CHAPTER XX
Causleen, when she left Hardcastle asleep in the hooded chair at Logie, wandered nearer and nearer to the Garsykes country, till she halted at last on Trolls Hill and stood looking over the barren lands.
The wind, boisterous now, had scattered the mists, and in the keen, chilly sunlight Garsykes village showed clear across the hollow. She could hear voices in its street, and wondered if they were planning some new devilment. A woman’s raucous laugh sounded. Was that in answer to the plotting?
Her courage ebbed low, after the night’s useless vigil. There were so many of them. What chance had Logie in the last result? Surely Hardcastle had done enough, and might give up the unequal battle. He had only to pay tribute, like the rest, to buy his safety.
She trampled down the thought. If she had half-loved him, that road of freedom might have brought content. As it was, she could not bear that he should be less than the Master, whatever came. And yet the odds against him were pitiful, disastrous.
Still her glance was drawn to Garsykes, as if the very evil of the place had cast a spell on her; and she started when Nita Langrish stepped lightly up the track that led from Logie.
“Not afraid to be so near our thieves and cut-throats?” said Nita.
“Logie does not fear such. They came, and had their answer.”
“Riding a tall horse, are you? Logie does not fear, says Hardcastle’s wanton, as if she was an honest wife there.”
The hot blood flamed in Causleen’s face, and pallor followed. If a knife had been ready to her hand, there would have been murder done, here where the wind roared and fluted over Trolls Hill.
“Go,” she said, “back to the styes that bred you!”
“I will go, little beggar on horseback. If you knew what errand I have been on—but, then, you do not know.”
Nita stood poised on slender feet, like a wild deer of the hills, but tarried.
“I’m skilled in divination,” she went on, her voice reminding Causleen, in some haphazard way, of Jonah, the brindled cat when he was playing with a mouse. “Shall the basket-weaver tell you what is coming?”
In spite of herself, Causleen felt weak and a child in the other’s hands. The magic that had kept Garsykes Men in thrall was drawing her into its webs. She followed Nita’s finger as it pointed to the road below, where the track from Logie split in two—one grey lane going flat to Garsykes, the other winding steep and rocky to a cavern gaping open-mouthed across the green face of the pastures.
“Do you see where the tracks divide?” purred Nita. “A man will come to the two-ways by and by, and take the upper road. And you will follow.”
Causleen remembered Hardcastle asleep at Logie; and he was the one man in the world she would ever follow willingly.
“It is not true,” she said, with chill disdain.
The basket-weaver made no answer. But still she did not go, and her silence began to mesh Causleen again with unseen nets. Yonder was Garsykes, foul and a menace centuries old. And close at hand was Nita. She felt utterly alone, as if friendless leagues divided her from Logie and her man.
Strive as she would, panic—headlong, unreasoning panic—was stealing on her, though the sun shone and the free winds went bristling by.
Nita kept silence. She, of all living Garsykes Folk, had learned most of the black magic handed down the generations. It had been her joy to weave it into the baskets she sold, into the ill-starred deeds her men did by night and day—and Causleen was given into her hands. She would half slay her now with dread, then let her go to what they had planned for the pedlar’s girl and Hardcastle.
All that was brave and Highland-born in Causleen fought the terror stealing on her. What sort of wife would she be to Hardcastle, if she yielded now to this stealthy dread that came like formless mist about her?
There came a whimpering through the heather. She did not hear, till a wet nose was pressed into her hand; and afterwards a tongue red with sheep-slaying reached up and licked her face.
Then, as on a night gone by when Storm lay in the cupboard under Logie’s stair, she threw her arms about him.
“Storm, you’ve come,” she said, hugging his tousled body, thick with bracken-splinters that he carried from his past night’s lair.
Nita drew away. Dogs always distrusted her, and fear of the whole race—a dread half superstitious—had grown into her life. Yet even now she could not keep back the bitter gibe.
“He is a friend of the Master’s, too. Dear grief, Logie keeps odd company nowadays.”
Storm, homeless and tired of the wander-lust, had been sending long thoughts out to Logie as he sat on a spur of the moors and saw Causleen swing into sight across the Garsykes track. He had bounded down—slipping and turning a somersault or two on the way—and, now that he was in touch again with Logie, he was content. He growled at Nita by habit, and bared his teeth, then turned again to Causleen and yielded like a puppy to her daft endearments. She smelt of home to Storm.
Causleen was reliant and herself again. The coming of this four-footed Ishmael had broken the basket-weaver’s spells. Garsykes mattered no longer. Out there Hardcastle was sleeping himself into new vigour; and here was Storm, to guide her safe to the return.
“Logie always had staunch friends,” she said, her glance meeting Nita’s.
Nita made no answer, but glanced behind her; and presently her slight body quivered with eagerness.
“Did I lie, little wanton? A man comes up the Garsykes road. He’s a small figure yet—but, see, he grows bigger—and now he nears the two-ways that I told you of.”
Causleen was meshed again by webs. She could do no more than follow the pointing finger, and watch the man till she knew his limber stride, his way of carrying broad shoulders.
“He has come to the two-roads now,” said Nita softly—“and now he takes the higher track. Did I lie?”
Hardcastle, in the clear light, seemed so near that Causleen cried aloud to him, entreating his return. The wind drove her voice back.
“I sent him there—in search of you,” said Nita. “He thinks we have you in our caves.”
