Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
BOB, SON OF BATTLE
By Alfred Ollivant
CONTENTS
PART I THE COMING OF THE TAILLESS TYKE
Chapter I. The Gray Dog
Chapter II. A Son of Hagar
Chapter III. Red Wull
Chapter IV. First Blood
PART II THE LITTLE MAN
Chapter V. A Man's Son
Chapter VI. A Licking or a Lie
Chapter VII. The White Winter
Chapter VIII. M'Adam and His Coat
PART III THE SHEPHERDS' TROPHY
Chapter IX. Rivals,
Chapter X. Red Wull Wins
Chapter XI. Oor Bob,
Chapter XII. How Red Wull Held the Bridge
Chapter XIII. The Face in the Frame
PART IV THE BLACK KILLER
Chapter XIV. A Mad Man
Chapter XV. Death on the Marches,
Chapter XVI. The Black Killer
Chapter XVII. A Mad Dog
Chapter XVIII. How the Killer was Singed
Chapter XIX. Lad and Lass
Chapter XX. The Snapping of the String
Chapter XXI. Horror of Darkness
PART V OWD BOB O' KENMUIR
Chapter XXII. A Man and a Maid
Chapter XXIII. Th' Owd Un
Chapter XXIV. A Shot in the Night
Chapter XXV. The Shepherds' Trophy.
PART VI THE BLACK KILLER
Chapter XXVI. Red-handed
Chapter XXVII. For the Defence
Chapter XXVIII. The Devil's Bowl
Chapter XXIX. The Devil's Bowl
Chapter XXX. The Tailless Tyke at Bay
Postscript
PART I THE COMING OF THE TAILLESS TYKE
Chapter I. THE GRAY DOG
THE sun stared brazenly down on a gray farmhouse lying, long and low
in the shadow of the Muir Pike; on the ruins of peel-tower and barmkyn,
relics of the time of raids, it looked; on ranges of whitewashed
outbuildings; on a goodly array of dark-thatched ricks.
In the stack-yard, behind the lengthy range of stables, two men were
thatching. One lay sprawling on the crest of the rick, the other stood
perched on a ladder at a lower level.
The latter, small, old, with shrewd nut-brown countenance, was Tammas
Thornton, who had served the Moores of Kenmuir for more than half a
century. The other, on top of the stack, wrapped apparently in gloomy
meditation, was Sam'l Todd. A solid Dales--man, he, with huge hands and
hairy arms; about his face an uncomely aureole of stiff, red hair; and
on his features, deep-seated, an expression of resolute melancholy.
“Ay, the Gray Dogs, bless 'em!” the old man was saying. “Yo' canna beat
'em not nohow. Known 'em ony time this sixty year, I have, and niver
knew a bad un yet. Not as I say, mind ye, as any on 'em cooms up to Rex
son o' Rally. Ah, he was a one, was Rex! We's never won Cup since his
day.”
“Nor niver shall agin, yo' may depend,” said the other gloomily.
Tammas clucked irritably.
“G'long, Sam'! Todd!” he cried, “Yo' niver happy onless yo' making'
yo'self miser'ble. I niver see sich a chap. Niver win agin? Why, oor
young Bob he'll mak' a right un, I tell yo', and I should know. Not as
what he'll touch Rex son o' Rally, mark ye! I'm niver saying' so, Sam'l
Todd. Ah, he was a one, was Rex! I could tell yo' a tale or two o' Rex.
I mind me hoo--”
The big man interposed hurriedly.
“I've heard it afore, Tammas, I welly 'ave,” he said.
Tammas paused and looked angrily up.
“Yo've heard it afore, have yo', Sam'l Todd?” he asked sharply. “And
what have yo' heard afore?”
“Yo' stories, owd lad--yo' stories o' Rex son o' Rally.”
“Which on' em
“All on 'em, Tammas, all on 'em--mony a time. I'm fair sick on 'em,
Tammas, I welly am,” he pleaded.
The old man gasped. He brought down his mallet with a vicious smack.
“I'll niver tell yo' a tale agin, Sam'l Todd, not if yo' was to go on
yo' bended knees for't. Nay; it bain't no manner o' use talkin'. Niver
agin, says I.”
“I niver askt yo',” declared honest Sam'l.
“Nor it wouldna ha' bin no manner o' use if yo' had,” said the other
viciously. “I'll niver tell yo' a tale agin if I was to live to be a
hunderd.”
“Yo'll not live to be a hunderd, Tammas Thornton, nor near it,” said
Sam'l brutally.
“I'll live as long as some, I warrant,” the old man replied with spirit.
“I'll live to see Cup back i' Kenmuir, as I said afore.”
“If yo' do,” the other declared with emphasis, “Sam'l Todd niver spake a
true word. Nay, nay, lad; yo're owd, yo're wambly, your time's near run
or I'm the more mistook.”
“For mussy's sake hold yo' tongue, Sam'l Todd! It's clack-clack all
day--” The old man broke off suddenly, and buckled to his work with
suspicious vigor. “Mak' a show yo' bin workin', lad,” he whispered.
“Here's Master and oor Bob.”
As he spoke, a tall gaitered man with weather-beaten face, strong, lean,
austere, and the blue-gray eyes of the hill-country, came striding into
the yard. And trotting soberly at his heels, with the gravest, saddest
eyes ever you saw, a sheep-dog puppy.
A rare dark gray he was, his long coat, dashed here and there with
lighter touches, like a stormy sea moonlit. Upon his chest an escutcheon
of purest white, and the dome of his head showered, as it were, with
a sprinkling of snow. Perfectly compact, utterly lithe, inimitably
graceful with his airy-fairy action; a gentleman every inch, you could
not help but stare at him--Owd Bob o' Kenmuir.
