The Leithen Stories

by John Buchan

  She awoke half an hour later with the sound of a shot in her ear. It set her scrambling to her feet till she remembered the excavators at the Piper’s Ring, who were out of sight of the knoll on which she stood, somewhat on her right rear. Reassured, she lazily scanned the sleeping haugh, with the glittering Raden in the middle distance, and beyond the wooded slopes of the other side of the glen. She noticed a small troop of deer splashing through the shallows. Had they been scared by Mr Bandicott’s explosion? That was odd, for the report had been faint and they were up-wind from it.

  They were badly startled, for they raced through the river and disappeared in a few breathless seconds in the farther woods … Suddenly a thought made her heart beat wildly, and she raked the ground with her glass …

  There was something tawny on a patch of turf in a little hollow near the stream. A moment of anxious spying showed her that it was a dead stag. The report had not been Mr Bandicott’s dynamite, but a rifle.

  Down the hill-side like a startled hind went Janet. She was choking with excitement, and had no clear idea in her head except a determination that John Macnab should not lay hand on the stricken beast. If he had pierced their defences, and got his shot, he would at any rate not get the carcass off the ground. No thought of the stakes and her hunter occurred to her – only of Glenraden and its inviolate honour.

  Almost at once she lost sight of the place where the stag lay. She was now on the low ground of the haugh, in a wilderness of bogs and hollows and overgrown boulders, with half a mile of rough country between her and her goal. Soon she was panting hard: presently she had a stitch in her side; her eyes dimmed with fatigue, and her hat flew off and was left behind. It was abominable ground for speed, for there were heather-roots to trip the foot, and mires to engulf it, and noxious stones over which a runner must go warily or break an ankle. On with bursting heart went Janet, slipping, floundering, more than once taking wild tosses. Her light shoes grew leaden, her thin skirts a vast entangling quilt; her side ached and her legs were fast numbing … Then, from a slight rise, she had a glimpse of the Raden water, now very near, and the sight of a moving head. Her speed redoubled, and miraculously her aches ceased – the fire of battle filled her, as it had burned in her progenitors when they descended on their foes through the moonlit passes.

  Suddenly she was at the scene of the dark deed. There lay the dead stag, and beside it a tall man with his shirt-sleeves turned up and a knife in his hand. That the miscreant should be calmly proceeding to the gralloch was like a fiery stimulant to Janet’s spirit. Gone was every vestige of fatigue, and she descended the last slope like a maenad.

  ‘Stop!’ she sobbed. ‘Stop, you villain!’

  The man started at her voice, and drew himself up. He saw a slim dishevelled girl, hatless, her fair locks fast coming down, who, in the attitude of a tragedy queen, stood with uplifted and accusing hand. She saw a tall man, apparently young, with a very ruddy face, a thatch of sandy hair, and ancient, disreputable clothes.

  ‘You are beaten, John Macnab,’ cried the panting voice. ‘I forbid you to touch that stag. I …’

  The man seemed to have grasped the situation, for he shut the knife and slipped it back in his pocket. Also he smiled. Also he held both hands above his head.

  ‘Kamerad!’ he said. ‘I acknowledge defeat, Miss Raden.’

  Then he picked up his rifle and his discarded jacket, and turned and ran for it. She heard him splashing through the river, and in three minutes he was swallowed up in the farther woods.

  The victorious Janet sank gasping on the turf. She wanted to cry, but changed her mind and began to laugh hysterically. After that she wanted to sing. She and she alone had defeated the marauder, while every man about the place was roosting idly on Carnmore. Now at last she remembered that hunter which would carry her in the winter over the Midland pastures. That was good, but to have beaten John Macnab was better … And then just a shade of compunction tempered her triumph. She had greatly liked the look of John Macnab. He was a gentleman – his voice bore witness to the fact, and the way he had behaved. Kamerad! He must have fought in the war and had no doubt done well. Also, he was beyond question a sportsman. The stag was just the kind of beast that a sportsman would kill – a switch-horn, going back in condition – and he had picked him out of a herd of better beasts. The shot was a workmanlike one – through the neck … And the audacity of him! His wits had beaten them all, for he had chosen the Home beat which everyone had dismissed as inviolable. Truly a foeman worthy of her steel, whom like all good fighters after victory she was disposed to love.