For one still moment Causleen paused. She knew the agony speeding Hardcastle to the black mouth that grinned across the pasture-lands. She knew what leaped from her in answer.
“You sent him there?” she echoed.
“Yes—food for our Garsykes wolves.”
Causleen, with sudden, blinding passion, called to the sheep-slayer “Storm, kill her. Fasten on her throat, Storm.”
The dog was far down the slope already. He, too had seen the Master. Causleen might smell of home, but Hardcastle was Logie’s self.
The pedlar’s girl raced sure-footed between the wet, gnarled hummocks, crying as she ran with a warning that the gale caught and drove to tatters. She came to the parting of the ways, and followed without pause the grey track that wound upward to the caves.
Hardcastle’s big figure, far ahead, halted for a brief welcome as Storm overtook him. As if she stood beside them, she knew what went to that greeting—the man’s joy that he had a toothed and stubborn friend in this adventure, the dog’s that he was with the chosen one.
“Come back,” she cried again—so loud, it seemed to her, that not even the wind could hinder its sharp bidding.
Hardcastle did not hear. Like a man possessed he strode forward till he reached the cave’s mouth. Then they were swallowed by the darkness, Storm and he, and Causleen knew at last what caring meant.
She neither wavered nor had fear. Where he went she would follow, by free-will and by right.
Nita watched it all from the benty lands above—saw Hardcastle and Storm go into the trap prepared. Then Causleen went, and was hidden by the dark. And after that, ten frowsy men got out from the rocks and closed about the entry.
The basket-weaver took her way to Garsykes, crooning a song of the Lost Folk—a low, stealthy ballad, ages old, that reeked of the marshes and the styes. And, as she came into the village, she found it packed with men and scolding women.
They snarled and jeered at her, and Long Murgatroyd’s voice was lifted in sullen fury.
“Here comes Nita. She sent us to fire Logie, and then talked big about doing what we couldn’t. She’s laughed at us too long, the hussy.”
She faced the answering uproar and laughed afresh at them. “Little Nita does what she promises,” she said, pointing to the caves above. “Hardcastle has gone in to find his wanton, and she’s with him there.”
They fell back then, muttering, and her tongue whipped them as of old.
“I’ve trapped them for you—and you whine and skulk here asking questions. They’d be out of the trap by now, if I hadn’t picked ten from among you to guard the caves—ten who shaped more like men than rabbits.”
“Art lying, Nita, as of old?” growled Murgatroyd.
Again she pointed to the black mouth that gashed the fells. And now in the keen light they saw ten of theirs moving to and fro about the cave-front, and a great shout went up.
In a moment they were racing pell-mell up the slope, save for Nita and Widow Mathison, who kept the Garsykes inn.
“You’re coming to see Logie’s end?” asked Nita, looking back after she had started to follow her men at leisure.
“No,” said the widow. “I’ve too much flesh on my bones to care for hill-climbing.”
A light shone in the basket-weaver’s eyes—the light of thunder skies that ripen to full-blooded tempest. Merciless, brooding long, her spite against Logie had come to victory. But more than that went to this mood of Nita’s. By mother’s milk and father’s training she had been taught that Garsykes had striven for centuries out of mind to tumble Logie’s pride to ground.
“Will you not come, widow?” she asked. “There’ll be such sport as was never seen.”
“I’m too fat, I tell you. I should sweat myself to death in climbing.”
“More’s the pity, for you’d look on at what men long dead in Garsykes hungered to see. It was left to little Nita to bring Logie down.”
Then she mocked the widow’s grossness, and went up the breast of the fells. And Widow Mathison got heavily to a spur of the rising ground that gave her a better outlook on the caves. She remembered how Hardcastle had brought her lad from the wet of the slimy marshes and given him back to her on a night not long gone by. Nothing could ever bridge that debt she owed him.
She listened to the roar of Garsykes voices, saw Nita going tireless up the slope; and the tears ran amain down the furrows of her plump, good-natured face.
“We could spare most on Logie-side,” she sobbed, “but not its Master.”
CHAPTER XXI
Hardcastle had gone into the black jaws of the cave without pause or thought of what ambushes might lie in wait. Causleen was here, and nothing mattered till he reached her. What he had suffered, since first he declined to give tribute, was child’s play measured by the agony of question that drove him forward. Causleen was somewhere in the gloom ahead. He was sure of finding her—yes, but in what evil plight? With that thought came crimson bands of flame that danced ahead. Nita would have found vengeance sweet almost to cloying if she had been with him in this hour.
Storm pressed close against him as he went with lighted candle along the narrow track, turning his head constantly to escape the dripping limestone spears that menaced from the roof.
No wind stirred in the cavern. It was a breeze of his own making that flickered the candle-glow this way and that, throwing little, fantastic shadow-shapes of gnomes and pixies on the rough ground beneath his feet. He hurried forward, crying to Causleen, and a troop of voices answered the cry, breaking it into tangled echoes that mocked at him from roof and slimy walls.
It seemed to Hardcastle that a year went by before the mockery ceased, and another voice ran echoing through the cave.
“Oh, Dick, come back. Come back.”
He fancied himself distraught. The voice sounded from behind—not from the shadowed track ahead, where fancy had painted havoc unbelievable.