At the foot of the ladder the two stopped. And the young dog, placing
his forepaws on a lower rung, looked up, slowly waving his silvery
brush.
“A proper Gray Dog!” mused Tammas, gazing down into the dark face
beneath him. “Small, yet big; light to get about on backs o' his sheep,
yet not too light. Wi' a coat hard a-top to keep oot Daleland weather,
soft as sealskin beneath. And wi' them sorrerful eyes on him as niver
goes but wi' a good un. Amaist he minds me o' Rex son o' Rally.”
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” groaned Sam'l. But the old man heard him not.
“Did 'Enry Farewether tell yo' hoo he acted this mornin', Master?” he
inquired, addressing the man at the foot of the ladder.
“Nay,” said the other, his stern eyes lighting.
“Why, 'twas this way, it seems,” Tammas continued. “Young bull gets
'isseif loose, somegate and marches oot into yard, o'erturns milkpail,
and prods owd pigs i' ribs. And as he stands lookin' about un, thinking'
what he shall be up to next, oor Bob sees un 'An' what yo' doin' here,
Mr. Bull?' he seems to say, cockin' his ears and trottin' up gay-like.
Wi' that bull bloats fit to bust 'isseif, lashes wi's tail, waggles his
head, and gets agate o' chargin' 'im. But Bob leaps oot o' way, quick
as lightnin' yet cool as butter, and when he's done his foolin drives un
back agin.”
“Who seed all this?” interposed Sam'l, sceptically.
“'Enry Farewether from the loft. So there, Fat'ead!” Tammas replied, and
continued his tale. “So they goes on; bull chargin' and Bob drivin'
un back and back, hoppin' in and oot agin, quiet as a cowcumber, yet
determined. At last Mr. Bull sees it's no manner o' use that gate, so he
turns, rares up, and tries to jump wall. Nary a bit. Young dog jumps
in on un and nips him by tail. Wi' that, bull tumbles down in a hurry,
turns wi' a kind o' groan, and marches back into stall, Bob after un.
And then, dang me!”--the old man beat the ladder as he loosed off this
last titbit,--“if he doesna sit' isseif i' door like a sentrynel till
'Enry Farewether coom up. Hoo's that for a tyke not yet a year?”
Even Sam'l Todd was moved by the tale.
“Well done, oor Bob!” he cried.
“Good, lad!” said the Master, laying a hand on the dark head at his
knee.
“Yo' may well say that,” cried Tammas in a kind of ecstasy. “A proper
Gray Dog, I tell yo'. Wi' the brains of a man and the way of a woman.
Ah, yo' canna beat 'em nohow, the Gray Dogs o' Kenmuir!”
The patter of cheery feet rang out on the plank-bridge over the stream
below them. Tammas glanced round.
“Here's David,” he said. “Late this mornin' he be.”
A fair-haired boy came spurring up the slope, his face all aglow with
the speed of his running. Straightway the young dog dashed off to
meet him with a fiery speed his sober gait belied. The two raced back
together into the yard.
“Poor lad!” said Sam'l gloomily, regarding the newcomer.
“Poor heart!” muttered Tammas. While the Master's face softened visibly.
Yet there looked little to pity in this jolly, rocking lad with the
tousle of light hair and fresh, rosy countenance.
“G'mornin', Mister Moore! Morn'n, Tammas! Morn'n, Sam'l!” he panted as
he passed; and ran on through the hay-carpeted yard, round the corner of
the stable, and into the house.
In the kitchen, a long room with red-tiled floor and latticed windows,
a woman, white-aproned and frail-faced, was bustling about her morning
business. To her skirts clung a sturdy, bare-legged boy; while at
the oak table in the centre of the room a girl with brown eyes and
straggling hair was seated before a basin of bread and milk.
“So yo've coom at last, David!” the woman cried, as the boy entered;
and, bending, greeted him with a tender, motherly salutation, which he
returned as affectionately. “I welly thowt yo'd forgot us this mornin'.
Noo sit you' doon beside oor Maggie.” And soon he, too, was engaged in a
task twin to the girl's.
The two children munched away in silence, the little bare-legged boy
watching them, the while, critically. Irritated by this prolonged stare,
David at length turned on him.
“Weel, little Andrew,” he said, speaking in that paternal fashion in
which one small boy loves to address another. “Weel, ma little lad,
yo'm coomin' along gradely.” He leant back in his chair the better to
criticise his subject. But Andrew, like all the Moores, slow of speech,
preserved a stolid silence, sucking a chubby thumb, and regarding his
patron a thought cynically.
David resented the expression on the boy's countenance, and half rose to
his feet.
“Yo' put another face on yo', Andrew Moore,” he cried threateningly, “or
I'll put it for yo'.”
Maggie, however, interposed opportunely.
“Did yo' feyther beat yo' last night?” she inquired in a low voice; and
there was a shade of anxiety in the soft brown eyes.
“Nay,” the boy answered; “he was a-goin' to, but he never did. Drunk,”
he added in explanation.
“What was he goin' to beat yo' for, David?” asked Mrs. Moore.
“What for? Why, for the fun o't--to see me squiggle,” the boy replied,
and laughed bitterly.
“Yo' shouldna speak so o' your dad, David,” reproved the other as
severely as was in her nature.
“Dad! a fine dad! I'd dad him an I'd the chance,” the boy muttered
beneath his breath. Then, to turn the conversation:
“Us should be startin', Maggie,” he said, and going to the door. “Bob!
Owd Bob, lad! Ar't coomin' along?” he called.
The gray dog came springing up like an antelope, and the three started
off for school together.
Mrs. Moore stood in the doorway, holding Andrew by the hand, and watched
the departing trio.
“'Tis a pretty pair, Master, surely,” she said softly to her husband,
who came up at the moment.
“Ay, he'll be a fine lad if his fether'll let him,” the tall man
answered.
