by John Buchan
‘Because we will be watchin’ all hours of the day. Ye heard what the Laird said, Alan Macdonald, and you, James Fraser. This John Macnab is not to shoot a Glenraden beast at all, at all, but if he shoots one he is not to move it one foot. If it comes to fightin’, you are young lads and must break the head of him. But the Laird said for God’s sake you was to have no guns, but to fight like honest folk with your fists, and maybe a wee bit stick. The Laird was sayin’ the law was on our side, except for shootin’ … Now, James Fraser, you will take the outer marches the day, and keep an eye on the peat-roads from Inverlarrig, and you, Alan, will watch Carnbeg, and I will be takin’ the woods myself. The Laird was sayin’ that it would be Carnmore the man Macnab would be tryin’, most likely at skreigh of day the morn, and he would be hidin’ the beast, if he got one, in some hag, and waitin’ till the da-ark to shift him. So the morn we will all be on Carnmore, and I can tell you the Laird has the ground planned out so that a snipe would not be movin’ without us seein’ him.’
The early morning broadened into day, and the glen slept in the windless heat of late August. Janet Raden, sauntering down from the Castle towards the river about eleven o’clock, thought that she had never seen the place so sabbatically peaceful. To her unquiet soul the calm seemed unnatural, like a thick cloak covering some feverish activity. All the household were abroad since breakfast – her father on a preliminary reconnaissance of Carnmore, Agatha and Mr Junius Bandicott on a circuit of Carnbeg, while the gillies and their youthful allies sat perched with telescopes on eyries surveying every approach to the forest. The plans seemed perfect, but the dread of John Macnab, that dark conspirator, would not be exorcised. It was she who had devised the campaign, based on her reading of the enemy’s mind; but had she fathomed it, she asked herself? Might he not even now be preparing some master-stroke which would crumble their crude defences? Horrible stories which she had read of impersonation and the shifts of desperate characters recurred to her mind. Was John Macnab perhaps old Mr Bandicott disguised as an archaeologist? Or was he one of the Strathlarrig workmen?
She walked over the moor to the Piper’s Ring and was greeted by a mild detonation and a shower of earth. Old Mr Bandicott, very warm and stripped to his shirt, was desperately busy and most voluble about his task. There was no impersonation here, nor in the two fiery-faced labourers who were burrowing their way towards the resting-place of Harald Blacktooth. Nevertheless, her suspicion was not allayed, she felt herself in the antechamber of plotters, and looked any moment to see on the fringes of the wood or on the white ribbon of road a mysterious furtive figure which she would know for a minion of the enemy.
But the minion did not appear. As Janet stood on the rise before the bridge of Raden with her hat removed to let the faint south-west wind cool her forehead, she looked upon a scene of utter loneliness and peace. The party at the Piper’s Ring were hidden, and in all the green amphitheatre nothing stirred but the stream. Even Fish Benjie and his horse had been stricken into carven immobility. He had moved away from the road a few hundred yards into the moor, not far from the waterside, and his little figure, as he whittled at his brooms, appeared from where Janet stood to be as motionless as a boulder, while the old grey pony mused upon three legs as rapt and lifeless as an Elgin marble. The two seemed to have become one with nature, and to be as much part of the sleeping landscape as the clump of birches whose leaves did not even shimmer in that bright silent noontide.
The quiet did something to soothe Janet’s restlessness, but after luncheon, which she partook of in solitary state, she found it returning. A kind of folie de doute assailed her, not unknown to generals in the bad hours which intervene between the inception and execution of a plan. She had a strong desire to ride up to Crask and have a talk with Sir Archie, and was only restrained by the memory of that young man’s last letter, and the hint it contained of grave bodily maladies. She did not know whether to believe in these maladies or not, but clearly she could not thrust her company upon one who had shown a marked distaste for it … Yet she had her pony saddled and rode slowly in the direction of Strathlarrig, half hoping to see a limping figure on the highway. But not a soul was in sight on the long blinding stretch or at the bridge where the Crask road started up the hill. Janet turned homeward with a feeling that the world had suddenly become dispeopled. She did not turn her head once, and so failed to notice first one figure and then another, which darted across the high road, and disappeared in the thick coverts of the Crask hill-side.
