Mor and his sturdy lads from Camus, the breeder of soldiers--back
through the gap and down on the brae to the walls of Calum Dubh.
“'Illean, 'illean!” cried Calum; “lads, lads! they have us, sure enough.
Oh! pigs and thieves! squint mouths and sons of liars!”
The cry gathered up the strength of all that was left of his clan, Art
and Uileam, the Maam lads, the brothers from Drimlea and two from over
Stron hill, and they stood up together against the Carnus men--a gallant
madness! They died fast and hard, and soon but Calum and his two sons
were left fencing, till a rush of Diarmaids sent them through the door
of the house and tossed among the peats.
“Give in and your lives are your own,” said Niall Mor, wiping his sword
on his shirtsleeve, and with all that were left of his Diarmaids behind
his back.
To their feet stood the three MacKellars.
Calum looked at the folk in front of him, and had mind of other ends to
battles. “To die in a house like a rat were no great credit,” said he,
and he threw his sword on the floor, where the blades of Art and Uileam
soon joined it.
With tied arms the father and his sons were taken outside, where the air
was full of the scents of birch and gall new-washed. The glen, clearing
fast of mist, lay green and sweet for mile and mile, and far at its
mouth the fat Blaranbuie woods chuckled in the sun.
“I have you now,” said Niall Mor. “Ye ken what we seek. It's the old
ploy--the secret of the ale.”
Calum laughed in his face, and the two sons said things that cut like
knives.
“Man! I'm feared ye'll rue this,” said Niall Mor, calm enough. “Ye may
laugh, but--what would ye call a gentleman's death?”
“With the sword or the dagger in the hand, and a Diarmaid or two before
me,” cried Calum.
“Well, there might be worse ways of travelling yont--indeed there could
ill be better; but if the secret of the ale is not to be ours for the
asking, ye'll die a less well-bred death.”
“Name it, man, name it,” said Calum. “Might it be tow at the throat and
a fir-branch.”
“Troth,” said Niall Mor, “and that were too gentle a travelling. The
Scaurnoch's on our way, and the crows at the foot of it might relish a
Glen Shira carcass.”
Uileam whitened at the notion of so ugly an end, but Calum only said,
“Die we must any way,” and Art whistled a bit of a pipe-tune, grinding
his heel on the moss.
Niall Mor made to strike the father on the face, but stayed his hand and
ordered the three in-by, with a few of his corps to guard them. Up and
down Glen Shira went the Diarmaids, seeking the brewing-cave, giving hut
and home to the flame, and making black hearths and low lintels for the
women away in the sheilings. They buried their dead at Kilblaan, and,
with no secret the better, set out for Scaurnoch with Calum and his
sons.
The MacKellars were before, like a _spreidh_ of stolen cattle, and the
lot of the driven herd was theirs. They were laughed at and spat on,
and dirk-hilts and _cromags_ hammered on their shoulders, and through
Blaranbuie wood they went to the bosky elbow of Dun Corr-bhile and round
to the Dun beyond.
Calum, for all his weariness, stepped like a man with a lifetime's plans
before his mind; Art looked about him in the fashion of one with an eye
to woodcraft; Uileam slouched with a heavy foot, white at the jaw and
wild of eye.
The wood opened, the hunting-road bent about the hill-face to give a
level that the eye might catch the country spread below. Loch Finne
stretched far, from Ardno to French Foreland, a glassy field, specked
with one sail off Creaggans. When the company came to a stand, Calum
Dubh tossed his head to send the hair from his eyes, and looked at what
lay below. The Scaurnoch broke at his feet, the grey rock-face falling
to a depth so deep that weary mists still hung upon the sides, jagged
here and there by the top of a fir-tree. The sun, behind the Dun,
gave the last of her glory to the Cowal Hills; Hell's Glen filled with
wheeling mists; Ben Ime, Ben Vane, and Ben Arthur crept together and
held princely converse on the other side of the sea.
All in a daze of weariness and thinking the Diarmaids stood, and looked
and listened, and the curlews were crying bitter on the shore.
“Oh, haste ye, lads, or it's not Carnus for us to-night,” cried Niall
Mor. “We have business before us, and long's the march to follow. The
secret, black fellow!”
Calum Dubh laughed, and spat in a bravado over the edge of the rock.
“Come, fool; if we have not the word from you before the sun's off
Sithean Sluaidhe, your sleep this night is yonder,” and he pointed at
the pit below.
Calum laughed the more. “If it was hell itself,” said he, “I would not
save my soul from it.”
“Look, man, look! the Sithean Sluaidhe's getting black, and any one of
ye can save the three yet. I swear it on the cross of my knife.”
Behind the brothers, one, John-Without-Asking, stood, with a gash on his
face, eager to give them to the crows below.
A shiver came to Uileam's lips; he looked at his father with a
questioning face, and then stepped back a bit from the edge, making to
speak to the tall man of Chamis.
Calum saw the meaning, and spoke fast and thick.
“Stop, stop,” said he; “it's a trifle of a secret, after all, and to
save life ye can have it.”
Art took but a little look at his father's face, then turned round on
Shira Glen and looked on the hills where the hunting had many a time
been sweet. “Maam no more,” said he to himself; “but here's death in the
hero's style!”
“I thought you would tell it,” laughed Niall Mor. “There was never one
of your clan but had a tight grip of his little life.”
“Ay!” said Calum Dubh; “but it's _my_ secret. I had it from one who made
me swear on the holy steel to keep it; but take me to Carnus, and I'll
make you the heather-ale.”
“So be't, and----”
“But there's this in it, I can look no clansmen nor kin in the face
after telling it, so Art and Uileam must be out of the way first.”
“Death, MacKellar?”
“That same.”
Uileam shook like a leaf, and Art laughed, with his face still to Shira,
for he had guessed his father's mind.
“Faith!” said Niall Mor, “and that's an easy thing enough,” and he
nodded to John-Without-Asking.
The man made stay nor tarry. He put a hand on each son's back and
pushed them over the edge to their death below. One cry came up to the
listening Diarmaids, one cry and no more--the last gasp of a craven.
“Now we'll take you to Camus, and you'll make us the ale, the fine ale,
the cream of rich heather-ale,” said Niall Mor, putting a knife to the
thongs that tied MacKellar's arms to his side.
With a laugh and a fast leap Calum Dubh stood back on the edge of the
rock again.
“Crook-mouths, fools, pigs' sons! did ye think it?” he cried. “Come with
me and my sons and ye'll get ale, ay, and death's black wine, at the
foot of Scaurnoch.” He caught fast and firm at John-Without-Asking, and
threw himself over the rock-face. They fell as the scart dives, straight
to the dim sea of mist and pine-tip, and the Diarmaids threw themselves
on their breasts to look over. There was nothing to see of life but
the crows swinging on black feathers; there was nothing to hear but the
crows scolding.
Niall Mor put the bonnet on his head and said his first and last
friendly thing of a foe.
“Yon,” said he, “had the heart of a man!”