The Hill of the Red Fox

by Allan Campbell McLean

  A plump, smiling woman with gleaming black hair coiled in a bun on the back of her head came into the room, followed by a younger woman.

  “This is my wife, Peigi,” said Hector MacLeod, “a grand woman with a girdle-pan, but an awful blether forby.”

  “Ist, ist,” said his wife.

  She shook hands warmly with me, and said, “Never you mind the bodach, Alasdair. “Tis himself is the blether. We are right pleased to have you with us.”

  Her daughter Morag shook hands with me smiling, and I was made to sit on a chair in front of the fire. Hector MacLeod leaned back in an old rocking-chair and the men sat on the long wooden bench behind me.

  The kitchen was big and airy. The walls were lined with tongued and grooved boarding painted cream and the floor was covered with linoleum. An old brown dresser stood against the wall, opposite the window, and the sunlight glinted on its sparkling delf. There was an easy chair on one side of the gleaming black range and a table under the window.

  The men lighted their pipes, and Iain Ban MacDonald said, “Surely you never came all the way from London by yourself, Alasdair?”

  I liked the easy way they used my name, as if they had known me all my life.

  “My mother took me to Glasgow, but I came on from there by myself,” I said.

  “Well, well,” exclaimed Calum Stewart, between draws on his pipe. “You are a hardy.”

  “How is your mother?” asked Lachlan MacLeod. “Fine I remember her, although it must be all of ten years since she was in this place.”

  “She’s well,” I said, thinking how pleased she would be to know that this dark silent man had remembered her.

  Roderick MacPherson said, “I saw you at the peats yesterday. I am thinking it is your back would be knowing all about it before the day was done.”

  “I was a bit stiff,” I admitted ruefully. “But I’m better today.”

  “You did too much altogether,” declared Calum Stewart. “You will be after killing yourself.”

  “Or I will be after killing the Red One,” said Donald Alec MacDonald quietly.

  I looked at him quickly but there was no laughter in his piercing grey eyes and nobody laughed.

  Hector MacLeod frowned and flashed him a warning glance. There was an awkward silence and suddenly everyone started talking at once. I had the feeling that they were too polite to embarrass me by dwelling on Murdo Beaton, but it was plain to see that he was not welcome in Achmore.

  Mrs MacLeod and Morag spread a spotless white cloth on the table, and amid much good-humoured banter, we all sat in to tea.

  Hector MacLeod presided at the head of the table, throwing out a word here and there whenever the conversation showed signs of flagging, and nodding his white head appreciatively at the best of the sallies. I noticed how cunningly he drew everybody into the talk, and they all had something to say except Lachlan MacLeod. That dark, silent man never spoke a single word, but his was a friendly silence, broken by his slow smile and the warmth of his eyes.

  I had never before talked to men like these. They treated me as an equal and listened to me as attentively as they did to white-haired Hector MacLeod. I remembered Aunt Evelyn’s scathing, “Small boys should be seen and not heard,” whenever I offended her by speaking out of turn. There was none of that in Hector MacLeod’s kitchen. Indeed I was encouraged to speak, when I would have preferred to sit quietly listening to the men.

  It was after tea, and the women were clearing away the dishes, when Hector MacLeod said, “Duncan Mòr should be here this night.”

  “Aye, right enough,” they all echoed. “Duncan Mòr should be here.”

  “Who is Duncan Mòr?” I asked.

  They all looked at Hector MacLeod and he rocked back in his chair and drew thoughtfully on his pipe before replying.

  “Duncan Mòr was your father’s best friend,” he said slowly. “They were aye together, the pair o’ them, although Duncan was a wheen older than your father. They were the biggest men in a township o’ big men, and Duncan Mòr stood a full head taller than your father.

  “He was the first mate on the Empire Rose and a sorry man, I’m thinking, that he did not go down with Alasdair Dubh. Ach well, that’s the way o’ the world.”

  He sighed heavily and drew on his pipe.

  “How did it happen!” I asked eagerly. “How was he saved?”

