into rainbow mist; and Hardcastle stood looking down on old, familiar country changed to fairyland. The spell of it was on him. He had not known what glamour lay about this simple Gathering Day.
He shook himself free of dreams, and glanced across the valley. Garsykes, the village of the Lost Folk, was sending wood-smoke up into the quiet sky as if it were a haunt of peace. Yet it had put a token on his gate, had killed old Roy already, and would burn Logie next, no doubt. It seemed destined that he should lose the few things left him nowadays to care for.
Here on the heights he learned suddenly what Roy’s loss meant to him. First grief, when he found the dead body at his gate, had been tempered by the shock that stuns. Through the days that followed he had shut down the windows of his heart, lest he looked too closely through them. There were other dogs in plenty to be had. He must buy one to-morrow—or perhaps the morrow after. So he told himself; but now, as again he looked across at Garsykes, he hungered just for Roy. If all was in the losing, because he had battered three men of the Wilderness, he could have faced it better if Roy had been beside him. He had no fear now. But he had loneliness, that can bite like east wind into the marrow of a man.
The sheep-nibbled grass sloped sharply down on this side of Pengables, and when he reached the hill-foot—half running and half sliding, as fell-racers do—he was checked by a sudden growl from the brackens on his right. Storm’s sleep these days was light as the triggers of pursuing guns. He was on his feet already, his teeth bared behind the tell-tale ruddy lips. Then, as he saw who the intruder was, he just stood and looked at him, his air ludicrously changed. The brown eyes grew full of deprecation, appeal, assurances that he was a mishandled and misjudged fugitive.
Hardcastle laughed quietly. “I believe no word of it, but you’re safe from me. I give you my word for that. There’s Brant down there.”
Storm followed his pointing finger, then glanced at his face again.
“There’s Brant down there—and more fool you to make an uproar when a friend comes by.”
And now about these two there came sharp intuition, such as thrives in times of peril. Storm had always liked the smell of this man who had saved him twice—once, when he gave him shelter at Logie, and now when he might have betrayed him to Shepherd Brant below. He thrust his rough head into the Master’s hand—the head smeared by blood, and packed within by the Wilderness knew what of guile and wolf-lust—and of loyalty to his chosen man.
So then Hardcastle knew that in sober truth he had bought another dog—but not with money. He bade Storm keep close, and left him in his lair, and went swinging down the fells. Loneliness had gone, though in the peaceful days he would have sneered at any man who told him he could take cheer of heart from an outlaw such as Storm.
The last swaying companies of sheep went out of sight behind the shoulder of the track as he strode down. From time to time a man’s voice sounded, or a collie’s eager yelp, muffled by distance into softer melody. For the rest there was the intimate and friendly silence of a land ripe with autumn’s big content.
That lasted till he neared the road where Shepherd Brant was gossiping with Michael Draycott and filling another pipe before he took the home-track to Logie. Then the jar of men’s voices raised in quarrel killed all peace, and Hardcastle, glancing down, saw five of the Wilderness Folk confronting the two of Logie. He made light of the quarter-mile between himself and trouble, and Brant turned at sound of his coming.
“We’ve missed you,” he grumbled; “but better late than never.”
“What is it?”
“Nay, ask these lean swine from Garsykes.”
The five were tongue-tied and loutish, till one of them—Jake Bramber, who had talked with Nita on the bridge and afterwards gone to Logie to feed old Roy with meat and hemlock—strutted his squat impudence up to Hardcastle.
“There’s a dog called Storm,” he said.
“There is,” Hardcastle agreed, with bitter quiet.
“He’s taken many sheep of ours. So I just asked Brant if he’d missed any ewes of his own this morning when he counted the tally. He owned to a score.”
“Well?”
“Nay, you needn’t be so high and mighty about it. They’re in our pinfold yonder—tribute, as you might say, for what Storm’s done to ours.”
“There’s a pinfold over Logie way, and three sheep of yours tried to stop me there. Did I break all their bones, or only half? I’ve often wondered.”
