by Russell Kirk
As if someone had thrust tentatively against it, the rotten door creaked shrilly. “Damn you,” Powert was crying, “speak up, or I’ll shoot.” The white-bearded man outside the window drew back his arm and flung the stone with great force, as if letting fly at a rabbit. The rock caught Powert at the back of his head; he fell to his knees, the rifle clattering on the flagstones. At that the door burst open, and two men tumbled into the room, and were upon Powert before he could recover. A boy followed them, and kneeling by Logan, looked shyly into his face. These were the two men and the boy, MacAskivals from Daldour, that Logan had seen in Loch Boisdale, four days before.
Then there strode through the doorway a very tall old man, erect and vigorous and bearded to his chest, with a shotgun in his hand. He was worth looking at; but another man, hard on his heels, was still stranger. This was a burly broad-shouldered fellow, with a heavy, jolly face, and mild eyes that were exceedingly odd, though it would have been difficult to say why. Something in the look of his face was queer enough. Yet it was his clothing that made him conspicuous. The other men wore the caps and canvas cloaks and rough homespun tweeds of the crofters and fishermen in the remoter Isles. This burly man, in strong contrast, was dressed in what seemed to be the garments of a laird or prosperous farmer: green tweed jacket, green corduroy breeches and long stockings, good heavy shoes. Under the open jacket was a soiled yellow waistcoat; and on his head was a battered porkpie hat. These clothes were in wretched repair, with dark stains here and there upon them. The breeches, seemingly split at the seams, were held together by pins. One sleeve of the jacket was ripped open from shoulder to wrist. And although the clothes had been got on, they did not fit the man who wore them.
Resting a hand on the boy’s shoulder, the tall old man bent over Logan and spoke in Gaelic. Logan shook his head: “I know only English.” Frowning, the old man muttered through his splendid beard to the boy beside him.
The boy stammered a little, as if overwhelmed with shyness; but there was no fear in him. He spoke to Logan in good, if careful, English. “Malcolm Mor MacAskival of Daldour asks what is your name, and what do you do in Carnglass.” The pirate-like old man looked hard at Logan.
These, then, were Mary MacAskival’s people! She had not been woolgathering when she spoke of them. How she had summoned them, Hugh Logan did not know; but the five of them – two had gagged Powert, and were sitting on the man – were staring at Logan intently. This was no time for long explanations. “Untie me,” Logan said. “I’m Hugh Logan, and I am to marry Miss Mary MacAskival.”
There was a murmur from the men, and all five MacAskivals of Daldour took off their caps deferentially, and then put them back on again. With a fisherman’s deftness, old Malcolm Mor undid the cords about Logan’s wrists and ankles, and the two men who looked like twins promptly bound Powert with them. As he released Logan, Malcolm Mor said, in decent English, “Then I am your man, sir, and so are my sons and my grandson, and my nephew Angus, and my nephew Kenneth who is not here. We saw the man with the third eye lead the lady away. Will we after her?” Malcolm Mor tapped his shotgun. Malcolm Mor’s two sons had old rifles; the boy and Angus, the queer burly man in the queerer clothes, were unarmed. One of the sons, almost bowing, handed Powert’s rifle to Logan as he stood up and tried to get the blood to circulate in his tingling wrists and ankles.
Hugh Logan surveyed his little army. “Yes, we will,” he said, “if they don’t come after us first. Just now they’re down in the valley hunting someone; but some of them will come back to the chapel.” These men, he thought, would be good shots; and to live in Daldour, they must be hardy and probably courageous, though he doubted whether they had much experience at man-killing.
“It is my nephew Kenneth that they are hunting,” Malcolm Mor observed. “I sent him to watch them from the bracken. It was Kenneth who shot his gun to lead them away from the chapel. They will not find him. We have watched them for a week, but we did not understand what they did, and there was no gentleman to lead us. We would have shot the man with the third eye when he took the lady away but we were afraid that she might be hurt. Is it so that they are robbers and murderers?”
“That they are,” Logan said, emphatically.
“Then,” Malcolm Mor went on, in the slow, gentle Island English, “it would be lawful for us to hunt them?” Logan suspected that the people of Daldour were extremely shy of the law.
