by Neil M. Gunn
Angus appeared not to hear.
“There’s a legend that a lot of you fellows know Latin and Greek. Ever heard of that?”
Angus remained silent.
“Don’t you understand a joke?” Then on a more friendly tone, “Why make the idiotic suggestion that he may not be up there? To cheer me up?”
“It wasn’t an idiotic suggestion,” said Angus. “The rut is on. Last year I know that King Brude had his hinds in Glenan Forest. He was nearly shot there by Lord Starnes in the first week of October. He’ll go there this year again.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s the way a stag like him behaves. He goes back to the same place for his hinds.”
Geoffrey rode on, trying not to think of Lord Starnes, trying to banish the appalling vision of that plutocratic gentleman shooting King Brude, shooting the stag that was his, Geoffrey Smith’s, and no one else’s on earth. His eyes gleamed vindictively, his mouth closed.
The first climb was not too difficult, and with a fair wind against them, no great precautions had to be taken. Geoffrey rested occasionally, rubbing a spot in his right side each time. His kneecap, too, felt the strain and had a deceitful tendency to go numb. But he refused to let Angus go on alone, and after an hour’s hard work they came to their first vantage point, where broken ground made spying easy.
It was not a corrie but a valley through the hills, a high broad pass, and it lay in the forenoon sunlight very still and silent. Geoffrey got his excitement, however, not from so immaterial a thing as a sense of beauty, but from the reality of red deer that his naked eyes picked out here and there. The sight of them flushed all his flesh, banished pain and tiredness. Not three hundred yards away, some hinds were feeding up wind. A stag, too; a nine pointer, and a heavy beast; and one or two more stags, youngsters, on the outskirts. Feeding quietly, moving forward a step or two, cropping the tender shoots, unsuspiciously, with quiet grace. Occasionally a head lifted and took the air with such extreme sensitiveness that it stopped one’s breath. Then his eyes picked out quite a small herd on the opposite side that he had completely missed. The place was alive with them! Positively swarming! He gulped and looked at Angus spying so concentratedly, slowly, and felt impatient to get the telescope for himself.
“Anything doing?” he whispered.
Angus paid no attention until he had finished; then he very slowly slid back.
“There’s one really fine beast over there,” he said.
“With that lot of hinds?”
“Yes.” Angus was slightly excited. The hunt did this to him, tended to make him forget personal vanities and insults, for coming up the hill he had vowed that he was not going to do much for this particular sort of gentleman if he could help it. And he knew the ways by which a cunning stalker can invisibly defeat the consummation of an impeccable stalk.
“Is it King Brude?”
“No,” said Angus. “King Brude is not there. I don’t know this beast. An imperial—thirteen points.”
“An imperial!” Geoffrey got hold of the telescope and picked up the stag. He spied for a long time. Then he slid back and nodded. “Cupped antlers.”
“Double cups.”
Geoffrey stirred restlessly. Angus said nothing, aware of the internal struggle. Geoffrey began to question him on the chances of this stalk. Angus explained how it was impossible to get at him where he was, but how in course of time, the hinds should reach a certain spot, where approach would be feasible. They would feed on. They might lie down—almost certainly would. It meant a wide detour to come in on them because of the nature of the high ground on the other side. But it should be possible. They might have to give their day to it.
“You think we’d get him?”
“There’s a good chance.”
The talk went on for some time, covering all possibilities of the disturbance of these deer, of other deer, all the endless tactics and strategy of the forest.
“What do you think?” Geoffrey asked.
“There is no doubt that that is the stalk we should do.”
And there was just no doubt about it. A bellow came up from the pass. Geoffrey got the spy-glass trained again. The imperial was chasing away a young stag that had dared come too near the hinds. While he was engaged on this task, another young fellow amorously adventured his presence on the other side of the hinds. The imperial, turning back, saw him, and, with a short bellow, charged. The young six-pointer was properly nimble, however. The old sultan was giving definition to his harem! A heavy, dark-skinned beast, with what would surely be the outstanding head of the season.
Geoffrey snapped shut the telescope. “If we find nothing in the higher corries, we might get him in the evening. We’ll go on.” His face was slightly congested. Angus said nothing, but about his eyes came an expression of dry sarcasm. Stags had not yet developed the obliging habit of waiting for anyone.
They had to descend again, and work round below the level of the pass on the west side, where the ground sloped steeply. Twice they were troubled by deer, and had to do one long wriggle up a scree that Geoffrey found very tiring. Angus was insistent that they take no chances of disturbing deer higher up. Geoffrey saw the point, but more than once deemed Angus’s care excessive. He knew quite well that Angus could take it out of him if he liked. And he was troubled by the consciousness that he should, as a sportsman, have gone for the imperial. There were other rifles in the forest; others who must take similar chances when they came their way.
Angus went on and waited for him, went on and waited, tireless, brown, tough as heather, his large mouth open often and wet, his eyes dark blue and gleaming.
Geoffrey followed grimly, pausing now and then, but never for long. For an hour they did not speak.