And now the five men stared at Hardcastle, marvelling at his hardihood.
“There’s one of you killed a dog of mine,” said the Master, his eyes holding Jake’s, “and he’ll pay toll for that.”
“Seems as if times were changed,” growled the little man, strutting it still. “D’ye know what it means when the Lost Folk put an arrow on a gate?”
“We know,” said Hardcastle—“and, Brant, go down to their pinfold and bring back our ewes.”
CHAPTER VII
Michael Draycott rubbed his hands together as he saw the five shrink back. They were not used to such frank and instant challenge. Hardcastle had reminded them, moreover, of what he had done to certain men of theirs; and they looked on with sullen wonder as Brant brought up the twenty ewes.
It was Jake Bramber who first spoke. “Leave us those ewes, and maybe we’ll call it quits.”
“Quits?”
“There’s been a long peace between you Logie Folk and ours. You wouldn’t break it for a matter of a few sheep?”
“He’s talking sense, Master,” quavered Geordie Wiseman. “Let him have ’em, and save us all from being murdered every night of our lives.”
A laugh went up; but Hardcastle was in no mood for merriment.
“There are two roads, Geordie,” he said sharply—“to Logie or the Wilderness. You’ve got to choose. If a tenant of mine gives any sort of tribute—aye, if it’s a penny to a brat of theirs—he crosses over to Garsykes. And may hell deal softly with him there.”
The five men drew further back from Hardcastle. More than his rugged strength, more than memory of the battered three who had returned they feared this man’s strength of spirit, revealed suddenly—feared the ring of his voice, the upright head and brawny shoulders.
“A hard man, you,” said Jake.
“Yes, a hard man, I, and God be thanked for that.”
“But an arrow-head left on a gate? It can weaken the hardest—by degrees. A blow in the dark say, or a boulder in the road when you and yours drive home o’ nights—and your women-folk not safe at any time——”
“I have no women-folk,” said Hardcastle—“except old Rebecca. And she’s a match for any two of you.”
Still Jake laboured to get the better of him. He knew that, if he could persuade the Master of Logie to buy peace at the small price of twenty ewes, the Wilderness was free to go its way again, robbing the weak, never needing to tackle stronger folk than ale-silly drovers and the like.
“There’s the house of Logie. They say no woman could ever be to Hardcastle what Logie is.”
“That’s true.”
“We shall come to burn it, on near night.”
“Thanks for the warning,” said Hardcastle, and told Brant to get busy with the ewes.
Wiseman paused for a backward glance, and the Master gripped his arm. “I’ll not hinder you either way—but, Geordie, you’ve to choose once for all.”
So Geordie, as his way was, went with those who had prevailed in the last battle. And Brant went driving the stolen ewes before him, more thankful for them than for all the hundreds that had gone before in safety. And Michael Draycott laughed.
“I could scarce tell you why,” he said, answering a question in the Master’s glance. “Perhaps I was thinking of me on my death-bed, and the bonnier times you kicked me up to share.”
Storm, the sheep-slayer, watched it all from his lair at the foot of Pengables. He saw the last of the ewes go in a rainbow-steam round the wide curve of the track, and with them Brant his enemy, and Hardcastle his friend—his friend from this till death ended loyalty for one unwanted dog.
The land grew quiet again, basking in the tranquil heat, until a whistle broke the silence. Storm knew the shepherd’s call, the whistle of hale farm-lads when they climbed the pastures; but this had another note. It was shrill and sinister.
He waited. Broken dogs, like broken men, learn a patience that is not contentment—a patience wide-eyed to observe all details and quick to interpret them.
Nothing happened for awhile, till the whistle was repeated. And then Storm saw the doors of Garsykes open wide, and men pour out from them and run into the wide, green road the Logie Men had taken. He saw Jake point first at their empty pinfold, then down the track—heard the deep, evil roar that died as they went grimly in pursuit.
