Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle

by Alfred Ollivant

  “Come on, Wullie!” he cried. “‘Scots wha hae . . .’! Now’s the day and now’s the hour! Come on!”

  On the table before him, calm and beautiful, stood the target of his madness. The little man ran at it, swinging his murderous weapon like the stick that is used for beating the wheat on the barn floor at harvest time.

  “Ours or nobody’s, Wullie! Come on! ‘Lay the proud usurpers low’!” He aimed a mighty blow; and the Shepherds’ Trophy—the Shepherds’ Trophy which had survived the hardships of a hundred years—was almost gone. It seemed to quiver as the blow fell. But the cruel steel missed, and the ax-head sank into the wood, clean and deep, like a spade in snow.

  Red Wull had leapt onto the table, and his deep voice grumbled a chorus to his master’s yells. The little man danced up and down, tugging and straining at the ax-handle.

  “You and I, Wullie!

  ‘Tyrants fall in every foe!

  Liberty’s in every blow!’”

  The ax-head was as impossible to move as the Muir Pike.

  “‘Let us do or die!’”

  The wooden shaft of the ax snapped, and the little man stumbled back. Red Wull jumped down from the table, and, in doing so, brushed against the Cup. It toppled over onto the floor, and rolled clattering away in the dust.* And the little man ran madly out of the house, still yelling out his war-song.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  When, late that night, McAdam returned home, the Cup was gone. Down on his hands and knees he traced out its path, plain to see, where it had rolled along the dusty floor. Beyond that, there was no sign of it.

  At first he was too upset to speak. Then he raved around the room like an abandoned ship, Red Wull following uneasily behind. He cursed; he swore; he screamed and beat the walls with feverish hands. A stranger, passing by, might well have thought this was a private insane asylum. At last, exhausted, he sat down and cried.

  “It’s David, Wullie, ye can be sure of it; David that has robbed his father’s house. Oh, it’s a great thing to have an obedient son!”—and he bowed his gray head in his hands.

  David, indeed, had taken it. He had come back to the Grange while his father was out, and, lifting the Cup from its grimy resting place on the floor, had marched it away to its rightful home. For, that evening at Kenmuir, James Moore had said to him:

  “David, your father has not sent the Cup. I shall come and get it tomorrow.” And David knew he meant it. Therefore, in order to avoid a collision between his father and his friend—a collision whose outcome he hardly dared to imagine, knowing the unchangeable determination of the one man and the lunatic passion of the other—the boy had decided to get the Cup himself, then and there, right in the teeth, if he had to, of his father and the Tailless Tyke. And he had done it.

  When he reached home that night, he marched straight into the kitchen, which was not his usual habit.

  There sat his father facing the door, waiting for him, his hands on his knees. For once the little man was alone; and David, brave though he was, thanked heaven devoutly that Red Wull was somewhere else.

  For a while, father and son kept silence, watching each other like two duelers with swords in their hands.

  “It was you as took my Cup?” asked the little man at last, leaning forward in his chair.

  “It was me as took Mr. Moore’s Cup,” the boy answered. “I thought you must have been finished with it—I found it all bashed upon the floor.”

  “You took it—no doubt told to do so by James Moore.”

  David shook his head.

  “Ay, by James Moore,” his father went on. “He dared not come himself for the stolen goods that he won so dishonestly, so he sent the son to rob the father. The coward!”—and his whole body shook with passion. “I’d ’ave thought James Moore would ’ave been enough of a man to come himself for what he wanted. Now I see I did him a wrong—I misjudged him. I knew he was a hypocrite; one of yer remarkable good men; a man as looks to be one thing, says another, and does a third; and now I know he’s a coward. He’s afraid o’ me, such as I am, five foot two in my socks.” He rose from his chair and drew himself up to his full height.

  “Mr. Moore had nothing to do with it,” David persisted.

  “Ye’re lying. James Moore got you to do it.”

  “I tell you he did not.”

  “Ye’d have been willing enough without him, if ye’d thought of it, I admit. But ye don’t have brains enough for that. All there is of ye has gone to make yer great body. However, that doesn’t matter. I’ll settle with James Moore another time. I’ll settle with you now, David McAdam.