“That’s the spot,” said Angus pointing upward to the edge of a hollow against the sky. “From that knob, that lump, we’ll see into the corrie. If you like, I could go up alone and see if he’s in it. If he’s not, then there’s nothing for it but Coireard, and you would be saved the climb here.”
Geoffrey stood gazing up. “I’ll go with you,” he said.
He doesn’t trust me! Angus thought. He smiled to himself, with a leftward twist of his mouth. For he knew it was not altogether distrust. It was the man’s keenness also, a keenness that surmounted bodily infirmity, that would surmount anything short of utter prostration. And Angus understood that and liked it. He could trust no one. He must be there himself!
All right, let the devil climb for it!
“Here, not so damned quick!” cried Geoffrey in a fierce half-whisper.
“Sorry,” muttered Angus, waiting.
“Blast it, can’t you see I’m not quite fit?”
Angus saw nothing for a moment but a blinding anger. It passed, leaving the usual moody trace, which also tended to fade out as they finally spied into the corrie, and their voices, in husky whispers, discussed the prospect. There were no less than two heads which any sportsman might be proud of; one in particular with a fine spread and long tines, including both bays—an extremely attractive, an unusual, head, the beast himself being, unlike the imperial, of a deep golden colour. He was far out on the off side. It would again be a longish stalk, but a better chance than in the case of the imperial. Geoffrey snapped shut the glass.
“Come on!” he said. “The High Corrie.”
Angus laughed inwardly. He didn’t care a tinker’s curse now whether the fellow got a stag or not!
The pony-man in the distance was keeping abreast of them. He was an old hand, inured to the hill, but attached to his ancient patch of a croft. It was long past lunch-time.
“We’ll see into the High Corrie first,” said Geoffrey.
Angus signalled. Not that it mattered whether Lachlan saw him or not. That wise old gillie would have his own “piece” at his own time!
The going now became heavy and complicated. The telescope was often in use. And once they had to go through the whole art of a difficult stalk
to get above some beasts that, disturbed too soon, might easily head for the High Corrie and raise the alarm. As they were on the lee side of Benuain, the wind was occasionally fluky. The deer, apprehending no danger from above, more particularly as the wind came down from the heights, were naturally on the alert to danger approaching from below and up wind. Geoffrey and Angus had to keep high, and often projecting rock faces called for careful and exhausting movements, while what should have been fairly easy going on smooth, if steep, slopes, provided the most anxious moments of all from lack of cover. Once, when they seemed completely caught out, Angus proved his skill by rousing some stragglers in the way to a point just beyond curiosity. The deer looked, and looked, and finally, becoming suspicious, moved off along the side of the hill, while Angus made Geoffrey continue to lie low. Not that any compulsion was needed, for Geoffrey was aware within himself that his strength was going.
But he made no complaint, and when at long last he drew up beside Angus, amongst great boulders on a shoulder below the weathered peak of Benuain, he lay flat on his stomach, his brow on his wrists. Drawing out the cylinders of his telescope, Angus heard the heavy laboured breathing. But he had reached Coireard, the High Corrie!
Angus pulled himself forward a yard or two and inspected the corrie. It was a wide corrie but not very extensive. His astonishment was complete when he saw that, except for one immature stag on the off side, it was empty. There was no need to put the glass on it. Automatically he lifted the telescope to his eye and searched the far shoulder. Completely deserted. He had a look at the young stag. One of the antlers was undergrown and had a deformed twist. The brute had got injured some time and was keeping by himself.
“Well?” came the harsh whisper.
Angus had forgotten his gentleman. He now slid back and shook his head. “Nothing.”
Geoffrey’s eyes pierced into him as if accusing him of some malign trick. It was a brutal fleshy attack. But Angus understood that it really came from the inner places of defeat and desperation, and was automatic and ugly, but not really personal.
“Look for yourself,” said Angus, and handed him the glass. “There’s just one small stag.”
After Geoffrey had spied for a long time, he was about to get up, when Angus stopped him. “Let me have one more look, please.”
“What’s the damned good of looking?” asked Geoffrey in his normal voice.
Angus, his brows drawn, instantly hushed him to silence and, ignoring his expression, picked up the young stag again. The thought that this young stag might be a toady attendant on the great had occurred to him, not an unusual relationship amongst deer. Yard by careful yard around the young stag, he searched out the ground. Just beyond the stag there were some shallow folds in the ground and tufts of old rank heather, though for the most part the real heather belt was now below them. Growing out of one of these tufts were what looked like the bare branches of a stunted shrub. He concentrated on them: two branches that curved in towards each other, the two final long spikes of each branch “blown” towards the other two. The span, the grace, the Highland arch. O god of Benuain! The glass shook the vision out of focus.
Should he tell him? He tried to steady the glass, but his hands were trembling. There was no need to tell him. No need. He did not deserve it. God damn him, he did not deserve it. A deep potent instinct moved in Angus, darkened by something of fear and myth, of a justice, a rightness, beyond the standards of the world. For this was the spirit of his forest, its incarnation, its reality, its legend, its living truth. For this man—this man—to shoot.