“Tis a shame Mr. M'Adam should lead him such a life,” the woman
continued indignantly. She laid a hand on her husband's arm, and looked
up at him coaxingly.
“Could yo' not say summat to un, Master, think 'ee? Happen he'd 'tend
to you,” she pleaded. For Mrs. Moore imagined that there could be no one
but would gladly heed what James Moore, Master of Kenmuir, might say
to him. “He's not a bad un at bottom, I do believe,” she continued. “He
never took on so till his missus died. Eh, but he was main fond o' her.”
Her husband shook his head “Nay, mother,” he said “'Twould nob' but
mak' it worse for t' lad. M'Adam'd listen to no one, let alone me.” And,
indeed, he was right; for the tenant of the Grange made no secret of his
animosity for his straight-going, straight-speaking neighbor.
* * * * *
Owd Bob, in the mean time, had escorted the children to the larch-copse
bordering on the lane which leads to the village. Now he crept
stealthily back to the yard, and established himself behind the
water-butt.
How he played and how he laughed; how he teased old Whitecap till that
gray gander all but expired of apoplexy and impotence; how he ran the
roan bull-calf, and aroused the bitter wrath of a portly sow, mother of
many, is of no account.
At last, in the midst of his merry mischief-making, a stern voice
arrested him.
“Bob, lad, I see 'tis time we larned you yo' letters.”
So the business of life began for that dog of whom the simple
farmer-folk of the Daleland still love to talk,--Bob, son of Battle,
last of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.
Chapter II. A SON OF HAGAR
It is a lonely country, that about the Wastrel-dale.
Parson Leggy Hornbut will tell you that his is the smallest church in
the biggest parish north of the Derwent, and that his cure numbers more
square miles than parishioners. Of fells and ghylls it consists, of
becks and lakes; with here a scattered hamlet and there a solitary hill
sheep-farm. It is a country in which sheep are paramount; and every
other Dalesman is engaged in that profession which is as old as Abel.
And the talk of the men of the land is of wethers and gimmers, of
tup-hoggs, ewe tegs in wool, and other things which are but fearsome
names to you and me; and always of the doings or misdoings, the
intelligence or stupidity, of their adjutants, the sheep-dogs.
Of all the Daleland, the country from the Black Water to Grammoch Pike
is the wildest. Above the tiny stone-built village of Wastrel-dale the
Muir Pike nods its massive head. Westward, the desolate Mere Marches,
from which the Sylvesters' great estate derives its name, reach away in
mile on mile of sheep infested, wind-swept moorland. On the far side of
the Marches is that twin dale where flows the gentle Silver Lea. And it
is there in the paddocks at the back of the Dalesman's Daughter, that,
in the late summer months, the famous sheep-dog Trials of the North are
held. There that the battle for the Dale Cup, the world-known Shepherds'
Trophy, is fought out.
Past the little inn leads the turnpike road to the market-centre of the
district--Grammoch-town. At the bottom of the paddocks at the back of
the inn winds the Silver Lea. Just there a plank bridge crosses the
stream, and, beyond, the Murk Muir Pass crawls up the sheer side of the
Scaur on to the Mere Marches.
At the head of the Pass, before it debouches on to those lonely
sheep-walks which divide the two dales, is that hollow, shuddering with
gloomy possibilities, aptly called the Devil's Bowl. In its centre the
Lone Tarn, weirdly suggestive pool, lifts its still face to the sky. It
was beside that black, frozen water, across whose cold surface the storm
was swirling in white snow-wraiths, that, many, many years ago (not in
this century), old Andrew Moore came upon the mother of the Gray Dogs of
Kenmuir.
In the North, every one who has heard of the Muir Pike--and who has
not?--has heard of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir, every one who has heard
of the Shepherd's Trophy--and who has not?--knows their fame. In that
country of good dogs and jealous masters the pride of place has long
been held unchallenged. Whatever line may claim to follow the Gray Dogs
always lead the van. And there is a saying in the land: “Faithfu' as the
Moores and their tykes.”
* * * * *
On the top dresser to the right of the fireplace in the kitchen
of Kenmuir lies the family Bible. At the end you will find a loose
sheet--the pedigree of the Gray Dogs; at the beginning, pasted on the
inside, an almost similar sheet, long since yellow with age--the family
register of the Moores of Kenmuir.
Running your eye down the loose leaf, once, twice, and again it will be
caught by a small red cross beneath a name, and under the cross the one
word “Cup.” Lastly, opposite the name of Rex son of Rally, are two of
those proud, tell-tale marks. The cup referred to is the renowned Dale
Cup--Champion Challenge Dale Cup, open to the world. Had Rex won it but
once again the Shepherds' Trophy, which many men have lived to win, and
died still striving after, would have come to rest forever in the little
gray house below the Pike.
It was not to be, however. Comparing the two sheets, you read beneath
the dog's name a date and a pathetic legend; and on the other sheet,
written in his son's boyish hand, beneath the name of Andrew Moore the
same date and the same legend.
From that day James Moore, then but a boy, was master of Kenmuir.
So past Grip and Rex and Rally, and a hundred others, until at the foot
of the page you come to that last name--Bob, son of Battle.
* * * * *
From the very first the young dog took to his work in a manner to
amaze even James Moore. For a while he watched his mother, Meg, at her
business, and with that seemed to have mastered the essentials of sheep
tactics.
Rarely had such fiery élan been seen on the sides of the Pike; and with
it the young dog combined a strange sobriety, an admirable patience,
that justified, indeed, the epithet. “Owd.” Silent he worked, and
resolute; and even in those days had that famous trick of coaxing the
sheep to do his wishes;--blending, in short, as Tammas put it, the
brains of a man with the way of a woman.