  He paused, and looked the boy over from head to foot.

  “So, ye’re not only an idler! A good-for-nothing! A liar!”—he spat the words out. “Ye’re—God help ye—a thief!”

  “I’m no thief!” the boy answered hotly. “I only gave to the man what my father—shame on him!—wrongfully kept from him.”

  “Wrongfully?” cried the little man, moving forward with burning face.

  “So you’d say it was an honorable thing, keeping what was not yours to keep! Holding back his rights from a man! Ay, if anyone’s the thief, it’s not me: it’s you, I say, you!”—and he looked his father in the face with flashing eyes.

  “I’m the thief, am I?” cried the other, who could hardly make himself understood, he was in such a state of emotion. “Though ye’re three times my size, I’ll teach my son to speak to me that way.”

  The old strap, now long unused, hung in the chimney corner. As he spoke, the little man sprang back, ripped it from the wall, and, almost before David realized what he was up to, had brought it down with a savage slash across his son’s shoulders; and as he struck, he whistled a shrill, commanding note:

  “Wullie, Wullie, to me!”

  David felt the blow through his coat like a bar of hot iron laid across his back. His passion boiled inside him; every vein throbbed; every nerve quivered. In a minute he would avenge, once and for all, the wrong his father had done him for so many years; at the moment, however, there was urgent business on hand. For outside he could hear the quick patter of feet hard-galloping, and the scurry of a huge creature racing madly to a call.

  With a bound he sprang at the open door; and again the strap came lashing down, and a wild voice:

  “Quick, Wullie! For God’s sake, quick!”

  David slammed the door shut. It closed with a rasping click; and at the same moment a great body from outside thundered against it with terrific violence, and a deep voice roared like the sea when denied its prey.

  “Too late, again!” said David, breathing hard; and he slid the door’s bolt into its socket with a clang. Then he turned to his father.

  “Now,” he said, “man to man!”

  “Ay,” cried the other, “father to son!”

  The little man half turned and leapt at the old gun hanging on the wall. He missed it, turned again, and struck with the strap full at the other’s face. David caught the falling arm at the wrist, hitting it aside with such tremendous force that the bone nearly snapped. Then he struck his father a terrible blow on the chest, and the little man staggered back, gasping, into the corner; while the strap dropped from his numbed fingers.

  Outside, Red Wull whined and scratched; but the two men paid no attention.

  David stepped forward; there was murder in his face. The little man saw it: his time had come; but even his bitterest enemy never doubted Adam McAdam’s courage.

  He stood huddled in the corner, his hair and clothes rumpled, nursing one arm with the other, entirely unafraid.

  “Remember, David,” he said, quite calm, “it will be called murder, not manslaughter.”

  “Then murder it will be,” the boy answered, in a thick, low voice, and came across the room.

  Outside, Red Wull banged and clawed high up on the door with powerless paws.

  The little man suddenly slipped his hand in his pocket, pulled something out, and flung it. The thing pattered against hi
s son’s face like a raindrop on a charging bull, and David only smiled as he came on. It dropped softly on the table at his side; he looked down and—it was the face of his mother which gazed up at him!

  “Mother!” he blurted out, a sob in his voice, and stopped short. “Mother! My God, ye saved him—and me!”

  He stood there, utterly beside himself, shaking and weeping quietly.

  It was some minutes before he pulled himself together; then he walked to the wall, took down a pair of heavy shears, and seated himself at the table, still trembling. Near him lay the miniature photograph, all torn and crumpled, and beside it the deep-buried ax-head.

  He picked up the strap and began cutting it into little pieces.

  “There! and there! and there!” he said with each snip. “If ye hit me again there may be no mother to save ye.”

  McAdam stood huddling in the corner. He shook like an aspen leaf; his eyes blazed in his white face; and he still nursed one arm with the other.

  “Honor yer father,” he quoted in a small, low voice.

  * You may still see the dent in the Cup’s white sides to this day.

  Part Four

  The Black Killer

  CHAPTER 14

  A Mad Man

  TAMMAS is on his feet in the taproom of the Arms, waving a pewter mug in the air.