Storm, whimpering with joy, left him suddenly, and again he asked himself if it was all a nightmare. Would he wake in his bed at Logie, with reek of smoke in his nostrils and knowledge that the Lost Folk were firing the house again? He longed to wake; for Causleen would be safe behind him, and all the flames in front.
As he stood bewildered, Storm’s eager whine sounded close, and then he came with Causleen into the sputtering candlelight.
“They told me——” said Hardcastle, and could get no further.
“Yes, Nita lied—and I’m here—and, Dick, come back before they take us both.”
He saw a red gash across her cheek, and drew her to him. “Garskyes did that?” he snarled, wolfish as any of the Broken Folk.
“It was so dark when I followed you and Storm, and I blundered against something cold and hard—it seemed like a knife hanging from the roof—and I went slowly after that.”
She let herself shelter awhile in the roomy haven of his arms, then withdrew restlessly.
“There’s so little time if we’re to get away. Nita went to rouse the village, and they may be coming up already.”
Hardcastle brushed past her in the narrow track, bidding her follow slowly with Storm as he hurried to the cavern-mouth. He halted on the threshold. The steep, empty brink-field stretched in front. No sound came, except the hoarse cry of a hoodie crow wheeling overhead. So then he stepped into the open. Ten of the Wilderness People, lurking out of sight, sprang at him in a body, and only his preparedness for some such ambush saved him. With the alertness of one lighter and more supple in the build, he leaped back into the cave’s friendly dark.
One from Garsykes could not check his own forward rush, and followed willy-nilly. Hardcastle closed with him—the roof was high enough for a tall man to stand upright—and his grip was so prolonged and terrible that Causleen could hear the rogue’s bones crack one by one.
Then Hardcastle took the broken body, using it for shield, and went out a step or two and threw his burden among the nine who still remained.
“Firstfruits,” he said, and turned as a wild uproar rang across the slope.
The barren pasture was swarming now with men. There was no chance of escape in front, and again Hardcastle leaped back across the threshold. A soft hand found his, and a brave voice whispered in his ear.
“Hurt, Dick? Are you hurt at all?”
“No; but one of Garsykes is.”
Her hand withdrew. She feared Hardcastle of Logie—feared his exultation, the hard breathing, as of a wild-beast that fought for love of it.
Outside the cavern, not ten yards from them, a raucous din began, stilled presently by Nita’s voice.
“What is this?”
“It’s what Hardcastle has left of Jake,” came a quavering answer.
“You fools. I got him caged for you. I left ten to take one as he came out with the pedlar’s brat, thinking they had a clear run to safety. And it’s all miscarried at the start.”
“You bade us take Hardcastle alive,” growled another of the nine. “But for that, we could have stoned him to death as if he’d been a conie.”
“An easy death, and I’d planned otherwise.”
Again Causleen’s hand crept into Hardcastle’s. The bleak venom in Nita’s voice, the lousy uproar of the mob so near them, put fierce gladness in her that Hardcastle had gone wild-beast, too.
The low, purring voice sounded again, daunting the uproar till it ceased.
“There was to be sport for Garsykes. If ten had taken one—alive, to watch the frolic—we’d have seen how he took it when I threw Causleen to our wolves.”
Hardcastle, in the darkness of the cave, gripped Causleen to him; and it was a marvel to her that his fierceness broke no bones this time. The wet roof dripped on them. Their only hope lay in retreat along dank, ghost-haunted passages. Yet, deep under all, they tasted swift content.
“One of the ten is dead,” Nita’s voice was bitter as mid-winter now. “The nine left shall give us sport.”
Still closer Causleen’s hand crept into Hardcastle’s. This was no puppet-game they played, of food and ease and the day’s routine. It was full life together, with death yapping at a gate they would not yield.
A babel of question sounded from outside, asking Nita what should be done with the nine.
“We shall drive them into the cave—to take him there, if they can.”
Hardcastle put Causleen behind him—roughly, and with haste—and stooped for his fowling-piece. And when Storm brushed against him, growling to be in the thick of what was coming, he forced him back to guard the mistress.
A squealing followed, and Hardcastle, looking out into the sunlight, saw the nine driven forward by their fellows till one by one they plunged into the cave.
Then he lifted his fowling-piece, and snapped the trigger.
The two Garsykes Men in front fell riddled with shot, blocking the narrow way, and those behind rushed out in panic, a prey for their own fellows. What fate befell them, Causleen could only guess; but their shrieks and the roar of ribald oaths were so appalling that she put both hands about her ears, striving to keep out the din.
A lull followed, and Hardcastle spoke no word, but stood listening to the mutterings of the enemy. Once he turned to put his hand on Causleen’s shoulder, and once to quieten Storm, then returned to silent waiting.
Nita’s voice sounded again, peremptory and clear.
“You’ve tasted blood, my braves, though it’s not Logie’s. And the taste of blood makes men even out of such poor stuff as you.”
They growled at her, but Hardcastle knew that she had them at her bidding—knew, too, that she meant each word to reach the darkness of his prison, for sapping of his courage.
“D’ye think he of Logie is built of magic, instead of flesh and sinew? Is he a giant too big for all Garsykes to keep in a cave, once they’ve got him there?”
She mocked them, cajoled, tempted what red blood they shared between them to mount to fever heat; and Hardcastle, listening, admitted grimly that her tongue was a she-devil’s.
“Ten failed me, and they’ll walk Garsykes street no more. They lost you the sport I promised—but we still have Hardcastle.”
