“Black darkness came down on the wood of Creag Dubh, and there was I
lost in the middle of it, picking my way among the trees. Fir and oak
are in the wood. In the oak I could walk straight with my chin in the
air, facing anything to come; in the fir the little branches scratched
at my neck and eyes, and I had to crouch low and go carefully.
“I had been at a wedding in the farm-house of Leacann. Song and story
had been rife about the fire; but song and story ever have an end, and
there was I in the hollow of the wood after song and story were by, the
door-drink still on my palate, and I looking for my way home. It was
nut-time. I had a pouch of them in my jacket, and I cracked and ate them
as I went. Not a star pricked the sky; the dark was the dark of a pot in
a cave and a snail boiling under the lid of it. I had cracked a nut and
the kernel of it fell on the ground, so I bent and felt about my feet,
though my pouch was so full of nuts that they fell showering in the
fin dust. I swept every one with a shell aside, hunting for my cracked
fellow, and when I found him never was nut so sweet!
“Then came to me the queerest of notions, that some night before in this
same wood I had lost a nut, and the darkness was the dark of a pot in
a cave and a snail under the lid of it. And yet the time or season that
ever I cracked nuts in Creag Dubh was what I could never give name to.
“‘Where was it? When was it?’ said I to myself, bent double creeping
under the young larch with my plaid drawn up to fend my eyes, and the
black fright crept over me. An owl’s whoop would have been cheery, or
the snort of a hind--and Creag Dubh is in daytime stirring with bird
and beast--but here was I stark lonely in the heart of it, never a sound
about, far from the hunting road, and my mind back among the terrors of
a thousand years ere ever the Feinne were sung.
“In this dreamy quirk of the mind I felt I was a hunter and a man of
arms. I was searching for a something here in this ghostly wood. The
cudgel and knife of folks I could not understand were coming on me!
Fast, fast, and hard I crunched my nuts, chewing shell and meat fiercely
between my teeth to fill the skull of my head with noise and shut out
the quietness. Never a taste of what I ate, sour or sweet. But so hard
and fast I crunched that soon my store of nuts was done, and there I
was helpless with my ears open to the roaring wave of sound that we call
silence. I stood a little, and though my back grewed at the chill of the
dreadful spaces behind me, I held my breath to study the full fright
of the hour. Something was coming to me; I knew it. When this thing
happened before, when a skin was my kilt and my shanks were bare,
whatever I had to meet had met me in the round space among the
candle-wood roots. The hair on my wrists stirred, a cry came to my
throat and was over the edge of it and into the dark night like a man’s
heart scurrying craven to the door.
“Through the wood went that craven roar, the wood all its own and, a
stranger, I listened to my own voice wake up Echo far off on Ben Dearg.
“The doors of Echo shut on the only thing I knew and was half friendly
with in the Duke’s wood, and down on me again came the quietest
quietness.
“‘Be taking thy feet from here’ said I to myself, taking out my
sailor-knife and scrugging my bonnet well on my brow. And there was no
wind, not a breath, on Creag Dubh. The stars black out, the rough ground
broken to my foot, the branches scraping unfriendly, I went on through
the trees.
“When one goes up from the Leacann hunting road into the farm-lands
he comes in a while on a space among the trees, clean shorn like the
shearing of a hook but for white hay that lies there thick and rustling
in the spring of the year. ‘Black Duncan,’ said I, ‘be pulling thyself
together, gristle and bone, for here’s the fright that stirs about the
dark with fingers and claws.’ I was the first man (said my notion) who
ever set foot on the braes of Argyll, newly from Erin and Argyll thick
with ghosts; daytime or dark the woods were full of things that hate the
stranger. Under my feet the rotting dust of the fir-trees felt soft and
clogging, like the banks of new-delved graves. My back shivered again
to the feel of the space behind me; in my bonnet stirred my hair. I went
into the glade with a dry tongue rasping on the roof of my mouth.
“When the Terror came up against me, I could have laughed in my sudden
ease of mind, for here at last was something to be sure of, in a way.
And I gripped back as it gripped fast at me, feeling it hairy at the
neck and the crook of the arms--a breathing and lusty body.
“‘What have I here?’ I asked, but never an answer. At my throat went ten
clawed fingers, and there was Duncan at dismal battle, fighting for life
with what he could not see, in his own home woods, but they so strange
and never a friend to help!
“For a time I had no chance with the knife; but at last ‘Steel, my
darling!’ said I, and I struck low in the soft spaces. ‘Gloop,’ said the
knife, and Death was twisting at my feet.
“Did Duncan put hurry on his heels and fly? The hurry was not in me
but the deep heart’s wonder. My first dead thing that in life had ever
struck back held me till the morning with a girl’s enchantment I went
down on a knee in the grass and felt him, a soft lump, freezing slowly
from the heel to the knee, from the knee to the neck. Some rags of
costume were on him, a kilt of coarse plaiding and a half-shirt of skin,
soaked in sweat at the armpits and wet with blood at the end.
“I waited till the morning to see what I had. ‘This,’ said I, hunched
on a mound, ‘is all as it was before.’ The first sound I heard was the
squeal of a beast caught at the throat among the bracken, then a hind
snored among the grass. The morning walked solemn among the trees,
stopping at every step to listen; birds put their claws down and shook
themselves free of sleep and dew; a polecat slinking past me started
at my eye and went back to his hole. Began the fir-trees waving in the
wind, and then the day was open wide and far.
“In the dark I had strained my eyes to see what was at my feet till my
eyeballs creaked in their hollows, yet now I had no desire to turn
about from the cheerful dawn and look behind, but I did it with my heart
thudding.
“Nothing was there to see, lappered blood, nor mark of body on grass!
“My knife, without a stain on the steel of it, was still in my hand.
I wiped it with a tuft of bracken, and I laughed with something of a
bitterness.
“‘So!’ said I, ‘the old story, the old story! It happened me before, and
in a hundred years from now Black Duncan will be at the killing again.’”