Parson Leggy, who was reckoned the best judge of a sheep or sheep-dog
'twixt Tyne and Tweed, summed him up in the one word “Genius.” And James
Moore himself, cautious man, was more than pleased.
In the village, the Dalesmen, who took a personal pride in the Gray Dogs
of Kenmuir, began to nod sage heads when “oor” Bob was mentioned. Jim
Mason, the postman, whose word went as far with the villagers as Parson
Leggy's with the gentry, reckoned he'd never seen a young un as so took
his fancy.
That winter it grew quite the recognized thing, when they had gathered
of a night round the fire in the Sylvester Arms, with Tammas in the
centre, old Jonas Maddox on his right, Rob Saunderson of the Holt on the
left, and the others radiating away toward the sides, for some one to
begin with:
“Well, and what o' oor Bob, Mr. Thornton?”
To which Tammas would always make reply:
“Oh, yo' ask Sam'l there. He'll tell yo' better'n me, “--and would
forthwith plunge, himself, into a yarn.
And the way in which, as the story proceeded, Tupper of Swinsthwaite
winked at Ned Hoppin of Fellsgarth, and Long Kirby, the smith, poked Jem
Burton, the publican, in the ribs, and Sexton Ross said, “Ma word, lad!”
spoke more eloquently than many words.
One man only never joined in the chorus of admiration. Sitting always
alone in the background, little M'Adam would listen with an incredulous
grin on his sallow face.
“Oh, ma certes! The devil's in the dog! It's no cannie ava!” he would
continually exclaim, as Tammas told his tale.
* * * * *
In the Daleland you rarely see a stranger's face. Wandering in the wild
country about the twin dales at the time of this story, you might have
met Parson Leggy, striding along with a couple of varmint terriers at
his heels, and young Cyril Gilbraith, whom he was teaching to tie flies
and fear God, beside him; or Jim Mason, postman by profession, poacher
by predilection, honest man and sportsman by nature, hurrying along with
the mail-bags on his shoulder, a rabbit in his pocket, and the faithful
Betsy a yard behind. Besides these you might have hit upon a quiet
shepherd and a wise-faced dog; Squire Sylvester, going his rounds upon
a sturdy cob; or, had you been lucky, sweet Lady Eleanour bent upon some
errand of mercy to one of the many tenants.
It was while the Squire's lady was driving through the village on a
visit* to Tammas's slobbering grandson--it was shortly after Billy
Thornton's advent into the world--that little M'Adam, standing in the
door of the Sylvester Arms, with a twig in his mouth and a sneer fading
from his lips, made his ever-memorable remark:
“Sall!” he said, speaking in low, earnest voice; “'tis a muckle wumman.”
Note:* It was this visit which figured in the Grammoch-town
_Argus_ (local and radical) under the heading of “Alleged
Wholesale Corruption by Tory Agents.” And that is why, on
the following market day, Herbert Trotter, journalist,
erstwhile gentleman, and Secretary of the Dale Trials, found
himself trying to swim in the public horse-trough.
“What? What be sayin', mon?” cried old Jonas, startled out of his usual
apathy.
M'Adam turned sharply on the old man.
“I said the wumman wears a muckle hat!” he snapped.
Blotted out as it was, the observation still remains--a tribute of
honest admiration. Doubtless the Recording Angel did not pass it by.
That one statement anent the gentle lady of the manor is the only
personal remark ever credited to little M'Adam not born of malice and
all uncharitableness. And that is why it is ever memorable.
The little Scotsman with the sardonic face had been the tenant of the
Grange these many years; yet he had never grown acclimatized to the
land of the Southron. With his shrivelled body and weakly legs he looked
among the sturdy, straight-limbed sons of the hill-country like some
brown, wrinkled leaf holding its place midst a galaxy of green. And as
he differed from them physically, so he did morally.
He neither understood them nor attempted to. The North-country character
was an unsolved mystery to him, and that after ten years' study.
“One-half o' what ye say they doot, and they let ye see it; t'ither half
they disbelieve, and they tell ye so,” he once said. And that explained
his attitude toward them, and consequently theirs toward him.
He stood entirely alone; a son of Hagar, mocking. His sharp, ill tongue
was rarely still, and always bitter. There was hardly a man in the land,
from Langholm How to the market-cross in Grammoch-town, but had at
one time known its sting, endured it in silence--for they are slow of
speech, these men of the fells and meres--and was nursing his resentment
till a day should bring that chance which always comes. And when at
the Sylvester Arms, on one of those rare occasions when M'Adam was not
present, Tammas summed up the little man in that historic phrase of his,
“When he's drunk he's wi'lent, and when he bain't he's wicious,” there
was an applause to gratify the blasé heart of even Tammas Thornton.
Yet it had not been till his wife's death that the little man had
allowed loose rein to his ill-nature. With her firmly gentle hand no
longer on the tiller of his life, it burst into fresh being. And alone
in the world with David, the whole venom of his vicious temperament was
ever directed against the boy's head. It was as though he saw in his
fair-haired son the unconscious cause of his ever-living sorrow. All
the more strange this, seeing that, during her life, the boy had been
to poor Flora M'Adam as her heart's core. And the lad was growing up the
very antithesis of his father. Big and hearty, with never an ache or ill
in the whole of his sturdy young body; of frank, open countenance; while
even his speech was slow and burring like any Dale-bred boy's. And
the fact of it all, and that the lad was palpably more Englishman than
Scot--ay, and gloried in it--exasperated the little man, a patriot
before everything, to blows. While, on top of it, David evinced an
amazing pertness fit to have tried a better man than Adam M'Adam.
On the death of his wife, kindly Elizabeth Moore had, more than once,
offered such help to the lonely little man as a woman only can give in
a house that knows no mistress. On the last of these occasions, after
crossing the Stony Bottom, which divides the two farms, and toiling up
the hill to the Grange, she had met M'Adam in the door.