“And his wanton,” hiccoughed a rough voice.
“Long Murgatroyd spoke there,” muttered Hardcastle, with still remembrance of meetings they had shared.
“And his wanton.” Nita’s laugh was soft and girlish. “It was not the honeymoon I’d planned, but it does well enough. We shall keep them there till the ghosts drive them mad—or till thirst and hunger teach them what a little thing love is. And their flesh will rot, Garsykes Men, till the water drips on their bare bones at last. And so much for Logie.”
“I cannot bear it, Dick,” pleaded Causleen. “She is so evil—so evil—and God does not strike her down.”
“Are you ready, child?” asked Hardcastle, with great gentleness.
“Ready?”
“Nita spoke truth. There’s no way out of this, except by the mouth they’re guarding. We shall die, and I’d have it that way, if needs must—and if we’re together.”
“Say that again, Dick—if we’re together—and, Dick, fear has gone.”
Quiet absolute held outside, and Hardcastle’s mind went back to many silences that Garsykes had put on him. Those waiting-times at Logie had seemed chill and harsh enough, but not as this was terrible. His own house had been about him then, the forest and the wind-sweet uplands, and he had liberty to come and go.
For a long while no stir of life sounded from without, till the frosty gloaming settled on what little he could see of the brink-field. Then again he fancied himself in a nightmare’s grip, for the two whose bodies lay prone at the entry, blocking the lower half, began to move backward with rough, convulsive twists and turns.
The horror of it—this watching dead men come to life—yielded to stark common-sense as muffled curses stole inward and he guessed that some of the Garsykes sort had crept on hands and knees to draw out his victims. His re-loaded gun was useless, for the living sheltered behind the dead, and he could only wait till the cave-mouth was clear, and all the gloaming pasture empty save for Nita’s voice.
“It is well done. I may tire of waiting till they die of the ghosts and hunger. The way must be free.”
Hardcastle drew Causleen round the first bend of the cave-track. His wits were keen as a razor’s edge, as he stilled Storm’s yearning to be out and at the throats of the besiegers. If they could not live, they three, they must make preparations to die with seemliness.
“There’s one chance left,” he said. “When dark comes, I’ll take Storm, and together we’ll stampede them.”
“And what of me?”
“You can win out in the confusion, and home to Logie.”
“Yes, Dick. And what of you?”
“As if that mattered, child.”
“But if—if it mattered everything?”
So they came near to bitter quarrel, there as they waited for the sunset glow to die across the hills that seemed lost to them for ever. Then Hardcastle had his way, taking Storm with him round the bend; and she had her way, following with mute-footed disobedience, till they came in sight of the cave’s mouth.
A crimson that was not of dawn or sunset flared through the entry. The reek of a fire built of pine-wood and heather was blown indoors by a wet, gusty wind, and its heat drove inward, licking the cave-walls.
Across the flare and cackle, Hardcastle saw men dancing with women of the village in frank abandonment. Wild-beast laughter made the music for their feet, and all that had been in Garsykes, since the first cut-throat settled there, was loosened down the ladder of the centuries.
When for a moment they were tired of their devilry, Nita’s voice rang clear and low across the spurting flames.
“Shall I sing of Logie to you? Hardcastle flouted me once, but it is my turn now.”
With that she sang a ballad in the Garsykes tongue, that was a bastard child of the true Romany speech, and her people, fantastic in the fireglow, roared with applause when it was ended. They knew its meaning, though Hardcastle could only guess how foul and sinister it was.
Nita laughed at their plaudits, and was grave again. “Why did I want the cave cleared of its dead? Because every long while I shall persuade one of ours to go in and see how it fares with our true lovers. Ah, you back away at that, do you? Then two shall go—carrying one man’s pluck between them—and they’ll creep forward on unshod feet, making no sound. Hardcastle will not know when to look for them, and an hour will seem a month in yonder.”
Do as he might, fear of the waiting-time ahead was creeping over Hardcastle like the tide of a quiet sea. Each word of Nita’s reached him—as she meant it should—with an overmastering sense of prophecy and doom.
He took Causleen’s hand in his, and together they went, with slow, nagging caution, along the twisting track, Storm following. To light a candle now was to waste what would be needed later on, and would make them a plain mark for pursuit. They had to feel like blind people for the rocky spears descending from the roof. They stumbled on rubble dropped from the same roof, and every now and then a bat brushed their faces with a sudden, silky dread.
Hardcastle halted often to ask Storm if he heard aught behind them, and the dog gave a gruff “all’s well.” Then, as a roar of waters sounded near ahead, Hardcastle remembered the far-off day when he had come, a boy, into this forbidden cave. The very thrill of it returned—part fear, most of it eager courage—as he lit his candle and went forward warily.
“It’s a slippery crossing, child,” he said, coming with her to a torrent that came from heaven knew where on the high moors and dipped into this underworld with foaming speed.
She crept closer to him as she looked at the sliding waters, at the rocky ledge above—scarce a foot’s breadth—that was the only bridge.
“Courage,” said Hardcastle. “It’s a short way to go.”
Her hand was brave in his as they made the crossing, with one slip that nearly hurled them into the bellowing flood below.
“That’s good so far,” he said. “We’ve put the stream between the Garsykes Men and us.”
“And afterwards?”
“Death, I fancy; but we’re together.”