  “The Empire Rose was well out in the Atlantic and a dirty sou’wester was blowing up. It was New Year’s Day. The torpedo caught her amidships and she settled quickly in the stern listing hard to port. They couldn’t clear the starboard boats at all. Duncan Mòr was ordered to take the first boat and they managed away right enough. Your father’s boat never got clear. It capsized and they were all lost.”

  “It was a bad day for us when the Empire Rose went down,” said Donald Alec MacDonald, “but I doubt no man felt it as bad as Duncan Mòr, an duine bochd.”

  “Where does he stay?” I asked.

  “He has a croft by the river at Mealt,” replied Hector MacLeod. “Mind you, boy, the same man would have been over to see you this while back if himself had been free to call.”

  “But he must know I would want to see him,” I said.

  “Oh, he would know, right enough,” acknowledged Hector MacLeod. He hesitated, leaning forward and tapping out the bowl of his pipe into the fire. I could see he was debating with himself, and suddenly he burst out, “Ach, why should I be quiet. You will find out for yourself soon enough. There is bad blood, boy, between Duncan Mòr and the Red Fellow.”

  The laughter had died from the room, and the atmosphere had become strained. I was going to say something when Hector MacLeod said quickly, “Did you ever hear a port-a-beul, Alasdair?”

  “No,” I said, wondering what it could be.

  “Come on, Ruairidh,” they all cried, and I had the feeling they were glad of something to distract my attention from Murdo Beaton.

  Roderick MacPherson sang a port-a-beul, the old mouth music.

  He sang it at great speed, his feet tapping out the rhythm, and his hands slapping down on his thighs. It must have been very funny, apart from the comical faces he made, for the men kept breaking out in great gusts of laughter. Hector MacLeod had to cry. “Ist! Ist!” to quieten them.

  When it was over, we all clapped loudly, and Roderick sang another port-a-beul. It was even faster than the first, and such was the lilt in the air that Iain Ban sprang to his feet and danced a wild reel round the kitchen. He collapsed on the bench, laughing and panting, and Hector MacLeod wiped his eyes, and cried, “Good for you, boys!”

  There were more jokes and laughter and happy talk, and I did not feel the time passing at all. But the men exclaimed that the cows would not wait milking any longer and said they must go.

  They clustered at the door, saying how much they had enjoyed the ceilidh.

  Roderick MacPherson’s twinkling eyes met mine, and he smiled and said, “We will take you fishing tomorrow night, Alasdair, so don’t be killing yourself at the peats.”

  Then they were gone, clattering across the lobby in their heavy boots and calling, “Oidhche mhath, Alasdair, oidhche mhath, Eachann.”

  Hector MacLeod walked with me to the edge of his croft, and stood for a while in silence with his hand on my shoulder.

  His last words were, “Don’t be making a stranger of yourself, Alasdair. You will always find an open door in this place.”

  I crossed the drain and walked slowly towards the thatched cottage. It was after eleven o’clock but the brief Hebridean night had not yet fallen. I did not even glance up at the dark peak of the Hill of the Red Fox for my mind was full of my new-found friends.

  Murdo Beaton was alone in the kitchen, looking at a newspaper. It was folded into a small square, and he held it at arm’s length, squinting at it longsightedly, the way men do who are not accustomed to reading.

  “It is time you were in bed, boy,” he said briefly, glancing up at me.

  I stood inside the
door, and he turned again to the newspaper in his hand.

  “Well, good night,” I ventured.

  He did not speak or look up, so perhaps he had not heard me. I closed the door quietly and went to bed.

  I woke up in the night knowing dimly that something had disturbed me. The luminous hands on the dial of my watch pointed to two o’clock. I lay quite still, listening intently, and I heard the murmur of men’s voices. The sound seemed to be coming from the direction of my window and I realized they must be standing outside the door of the cottage.

  Some time passed before I grasped the fact that they were speaking English, and I listened with renewed interest, for I knew that the men of the township spoke Gaelic amongst themselves. I caught the words lochailort and silenced and midnight Saturday before the voices faded and were still.