Storm understood it all, and a great song came into his blood. He was not concerned with his own needs now, but with Hardcastle’s. As he went between the brackens and kept pace with the running folk below, he could see the men of Logie moving slowly, hidden as yet from the enemy, but with only a few hundred yards to spare. And they did not know their peril.
The song in Storm’s blood had the gale’s speed now. Like all great-hearted sinners, he was sick of skulking. Reason had nothing to do with the long, howling wail he gave—a wail like the cry of all the lost who had ever lived and died in Garsykes—but instinct told him he was serving Hardcastle.
Hardcastle himself glanced backward, to learn the meaning of it; and round the bend he saw a company of the Lost Folk, their shuffling run stopped for a moment by the eerie cry that still whined and sobbed from the bracken-lands above. He took advantage of their superstition—they fancied Guytrash was calling them to death—and glanced ahead again, down the track the sheep were taking over a grey, narrow bridge.
“Get the ewes over, Brant,” he said quietly, as if he called him to supper up at Logie. “Get them over, man, and be quick. We two must hold the bridge.”
Sixty years of weather on the heights had only toughened Brant’s lean body and he warmed to this queer happening. He got the sheep across, and left them in Geordie Wiseman’s charge.
“Your knees are all a-twitter, Geordie,” he growled, “but there’s use enough in you, maybe, to keep a few ewes from straying into what’s to come.”
“How will it end, shepherd?”
“As it will end. What can I tell you more than that?”
The Wilderness Men were still halting, for Storm’s long-drawn howl had taken a deeper note. They looked for some ghostly death to overtake them, till Jake rallied their oozing pluck.
“It’s naught. We live too near those durned old miners up at Weathersett, with their talk of trolls and weir-dogs——”
“Aye, but it’s Guytrash calling us, all the same,” broke in a lad of the company. “I heard him once, and my father hanged himself that night.”
“The more fool he,” laughed Jake. “He’d have been hanged any way, soon or late; but no man should run to meet a halter.”
Hardcastle, fronting them at the bridge, knew that the odds must overmaster himself and Brant, once these folk came at them in dead earnest. They were thirty paces away as yet, irresolute for a moment that seemed endless, and Hardcastle’s thoughts ran swiftly, like those of a drowning man. This end was better, after all, than the long-drawn-out stealthy warfare he had been prepared to meet. And Logie’s honour would be safe. Yet he felt an odd, wistful regret for Brant the shepherd. The pity of it that Brant was old, with a heart reared on upland solitude. The fights he was trained to share were clean battles between a man and such weather as the skies chose to ding about his ears. But they were here together and must face it out.
Brant’s thoughts were busy, too, in this long moment of inaction. The deep, running cry, that sounded ceaselessly through the brackens up above, was a cry known to him. It had roused him many a night as he slept in his hut, up yonder on the roof of the high fells, had got him out of doors with a gun in his hand to follow a useless hunt in the dark for a sheep-slayer who yapped and growled across the wastes. He knew Storm’s voice now, as one knows the voice of his dearest enemy.
The ewes behind him knew it, and pressed together in a sweat of fright. Storm the sheep-slayer was among them once again—Storm, who had made nightmares of their slumber for time out of mind.
Then Hardcastle’s voice sounded, rough and sturdy, as he answered Jake’s gibe that no man should run to meet a halter.
“No man runs to meet my fists, I notice.”
Still the Wilderness Men held back. Attack in daylight was a trade they had not learned, and they were clumsy at it.
Hardcastle’s blood was red in him, as when he had stood above old Roy, slain foully by these people. The struggle could not last, he knew. Soon they would gather bastard courage from force of numbers, and there would be an end to him and Shepherd Brant. But joy was with him. There was a sharp memory of Logie, the house dearer to him than all else except his lands. Parting was hard, till he remembered that they would carry him there a true Hardcastle. Dead or alive, he asked for Logie’s honour.
