THE SHEEP SLAYER
The temptation came late in February, for that is famine time in the
country-side. The rabbits were alert, and it was difficult to stalk
birds successfully when the leaves were off the trees. In three days
Redpad had only picked up a starved rat and a sick pigeon, all skin
and bone, and on the fourth day he caught nothing at all. His sides
had fallen in, and his haunch bones stood out. At last he went to the
moor; but although he hunted there for a long while, he did not even
see a field-mouse. The sun had set when he returned to Knockdane, and
the stars came out, one by one, in the steely sky. It was going to
freeze. Redpad jumped a wall into a little field, where withered fern
grew more plentifully than grass, and across which the sheep
stampeded. These were the ewes with young lambs, and they wheeled into
a jostling flock at his approach. Redpad never looked at them as he
skirted the field. He was well used to sheep, but so far, in his
opinion, their only use was to foul his line for the hounds. Also,
even had he been so minded, he could scarcely pull down a lamb under
the hoofs of the dams, for collectively the old ewes were formidable.
Therefore he did not give them a second thought until he came to the
far side of the field, when a little cry in the fern made him pause
with pad upraised. He snuffed his way cautiously under the wall; and
there, sheltered by a boulder from the cold wind, lay a newly dropped
lamb. It was one of a couple, but being sickly, it had not risen and
followed the dam to the rest of the flock as its fellow did. It was
too weak to stand, and could only lie and shiver as the fox crept up.
Redpad was ravenous--starving, in fact--and far and near the
countryside was empty in the night. The old ewe was not at hand;
nothing watched him but the hungry stars overhead. He seized the lamb
by the shoulder, and it did not even bleat as he swung it over the
wall, and cantered with it to Knockdane. That night, for the first
time for many days, Redpad was full-fed, and slept soundly.
The theft might have remained undiscovered, but unluckily the sheep
belonged to Jack Skehan; and twice a day, during the lambing time, he
went along a certain path in Knockdane to visit the flock. The next
morning, when on his usual round, his dog ran on ahead, and presently
returned carrying the woolly leg of a lamb. On the path were
unmistakable traces of Redpad's last night's meal; and worst of all,
in the soft earth where he had drunk from a puddle, were the plain
prints of pads. There was no doubt who had done the deed.
Jack Skehan himself was not kindly disposed to the Hunt, and he threw
out dark hints as to his future plans. However, he had no opportunity
of carrying these into effect, for Redpad did not visit the sheep
again after his one theft. What with one thing and another, his luck
began to turn. He picked up two or three snared rabbits and other
trifles, and the press of famine was over for a time.
However, a week later, he was patrolling the fir wood at the top of
Knockdane. It was a still night, mild for the season, with a crescent
moon struggling behind a mass of little sheep-backed clouds. Presently
he heard a businesslike patter of feet on the fir needles, and
snuffing, that his nose might confirm his ears in correct fox fashion,
he winded a dog. Redpad hated dogs only one degree less than men, and
slipped quietly away into the shadows. The footsteps paused
undecidedly at the spot where he had turned aside, then passed on.
Shortly afterwards, Redpad was scaling the demesne wall, when a
distant rumble of hoofs startled him. The ground slopes away gently
from the end of the wood, over the fields, and then rises again to
meet the moor. Hence, from the wall, Redpad could look down into the
field where the sheep dwelt. He saw the whole flock--a grey mass in
the twilight--collected in a corner; and listening, it seemed to him
that he heard a shrill yelp. However, it was not repeated, and as he
winded nothing unusual, for the night air was damp and chilled the
scent, he continued his way. Night after night he went to the moor by
the same path--over the wall, and across the little field where the
sheep grazed among the stones. Here he suddenly crossed a line from
which the Fur Folk usually turn--the line of fresh blood; and among
the dwarfed gorse he found the body of a young lamb. At that moment
the sheep stampeded, and one lamb, breaking from the flock, bounded
hither and thither among the rocks with the agility of despair. As it
leaped, something small and dark sprang beside it. There was a wicked
snarl, a piteous stifled bleat, and the lamb was dragged headlong into
the furze. Redpad waited no longer, but cantered back to the wood. If
something was worrying the sheep, this was no safe place for him.
When Jack Skehan came up at eight o'clock, two lambs were missing. He
called a conclave of neighbours, and they sat in judgment upon
Redpad's real and supposed delinquencies. Jack Skehan, who was very
wrathful, purposed to put a notice to 'foxhunters and others' in the
local press, and resort to drastic measures by means of strychnine;
but the rest of the council shook their heads, for they had no wish to
banish the hounds from Knockdane. Ultimately they all went down to
consult Paddy Magragh, whose reputation for wisdom was deservedly
great where animals were concerned. Paddy was smoking in his cabin,
and after he had heard all that they had to say, he said: ''Twas a
dog, not a fox, took the lamb lasht night, I'm thinking.' And this
opinion he held to in spite of all arguments against it.