  “Gen’lemen!” he cries, his old face flushed; “I’ll give you a toast. Stand up!”

  The knot of Dalesmen around the fire rises like one man. Old Tammas waves his mug before him, careless of the good ale that drips onto the floor.

  “To the best sheepdog in the North—Owd Bob o’ Kenmuir!” he cries. In an instant there is an uproar: the merry applause of clinking pewters; the stamping of feet; the rattle of sticks. Rob Saunderson and old Jonas are cheering with the best; Tupper and Ned Hoppin are bellowing in each other’s ears; Long Kirby and Jem Burton are thumping each other on the back; even Sammel Todd and Sexton Ross are roused from their usual melancholy.

  “Here’s to th’ Owd One! Here’s to our Bob!” yell powerful voices; while Rob Saunderson has jumped onto a chair.

  “With the best sheepdog in the North I give you the Shepherds’ Trophy!—won forever, as we know it will be!” he cries. Instantly the uproar grows twice as loud.

  “The Dale Cup and th’ Owd One! The Trophy and our Bob! Hip, hip, for the gray dogs! Hip, hip, for the best sheepdog as ever was or will be! Hooray, hooray!”

  Some minutes pass before the noise dies down; and slowly the enthusiasts go back to their seats with hoarse throats and red faces.

  “Gentlemen all!”

  A little man, ignored until now, is standing up at the back of the room. His face is aflame, and his hands twitch from time to time uncontrollably; and, in front of him, with hackles up and eyes gleaming, is a huge, bull-like dog.

  “Now,” cries the little man, “I dare ye to repeat that lie!”

  “Lie!” screams Tammas; “lie! I’ll give him lie! Lemme at him, I say!”

  The old man in his fury is halfway over the surrounding ring of chairs before Jim Mason on the one hand and Jonas Maddox on the other can pull him back.

  “Come, Mr. Thornton,” soothes the eighty-year-old, “let him be. You surely ain’t angered by the likes o’ him!”—and he jerks his head with contempt toward the solitary figure behind him.

  Tammas unwillingly returns to his seat.

  The little man in the far corner of the room remains silent, waiting for his challenge to be taken up. He waits in vain. And as he looks at the collection of broad, unfeeling backs turned on him, he smiles bitterly.

  “They don’t dare, Wullie, not a single man, out of them all!” he cries. “They’re one—two—three—four—eleven to one, Wullie, and yet they dare not. Eleven of them, and every man a coward! Long Kirby—Thornton—Tupper—Tod—Hoppin—Ross—Burton—and the rest, and not one that isn’t bigger than me, and yet— Well, we might have known it. We should have known Englishmen by now. They’re always the same and always have been. They tell lies, black lies—”

  Once again Tammas is half out of his chair, and he is held back only by force, by the men on either side of him.

  “—and then they haven’t the courage to stand by their lies. Ye’re English, every man o’ ye, down to the marrow of yer bones.”

  The little man’s voice rises as he speaks. He seizes the large pewter mug from the table at his side.

  “Englishmen!” he cries, waving it before him. “Here’s a toast for you! To the best sheepdog that ever penned a flock—Adam McAdam’s Red Wull!”

  He pauses, the pewter at his lips, and looks at his audience with flashing eyes. There is no response from them.

  “Wullie, here’s to you!” he cries. “Luck and life to ye, my trusty mate! Death and defeat to yer enemies!

  ‘The warld’s wrack we share o’t,

  The warstle and the care o’t.’”

  He raises the mug and drains it to its last drop.

  Then, standing up straight, he addresses his audience once more:

  “And now I’ll warn ye once and for all, and ye may tell James Moore I said it: He may plot against us, Wullie and me; he may threaten us; he may win the Cup outright for his great favorite; but there was never yet a man or dog that harmed Adam McAdam and his Red Wull but in the end he wished his mother hadn’t given birth to him.”

  A little later, he walks out of the inn, the Tailless Tyke at his heels.