Her hand tightened its grip. He was altogether hers, and this evil road they took tested his caring at every turn.
Both forgot Storm, till a whimpering came from the far side of the stream. Fearless in a score of ways, the look of the narrow bridge, wet in the candlelight, daunted him. Time after time he tried to foot it and withdrew, afraid of the cauldron underneath.
Hardcastle gave the flickering candle to Causleen, and crossed the bridge again, and took Storm on his shoulders, telling him to cease wriggling unless he meant to overbalance both.
She watched that crossing, short as it was, as if its length reached through an eternity of suffering. Storm’s bulk was no light burden for a man treading slippery rocks. At every step Hardcastle blundered and recovered—blundered so wildly over the last of the crossing that he had to take a sheer leap across the torrent, to land safely on the further brink.
He shook Storm from his shoulders, and cuffed him soundly. “There’s no room here for fools, my lad,” he grumbled. “Why could you not keep still?”
Storm pressed against him with mute penitence, and after the Master had stayed to get his breath again the three went forward. The ground underfoot was so broken now that Hardcastle kept the candle burning, and by its light they saw presently that they had come to a place of skulls—human skulls, grinning from a tangled heap of bones. They lay in a circle to the right of the track, where it widened for a space, and they were no good sight for folk oppressed already with a sense of doom.
“How could they harm us?” said Hardcastle, with harsh levity. “They’ve been dead too long for that.”
Yet, while he spoke, Storm began to shiver as with ague. His limbs refused their work, and his bristling hide was dank with sweat. Causleen, her Highland other-sight stirred suddenly, was next aware that they stood in an underworld of ghosts, till Hardcastle himself was shaken, remembering many legends that were rife about the moorside.
“Come away,” he said, gripping Storm by the collar and dragging him by force beyond the peopled silence.
The candle burned more wanly now. The thick, dead air cumbered their going, and they were drenched as with intolerable heat, though the caves were damp and chill.
“Have we far to go?” asked Causleen faintly.
Hardcastle, seeing a low slab of rock that jutted into the track, guided her to it and kept his arm about her.
“I’d forgotten you needed rest,” he said, with grave gentleness.
The cool air, now that no effort was asked, revived her weariness. “I have no fear, Dick—except that the journey may be too long for me.”
“It’s a long journey for us both. There’s no hope at all of winning out, Causleen.”
She touched his sleeve with a caress so soft, so all-revealing, that his hardihood was near to breaking. “Such dreams I’ve had—of us two, and Logie, and the summer days to come. And now they’re over—but you are with me, Dick.”
He dared not break the silence. So steadfastly her spirit marched with his, that he thought of the rough welcome he had given her when she first came to Logie. So close they stood together now, that suddenly death took new shape and substance. If there were to be no mating-days with Causleen up at Logie, they must find them in some world beyond.
“Where would you have me go? I am strong again,” she asked by and by.
Once more, saying no word, he took her by the hand, and they crept through the dank, lifeless air, over the broken ground. Here and there the light glinted on flint arrow-heads—fashioned, maybe, by the folk whose skulls had peered at them not long ago—and his thoughts raced back to the day when Pedlar Donald found the token on Logie’s gate.
He was sick with defeat. He had carried his head high above the Garsykes challenge, had gone through peril of the roads by night and day. And this was the finish of it all.
Causleen’s hand gripped his with instant sympathy, answering his mood. “Logie’s honour still goes safe,” she said.
“It still goes safe,” was all he answered.
The track wound downward now, till it turned sharply, and Causleen gave a stifled cry. They had come to the brink of a lake whose waters glinted smooth and glossy in the candlelight. The silence they had passed through seemed almost friendly, compared with the nether dumbness of this pool, deep beyond knowledge, windless, asleep with its living and its dead.
A strange beguiling came about them. Once again they knew what Nita had meant when she spoke of their death by hunger—or the ghosts. The pool called them, though the silence was unbroken. Hands reached out to draw them down, though they saw none. And Storm stood whimpering like a child.
Hardcastle, by sheer sweat of will, drew Causleen—and himself—from the alluring depths.
“It’s the end of our journey, when worst comes to worst,” he said.
“Tell me, Dick. It is better I should know—just all.”
“They’ll creep on us, soon or late. And they shall not have us, child. The pool is cleaner than the Garsykes sort.”
He led her over the broad causeway bordering the lake, and as they neared its end she looked down and recoiled. Hardcastle, following her glance, saw a stirring of the waters that gathered strength till wavelets licked the rock-track, and mounted till they broke across their feet. The flickering light showed them a great, sinewy back that threshed itself to fury. They glimpsed for a moment the face of something half fish, half devil, and Hardcastle himself recoiled now, drawing Causleen close against the wet precipice. He was in the grip of a cavern that sheltered primeval ghosts and age-old, living things, and the heart went out of him for one sick moment.
Whatever monster lurked in the bottomless waters, it had plunged deep out of sight again, and the back-wash of its going drenched the three of them with chill, spumey spray. Storm cried piteously, till Hardcastle, with a rough oath, cuffed him into silence.
Their candle, held high above the spray, flickered and went out, and Hardcastle let it fall, knowing his tinder-box was drenched and useless.
“This is the end of all?” asked Causleen, reaching for his hand.
“The end. Nita will send her swine—be sure of that—and they might take you, child, after I was beyond aiming another blow. But it’s in my heart to kill another Garsykes Man or two before we go.”