  Crouched beside the dead stag, she slowly recovered her breath. What was the next move to be? If she left the beast might not John Macnab return and make off with it? No, he wouldn’t. He was a gentleman, and would not go back on his admission of defeat. But she was anxious to drain the last drops of her cup of triumph, to confront the idle garrison of Carnmore on its return with the tangible proof of her victory. The stag should be lying at the Castle door, and she herself waiting beside it to tell her tale. She might borrow Mr Bandicott’s men to move it.

  Hastily doing up her hair, she climbed out of the hollow to the little ridge which gave a prospect over the haugh. There before her, not a hundred yards distant, was the old cart and the white pony of Fish Benjie, looking as if it had been part of the landscape since the beginning of time.

  Benjie had wormed his way far into the moss, for he was more than half a mile from the road. It appeared that he had finished his day’s work on the besoms, for his pony was in the shafts, and he himself was busy loading the cart with the fruits of his toil. She called out to him, but got no reply, and it was not till she stood beside him that he looked up from his work.

  ‘Benjie,’ she said, ‘come at once. I want you to help me. Have you been here long?’

  ‘Since nine this mornin’, lady.’ Benjie’s face was as impassive as a stump of oak.

  ‘Didn’t you hear a shot?’

  ‘I heard a gude wheen shots. The auld man up at the Piper’s Ring has been blastin’ awa.’

  ‘But close to you? Didn’t you see a man – not five minutes ago?’

  ‘Aye, I seen a man. I seen him crossin’ the water. I thought he was a gentleman from the Castle. He had a gun wi’ him.’

  ‘It was a poacher, Benjie,’ said Janet dramatically. ‘The poacher I wanted you to look out for. He has killed a stag, too, but I drove him away. You must help me to get the beast home. Can you get your cart over that knowe?’

  ‘Fine, lady.’

  Without more words Benjie took the reins and started the old pony. The cart floundered a little in a wet patch, tittuped over the tussocks, and descended with many jolts to the neighbourhood of the stag – Janet dancing in front of it like an Israelitish priest before the Ark of the Covenant.

  The late afternoon was very hot, for down in the haugh the wind had died away. The stag weighed not less than fifteen stone, and before they finished Janet would have called them tons. Yet the great task of transhipment was accomplished. The pony was taken out of the shafts and the cart tilted, and, after some strenuous minutes, the carcase was heaved and pushed and levered on to its floor. Janet, hanging on to the shafts, with incredible exertions pulled them down, while Benjie – a tiny Atlas – prevented the beast from slipping back by bearing its weight on his shoulders. The backboard was put in its place, the mass of brooms and heather piled on the stag, the pony restored to the shafts, and the cortege was ready for the road. Benjie had his face adorned with a new scratch and a quantity of deer’s blood, Janet had nobly torn her jumper and one stocking; but these were trivial casulties for so great an action.

  ‘Drive straight to the Castle and tell them to leave the beast before the door. You understand, Benjie? Before the door – not in the larder. I’m going to strike home through the woods, for I’m an awful sight.’

  ‘Ye look very bonny, lady,’ said the gallant Benjie as he took up the reins.

  Janet watc
hed the strange outfit lumber from the hollow and nearly upset over a hidden boulder. It had the appearance of a moving peat-stack, with a solitary horn jutting heavenwards like a withered branch. Once again the girl subsided on the heather and laughed till she ached.

  * * *

  The highway by the Larrrig side slept in the golden afternoon. Not a conveyance had disturbed its peace save the baker’s cart from Inverlarrig, which had passed about three o’clock. About half-past five a man crossed it – a man who had descended from the hill and used the stepping-stones where Sir Archibald Roylance had come to grief. He was a tall man with a rifle, hatless, untidy and very warm, and he seemed to desire to be unobserved, for he made certain that the road was clear before he ventured on it. Once across, he found shelter in a clump of broom, whence he could command a long stretch of the highway, almost from Glenraden gates to the Bridge of Larrig.