“It would,” Logan told him. “I am a lawyer, and I give you my authority.” Malcolm Mor MacAskival’s old eyes lit up, and he smiled as some Norse rover might have smiled. “Then, sir,” he said, “we will go after the lady, and take the Old House of Fear.” He seemed to have no doubt whatsoever of the success of this undertaking by five or six men and a boy. “There are three more able-bodied men in Daldour, but we have no time to fetch them. Kenneth, my nephew, will come to us soon. Will we go down into the valley now, Mr. Logan?”
“Let’s have a look about,” Logan said. The men followed him through the chapel doorway. When Logan had thrown his rucksack on the fire, he had stuffed his binoculars into a trouser-pocket; and now he pulled them out and stared through them in the direction of the Old House, but, what with hills, rocks, and clumps of trees and thickets of bracken, he could see no one moving.
Then, a hundred yards away, and ascending toward the chapel, Anderson came into view. Logan dropped the binoculars and snatched up his rifle, but Anderson had seen them before he could get the gun to his shoulder. For a second, Anderson stared aghast; then, flinging himself around, he leaped downhill, vanishing into bracken, reappearing on a knoll, slipping, almost rolling down a talus slope, merging with the blur of gray rock and purple heather and green bracken. Logan fired twice, but could not have hit him. At that, Malcolm Mor and his two sons brought up their guns and fired also. They did not really take aim, and Logan thought they meant to frighten, rather than to wound; but also he thought that they could be brought to shoot to kill if they must.
“We can catch him,” Malcolm Mor said, like a dog eager for the word from his master. “He is a town man, and we are faster.”
“No,” Logan decided, shaking his head, “no, there’ll be three others down there, and they have Miss MacAskival with them, on a rope. We’ll go down and after them, but together; and no one must shoot if the lady might be hurt.” This deliberation was agony to Logan himself, but he had been an officer, and he knew something of tactics.
The MacAskivals nodded. “My nephew Kenneth will be watching them from the bracken,” Malcolm Mor said. “We will go down, and he will join us; and if they take the lady to the Old House, then we will follow them into the house.”
Malcolm Mor’s nephew Angus, the burly man in the dirty yellow waistcoat, was nodding and smiling at every word his old uncle uttered. “Do you have a gun?” Logan said to him. The man opened his mouth, but words did not come out: only mouthed grunts, rather horrid. Malcolm Mor seemed somewhat embarrassed.
“He cannot speak,” the boy – Malcolm Gille was his name – said apologetically. “He is called” – here the boy seemed to seek the English equivalent of a Gaelic term, and emerged triumphantly – “he is called Dumb Angus.” Dumb Angus nodded enthusiastically at the mention of his name. “And,” the boy went on, “he is simple. Dumb Angus is simple, and does not have a gun, but he is very strong, and he is honest, and he makes many jokes.” Dumb Angus bowed and smiled, and tapped himself on the head to prove that he knew he was simple. “He cannot speak,” the boy said, “but he makes jokes in other ways.”
Logan checked Powert’s rifle, and reloaded; one of Malcolm’s sons – their names, it turned out, were John and Robert – brought him a cartridge-pouch that Powert had worn. What ought they to do with Powert? Malcolm Mor, now assured that the majesty of the law sheltered the persecuted sept of MacAskival, speculatively fingered the little black knife in his belt. “No,” said Logan, “we’ll bring them all to trial, if we can.”
“There is one already taken and locked away,
” Malcom Mor offered. “His name, I think, is Carruthers. We took him the night before last night, and carried him to Daldour, and locked him in a byre, and he is afraid, for he thinks that we will eat him. Dumb Angus made him think so; that is one of the jokes of Dumb Angus. It is pleasant to have Dumb Angus in Daldour. We could carry this man too, to Daldour, but there is not time.”
Dumb Angus was gesturing and beckoning, and pointing upward. At the east end of the chapel, behind the altar, ran a kind of low loft or gallery, of wood, probably built when the chapel was re-roofed by Sir Alastair MacAskival. “Yes,” said Logan, “that will do. Put Powert there, at the back, and no one is likely to notice him until we need him.” The sons of Malcolm carried Powert up the short flight of wooden steps, and tightened the cords and his gag. Dumb Angus might be simple, but he had eyes in his head.