“Yo' maun let me put yo' bit things straight for yo', mister,” she had
said shyly; for she feared the little man.
“Thank ye, Mrs. Moore,” he had answered with the sour smile the Dalesmen
knew so well, “but ye maun think I'm a waefu' cripple.” And there he had
stood, grinning sardonically, opposing his small bulk in the very centre
of the door.
Mrs. Moore had turned down the hill, abashed and hurt at the reception
of her offer; and her husband, proud to a fault, had forbidden her
to repeat it. Nevertheless her motherly heart went out in a great
tenderness for the little orphan David. She knew well the desolateness
of his life; his father's aversion from him, and its inevitable
consequences.
It became an institution for the boy to call every morning at Kenmuir,
and trot off to the village school with Maggie Moore. And soon the lad
came to look on Kenmuir as his true home, and James and Elizabeth Moore
as his real parents. His greatest happiness was to be away from the
Grange. And the ferret-eyed little man there noted the fact, bitterly
resented it, and vented his ill-humor accordingly.
It was this, as he deemed it, uncalled-for trespassing on his authority
which was the chief cause of his animosity against James Moore. The
Master of Kenmuir it was at whom he was aiming when he remarked one
day at the Arms: “Masel', I aye prefaire the good man who does no go to
church, to the bad man who does. But then, as ye say, Mr. Burton, I'm
peculiar.”
The little man's treatment of David, exaggerated as it was by eager
credulity, became at length such a scandal to the Dale that Parson Leggy
determined to bring him to task on the matter.
Now M'Adam was the parson's pet antipathy. The bluff old minister, with
his brusque manner and big heart, would have no truck with the man who
never went to church, was perpetually in liquor, and never spoke good of
his neighbors. Yet he entered upon the interview fully resolved not to
be betrayed into an unworthy expression of feeling; rather to appeal to
the little man's better nature.
The conversation had not been in progress two minutes, however, before
he knew that, where he had meant to be calmly persuasive, he was fast
become hotly abusive.
“You, Mr. Hornbut, wi' James Moore to help ye, look after the lad's
soul, I'll see to his body,” the little man was saying.
The parson's thick gray eyebrows lowered threateningly over his eyes.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk like that. Which d'you
think the more important, soul or body? Oughtn't you, his father, to be
the very first to care for the boy's soul? If not, who should? Answer
me, sir.”
The little man stood smirking and sucking his eternal twig, entirely
unmoved by the other's heat.
“Ye're right, Mr. Hornbut, as ye aye are. But my argiment is this: that
I get at his soul best through his leetle carcase.”
The honest parson brought down his stick with an angry thud.
“M'Adam, you're a brute--a brute!” he shouted. At which outburst the
little man was seized with a spasm of silent merriment.
“A fond dad first, a brute afterward, aiblins--he! he! Ah, Mr. Hornbut!
ye 'ford me vast diversion, ye do indeed, 'my loved, my honored,
much-respected friend.”
“If you paid as much heed to your boy's welfare as you do to the bad
poetry of that profligate ploughman--”
An angry gleam shot into the other's eyes. “D'ye ken what blasphemy is,
Mr. Hornbut?” he asked, shouldering a pace forward.
For the first time in the dispute the parson thought he was about to
score a point, and was calm accordingly.
“I should do; I fancy I've a specimen of the breed before me now. And
d'you know what impertinence is?”
“I should do; I fancy I've--I awd say it's what gentlemen aften are
unless their mammies whipped 'em as lads.”
For a moment the parson looked as if about to seize his opponent and
shake him.
“M'Adam,” he roared, “I'll not stand your insolences!”
The little man turned, scuttled indoors, and came running back with a
chair.
“Permit me!” he said blandly, holding it before him like a haircutter
for a customer.
The parson turned away. At the gap in the hedge he paused.
“I'll only say one thing more,” he called slowly. “When your wife, whom
I think we all loved, lay dying in that room above you, she said to you
in my presence--”
It was M'Adam's turn to be angry. He made a step forward with burning
face.
“Aince and for a', Mr. Hornbut,” he cried passionately, “onderstand I'll
not ha' you and yer likes lay yer tongues on ma wife's memory whenever
it suits ye. You can say what ye like aboot me--lies, sneers, snash--and
I'll say naethin'. I dinna ask ye to respect me; I think ye might do sae
muckle by her, puir lass. She never harmed ye. Gin ye canna let her bide
in peace where she lies doon yonder”--he waved in the direction of the
churchyard--“ye'll no come on ma land. Though she is dead she's mine.”
Standing in front of his house, with flushed face and big eyes, the
little man looked almost noble in his indignation. And the parson,
striding away down the hill, was uneasily conscious that with him was
not the victory.
Chapter III. RED WULL
THE winter came and went; the lambing season was over, and spring
already shyly kissing the land. And the back of the year's work broken,
and her master well started on a fresh season, M'Adam's old collie,
Cuttie Sark, lay down one evening and passed quietly away.
The little black-and-tan lady, Parson Leggy used to say, had been
the only thing on earth M'Adam cared for. Certainly the two had been
wondrously devoted; and for many a market-day the Dalesmen missed the
shrill, chuckling cry which heralded the pair's approach: “Weel done,
Cuttie Sark!”
The little man felt his loss acutely, and, according to his wont, vented
his ill-feeling on David and the Dalesmen. In return, Tammas, whose
forte lay in invective and alliteration, called him behind his back,
“A wenomous one!” and “A wiralent wiper!” to the applause of tinkling
pewters.