  Mr Palliser-Yeates, having reached sanctuary – for behind him lay the broken hillsides of Crask – mopped his brow and lit a pipe. He did not seem to be greatly distressed at the result of the afternoon. Indeed, he laughed – not wildly like Janet, but quietly and with philosophy. ‘A very neat hold-up,’ he reflected. ‘Gad, she came on like a small destroying angel … That’s the girl Archie’s been talking about … a very good girl. She looked as if she’d have taken on an army corps … Jolly romantic ending – might have come out of a novel. Only it should have been Archie, and a prospect of wedding bells – what? … Anyway, we’d have won out all right but for the girl, and I don’t mind being beaten by her …’

  His meditations were interrupted by the sound of furious wheels on the lone highway, and he cautiously raised his head to see an old horse and an older cart being urged towards him at a canter. The charioteer was a small boy, and above the cart sides projected a stag’s horn.

  Forgetting all precautions, he stood up, and at the sight of him Benjie, not without difficulty, checked the ardour of his much-belaboured beast, and stopped before him.

  ‘I’ve gotten it,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘The stag’s in the cairt. The lassie and me histed him in, and she tell’t me to drive to the Castle. But when I was out o’ sicht o’ her, I took the auld road through the wud and here I am. We’ve gotten the stag off Glenraden ground and we can hide him up at Crask, and I’ll slip doun i’ the cairt afore mornin’ and leave him ootbye the Castle wi’ a letter from John Macnab. Fegs, it was a near thing!’

  Benjie’s voice rose into a shrill paean, his disreputable face shone with unholy joy. And then something in Palliser-Yeates’s eyes cut short his triumph.

  ‘Benjie, you little fool, right about turn at once. I’m much obliged to you, but it can’t be done. It isn’t the game, you know. I chucked up the sponge when Miss Raden challenged me, and I can’t go back on that. Back you go to Glenraden and hand over the stag. Quick, before you’re missed … And look here – you’re a first-class sportsman, and I’m enormously grateful to you. Here is something for your trouble.’

  Benjie’s face grew very red as he swung his equipage round. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘If ye like to be beat by a lassie, dinna blame me. I’m no wantin’ your money.’

  The next moment the fish-cart was clattering in the other direction.

  To a mystified and anxious girl, pacing the gravel in front of the Castle, entered the fish-cart. The old horse seemed in the last stages of exhaustion, and the boy who drove it was a dejected and sparrow-like figure.

  ‘Where in the world have you been?’ Janet demanded.

  ‘I was run awa wi’, lady,’ Benjie whined. ‘The auld powny didna like the smell o’ the stag. He bolted in the wud, and I didna get him stoppit till verra near the Larrig Bridge.’

  ‘Poor little Benjie! Now you’re going to Mrs Fraser to have the best tea you ever had in your life, and you shall also have ten shillings.’

  ‘Thank you kindly, lady, but I canna stop for tea. I maun awa down to Inverlarrig for my fish.’ But his hand closed readily on the note, for he had no compunction in taking money from one who had made him to bear the bitterness of incomprehensible defeat.

  SIX

  The Return of Harald Blacktooth

  MISS JANET RADEN had a taste for the dramatic, which that night was nobly gratified. The space in front of the great door of the Castle became a stage of which the sole furniture was a deceased stag, but on which event succeeded event with a speed which recalled the cinema rather than the legitimate drama.

  First, about six o’clock, entered Agatha and Junius Bandicott from their casual wardenship of Carnbeg. The effect upon the young man was surprising. Hitherto he had only half believed in John Macnab, and had regarded the defence of Glenraden as more or less of a joke. It seemed to him inconceivable that, even with the slender staffing of the forest, one man could enter and slay and recover a deer. But when he heard Janet’s tale he became visibly excited, and his careful and precise English, the bequest of his New England birth, broke down into college slang.

  ‘The man’s a crackerjack,’ he murmured reverentially. ‘He has us all rocketing around the mountain tops, and then takes advantage of my dad’s blasting operations and raids the front yard. He can pull the slick stuff all right, and we at Strathlarrig had better get cold towels round our heads and do some thinking. Our time’s getting short, too, for he starts at midnight the day after to-morrow … What did you say the fellow was like, Miss Janet? Young, and big, and behaved like a gentleman? It’s a tougher proposition than I thought, and I’m going home right now to put old Angus through his paces.’