Up above this battle that could only have one end, Storm was pressing through the brackens. He had warned the Master, and afterwards had watched the score of grey-fleeced ewes. And the old wolf-call had reached him.
Storm went on his own business now. He went at speed, but craftily, and never left cover till he crossed the brook that, further down, ran under the bridge where Hardcastle fronted the Lost Folk. Then he turned downhill. He was in the open now, and the sheep that fool Geordie guarded turned face about as the slayer’s hunting-note came down the lean, steep pasture-lands. They knew that Storm loved to chase them from behind before at last he leaped and fastened his teeth in wool and flesh. So they turned about, with bleating courage to resist, till the cry of the slayer came near and eager.
Geordie Wiseman pranced up and down, shouting that the ewes were all gone daft. Hardcastle and Brant turned to see the frenzied mob of sheep charge them from behind; and just in time they left the bridge. The sheep came skeltering over in resistless panic, drove through the Wilderness Folk and scattered them like chaff to one side and the other of the road. Fear of man was lost in the wilder dread of what pursued.
After them came Storm, at a tearing gallop that checked as he neared the Garsykes Men. The sheep were in front of him, a sure quarry later on; and here were enemies who had harried him up and down the country-side for many a day. He bit right and left with savage yelps. He paused to maul one here and there of those who had been stamped into the breeze-blown dust of the roadway. Then he passed, as a roaring gale might do, and followed the grey ewes—out and up, till he was hidden by a bluff of rock.
The Garsykes Men were broken. They forgot Hardcastle at the bridge, forgot all but superstition, and the look of Storm as he went by, with his fangs bared and his muzzle dripping red with blood of theirs. Terror-stricken as the sheep whose cries still came fitfully down-wind, they made for home, some limping as they went.
Hardcastle passed a hand across his eyes. A moment since he had been ready for the struggle that was to end all strife for him on this side of things; and now he was a free man again. It was unbelievable how sweet life was, with all its harsh ups-and-downs.
Brant came to his side, and together they stood looking down on the mean village in the hollow just below them. It was packed with women, and one of them—a plump, brazen hussy—sent a great laugh up.
“Good grief, our men come home,” she cried—“our men.”
The laughter spread, till the broken warriors rallied and made for their own women-folk with ready fists.
“It’s about time we went,” said Shepherd Brant. “If the men and the women both come out against us after their fratching’s done—why, God help us.”
They took a last look at this village that had conquered Logie-side for generations, and were turning homewards when a voice hailed them, and they saw the plump hussy breasting the rise of the pastures up from Garsykes.
“You’re Hardcastle of Logie?” she panted.
“Why, yes.”
“Then I’ve come to tell you two things. First, that you’ve a queer pluck of your own, to come so near us after we’ve put the token on Logie’s gate. A bit of a fool, I should call you.”
“Like most of us.”
She stood fronting them, her red arms folded across her ample breasts. “Aye, laugh while you can; for it’s no easy road you’ve chosen—’specially by night. Lord, what our men will put on you for this day’s work.”
She left them as quickly as she had come, and Brant’s face was sombre as Hardcastle and he crossed the bridge that would have seen their death if Storm had not run wild awhile since.
“I’ve lost twenty ewes. There’s no denying that,” he grumbled. “And Storm—that old, ancient devil—is with them up the pastures.”
“He saved you and me, Brant—saved us for Logie and the days to come.”
“You were always partial to him, as I’ve told you time and again. I’d rather have died than be saved by a ravisher of ewes.”
“Maybe—but I’d rather live, to put fear of Logie on these Garsyke swine.”
For a mile they went, Hardcastle and his shepherd, in sharp disagreement. Then Brant turned, with a dry chuckle.
“There’s sense in that. After the few hundred years they’ve been putting fear on Logie, it’s time we had our turn. But I cannot thole the thought o’ Storm, and never will.”