At the Castle she found Agatha and Junius Bandicott having tea, and presently her father arrived in a state of heat and exhaustion. Stayed with a whisky-and-soda, Colonel Raden became communicative. He had been over the high tops of Carnmore, had visited the Carn Moss, and Corrie Gall, had penetrated the Grey Beallach, had heard the tales of the gillies and of the herd-boys in their eyries, and his report was ‘all clear.’ The deer were undisturbed, according to James Fraser, since the morning. Moreover, the peat-road from Inverlarrig had relapsed owing to recent rains into primeval bog which no wheeled vehicle and few ponies could traverse. The main fortress seemed not only unassailed but unassailable, and Colonel Raden viewed the morrow with equanimity.
The Carnbeg party had a different story to tell, or rather the main members of it had no story at all. Agatha and Junius Bandicott appeared to have sauntered idly into the pleasant wilderness of juniper and heather which lay between the mossy summits, to have lunched at leisure by the famous Cailleach’s Well, and to have sauntered home again. They reported that it had been divine weather, for a hill breeze had tempered the heat, and that they had observed the Claybodys’ yacht far out at the entrance of Loch Larrig. Also Junius had seen his first blue hare, which he called a ‘jack rabbit.’ Of anything suspicious there had been neither sign nor sound.
But at this moment a maid appeared with the announcement that ‘Macpherson was wanting to see the Colonel,’ and presently the head stalker arrived in what John Bunyan calls a ‘pelting heat.’ Generally of a pale complexion which never tanned, he was now as red as a peony, and his grey beard made a startling contrast with his flamboyant face. Usually he was an embarrassed figure inside the Castle, having difficulties in disposing of his arms and legs, but now excitement made him bold.
‘I’ve seen him, Cornel,’ he panted. ‘Seen him crawlin’ like an adder and runnin’ like a sta-ag!’
‘Seen who? Get your breath, Macpherson!’
‘Him – the man – Macnab. I beg your pardon for my pechin’, sir, but I came down the hill like I was a rollin’ stone … It was up on the backside of Craig Dhu near the old sheep-fauld. I seen a man hunkerin’ among the muckle stones, and I got my glass on him, and he was a sma’ man that I’ve never seen afore. I was wild to get a grip of him, and I started runnin’ to drive him to the Cailleach’s Well, where Miss Agatha and the gentleman was havin’ their lunch. He seen me, and he took the road I ettled, and I thought I had him, for, thinks I, the young gentleman is soople and lang in the leg. But he seen the danger and turned off down the burn, and I couldna come near him. It would have been all right if I could have made the young gentleman hear, but though I was roarin’ like a stot he was deafer than a tree. Och, it is the great peety.’
‘Agatha, what on earth were you doing?’ Janet asked severely.
Junius Bandicott blushed hotly. ‘I never heard a sound,’ he said. ‘There must be something funny about the acoustics of that place.’
Colonel Raden, who knew the power of his stalker’s lungs, looked in a mystified way from one to the other.
‘Didn’t you see Macpherson, Agatha?’ he asked. ‘He must have been in view coming over the shoulder of Craig Dhu.’
It was Agatha’s turn to blush, which she did with vigour, and, to Mr Bandicott’s eyes, with remarkable grace.
‘Ach, I was in view well enough,’ went on the tactless Macpherson, ‘and I was routin’ like a wild beast. But the twa of them was that busy talking they never lifted their eyes, and the m
an, as I tell you, slippit off down the burn. It is a gre-at peety, whatever.’
‘What did you do then?’ the Colonel demanded.
‘I followed him till I lost him in that awful rough corrie … But I seen him again – aye, I seen him again, away over on the Maam above the big wud. Standin’, as impident as ye please, on the sky-line.’
‘How long after you lost him in the corrie?’ Janet asked.
‘Maybe half an hour.’
‘Impossible,’ she said sharply. ‘No living man could cover three miles of that ground in half an hour.’
‘I was thinkin’ the body was the Deevil.’
‘You saw a second man. John Macnab has an accomplice.’
Macpherson scratched his shaggy head. ‘I wouldn’t say but ye’re right, Miss Janet. Now I think of it, it was a bigger man. He didn’t bide a moment after I caught sight of him, but I got my glass on him, and he was a bigger man. Aye, a bigger man, and, maybe, a younger man.’