  With a deeply preoccupied face Junius, declining tea, fetched his car from the stableyard and took his leave.

  At seven-fifteen Colonel Raden, bestriding a deer pony, emerged from the beech avenue, and waved a cheerful hand to his daughters.

  ‘It’s all right, my dears. Not a sign of the blackguard. The men will remain on Carnmore till midnight to be perfectly safe, but I’m inclined to think that the whole thing is a fiasco. He has been frightened away by our precautions. But it’s been a jolly day on the high tops, and I have the thirst of all creation.’

  Then his eyes fell on the stag. ‘God bless my soul,’ he cried, ‘what is that?’

  ‘That,’ said Janet, ‘is the stag which John Macnab killed this afternoon.’

  The Colonel promptly fell off his pony.

  ‘Where – when?’ he stammered.

  ‘On the Home beat,’ said Janet calmly. The situation was going to be quite as dramatic as she had hoped. ‘I saw it fall, and ran hard and got up to it just when he was starting the gralloch. He was really quite nice about it.’

  ‘What did he do?’ her parent demanded.

  ‘He held up his hands and laughed and cried ‘Kamerad!’ Then he ran away.’

  ‘The scoundrel showed a proper sense of shame.’

  ‘I don’t think he was ashamed. Why should he be, for we accepted his challenge. You know, he’s a gentleman, papa, and quite young and good looking.’

  Colonel Raden’s mind was passing through swift stages from exasperation to unwilling respect. It was an infernal annoyance that John Macnab should have been suffered to intrude on the sacred soil of Glenraden, but the man had played the boldest kind of hand, and he had certainly not tailored his beast. Besides, he had been beaten – beaten by a girl, a daughter of the house. The honour of Glenraden might be considered sacrosanct after all.

  A long drink restored the Colonel’s equanimity, and the thought of their careful preparations expended in the void moved him to laughter.

  ‘ ’Pon my word, Nettie, I should like to ask the fellow to dinner. I wonder where on earth he is living. He can’t be far off, for he is due at Strathlarrig very soon. What did young Bandicott say the day was?’

  ‘Midnight, the day after tomorrow. Mr Junius feels very solemn after today, and has hurried home to put his house in order.’

  ‘Nettie,’ said the Colonel gravely, ‘I am prepared to make the modest bet that John Macnab gets his salmon. Hang it a
ll, if he could outwit us – and he did it, confound him – he is bound to outwit the Bandicotts. I tell you what, John Macnab is a very remarkable man – a man in a million, and I’m very much inclined to wish him success.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Janet; but Agatha announced indignantly that she had never met a case of grosser selfishness. She announced, too, that she was prepared to join in the guarding of Strathlarrig.

  ‘If you and Junius are no more use than you were on Carnbeg today, John Macnab needn’t worry,’ said Janet sweetly.

  Agatha was about to retort when there was a sudden diversion. The elder Bandicott appeared at a pace which was almost a run, breathing hard, and with all the appearance of strong excitement. Fifty yards behind him, could be seen the two Strathlarrig labourers, making the best speed they could under the burden of heavy sacks. Mr Bandicott had no breath left to speak, but he motioned to his audience to give him time and permit his henchmen to arrive. These henchmen he directed to the lawn, where they dropped their sacks on the grass. Then, with an air which was almost sacramental, he turned to Colonel Raden.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you are privileged – we are privileged – to assist in the greatest triumph of modern archaeology. I have found the coffin of Harald Blacktooth with the dust of Harald Blacktooth inside it.’

  ‘The devil you have!’ said the Colonel. ‘I suppose I ought to congratulate you, but I’m bound to say I’m rather sorry. I feel as if I had violated the tomb of my ancestors.’

  ‘You need have no fear, sir. The dust has been reverently restored to its casket, and tomorrow the Piper’s Ring will show no trace of the work. But within the stone casket there were articles which, in the name of science, I have taken the liberty to bring with me, and which will awaken an interest among the learned not less, I am convinced, than Schlie-mann’s discoveries at Mycenae. I have found, sir, incredible treasures.’