And now they could start in pursuit of Jackman, for Mary MacAskival’s sake. Anderson probably would have warned Jackman and the others by this time; but the warning might do no mischief, for those four guns going off at his heels must have sounded to Anderson as if half the constabulary of Scotland were after him. They could not catch Jackman and the rest before they reached the Old House, the odds were, nor would it have been safe to fire at the retreating gang with Mary MacAskival in their midst. But by night, Logan was resolved, he and the Daldour people would make their try. “Well, gentlemen,” he said to Malcolm Mor and the others, “if you’re ready, I am.” And they started down the brae.
As they trotted and scrambled toward the valley, the boy running by Logan’s side, Logan said to Malcolm Gille, “Why does Dumb Angus wear such clothes?”
“Those clothes were not his.” The boy smiled broadly. “It is one of the jokes of Dumb Angus. They are the clothes of Mr. Lagg, the factor, that we found broken below the cliffs and buried in the chapel of St. Merin. For Dumb Angus, it is always Hallowe’en.”
The humor of Daldour, Logan took it, had its grisly side. Dumb Angus it must have been that Rab had encountered two nights before. If even the simpletons of Daldour – and the whole band of Daldour MacAskivals was a remarkably odd-looking lot – were this resourceful, it might be just possible for Logan to get Mary alive out of the Old House.
Chapter 14
ON THE FLANK of Cailleach, a little ferret-like man rose out of the heather to join Logan and the MacAskivals: Kenneth MacAskival. Like the rest of his family, he really understood English, when he chose, and could speak it tolerably well when he had to. On learning from Malcolm Mor that this gentleman was the betrothed of The MacAskival, Kenneth gave Logan his report.
After firing twice that morning to draw Jackman away from the chapel, Kenneth MacAskival had contented himself with creeping through the bracken and spying on the retreating party. The lady, Kenneth said, never spoke, so far as he could hear; though the men thrust her roughly along when, led on a cord as she was, she stumbled. They would be at the Old House within a few minutes, the man with the third eye and the rest, and could not be intercepted.
Logan and his men did not move toward the Old House so fast as they could have. For Jackman might have laid an ambush, which had to be watched for among the rocks and dens of rugged Carnglass. Once, through his binoculars, Logan caught a glimpse of a hurrying figure, very close to the Old House; then it was hidden again by a low intervening ridge.
Either of two courses he might take, Logan thought. He might send the MacAskivals in their lobster boat to Loch Boisdale or whatever other port they could reach that had a police station, and ask for prompt help. But this would take hours, many hours, and meanwhile Jackman would have Mary MacAskival in the Old House. And Jackman would be thinking of the ruin of his scheme, and of the gelignite in the cellars. Besides, would any police constable believe such a story, from such a crew as the MacAskivals, without telegraphing to Glasgow or Edinburgh for orders, which would mean delays? No, that plan wouldn’t do.
So there remained to Logan only the storming of the Old House. Briefly, he thought of trying to enter through the passage in the rock by which Mary and he had escaped; but that was no go, since one of Jackman’s riflemen at the cistern-mouth could kill anyone who tried to ascend. They would have to rush the place from outside.
The thing could not be tried until evening, for Jackman had more men within the Old House than Logan had without, and Jackman’s men were desperate, well armed, and probably experienced in killing. By day, it would have been mad. The oldest tower, with its little windows and iron bars, would have been impossible to take even if defended by only one or two riflemen, unless the attackers had mortars. The Renaissance block was nearly as strong. But the Victorian addition was another matter. The gate was stout, and the ground-floor windows were small, covered by iron grilles, and shuttered within. The plate-glass windows of the first floor, however, were immense and undefended, and could be reached with a long ladder – after dark. Even supposing Logan and his men got inside the Old House, they still would be outnumbered. Their hope was that before they should make their rush, they might be able to demolish the morale of Jackman’s people, already badly shaken.
To help Mary, Logan would have taken any risk: if getting himself shot would have saved her, he would have rushed the Old House that hour. But the best chance for saving her, it seemed to him, lay in keeping Jackman’s people very much on edge, and busy – and in praying that Jackman himself might not go mad altogether. And this meant that some eight hours, eight intolerable hours for Logan, must pass before he could act.