Her grasp tightened. He had spoken quietly, without haste, as if he were reckoning the chances of the weather when they mowed the hay at Logie.
“I would not fear the pool, Dick—or the dark—if we’d not seen what lurked there.”
“Better even that than Garsykes,” he said.
She crept nearer to him, and they stood there on the brink of dread, waiting for death. The lake still lapped and gurgled at its rocks. Storm whined fitfully, afraid of things more terrible than his second-sight had ever glimpsed on the wildest moorland nights. He had seen Habatrot go by, and the Heather Dwarf, and the dog shaggy as himself—the dog known as Guytrash, that waited on lonely gates and frightened his own kin, who shuddered by and would have none of usual, honest fight.
Storm, as he shared this night watch with his chosen two, longed for the moor-winds and the sky. Nothing he had found there—the worst of it—was like this sick, clammy air, peopled with foul shapes of the underworld.
“What is beyond?” asked Causleen by and by. “Cannot we get further down the track?”
He knew that she was thinking of the pool’s occupant, was dreading its return. One hand still held his fowling-piece above the wet. The other closed on hers with a grip quiet and resolute.
“A few yards would bring us to the end.”
He humoured her, and they crept forward slowly round the bend that Hardcastle remembered from the far-off day when he had travelled the cave’s length. Then he had had candlelight to help. Now he had none; and from the very lack, hope came to him.
As he turned the bend, the darkness seemed to grow less heavy. He crept on, feeling the way with his one free hand, till a gentle glow began to steal between the rocks that hemmed them in; and with a bound his mind returned, as Storm’s had done, to the free moor’s overhead. So it had been when he set out on stark, mid-winter nights to cross the heath on foot—nothing at all to see in front at the start, but presently a gleam of grey that showed a filmy track ahead.
His grip on Causleen’s hand tightened till she winced.
“What is it, Dick?”
“I do not know,” he said, harsh in this moment of swift, unlooked for hope. He had had many such, and feared to lose it.
The track brought them soon to the rock-wall that had seemed impenetrable when Hardcastle, as a lad, had held his candle-flare to its wet face. The candle’s flame had been stronger than the grey-blue gleams that broke now into the blank and utter darkness.
Down the wall’s face they ran, these gleams, in soft, ever-moving rivulets that were narrow and broad by turns, criss-crossing like the hurry of a water-slide.
Fearing almost to put hope to the test, Hardcastle stretched out his hand into the grey-blue gleam where it ran widest. His hand passed through it. His eager fingers reached beyond the wall’s fancied thickness and closed on it. He dragged an inch or two of rotted stone away, and turned with guarded triumph.
“We may outwit both Garsykes and the pool,” he said.
CHAPTER XXII
By her silence, by the sob that followed, Hardcastle learned the measure of Causleen’s dread of what lay behind them. He learned, too, the depth of his fear for her—a terror that ate still at his heart and goaded him to effort. The very chance of release, the nearness of it, made him the more eager to win through with haste, lest Garsykes came at them just too soon.
“The cave drives us mad,” said Causleen, light-headed for a moment between strain of fear and stress of hope. “How can there be little threads of light, stealing from outside—from God’s good out of doors, Dick? It’s night out there, except for the fire that Nita lit, far away. Surely it was far away. We’ve journeyed many a mile since then.”
Hardcastle, seeing how it went with her, put a firm hand on hers. “Would you faint at journey’s end? And where’s your Highland pride?”
He loathed himself for saying it, though it brought her back from sickness.
“Here, Dick,” she said, and was quiet awhile. “Here, Dick,” she said again, her whole body quivering with release from dread. “There are Highland pipers stepping down the cave—and pride marches with them. But we two are mad to dream that light comes from out of doors. How could it? We watched the sun go down—years since—before Nita lit her fire.”
Again he was compelled to rally her. She had gone through more than should be asked of any woman; but needs must that she kept weariness at bay.
“There’s a wall to be broken down,” he said sharply. “Take my gun, Causleen.”
The command steadied her again. Obediently she took the fowling-piece and watched him tear at the rock-wall, getting his fingers in where the grey-blue light rippled at its widest. Piece after piece of wet-worn rock crumbled to his grasp, till he got his arm through at last.
Causleen saw a broader stream of light break softly through the dark. Storm, the sheep-slayer, was pressing his rough snout against her, and somehow he, like the Master, brought courage home again.
“How can the light break through?” she asked, as a child might.
Hardcastle glanced back from the sweat of his toil. “There’s a full moon on Logie-side, and we’re winning fast to it.”
“Oh, God be thanked,” said Causleen. “And shall we see the hills again, Dick, and hear the winds go by?”
“With luck, we shall,” said Hardcastle, riving at the wall-face afresh.
He was checked now by a thicker and less yielding slab of rock. Tug as he would, his grip was powerless to widen the breach, and again the sense of desperate haste returned. They were so near freedom, but behind them was all the stealth of Garsykes.
He felt about in the rubble at his feet till his hands closed on a round boulder-stone, and with this he hammered feverishly wherever a crack showed. He was steaming now with the effort, and the slender breeze that drifted in through the opening he had made, did little to relieve the cavern’s dank, lifeless air.
At last there was an answer to his toil. The cracks broadened suddenly, and the next hard blow brought a mass of splintered stones to ground.