A shepherd without his dog is like a ship without a rudder, and M'Adam
felt his loss practically as well as otherwise. Especially did he
experience this on a day when he had to take a batch of draft-ewes over
to Grammoch-town. To help him Jem Burton had lent the services of his
herring-gutted, herring-hearted, greyhound lurcher, Monkey. But before
they had well topped Braithwaite Brow, which leads from the village
on to the marches, M'Adam was standing in the track with a rock in his
hand, a smile on his face, and the tenderest blandishments in his voice
as he coaxed the dog to him. But Master Monkey knew too much for that.
However, after gamboling a while longer in the middle of the flock, a
boulder, better aimed than its predecessors, smote him on the hinder
parts and sent him back to the Sylvester Arms, with a sore tail and a
subdued heart.
For the rest, M'Adam would never have won over the sheep-infested
marches alone with his convoy had it not been for the help of old
Saunderson and Shep, who caught him on the way and aided him.
It was in a very wrathful mood that on his way home he turned into the
Dalesman's Daughter in Silverdale.
The only occupants of the tap-room, as he entered, were Teddy Bolstock,
the publican, Jim Mason, with the faithful Betsy beneath his chair and
the post-bags flung into the corner, and one long-limbed, drover-like
man--a stranger.
“And he coom up to Mr. Moore,” Teddy was saying, “and says he, 'I'll gie
ye twal' pun for yon gray dog o' yourn.' 'Ah,' says Moore, 'yo' may gie
me twal' hunner'd and yet you'll not get ma Bob.'--Eh, Jim?”
“And he did thot,” corroborated Jim. “'Twal' hunner'd,' says he.”
“James Moore and his dog agin” snapped M'Adam. “There's ithers in the
warld for bye them twa.”
“Ay, but none like 'em,” quoth loyal Jim.
“Na, thanks be. Gin there were there'd be no room for Adam M'Adam in
this 'melancholy vale.'”
There was silence a moment, and then--:
“You're wantin' a tyke, bain't you, Mr. M'Adam?” Jim asked.
The little man hopped round all in a hurry.
“What!” he cried in well-affected eagerness, scanning the yellow mongrel
beneath the chair. “Betsy for sale! Guid life! Where's ma check-book?”
Whereat Jim, most easily snubbed of men, collapsed.
M'Adam took off his dripping coat and crossed the room to hang it on a
chair-back. The stranger drover followed the meagre, shirt-clad figure
with shifty eyes; then he buried his face in his mug.
M'Adam reached out a hand for the chair; and as he did so, a bomb in
yellow leapt out from beneath it, and, growling horribly, attacked his
ankles.
“Curse ye!” cried M'Adam, starting back.
“Ye devil, let me alone!” Then turning fiercely on the drover, “Yours,
mister?” he asked. The man nodded. “Then call him aff, can't ye? D--n
ye!” At which Teddy Bolstock withdrew, sniggering; and Jim Mason slung
the post-bags on to his shoulder and plunged out into the rain, the
faithful Betsy following, disconsolate.
The cause of the squall, having beaten off the attacking force, had
withdrawn again beneath its chair. M'Adam stooped down, still cursing,
his wet coat on his arm, and beheld a tiny yellow puppy, crouching
defiant in the dark, and glaring out with fiery light eyes. Seeing
itself remarked, it bared its little teeth, raised its little bristles,
and growled a hideous menace.
A sense of humor is many a man's salvation, and was M'Adam's one
redeeming feature. The laughableness of the thing--this ferocious atomy
defying him--struck home to the little man. Delighted at such a display
of vice in so tender a plant, he fell to chuckling.
“Ye leetle devil!” he laughed. “He! he! ye leetle devil!” and flipped
together finger and thumb in vain endeavor to coax the puppy to him.
But it growled, and glared more terribly.
“Stop it, ye little snake, or I'll flatten you!” cried the big drover,
and shuffled his feet threateningly. Whereat the puppy, gurgling like
hot water in a kettle, made a feint as though to advance and wipe them
out, these two bad men.
M'Adam laughed again, and smote his leg.
“Keep a ceevil tongue and yer distance,” says he, “or I'll e'en ha' to
mak' ye. Though he is but as big as a man's thumb, a dog's a dog for
a' that--he! he! the leetle devil.” And he fell to flipping finger and
thumb afresh.
“Ye're maybe wantin' a dog?” inquired the stranger. “Yer friend said as
much.”
“Ma friend lied; it's his way,” M'Adam replied.
“I'm willin' to part wi' him,” the other pursued.
The little man yawned. “Weel, I'll tak' him to oblige ye,” he said
indifferently.
The drover rose to his feet.
“It's givin' 'im ye, fair givin' im ye, mind! But I'll do it!”--he
smacked a great fist into a hollow palm. “Ye may have the dog for a
pun'--I'll only ask _you_ a pun',” and he walked away to the window.
M'Adam drew back, the better to scan his would-be benefactor; his lower
jaw dropped, and he eyed the stranger with a drolly sarcastic air.
“A poun', man! A pouxi'--for yon noble dorg!” he pointed a crooked
forefinger at the little creature, whose scowling mask peered from
beneath the chair. “Man, I couldna do it. Na, na; ma conscience wadna
permit me. 'Twad be fair robbin' ye. Ah, ye Englishmen!” he spoke half
to himself, and sadly, as if deploring the unhappy accident of his
nationality; “it's yer grand, open-hairted generosity that grips a
puir Scotsman by the throat. A poun'! and for yon!” He wagged his head
mournfully, cocking it sideways the better to scan his subject.
“Take him or leave him,” ordered the drover truculently, still gazing
out of the window.
“Wi' yer permission I'll leave him,” M'Adam answered meekly.
“I'm short o' the ready,” the big man pursued, “or I wouldna part with
him. Could I bide me time there's many'd be glad to give me a tenner
for one o' that bree--” he caught himself up hastily--“for a dog sic as
that.”
“And yet ye offer him me for a poun'! Noble indeed!”