  There was the sound of a door scraping shut. Then silence. Then stealthy footsteps slowly approaching my room. I lay perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe, but the footsteps stopped outside my door. There was a silence in which every sound of the night became magnified a hundredfold. I heard every rustle of the wind in the rowan trees outside the house, and the scurrying run of a mouse across the floor, before the footsteps retreated from my door. I heard the creak of the kitchen door and then silence again.

  I started to breathe once more, like a swimmer who has been under water for a long time. The wind still shook the branches of the trees, but there was no longer a lurking menace in the rustling of the leaves. The rapid beating of my heart gradually stilled. It was as if all the nerves of my body had been stretched taut and were slowly relaxing again.

  I went over in my mind the fragments of conversation I had heard. Perhaps it was because I was tired and afraid, I don’t know, but it was a long time before I recalled the name of the place where the man with the scar had leapt off the train.

  With a sudden stab of fear, I realized it was Lochailort.

  Chapter 10

  At the sound of that one word, Lochailort, I knew that my suspicion of Murdo Beaton had been justified. Lochailort, to me, meant the man with the scar leaping desperately off the train and his pursuer racing down the corridor to the swinging door. It was the start of the trail to the Hill of the Red Fox.

  The voice I had heard was not the voice of Murdo Beaton; it was the voice of a stranger. Someone had stood outside the house with him and spoken the word Lochailort. Someone who was so anxious to avoid being seen that he had waited until two in the morning before making his furtive approach. But who could it have been? Who? Who? Who? The question hammered insistently at my brain.

  Of one thing I was certain: it could not have been the man with the brilliant blue eyes. He was unaware of my destination and ignorant of the fact that I carried a message from the man with the scar.

  I recalled again the fragments of conversation I had heard. Lochailort. Silenced. Midnight Saturday.

  The sudden impact of the frightening truth stunned me. I felt my heartbeats quicken and the palms of my hands grew moist with sweat. I heard a sudden noise and started up fearfully in bed, straining my eyes to penetrate the darkness of the room. But it was only a sudden gust of wind rustling the leaves of the rowan trees, and I sank back on the pillow breathing hard.

  I wondered how I could have been so stupid as to have overlooked the obvious truth for so long. The message I carried in my wallet must have been intended for Murdo Beaton! There could be no other explanation of the stranger’s secret visit to the cottage.

  I saw in my mind’s eye the address label on my case, penned in Aunt Evelyn’s bold capitals. Master Alasdair Cameron, c/o Mr Murdo Beaton, Achmore, Skye. The man with the scar was the only person on the train to have seen that label. He had seen Murdo Beaton’s name, as well as my own, and that was why he had given me the message, thinking I would pass it on to him. MI5 was doubtless the code number he used; he would not be likely to put his own name on an open message.

  My thoughts raced wildly. If the man with the scar had come to Achmore himself, he must have succeeded in shaking off his pursuer, and Murdo Beaton would know that I had failed to deliver the message.

  Lochailort. Silenced. Midnight Saturday. The words buzzed in my head like a swarm of angry bees. Silenced. Who was to be silenced? My blood chilled. They must know that I still had the message; that the secret of the Hill of the Red Fox was shared with me. If anybody had to be silenced, it was me. I could imagine the man with the scar saying softly, “The boy must be silenced. Midnight Saturday will do.” And Murdo Beaton nodding his long head.

  I had read many adventure stories, and I used to play a game, imagining myself to be the hero facing dreadful perils with cool courage. But this was no game, and now that I knew my life to be in danger I was afraid. None of the heroes in my stories was ever afraid. Sword in hand, they fought off half a score of attackers with a smile on their lips. But this was different. A whispered word, spoken in the darkness of the night, could be far more frightening than a dozen sword blades.

  I lay awake for a long time listening wide-eyed to all the sounds of the night. I heard a cock crow, and the first red rays of the rising sun were lighting the sky before I slept.

  My fears receded in the bright light of day, amid the sight and sounds of the everyday life of the croft. There was nothing sinister about Murdo Beaton in his blue denim jacket and tattered khaki trousers. I watched him closely, but he seemed the same as before; surly and morose, no doubt, but there was nothing threatening about him.

  I scoffed at myself for having been so foolish. It was like the night terrors I had known as a small child; they vanished with the coming of day.