Hardcastle went at it with fresh, dogged hope. Slow as the work was, he could get one shoulder through the opening now, and the thought came, across the dull confusion of his mind, that Causleen needed a narrower doorway out than he. Another fall like the last, and she could creep sideways into safety.
The thought was food and drink to his strength. Once she was safe, the worst was passed; and Storm and he, surely, could hold this narrow way till no pursuit could reach her.
Once more he fell to hammering wherever the blue-grey moonlight showed a crack, but the reward was long in coming; and, as he rested for a moment from sheer lack of breath, Storm broke the quiet with a low, purring growl.
No ghosts were troubling the sheep-slayer now, So much was plain. His hide was stiff, not with dread, but with eagerness to be at the throat of some menace threatening from behind.
Hardcastle quietened him with one sharp whisper, and took the gun from Causleen’s hands. Then he pushed his fowling-piece into the gloom, and waited.
Twice Storm growled, so low that Hardcastle could scarcely catch the note. And still they waited—bond-brothers, side by side—for what was coming through the stealthy dark.
Then Hardcastle felt a bulk of flesh steal against the muzzle of his gun, and plucked the trigger. The back-throw—not of the butt against his shoulder, but the answering uproar of the cave’s low roof—drove him staggering back.
Two had come against them, it seemed. He heard Storm’s eager yelp, a man’s sudden scream of anguish, and an answering howl from Storm. And then there came a din of falling rocks, a rush of clean, cold wind that brought a flood of moonlight with it.
“Are you safe, Causleen?” he cried through his dizziness.
A low voice answered. “That was your first thought? Yes, I’m safe, Dick—doubly safe.”
Her touch made light of hardship. Two more of Nita’s men were blocking the cavern behind them with their dead, ill-kempt bodies, and there was time enough now to hack a way through for Causleen and himself.
When he turned to batter at the rock-face again, he found the work done already. The gunfire shock that had driven him back and roared loud as an earthquake in the narrow space, had probed into every crevice of a barrier near to falling long ago. The way now lay open to them, over broken rocks that showed fantastic in the moon-glow.
Hardcastle, exultant, was reaching for her hand, to guide her through the wreckage, when he remembered Storm and whistled sharply.
A snout was pushed against his knee, and he reached down to pat the dog’s rough hide.
“You’re as drenched with sweat as I am, lad,” he said.
So Storm was, though he had no speech to tell them that the sweat ran crimson. He had killed his man, but in the doing had taken a knife-wound that raked half down his body.
“Don’t whimper. Storm,” murmured Causleen. “The cave’s full of ghosts, I know, but we’re free of it.”
The sheep-slayer whimpered no more. With extreme pain he followed them across the broken way, till they reached smooth going again. Storm was not sure that they were free, and to the last edge of his strength he meant to guard these two.
Hardcastle saw now a wide arch of moonlight close ahead. He could hazard no guess as to the corner of Logie-land that it opened on. He did not care, for beyond it lay the free sky and the fells; and whatever battle waited would not be clogged by prison walls.
Before they had covered half the short way to liberty, Causleen’s hand gripped his with sudden dread. Behind them was a rumble, as of thunder, followed by a cracking and a rending overhead. Hardcastle, it seemed, when he first made space enough to get a shoulder through the barrier, had loosened the frail keystone of the roof, and they were stifled by the dust and uproar of the falling rocks behind.
He drew Causleen sharply back and through the moonlit opening, and Storm had scarcely struggled after them when a second tumult sounded from the cave behind, and a pile of shattered rocks came crashing to the very mouth by which they had escaped.
Then Hardcastle, his arm round Causleen still, drew a deep breath and glanced in silence at the moonlight flooding all the land in front. He had not known how sweet and all-sufficing a night wind could be, had never tasted until now the fullest joy in sight—sight to see the strong free spaces of his own good country-side.
For awhile he did not care to ask where they were standing. It was enough to remember the cave’s unclean nightmare, and to wash in this swift moorland air.
“The joy of it,” sobbed Causleen, her head against his sleeve.
And now he remembered that joy was apt to be short-lived, with Garsykes as close neighbour. For aught he knew, Nita and the men who watched the bonfire at the other entry might be close at hand. The track through the cavern, long as it was, twisted so constantly that it might have led them back within a stone’s throw of the start.
He glanced this way and that, listening. No sound came, save the wind’s voice, till a screech-owl hooted from somewhere far below. A raven’s sleepy croak answered. That was all.
They stood on a spur of pasture-land that dipped sharply down in front, and Hardcastle went forward in search of landmarks. Moonlight is apt to play strange tricks with the most familiar hills and cloughs; but he could not mistake the ravine that gaped below, black with shadow under the radiance that lit its upper banks.
He saw where it narrowed at Nevison’s Leap, and where it broadened to the mist-white flats. And, beyond again, Pengables Hill looked out at him with the gaze of an old and proven friend.
“We’re in Drumly Ghyll, sweetheart,” he said, “and a clear road home for us.”
A yelp of pain sounded from behind—so sharp, so strong with anguish, that joy in freedom went from them. They turned to see Storm dragging himself forward, wincing at every step, and Hardcastle ran back.
The sheep-slayer paused a moment, to gather his failing strength. Then he got his forepaws up to the Master’s shoulders, with a farewell that gushed crimson, licked his face once and then fell back.