As they rounded the bend where Widow Dyke’s cottage stood snug and lonely, its garden-patch ablaze with red butterflies that feasted on the tall-standing Michaelmas daisies, Nita Langrish met them in the road. A little, toddling chap had hold of her hand, and she was singing a song to him.
Now grow you big, and grow you tall,Lad o’ the Wilderness.You’ll give the Logie Folk a callWhen nights are dark and drear and all,Lad o’ the Wilderness.
Now grow you big, and grow you tall,Lad o’ the Wilderness.You’ll give the Logie Folk a callWhen nights are dark and drear and all,Lad o’ the Wilderness.
Now grow you big, and grow you tall,Lad o’ the Wilderness.You’ll give the Logie Folk a callWhen nights are dark and drear and all,Lad o’ the Wilderness.
Now grow you big, and grow you tall,
Lad o’ the Wilderness.
You’ll give the Logie Folk a call
When nights are dark and drear and all,
Lad o’ the Wilderness.
She ceased her singing, and stood fronting Hardcastle. Supple and eager, a thing radiant as the sunlit day, she brought harsh memories back. He had been in slavery once to this beguilement, before he learned what lay behind it.
“Whose brat have you with you?” he asked.
“Widow Mathison’s.” Nita’s voice was clear and bell-like as of old, pleasant to hear. “You felled his uncle at the pinfold, and Murgatroyd has not recovered yet.”
“That’s welcome news.”
She glanced at him with such hope of old dominion that Brant went forward, disgruntled and at war with life. If the Master liked to be fooled a second time, that was no concern of a shepherd who had kept his eyes on the hills, instead of letting them rove women’s way.
“Have you forgotten Logie Woods?” asked Nita, tears in her grey, pleading eyes.
“Except in nightmare. Yes, I’ve forgotten those days, Nita.”
“Bitter to the end?”
“Aye, and beyond.”
She fell to crying; and, when that did not serve, she glanced at him through long, wet lashes. “If I cared for too many men—it was vanity, and no more. There was never a man but you.”
Wrath came to Hardcastle—sudden, heedless tempest, like a north wind from far, broken hills. “I’ll not say to any woman what’s on my tongue for you. I gave you—all Logie and myself—gave you my heart to be held, or played with. Tales came of other men, and I laughed at them—till I found them true.”
“It was vanity. No man but you ever took my lips—though many wanted to.”
She was weaving gossamer about him, this once again. Charm of the slender body, supple as the willows she wove into her baskets—lilt of her voice—the pleading in her eyes—were meshing him into her net.
He broke through. The new days had hardened him. Up yonder was threatened Logie; and here was Nita of the Wilderness, wanting him not for himself, but because he was the one man in the country-side she could not play with.
“You were singing a song to Widow Mathison’s brat,” he said.
“The feud with Logie’s up again. It came out of the olden days, before I knew.”
“Teach him a newer song. There’ll be no Garsykes when the lad grows up.”
Wrath had left him. Gruff and cold, sinewy with field-sports and hard riding, he would never again be the lover she had known. He was in the thick of peril, and seemed to have no fear. He was within reach of her hands and lips, and would not take them. And now fury came to her in turn, though it ran deep and out of sight.
“There are three things Hardcastle of Logie cared for,” she said, counting them on slender fingers—“his house, his dog Roy, his pride. And Roy has gone the way of hemlock. So two are left him now.”
“It was you sent one of yours to Roy?”
“And next I shall send one to fire your house,” laughed Nita gently, counting the tally on her second finger. “Then there’ll be stillness for a long while, till your pride takes fright and dies.”
He grew only a little harder. She had killed his heart long since, and now had sent hemlock up to Roy. And she was glancing at him with softened eyes, was reaching out slim hands he would not take.
“I have the Lost Folk at call—could turn the storm from Logie, if—if you cared.”
Hardcastle was no bondsman now to Garsykes Men—still less to thraldom of any woman who thought to glamour him from that side of the country.
“You’re asking tribute, Nita,” he said. “Logie gives none to the Wilderness.”