Nothing occurred that night, and the following day Paddy Magragh went
alone to the field on the hill, and searched it thoroughly. He came
upon the carcase of the lamb in the gorse, and he grinned, for he knew
the ways of the Fur Folk, and their law, better than most of the men
round Knockdane. The next day, however, there was great consternation.
Jack Skehan's flock was untouched, but Dinny Purcell had left his ewes
in a field adjoining the wood, and a young lamb lay torn and draggled
upon the grass. The remains were taken triumphantly to Paddy Magragh,
and the foxlike print of the fangs displayed; and secretly even his
conviction was shaken, although he declared stoutly that it was a dog
and not a fox that had done the deed.
With one accord it was decreed that poison should be laid down; and
Jack Skehan went to Skelagh and bought strychnine, ostensibly to
poison rats. Paddy Magragh had manfully opposed this scheme, for
besides the fact that every fox hunted from Knockdane meant ten
shillings in his pocket, he had 'stopped' the woods for twenty years,
and took more pride in his foxes than he cared to own.
'If ye'll do as I tell ye,' he declared, 'ye'll lay the mate on a bit
o' paper, an' if it's a fox, he'll never touch it at all, for he'd be
afeard o' the paper, but if it's a dog he'll ate it.'
And this was the utmost they would grant him. Indeed, if they had
believed him, he could not even have extorted this concession.
They 'doctored' some rabbit paunches with strychnine cunningly enough,
and laid them seductively in the field. It was just before dark when
they returned home, so they did not see how the magpie fluttered down
a few minutes later, and spying the bait, sidled up to it. He did not
altogether like the white paper, but he was hungry, and a paunch was a
paunch. He picked it up gingerly and carried it off, for a magpie does
not care to eat where he has killed--he is too accustomed to traps.
Even an egg is impaled on his bill and conveyed away. Luckily for this
magpie, however, it so happened that when he was flying into the wood
he accidentally let the choice morsel fall out of sight among the
trees. Therefore, although he went supperless to bed, he was fortunate
in that he roosted in the branches that night, instead of lying claws
upwards on the ground. Redpad found that paunch two days afterwards
and ate a piece; but something peculiar about the morsel--in its taste
or odour--warned him, and although he was very sick for some hours,
yet he eventually recovered.
There was great jubilation the next morning when it was found that
some of the poison had been taken; but the triumph was short-lived,
for the following night another lamb had disappeared. The next evening
Jack Skehan took his old gun and the little whippet-nosed dog who
worked for him among the sheep all day, and sat up to watch. The dog
sat beside him on a stone, and when he was not watching his master for
orders, he gazed serenely above the heads of the sheep. Nothing,
however, came, and at six o'clock, tired and chilled, Jack Skehan
went home.
The poison was still there, but Redpad, made wary by his former
experience with the rabbit paunch, passed it by, and besides, the
mysterious rustling of the white paper underneath scared him. The real
sheep slayer never touched it, for he seemed to prefer warm meat to
cold.
On the two following nights again nothing was taken; but on the third
morning news was brought that an older lamb had been killed in Jack
Skehan's flock, and that the carcase had not been removed, so Paddy
Magragh went up to the field.
'Bedam! I'll have the poison thick in every field on the farm, and put
up the wire besides,' stormed Jack Skehan. 'Is al' me sheep to be
worried on me that the gintry may hunt their dirthy foxes over me
land? I'll have ivery mother's son o' thim prosecuted.'
'Now I'll go bail,' said Paddy Magragh, who had picked up the carcase,
'that 'twas a dog had this killed.'
'An' what dog in this counthry would touch a sheep, an' they wid 'em
all day?' demanded Garry, Jack Skehan's young brother.
'Where have ye that felly o' yours shut at nights?' asked Paddy
Magragh, looking at the little narrow-headed cur who slunk at
Skehan's heel.
'Shure he slapes in the cowhouse, and I lets him out in the mornin'.
But he'd never harm a sheep--I rared him meself.'
Paddy Magragh spat discreetly. 'I'd have me cowhouse door mended, an'
the window blocked,' said he.
'Are ye sayin' that it was a dog all the while?' demanded Skehan
irately.
'I do not. Maybe 'twas a fox took one or two--the first was a little
small one, an' he sick-like. But this is a dog, shure enough.' And he
looked again at Jack Skehan's sheep-dog, who was licking his paws
thoughtfully.
