THE WATCHERS BY NIGHT
Darkness overtook Muckle John to the south of Loch Garry in the
Macdonald country. He had travelled without halt all day, keeping to
the less frequented roads, and seeing on every side traces of the
panic that followed Culloden. In every village was the same terror
and the same frantic haste--some burying claymores with desperate
hands so that they remained only half covered--others taking to the
hills with their wives and little ones. Once a party of two hundred
or more passed him on the road making for the south-west. They wore
the look of men utterly dispirited, limping in broken ranks for all
the blithe playing of a piper at their head.
Then plunging on through the heather he put mile after mile between
him and Fort Augustus.
It was about three on the same afternoon that he pulled in his horse
very sharply and swinging about gazed back. He was not sure that he
had heard anything. It was more a premonition than anything else,
but a northerner pays close heed to such things.
Everything was very lifeless and dreary on the road he had come.
There was no sign of man or beast. With a grim look in his eyes
Muckle John continued his journey.
But about an hour later he swerved behind a ledge of rock and
cantered swiftly up the hill, keeping behind a huddle of crag for
some hundred yards. Then turning as rapidly he watched the back
trail. Several minutes passed and there was no sign of living thing.
Presently, however, something moved ever so slightly just where the
last rock towered out of the heather. A man's head rose and fell
again.
With a faint smile Muckle John continued his way. His horse was very
tired--twice it had nearly fallen through pure weariness. That it
could carry him little further he realized at once. He did not know
how many pursuers were on his track, but he put them down as Highland
caterans ready to cut a throat for a purse. In that case they would
wait till he slept, and rush upon him. It was, therefore, a matter
of life or death for him to find a place of refuge before the sun
fell.
The evening was closing in and he was so tired that he nodded as he
rode. Nowhere in that rolling desolate country could he see a house
or any trace of clachan or croft. And behind him waiting for
darkness were men as crafty and cruel as Indians and just as patient.
If not to-night then to-morrow, and he might wander over--miles of
heather for days on end.
Meanwhile the brain of Muckle John was working. The future lay open
to him like a man reading a map. He must throw them off the scent or
perish. If not to-night--to-morrow. He would never come to grips
with them--that he knew too well. It would be in his heavy sleep in
the blackness of a Highland night. It must not be thought Muckle
John was much concerned at the prospect. Those were days when life
was not held dearly, and when a soldier of fortune might be hard put
to it several times in a week. It was more the indignity of the
business that irritated him. He was not accustomed to being stalked
like a young stag. Most men gave Muckle John a wide berth.
Even as he brooded on the matter the grey horse tripped and fell. No
power on earth could have kept it on its feet. It was utterly done.
With a groan it collapsed upon its knees and rolled over on its side.
Muckle John had slipped off as it staggered and now stood above it
studying the next move. He was above all anxious to get a glimpse of
his pursuers. Loosening his sword and taking a pistol from his
great-coat pocket, he lay alongside the horse as though his leg were
securely fastened beneath it in its fall. It was an old trick, but
this was a country of few horses and worth a trial. He knew that
they would close in on him if they saw him apparently crippled and at
their mercy. Slowly the minutes passed and there was no sound, while
a mist rose from the moist bed of the valley and hung in wreaths
between the hills. Muckle John lay perfectly still, his pistol
hidden beneath the tail of his coat, one leg stretched over the
horse's flank, the other doubled up beneath him.
Near at hand a stone clinked at the burnside. It might have been a
hill fox creeping away, but Muckle John knew that a fox does not do
such things. He felt the eyes of some one upon him--but he could see
nothing, and all the time the darkness was falling swiftly and his
nerves were strained to the uttermost, waiting as he was upon his
side for the rush of perhaps a dozen men.
Up the hill he heard an owl call and at that he smiled, for he
knew--who better--that it was not the night for owls to cry Glengarry
way, and that there is a world of difference between the call of a
man and the call of an owl except to those who have never made it
their business to note such things.
It was all falling out as he had expected, and he waited quite coolly
for what was to come, foreseeing nothing of what really happened.
Indeed it all came about so swiftly and so silently that few save
Muckle John would have lived to learn another lesson in methods of
attack.
Now there was an eminence immediately above him, such a natural
frontage of rock as one sees on many a hill-side--places naturally
avoided by the wild things unless they travel up wind or come upon
them from above. Muckle John was looking upward when it happened.
He was quite aware of the danger he ran, but he was waiting for a
man's head to show itself against the sky-line just over the ledge.