He shut the glass and slid towards Geoffrey, who had turned over on his left side and closed his eyes. But the mouth was deliberately shut and breath came through the nostrils. Their way back was below them. They would simply get up and go, and this man would never know.
Angus sat upright, looked at the grey face, the intolerance of the drawn lips, the material force of the rounded head, the fleshy dominance, and looked away from it across that northern world of moor and hill. The sun was warm and cast shadows. Far as the eye could travel there were mountain ridges, in dark browns, in misty blues, and in the hollows of ultimate ridges stood back the shadowy cones of ultimate peaks. Nothing moved over these vast solitudes, nothing stirred out of that warm timeless sleep.
“Well?”
Angus half-turned but did not look at him. “He’s there,” he said on a quiet undertone.
Geoffrey’s body swung slowly upward until he was supporting it with his palms.
“Who?” His whisper was harsh.
“King Brude,” said Angus.
For several seconds there was complete immobility, utter silence. Then Geoffrey scrambled into forceful life and demanded of Angus what he thought he was trying to do.
“I was merely thinking”, lied Angus calmly, “of the best way of getting at him.”
Geoffrey regarded him with the mistrust naturally born out of lack of understanding. Angus fixed the telescope and handed it to Geoffrey. “Come here.”
It took Geoffrey a long time to pick up the antlers, but at last he did. And then he, too, grew quiet. For in his excitement, he could not speak. He plucked a blade of hill grass, gnawed at it, spat it out, and asked, “What do you suggest?”
“It’s difficult,” said Angus. “We cannot get near enough from this side. And we can’t come in from anywhere beyond, because of the wind. The only approach would be across wind from directly behind and above him. And we can’t do that because right round that off side is a face of rock. If we went beyond the rock, farther round, then the wind might carry our scent over the shoulder and down into the corrie.”
Geoffrey nodded, his brows knitted. “You think we should wait here till he gets up?”
“There doesn’t seem to be much else. When he gets up he’ll begin feeding. If he comes this way, we’re in a perfect place, and the chances are he will, because it is now the afternoon and he will tend to feed down to the lower ground.” He spoke evenly. “But he might go on up the corrie, across the ridge, and down into the main glen beyond, or perhaps out over the march, for Glenan lies in that direction—though there’s no signs on him yet, for the high-hill stag is always a bit later. If he goes that way, we’re in the wrong place. I doubt if we could come round on him in time. Though we might.”
Geoffrey was thoughtful, the domineering quality in him quite gone. “Are you sure there’s no way up behind?”
“Up the rock? I have never done it.”
“Has anyone?”
“Alick has done it.”
Geoffrey looked at him, but Angus did not meet the look.
“Shouldn’t we at least see if we can do it?”
“Whatever you say,” said Angus.
Geoffrey’s look grew sharper. “Angus! What do you mean exactly?”
“It’s whatever you say,” replied Angus without stress. “He may get up at any time to feed.”
“You think we should stay here?” Geoffrey was watching him.
“Yes.”
Geoffrey had seen a dour mood at work in Angus before, generally after there had been some too direct expression of opinion on his own part. He could be touchy, but usually got over it before very long, and in the heat of the actual hunt itself there had always been a natural unanimity between them, for he recognised in Angus a hunter as keen as himself. He could never wish for a better stalker, would never want a better, and any temporary differences were to Geoffrey afterwards, when he had won through, a matter for humorous reflection. That a stalker should be independent and express himself in full at moments of stress was “in character”, was in the forest tradition. But now there was a mysterious something extra in Angus’s mood that Geoffrey could not fathom and that, by force of his own nature, he must mistrust.
“I should like to see this place that Alick can climb and you and I can’t.”
“Very good, sir.” Angus put the telescope in its leather case and slung it round his back. Without looking at Geoffrey
, he picked up the rifle and started off.
He went carefully, giving Geoffrey plenty of time. His manner was quiet and efficient. He had every consideration for his gentleman. He brought him across rough ground below the corrie and then on to smooth ground that sloped so steeply that they had to grip the hillside with a hand. Geoffrey found this side-walking very tiring to his knee. The general body weakness he put down to lack of food. When at last Angus brought him under the long curving terrace of rock, all his muscles were tremulous and his brow cold.
He saw that the place to which Angus pointed was the only way up. It seemed to Geoffrey simple enough and he said so. Couldn’t be more than fifteen feet high, wasn’t perpendicular, and had obvious projections and fissures for hands and feet.
Angus nodded. “Very good, sir,” he said. “Would you like a couple of minutes’ rest first? I could try it.”
He spoke so simply, in undertones, that Geoffrey experienced a slight pang of remorse, and he glanced at Angus with that perceptible goggle of the eyes that implied a chuckle was not far away, if need be. But Angus was apparently still a little on his high horse. So “You sit down for a minute, too. You need it,” he said, with consideration.
Angus shook his head and went up the few yards to the foot of the climb and began examining it. As Geoffrey joined him, he asked who should go first.