Nevertheless the little man had pricked his ears at the other's slip
and quick correction. Again he approached the puppy, dangling his coat
before him to protect his ankles; and again that wee wild beast sprang
out, seized the coat in its small jaw, and worried it savagely.
M'Adam stooped quickly and picked up his tiny assailant; and the
puppy, suspended by its neck, gurgled and slobbered; then, wriggling
desperately round, made its teeth meet in its adversary's shirt. At
which M'Adam shook it gently and laughed. Then he set to examining it.
Apparently some six weeks old; a tawny coat, fiery eyes, a square head
with small, cropped ears, and a comparatively immense jaw; the whole
giving promise of great strength, if little beauty. And this effect
was enhanced by the manner of its docking. For the miserable relic of
a tail, yet raw, looked little more than a red button adhering to its
wearer's stern.
M'Adam's inspection was as minute as it was apparently absorbing; he
omitted nothing from the square muzzle to the lozenge-like scut. And
every now and then he threw a quick glance at the man at the window, who
was watching the careful scrutiny a thought uneasily.
“Ye've cut him short,” he said at length, swinging round on the drover.
“Ay; strengthens their backs,” the big man answered with averted gaze.
M'Adam's chin went up in the air; his mouth partly opened and his
eyelids partly closed as he eyed his informant.
“Oh, ay,” he said.
“Gie him back to me,” ordered the drover surlily. He took the puppy
and set it on the floor; whereupon it immediately resumed its former
fortified position. “Ye're no buyer; I knoo that all along by that face
on ye,” he said in insulting tones.
“Ye wad ha' bought him yerseif', nae doot?” M'Adam inquired blandly.
“In course; if you says so.”
“Or airblins ye bred him?”
“'Appen I did.”
“Ye'll no be from these parts?”
“Will I no?” answered the other.
A smile of genuine pleasure stole over M'Adam's face. He laid his hand
on the other's arm.
“Man,” he said gently, “ye mind me o' hame.” Then almost in the same
breath: “Ye said ye found him?”
It was the stranger's turn to laugh.
“Ha! ha! Ye teekle me, little mon. Found 'im? Nay; I was give 'im by a
friend. But there's nowt amiss wi' his breedin', ye may believe me.”
The great fellow advanced to the chair under which the puppy lay. It
leapt out like a lion, and fastened on his huge boot.
“A rare bred un, look 'ee! a rare game un. Ma word, he's a big-hearted
un! Look at the back on him; see the jaws to him; mark the pluck of
him!” He shook his booted foot fiercely, tossing his leg to and fro like
a tree in a wind. But the little creature, now raised ceilingward, now
dashed to the ground, held on with incomparable doggedness, till its
small jaw was all bloody and muzzle wrinkled with the effort.
“Ay, ay, that'll do,” M'Adam interposed, irritably.
The drover ceased his efforts.
“Now, I'll mak' ye a last offer.” He thrust his head down to a level
with the other's, shooting out his neck. “It's throwin' him at ye, mind.
'Tain't buyin' him ye'll be--don't go for to deceive yourself. Ye may
have him for fifteen shillin'. Why do I do it, ye ask? Why, 'cos I think
ye'll be kind to him,” as the puppy retreated to its chair, leaving a
spotted track of red along its route.
“Ay, ye wadna be happy gin ye thocht he'd no a comfortable hame,
conseederate man?” M'Adam answered, eyeing the dark track on the floor.
Then he put on his coat.
“Na, na, he's no for me. Weel, I'll no detain ye. Good-nicht to ye,
mister!” and he made for the door.
“A gran' worker he'll be,” called the drover after him.
“Ay; muckle wark he'll mak' amang the sheep wi' sic a jaw and sic a
temper. Weel, I maun be steppin'. Good-nicht to ye.”
“Ye'll niver have sich anither chanst.”
“Nor niver wush to. Na, na; he'll never mak' a sheep-dog”; and the
little man turned up the collar of his coat.
“Will he not?” cried the other scornfully. “There niver yet was one o'
that line--” he stopped abruptly.
The little man spun round.
“Iss?” he said, as innocent as any child; “ye were sayin'?”
The other turned to the window and watched the rain falling
monotonously.
“Ye'll be wantin' wet,” he said adroitly.
“Ay, we could do wi' a drappin'. And he'll never mak' a sheep-dog.”
He shoved his cap down on his head. “Weel, good-nicht to ye!” and he
stepped out into the rain.
* * * * *
It was long after dark when the bargain was finally struck.
Adam M'Adam's Red Wull became that little man's property for the
following realizable assets: ninepence in cash--three coppers and a
doubtful sixpence; a plug of suspicious tobacco in a well-worn pouch;
and an old watch.
“It's clean givin' 'im ye,” said the stranger bitterly, at the end of
the deal.
“It's mair the charity than aught else mak's me sae leeberal,” the other
answered gently. “I wad not like to see ye pinched.”
“Thank ye kindly,” the big man replied with some acerbity, and plunged
out into the darkness and rain. Nor was that long-limbed drover-man ever
again seen in the countryside. And the puppy's previous history--whether
he was honestly come by or no, whether he was, indeed, of the famous Red
McCulloch* strain, ever remained a mystery in the Daleland.
*N. B.--You may know a Red McCulloch anywhere by the ring of
white upon his tail some two inches from the root.
Chapter IV. FIRST BLOOD
AFTER that first encounter in the Dalesman's Daughter, Red Wull, for
so M'Adam called him, resigned himself complacently to his lot;
recognizing, perhaps, his destiny.
Thenceforward the sour little man and the vicious puppy grew, as it
were, together. The two were never apart. Where M'Adam was, there was
sure to be his tiny attendant, bristling defiance as he kept ludicrous
guard over his master.
The little man and his dog were inseparable. M'Adam never left him even
at the Grange.