‘This is very disturbing,’ said Colonel Raden, walking to the window and twisting his moustache. ‘What do you make of it, Nettie?’
‘I think the affair is proceeding, as generals say about their battles, “according to plan.” We didn’t know before that John Macnab had a confederate, but of course he was bound to have one. There was nothing against it in the terms of the wager.’
‘Of course not, of course not. But what the devil was he doing on Carnbeg? There was no shot, Macpherson?’
‘There was no shot, and there will be no shot. There wass no beasts the side they were on, and Alan is up there now with one of James’s laddies.’
‘It’s exactly what we expected,’ said Janet. ‘It proves that we were right in guessing that John Macnab would take Carnmore. He came here today to frighten us about Carnbeg – make us think that he was going to try there, and get us to mass our forces. Tomorrow he’ll be on Carnmore, and then he’ll mean business. I hoped this would happen, and I was getting nervous when Agatha and Mr Bandicott came home looking as blank as the Babes in the Wood. But I wish I knew which was really John Macnab – the little one or the tall one.’
‘What does that matter?’ her parent asked.
‘Because I should be happier if he were tall. Little men are far more cunning.’
Junius Bandicott, having recovered his composure, chose to be amused. ‘I take that as a personal compliment, Miss Janet. I’m pretty big, and I can’t say I want to be thought cunning.’
‘Then John Macnab will get his salmon,’ said Janet with decision.
Junius laughed. ‘You bet he won’t. I’ve gotten the place watched like the Rum Fleet at home. A bird can’t hardly cough without its being reported to me. My fellows are on to the game, and John Macnab will have to be a mighty clever citizen to come within a mile of the Strathlarrig water. Nobody is allowed to fish it but myself till the 3rd of September is past. I reckon angling just now is the forbidden fruit in this neighbourhood. I’ve seen but the one fellow fishing in the last three days – on the bit of slack water five hundred yards below the bridge. It belongs to Crask, I think.’
Janet nodded. ‘No good except with a worm after a spate. Crask has no fishing worth the name.’
‘I saw him from the automobile early this morning,’ Junius continued. ‘Strange sight he was, too – dressed in pyjamas and rubbers – flogging away at the most helpless stretch you can imagine – dead calm, not a ripple, He had out about fifty yards of line, and when I passed he made a cast which fell with a flop about his ears. Who do you suppose he was? Somebody from Crask?’
Janet, who was the family’s authority on Crask, agreed. ‘Probably some English servant who came down before breakfast just to say he had fished for salmon.’
After tea Janet went down into the haugh. She met old Mr Bandicott returning from the Piper’s Ring, a very grubby old gentleman, and a little dashed in spirits, for he had as yet seen no sign of Harald Blacktooth’s coffin. ‘Another day’s work,’ he announced, ‘and then I win or lose. I thought I had struck it this afternoon, but it was the solid granite. If the fellow is there he’s probably in a rift of the rock. That has been known to happen. The Vikings found a natural fissure, stuck their dead chief in it, and heaped earth above to make a barrow …’
Down near the stream she met Benjie, who appeared to have worked late at his besoms, bumping over the moor to the road. He and his old pony made a more idyllic picture than ever in the mellow light of evening, almost too conventionally artistic to be real, she thought, till Benjie’s immobile figure woke to life at the sight of her and he pulled his lint-white forelock. ‘A grand nicht, lady,’ he crooned, and jogged on into the beeches’ shade … She sat on the bridge and watched the Raden waters pass from gold to amethyst and from amethyst to purple, and then sauntered back through the sweet-smelling dusk. Visions of John Macnab filled her mind, now a tall bravo with a colonial accent, now a gnarled Caliban of infinite cunning and gnome-like agility. Where in this haunted land was he ensconced – in some hazel covert, or in some clachan but-and-ben, or miles distant in a populous hotel, ready to speed in a swift car to the scene of action? … Anyhow, in twenty-four hours she would know if she had defeated this insolent challenger. On the eve of battle she had forgotten all about the stakes and her new hunter; it was the honour of Glenraden that was concerned, that little stone castle against the world.