Suddenly, without warning but with only a muffled scraping like small
pebbles scattered wildly, the sky was blotted out altogether, and at
that Muckle John leaped like a hare and leaped just a thousandth
fraction too late. The boulder, for that was of course what had been
launched to crush him, killed the dying horse on the instant. But it
also smashed the pistol of Muckle John and crumpled his sword like a
thin strip of tin, imprisoning the tail of his great-coat in the
ruin. It was neck or nothing now, and wrenching himself free he gave
one glance at his arms and flinging them down set off through the
trees that fringed the hill-side--running for his life. Knowing that
his pursuers were probably tired men he set the pace in the hope of
flinging them off, keeping the upper part of the hill, seldom
stumbling for all his riding-boots and the darkness, and sometimes
pausing for a breath of time to hear whether he had cast them off.
But always at the same distance behind him he caught the dull padding
of feet like wolves on the trail--tireless as deer. He made use of
every feint he knew. He doubled on his tracks, he took refuge in
places beneath crags. But always silently, patiently, utterly
undaunted they came on. He could not see them but he heard them
moving ever nearer, biding their time. There might be six or there
might be twenty--he could not tell.
A desperate plan occurred to him to carry the war into the enemy's
country--to pick off single men and throttle them noiselessly in the
heather. But there was danger in that. He was unarmed now, and some
one might give the alarm and they would overcome him in the struggle.
Stumbling on he looked about him for a river or a loch in which he
could swim to safety, or some cleft in a rock where he could hope to
meet his assailants single-handed.
But there was nothing in all that dreary maze of darkness, and with
anger and despair in his heart he settled down to a long tireless
trot, waiting to outwit them if he could.
It was about two hours later that the moon filtered thin shafts of
grey light through the scurrying clouds, and in a twinkling the
landscape showed dimly and Muckle John found himself at a narrow pass
running between two hills with a precipice of rock reaching up
hundreds of feet on either side. Then the moon disappeared and he
set off at a great pace up the rocky track, knowing that here, if at
all, there lay a way to safety. On each side was the smooth surface
of rock. There was no place to take refuge, but who could tell what
use might be made of such a place? He must have covered half a mile
at a quick pace--all the quicker because he knew that those upon his
heels, running barefoot, would be handicapped by the loose stones and
jagged edges of rock--when he came out upon the open moorland again
and on the breath of the wind he caught the smell of cattle. And at
once he saw a way.
Again the moon trailed out upon the misty sky and with eager eyes
Muckle John searched the vapour. A clump of shaggy dripping coats
huddled in a sheltered place to his right, that was all, but it
satisfied Muckle John, for very quickly, knowing that there was not a
moment to lose, he drew near to them and running amongst them, with a
great shout brought them lumbering and snorting wildly to their feet.
A vast Highland bull bellowed in the driving mist, but seeing nothing
stamped his feet and shook his horns uncertainly. Then unsheathing a
small knife, Muckle John drove the blade into a heifer beside him and
sent it at a gallop towards the pass. Running hither and thither,
but always avoiding the bull, he kept them moving, moving, until the
head of the narrow way was reached, and at that he drew back and
halted for the moon.
It came again in all serenity, streaming on to the desolate place
with a thin forlorn kind of light, making the shadow of Muckle John
look very large and the clump of cattle, some fifty of them and their
perplexed and irritated leader, look like the cattle of a dream.
The time was ripe. With a strange noise in his throat like the roar
of a stag Muckle John dropped upon his hands and made towards them on
all fours--a weird enough spectacle on a lonely moor and very
unnerving under a hazed moon. It was the last straw to the agitated
beasts packed at the head of the pass. For a moment the bull stood
his ground, but his heart failed him, being a bull barely three years
old, and losing his head he set the panic ablaze. It was
helter-skelter down the gorge and Muckle John at the back of them
with his naked knife in their flanks. Again and again his wild cry
rose and fell, faster and faster they thundered on until nothing
could have stopped them--least of all three Frasers caught just
midway like rats in a trap. What happened can never be known in its
grim detail. But the herd passed on, and the beat of their feet died
down and was swallowed up in the silent night.
And after them Muckle John, scanning the ground behind them, treading
leisurely down the moonlit pass. Suddenly he paused and shivered at
what he saw. Then walking on he paused again, and once more about
fifty yards away he bent his head, and this time he took up a flutter
of blood-stained tartan and peered at it very closely.
Presently he grinned like a dog.
"Fraser," he said, "what brings Frasers so far from Lovat at such a
time--except to carry a message at the end of a dirk? What will
Lovat say when he waits for news of the killing of Muckle John and he
waits in vain?"
He stared at the strip of tartan for a long time, and then setting it
on a ledge of rock he cut it into three equal parts.
"I doubt," he said grimly, "but there'll be a coronach playing when
the last of you comes home."
Then making his way to the head of the pass he lay down underneath
the shadow of a rock and settled himself to sleep.