'Well, I'll have the poison down again, an' that widout the paper.
Shure there's enough o' talkin'. If there's another lamb worried on
me, begob, but I'll poison every fox in Knockdane,' grumbled Jack
Skehan.
Paddy Magragh said nothing, for he was crafty, and the Knockdane foxes
were near to his heart and his pocket, but that night, after the bait
had been laid, he went to the field, and, taking the carcase of the
dead lamb, he put in enough strychnine to poison a dozen dogs or foxes
either, and left it by the gate.
'It's a bit o' a risk,' he mumbled, 'but shure, if I don't have the
right lad cot to-night, Jack Skehan is that bitther with the Hunt
he'll not lave a fox in the woods, what wid the traps an' the poison.'
That night the hunger pain hurt Redpad sorely again; and if he had
reflected upon the subject, he might have envied the squirrels, who,
during that hard March weather, eked out a living upon germinating
beechmast, or the badgers who dug up and ate the acrid tubers of the
wild arum. But the Fur Folk do not possess the faculty of comparing
their own lot with that of others. Perhaps they are all the happier
that they lack it.
It was after midnight, and the moon was not long risen, when Redpad
trotted by the gate of the field where the sheep were. He had no idea
of taking a lamb. They were all able to run well by now, and he had
too much respect for the hoofs of the old ewes to attack the entire
flock. He crept under the gate (there be those who say that a fox will
not do this, but the hedgerow rabbits whom the fox stalks know better)
and then he found the carcase of the lamb. His recent experience with
the rabbit paunch had made him wary, otherwise he might have eaten of
it, for he was very hungry; but to his sharp senses something seemed
not altogether right--perhaps the taint of human hands was still upon
the food--and he passed on. For two hours he hunted in the fields, but
the meagre results only whetted his appetite. Then he recollected the
dead lamb, and desire for one full meal overcame his caution, and he
returned to the place.
The moon, which had been obscured by sullen clouds, here brightened a
little, and he caught sight of the lamb's carcase in the fern,
gleaming in the dusk. He was hurrying up to it, when suddenly, by a
wandering night breeze, he winded dog, and at the same instant the
clouds broke entirely from the moon. Redpad stood petrified, for not
thirty yards away, his back turned and his foot on the dead lamb,
crouched Jack Skehan's tried sheep-dog. He looked up, and snarled at
the sheep who stared fearfully at him. Evidently he was devouring his
last night's kill, before attacking the flock. As Redpad watched, the
dog tore off a mouthful and swallowed it. Then he growled again, and
Redpad slunk silently away. The dog was lightly built, and smaller
than he was, but he was thin and weak, and in no condition to fight.
The Fur Folk seldom contest a kill, and besides, in Redpad's mind,
dogs were so intimately connected with men that he was by no means
certain that a man might not lurk under the wall. But as he went
there was a half-strangled, hysterical yell behind him. The dog
suddenly leaped up, and rushed madly towards the gate, as though in
his terror his first instinct was to run home. His agonised eyes,
fear-stricken, glinted white in the moonlight, and there was foam on
his jowl. Redpad took the wall in one bound, but as he sprang he heard
a dull thud, as the dog, leaping blindly in the extremity of his
frenzy, struck the top bar of the gate, and fell back struggling
convulsively.
Redpad ran as he had seldom run before, for he believed that the other
pursued him, and that the mysterious madness would be upon him too if
he were overtaken. But the hideous sounds which tore the silence of
the night behind gradually grew fainter, and before he had crossed the
demesne wall the dog lay still and stiff beside the torn lamb. There
Paddy Magragh found him at dawn, and went home chuckling; and there
also, a little later, his owner found him, and buried him secretly in
the corner of a turnip field.
For obvious reasons Jack Skehan did not publish the story of that
night abroad; but in the country round it was noticed ever after that
his lambing ewes were kept in the home-field; and also that from this
time onwards he ceased to be accompanied everywhere by his favourite
dog. Until recently, indeed, the identity of the sheep killer was only
known to three persons--to Skehan himself, who never divulged it; to
Paddy Magragh, who kept the secret faithfully, and only revealed it
long afterwards in order, on another occasion, to clear the name of
the foxes of Knockdane; and lastly to Redpad. But for a long while the
latter avoided the place; for in his memory dwelt the recollection of
that strange death which men deal to those who break the primitive law
which ordains that man is placed in dominion, not only over the beasts
who eat his bread, but over the Wild Folk of the hills and woods, and
that his dependents and possessions are sacred, and not to be harmed
with impunity.