“Oh, the good brute,” said Hardcastle, with a grim, sudden oath. “His hunting days are over.”
“He’s not dead?” Causleen pleaded, knowing the futility of what she asked.
He did not hear, and her own sorrow was checked for a moment at sight of his. In silence and in grief he stood looking down at this lost comrade who had been with him through the long, unequal fight of Logie against the Wilderness.
“We can’t leave him here to the corbie-crows,” he growled at last—“or for the Garsykes sort to mock at.”
Causleen’s tears were running fast as she knelt beside the gaunt, still body. “Storm, come back,” she whispered. “You’re too brave and dear to die like this. We need you, Storm.”
Hardcastle watched her in gloomy silence, till thought of all she had gone through overmastered him with a sharp rush of pity. He lifted her with a strength that was persuasion, too, and held her close.
“I’d rather have it this way, child. He died for Logie—not at Brant’s hands.”
She smiled wanly through her tears. “He had his faults—but I—I shall miss him. He used to come to the cupboard under the stair—so wise and penitent, Dick, so loyal—and now he’ll never come again.”
He put her from him, with the same gentle strength, and shouldered what was left of Storm. Then he went down into Drumly Ghyll, and presently returned.
“What have you done with him?” she asked piteously.
“He lies deep in Cobblers’ Gully, safe from crows and foxes.”
“Poor Storm,” she said, and was silent. Then, “Did you send a prayer with him?” she asked.
“What do I know of praying? He’s gone, and part of me went with him, somehow.”
They said no more as they went down together through the midnight of Drumly Ghyll—its high walls closing round them like another cave of dread—and out into the moonlit lowlands. It was only when they came near to Logie Bridge and all its memories that Causleen broke down again, remembering Storm.
“He lies so lonely, Dick, up there.”
“Storm hadn’t much of a life on this side. He was glad to go, maybe.”
So then Causleen knew that a prayer had gone with the dead dog into Cobblers’ Gully.
They went together up the steep, winding road to Logie—its guardian beeches comely in their winter’s nakedness—and at the bend they encountered Rebecca—the brindled cat snarling on her shoulder.
“Is it your ghost, Master?” she quavered.
“A fairly solid ghost, Rebecca.”
“Then God be thanked, say I.”
She was old, and shaken by her vigil. Her hair was driven by the breeze into grey, wispish threads; but her eyes, even in the tempering moonlight, showed like pools of living fire.
“I feared there’d be no home-coming for you two,” she said, the tang returning to her voice already—“especially when Brant and Michael Draycott came back with the tale of what they’d seen.”
“What should they know about the cave?” asked Hardcastle, with tired wonder.
“What I chose to tell Brant when he stumped into my kitchen, a half-hour after you’d gone, and grumbled that Storm had taken another ewe of his in the night. ‘I wouldn’t worrit about that,’ says I. ‘Garsykes has taken the Master, and I’m nigh out o’ my wits.’ That sobered the shepherd.”
She touched Hardcastle, to make sure that he was in the flesh before her, then told, in tart, brief speech, how Shepherd Brant had gone to raise Logie-side against the Wilderness—how all its strapping yeomen, except Michael Draycott, were at Skipton market—how Michael and Brant had stolen down to the Garsykes hollow, to see if they could put a fight up, and had found a company of devils dancing with Nita round a fire at the cave’s mouth.
Tired as he was, needing food and drink, and sleep’s forgetting of the cave, the Master warmed to Rebecca’s tale. There were two men at least who had cared to rouse the Dale for him and all that Logie stood for.
“They came back here,” said Rebecca, “for bite and sup before they left again to meet the Logie Men as they rode home from market. I wouldn’t daunt their spirit by telling ’em there was a full moon, and our men by that token would come late, with a plenty of good ale inside them.”
“That same full moon, Rebecca,” said Hardcastle, with chastened humour, “showed us the way out.”
She listened, her lean, old body tense with eagerness, as he told what had chanced. Then she was no longer the woman who had waited, every fear on edge, for news that could only be evil, so it had seemed through the long waiting-time.
The Master was home again, tall and limber, though his coat was drenched with blood. His old laugh was in the front of hardship. He was glad, with a clean, hard joy, to have brought Causleen safe to Logie, after all, through moil of the Garsykes Men. And Rebecca was glad with him—fiercely glad that the Wilderness had been outwitted once again.
Every sorrow she had known, since her own man died for Logie forty years ago, returned now to this grey henchwoman of the house—the wedded days she should have had, the bairns that might have been—and hate of Garsykes swept through her like a tempest.
Then she saw the Master and Causleen glance at each other with such silent, all-sufficing knowledge that jealousy chilled her to the bone. Why should they come in their young, insolent strength, and flaunt their caring in her face?
The brindled cat was in ill-humour, too. All day he had wandered from house to stable-yard in search of his boon-comrade, Storm, and now the friendly reek of him stole out from Hardcastle’s drenched coat. Jonah leaped from Rebecca’s shoulder, and purred and growled by turns, reaching up to sniff the scent that was Storm’s, but with a cold, dismaying difference. Then the cat neither growled nor purred. All the life seemed to dwindle in him. The fur, stiff with battle, fell limp and draggled, and he mewed with piteous appeal.
“Gone away, Jonah,” said Hardcastle, a queer break in his voice. “Storm’s sleeping up the fells.”