But meanwhile he could prepare. Giving the Old House a wide berth, he led the MacAskivals to the farm steading nearest the castle. Before the troubles had begun, Simmons had kept the steading in some order, though there were only two animals about the place: two shaggy and ill-tempered little Barra horses, grazing in a small field. Having caught the horses, the MacAskivals harnessed them to a farm cart. This they loaded with straw, and with what loose lumber they could find; also they put two gallon tins of paraffin, discovered in the farmhouse, into the cart. In a shed they came upon a long ladder, which they piled atop straw and lumber. Then, keeping out of range of fire from the Old House, Dumb Angus and Malcolm Gille took the horses and cart circuitously round to the wooded policies of the New House, which was as close to the Victorian wing of the Old House as they could get without being fired upon.
While this operation was going forward, Logan sent Kenneth and John MacAskival to the rocky and bracken-covered hillsides that were barely within extreme firing range of the Old House. And there the two veteran poachers commenced a desultory fire against the windows of the Old House. Logan gave Powert’s rifle to Kenneth, as the best weapon available, taking Kenneth’s shotgun for himself. Concealed as they were by dense bracken, and shifting position after every shot, there was little danger of the Mac-Askivals being hit by retaliatory fire from the Old House. For their part, the MacAskivals were instructed not really to attempt to hit anyone, but to spend their time shattering panes and nerves. The windows of Mary’s room in the old tower they left untouched. Lady MacAskival’s room was on the seaward side of the Old House, and so safe. For that matter, the whole garrison of the Old House could retreat to the seaward rooms and temporary security, except for what luckless sentinels Dr. Jackman might leave to guard against a sudden rush. By early afternoon, every pane on the eastern side of the Old House had been shattered, except those in Mary MacAskival’s windows.
For the first hour of this, three or four marksmen replied from the Old House. But they could have seen almost nothing to shoot at, and their risk of being struck by flying windowglass, if not by bullets, was considerable. The return fire slackened perceptibly in the second hour, and after that there came only infrequent shots from a single rifle on the second floor, as if to demonstrate that the defenders were still awake. Another rifleman on the roof of the old tower was driven below early in the game. What all this did to the nerves of Jackman’s men – this sniping by an unknown body of enemies, who had not even made a formal demand fo
r the surrender of the Old House – Logan could only surmise. The loss of Powert, too, coming on the heels of Carruthers’ disappearance and the discovery of Lagg’s body, must have made an impression.
Logan sent Robert MacAskival round to keep an eye on the back of the old tower, to make sure no one slipped out by the garden gate; the man hid himself behind an outcrop of rock and bided his time, leaving the shooting to the others. Accompanied by Malcolm Mor, Logan himself watched the main entrance from the plantation that stretched from the New House nearly to the rock of the Old House. And from Malcolm Mor, as they lay on their bellies under cover, that warm and fatal spring day, Logan pieced together a good deal more of the history of the recent troubles in Carnglass.
Poaching in Carnglass the shy twilight folk of Daldour took for a natural right. The older people of the Daldour MacAskivals, like Malcolm Mor, had been born in Carnglass and looked upon it as Eden; several of them, from time to time, right down to the coming of Dr. Jackman as Lady MacAskival’s guest and master, had been servants at the Old House or on the two farms. Life in that windswept peatbog Daldour was precarious at best, and the dwindling race of the MacAskival crofters and fisherfolk had considered the killing of a sheep or a deer in Carnglass as no more than getting back a bit of their lost patrimony. That the sheep and the deer nominally belonged to old Lady MacAskival was little to them: she was a mere Lowlander, a MacAskival only by marriage – a bad marriage at that – and their enemy.
So whenever they dared – especially in the early morning or the evening, when the gamekeepers might be in their cottages – the Daldour men, for years, had landed in Carnglass under cover of darkness or fog, most commonly mooring their lobster boats in a great cave under the headland on which St. Merin’s Chapel stood. The cave was known to very few; and though the ascent was precarious even for MacAskivals, still the descent was so risky as to daunt even the boldest hired gamekeeper, most of the time.