  We worked all afternoon at the peats, and by tea-time the last load had been carted from the bog.

  After tea, I watched Murdo Beaton and the cailleach building the stack. They built up the sides first, setting the peats at an angle so that they interlocked. Each layer of peats was placed further in, to give an inward slope to the wall, so that the finished stack would be weatherproof. Mairi and I helped them by selecting peats of a uniform size for the outer walls, and the stack slowly began to take shape.

  I heard a man’s voice calling me, and I knew it would be Roderick MacPherson ready for the fishing.

  “Do you mind if I go fishing?” I asked Murdo Beaton.

  “Away you go, boy,” he said, never looking up from his work. Perhaps it was my imagination, but he seemed glad to be rid of me.

  When I topped the rise, I saw Roderick MacPherson, and I ran across the crofts to join him. He was carrying a long cane rod over his shoulder and attached to the rod was a neatly wound line.

  He smiled at my eager face, and said, “It is a good night for the fishing, a bhalaich. See the clouds gathering. You should take home a good fry tonight.”

  “But where are the others?” I asked, as we set off down the croft.

  “Lachlan and Iain Ban went to the shop,” he replied. “They will meet us at the shore.”

  We crossed the fence at the bottom of the crofts and made our way over the bog to the plank bridge across the burn. The air was full of the scent of heather and bog myrtle and the ground was coloured by patches of blue veronica. We startled a brown hare, and it went leaping off across the moor in a zigzagging run.

  When we crossed the main road I thought of the night I had stood there, miserable and alone, my case in my hand. It did not seem possible that it could be the same road, or the same me.

  What I had thought, looking down from Achmore, to be the cliff edge was not the cliff at all but a high escarpment. We followed a track down the escarpment and tramped across a narrow glen. Roderick pointed out the lonely ruins of a cottar’s house, and we followed a swift flowing burn past a dipping fank. We stopped for a while at the fank, and I was shown the sheep pens and the narrow walled path to the dipper.

  From the fank, a narrow path wound round an overhanging rock and dipped sharply to the shore. Lachlan MacLeod and Iain Ban were sitting on a rock, smoking their pipes, and t
hey greeted me cheerily.

  The boat was lying under the shelter of the cliff face, firmly anchored by the strong ropes which were lashed to massive boulders. It was at least thirty yards, across rough shingle, to the water’s edge, and I wondered how we would ever get the boat launched.

  Iain Ban saw the dismay on my face.

  “Wait you, a bhalaich,” he smiled. “You’ll see.”

  The men untied the ropes and Roderick collected an armful of small round logs from a nearby stack. He placed one under the bows of the boat, and spread out the rest at intervals of a few yards, leading down to the sea. Roderick and Iain Ban took up position on one side, and I joined Lachlan MacLeod on the other side of the boat.

  They shouted together, “One … two … hup!” and at the last cry strained forward dragging the boat over the line of rollers.

  “Why do you leave her so far from the water?” I asked, when we were resting before starting the next heave.

  “This is a bad shore,” Roderick explained patiently. “There is a terrible surf wi’ a gale o’ north wind. If she wasn’t well clear she would be battered to pieces.”

  Iain Ban clambered into the bow, and Lachlan MacLeod took the oars. I sat in the stern, and Roderick pulled up the rolled tops of his thigh boots and waded out, pushing us clear of the shore. Then he climbed into the stern alongside me, and Lachlan pulled out to sea.

  I looked up at the towering cliffs descending sheer into the water. The sea washed into the dark openings of several caves, and I watched the gulls swooping down to their nesting places in the clefts of rock. Lachlan MacLeod pointed out an eiderduck, and I watched her wing her way to her nest low on the cliff face.

  A solitary house was perched on the cliff top where it jutted out to sea, and the croft lay below on an incredibly steep slope. A man was working on the croft, hoeing potatoes, and he seemed to be clinging to the hillside like a fly to a wall.

  Roderick unfastened his line, and I saw that he had eight hooks, set one below the other. They all carried a different coloured fly. He cast the line into the water, and sat holding the rod loosely between his knees.