Night fell, cool and cloudless, and the gillies went on their patrols. Carnmore was their only beat, and they returned one at a time to snatch a few hours’ rest. At dawn they went out again – with the Colonel, but without Alan, who was to follow after he had had his ration of sleep. It was arranged that the two girls and Junius Bandicott should spend the day on Carnbeg by way of extra precaution, though if a desperate man made the assault there it was not likely that Junius, who knew nothing of deer and had no hill-craft, would be able to stop him.
Janet woke in low spirits, and her depression increased as the morning advanced. She was full of vague forebodings, and of an irritable unrest to which her steady nerves had hitherto been a stranger. She wished she were a man and could be now on Carnmore, for Carnbeg, she was convinced, was out of danger. Junius, splendid in buckskin breeches and a russet sweater, she regarded with disfavour; he was a striking figure, but out of keeping with the hills, the obvious amateur, and she longed for the halting and guileful Sir Archie. Nor was her temper improved by the conduct of her companions. Agatha and Junius seemed to have an inordinate amount to say to each other, and their conversation was idiotic to the ears of a third party. Their eyes were far more on each other than on the landscape, and their telescopes were never in use. But it mattered little, for Carnbeg slept in a primordial peace. Only pipits broke the silence, only a circling merlin made movement in a spell-bound world. There were some hinds on the west side of Craig Dhu, but no stag showed – as was natural, the girl reflected, for in this weather and thus early in the season the stags would be on the highest tops. John Macnab had chosen rightly if he wanted a shot, but there were three gillies and her father to prevent him getting his beast away.
At luncheon, which was eaten by the Cailleach’s Well, Junius took to quoting poetry and Agatha to telling, very charmingly, the fairy tales of the glens. To Janet it all seemed wrong; this was not an occasion for literary philandering, when the credit of Glenraden was at stake. But even she was forced to confess that nothing was astir in the mossy wilderness. She climbed to the top of Craig Dhu and had a long spy, but, except for more hinds and one small knobber, living thing there was none. As the afternoon drew on, she drifted away from the two, who, being engrossed with each other, did not notice her departure.
She wandered through the deep heather of the Maam to where the great woods began that dipped to the Raden glen. It was pleasant walking in the cool shade of the pines on turf which was half thyme and milkwort and eyebright, and presently her spirits rose. Now and then, on some knuckle of blaeberry-covered rock which rose above the trees, she would halt, and, stretched
at full length, would spy the nooks of the Home beat. There was no lack of deer there. She picked up one group and then another in the aisles and clearings of the woods, and there were shootable stags among them.
A report like a rifle-shot suddenly startled her. Then she remembered old Mr Bandicott down in the haugh, and, turning her glance in that direction, saw a thin cloud of blue smoke floating away from the Piper’s Ring.
Slowly she worked her way down-hill, aiming at the haugh about a mile upstream from the excavators. Once a startled hind and calf sprang up from her feet, and once an old fox slipped out of a pile of rocks and revived thoughts of Warwickshire and her problematical hunter. Soon she was not more than three hundred feet above the stream level, and found a bracken-clad hillock where she could lie and watch the scene. There was a roebuck feeding just below her, a roebuck with fine horns, and it amused her to see the beast come nearer and nearer, since the wind was behind him. He got within five yards of the girl, who lay mute as a stone; then some impulse made him look up and meet her eye, and in a second he had streaked into cover.
Amid that delicious weather and in that home of peace Janet began to recapture her usual mirthfulness. She had been right; Carnmore was the place John Macnab would select, unless his heart had failed him, and on Carnmore he would get a warm reception. There was no need to worry any longer about John Macnab … Her thoughts went back to Agatha. Clearly Junius Bandicott was in love with her, and probably she would soon be in love with Junius Bandicott. No one could call it anything but a most suitable match, but Janet was vaguely unhappy about it, for it meant a break in their tiny household and the end of a long and affectionate, if occasionally tempestuous, comradeship. She would be very lonely at Glenraden without Agatha, and what would Agatha do when transplanted to a foreign shore – Agatha, for whom the world was bounded by her native hills? She began to figure to herself what America was like, and, as her pictures had no basis of knowledge, they soon became fantastic, and merged into dreams. The drowsy afternoon world laid its spell upon the girl, and she fell asleep.