  After he is gone, it is Rob Saunderson who says: “The little man’s crazy; he’ll stop at nothing”; and Tammas who answers:

  “Nay; not even murder.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  The little man had aged a good deal lately. His hair was completely white, his eyes unnaturally bright, and his hands were never quiet, as though he were in constant pain. He looked like the very picture of disease.

  After Owd Bob’s second victory, he had become gloomy and untalkative. At home, he often sat silent for hours at a time, drinking and glaring at the place where the Cup had been. Sometimes he talked in a low, eerie voice to Red Wull; and twice, David, turning around suddenly, had caught his father glowering stealthily at him with an expression on his face that chilled the boy’s blood. The two never spoke now; and to David, this silent, deadly enmity seemed far worse than the old-time constant warfare.

  It was the same at the Sylvester Arms. The little man sat alone with Red Wull, exchanging words with no man, drinking steadily, brooding over the wrongs done to him, only now and again galvanized into sudden action.

  Other people besides Tammas Thornton came to the conclusion that McAdam would stop at nothing to hurt James Moore and the gray dog. They said that drink and disappointment had affected his mind; that he was mad and dangerous. And on New Year’s day, matters seemed to be coming to a crisis; for it was reported that in the gloom of a snowy evening he had drawn a knife on the Master in the High Street, but had slipped before he could accomplish his deadly purpose.

  Of all of them, David was most haunted with an ever-present anxiety as to the little man’s intentions. The boy even went so far as to warn his friend against his father. But the Master only smiled grimly.

  “Thank ye, lad,” he said. “But I reckon we can fend for ourselves, Bob and I. Eh, Owd One?”

  Anxious as David might be, he was not above taking unkind advantage of this state of constant worry to work on Maggie’s fears.

  One evening, as he was walking her home from church, just before they reached the little grove of larch trees, he took a sudden step back and exclaimed with horror:

  “Oh God! What’s that?”

  “What, Davie?” cried the girl, shrinking up against him and trembling.

  “Couldn’t say for sure. It might be something, or then again it might be nothing. But you hold on to my arm, and I’ll hold you around your waist.”

  Maggie objected.

  “Can you see anything?” she asked, still nervous.

  “Behind the hedge.”

 
“Where?”

  “There!”—pointing vaguely.

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Why, there, lass. Can’t yo’ see it? Then put your head next to mine—like that—closer—closer.” Then, in a complaining tone of voice: “Whatever is the matter with yo’, girl? You act as though I were a leper.”

  But the girl was walking away with her head as high as the snow-capped Pike.

  “So long as I live, David McAdam,” she cried, “I’ll never go to church with you again!”

  “Ohhh, but you will, though—once,” he answered quietly.

  Maggie whisked around in a flash, superbly indignant.

  “What d’yo’ mean, sir?”

  “You know what I mean, lass,” he replied sheepishly, shuffling before her queenly anger.

  She looked him up and down, and down and up again.

  “I’ll never speak to you again, Mr. McAdam,” she cried; “not if it was every so. . . . Nay, I’ll walk home by myself, thank you. I’ll have nothing to do with you.”

  So the two must return to Kenmuir, one behind the other, like a lady and her footman.

  David’s boldness had, more than once already, nearly caused a break between the two of them. And what had happened behind the hedge was the limit of his insolence. That had been intolerable, and Maggie, by her behavior, let him know it.

  David put up with the girl’s new attitude for exactly twelve minutes by the kitchen clock. Then he said to himself: “Sulk in front of me, indeed! I’ll teach her!” and he marched out the door, “Never to come through it again, my word!”

  Afterward, however, he gave in so far as to go on with his visits as before; but he made it clear that he came only to see the Master and to hear about Owd Bob’s doings. On these visits he loved best of all to sit on the windowsill outside the kitchen, and talk and joke with Tammas and the men in the yard, pretending to be uncomfortable and shy if the name of Bessie Bolstock was mentioned. And after sitting in this way for some time, he would half turn, look over his shoulder, and remark in an indifferent tone of voice to the girl inside: “Oh, good evening! I forgot you”—and then go on with his conversation. While the girl inside, her face a little pinker, her lips a little tighter, and her chin a little higher, would go about her business, pretending neither to hear nor care.