“I couldna trust ma Wullie at hame alone wi' the dear lad,” was his
explanation. “I ken weel I'd come back to find a wee corpse on the
floor, and David singin':
'My heart is sair, I daur na tell,
My heart is sair for somebody.'
Ay, and he'd be sair elsewhere by the time I'd done wi' him--he! he!”
The sneer at David's expense was as characteristic as it was unjust.
For though the puppy and the boy were already sworn enemies, yet the
lad would have scorned to harm so small a foe. And many a tale did David
tell at Kenmuir of Red Wull's viciousness, of his hatred of him (David),
and his devotion to his master; how, whether immersed in the pig-bucket
or chasing the fleeting rabbit, he would desist at once, and bundle,
panting, up at his master's call; how he routed the tomcat and drove him
from the kitchen; and how he clambered on to David's bed and pinned him
murderously by the nose.
Of late the relations between M'Adam and James Moore had been unusually
strained. Though they were neighbors, communications between the two
were of the rarest; and it was for the first time for many a long
day that, on an afternoon shortly after Red Wull had come into his
possession, M'Adam entered the yard of Kenmuir, bent on girding at the
master for an alleged trespass at the Stony Bottom.
“Wi' yer permission, Mr. Moore,” said the little man, “I'll wheestle ma
dog,” and, turning, he whistled a shrill, peculiar note like the cry of
a disturbed peewit.
Straightway there came scurrying desperately up, ears back, head down,
tongue out, as if the world depended on his speed, a little tawny beetle
of a thing, who placed his forepaws against his master's ankles
and looked up into his face; then, catching sight of the strangers,
hurriedly he took up his position between them and M'Adam, assuming his
natural attitude of grisly defiance. Such a laughable spectacle he made,
that martial mite, standing at bay with bristles up and teeth bared,
that even James Moore smiled.
“Ma word! Ha' yo' brought his muzzle, man?” cried old Tammas, the
humorist; and, turning, climbed all in a heat on to an upturned bucket
that stood by. Whereat the puppy, emboldened by his foe's retreat,
advanced savagely to the attack, buzzing round the slippery pail like a
wasp on a windowpane, in a vain attempt to reach the old man.
Tammas stood on the top, hitching his trousers and looking down on his
assailant, the picture of mortal fear.
“'Elp! Oh, 'elp!” he bawled. “Send for the sogers! Fetch the p'lice!
For lawk-amussy's sake call him off, man!” Even Sam'l Todd, watching
the scene from the cart-shed, was tickled and burst into a loud guffaw,
heartily backed by 'Enry and oor Job. While M'Adam remarked: “Ye're
fitter for a stage than a stable-bucket, Mr. Thornton.”
“How didst come by him?” asked Tammas, nodding at the puppy.
“Found him,” the little man replied, sucking his twig. “Found him in
ma stockin' on ma birthday. A present from ma leetle David for his auld
dad, I doot.”
“So do I,” said Tammas, and was seized with sudden spasm of seemingly
causeless merriment. For looking up as M'Adam was speaking, he had
caught a glimpse of a boy's fair head, peering cautiously round the
cow-shed, and, behind, the flutter of short petticoats. They disappeared
as silently as they had come; and two small figures, just returned from
school, glided away and sought shelter in the friendly darkness of a
coal-hole.
“Coom awa', Maggie, coom awa'! 'Tis th' owd un, 'isself,” whispered a
disrespectful voice.
M'Adam looked round suspiciously.
“What's that?” he asked sharply.
At the moment, however, Mrs. Moore put her head out of the kitchen
window.
“Coom thy ways in, Mister M'Adam, and tak' a soop o' tea,” she called
hospitably.
“Thank ye kindly, Mrs. Moore, I will,” he answered, politely for him.
And this one good thing must be allowed of Adam M'Adam: that, if there
was only one woman of whom he was ever known to speak well, there was
also only one, in the whole course of his life, against whom he ever
insinuated evil--and that was years afterward, when men said his brain
was sapped. Flouts and jeers he had for every man, but a woman, good or
bad, was sacred to him. For the sex that had given him his mother and
his wife he had that sentiment of tender reverence which, if a man still
preserve, he cannot be altogether bad. As he turned into the house he
looked back at Red Wull.
“Ay, we may leave him,” he said. “That is, gin ye're no afraid, Mr.
Thornton?”
Of what happened while the men were within doors, it is enough to tell
two things. First, that Owd Bob was no bully. Second, this: In the code
of sheep-dog honor there is written a word in stark black letters; and
opposite it another word, writ large in the color of blood. The first
is “Sheep-murder”; the second, “Death.” It is the one crime only to
be wiped away in blood; and to accuse of the crime is to offer the one
unpardonable insult. Every sheep-dog knows it, and every shepherd.
That afternoon, as the men still talked, the quiet echoes of the
farm rung with a furious animal cry, twice repeated: “Shot for
sheep-murder”--“Shot for sheep-murder”; followed by a hollow stillness.
* * * * *
The two men finished their colloquy. The matter was concluded
peacefully, mainly owing to the pacifying influence of Mrs. Moore.
Together the three went out into the yard; Mrs. Moore seizing the
opportunity to shyly speak on David's behalf.
“He's such a good little lad, I do think,” she was saying.
“Ye should ken, Mrs. Moore,” the little man answered, a thought
bitterly; “ye see enough of him.”
“Yo' mun be main proud of un, mester,” the woman continued, heedless of
the sneer: “an' 'im growin' such a gradely lad.”
M'Adam shrugged his shoulders.
“I barely ken the lad,” he said. “By sight I know him, of course, but
barely to speak to. He's but seldom at hame.”
“An' hoo proud his mother'd be if she could see him,” the woman
continued, well aware of his one tender place. “Eh, but she was fond o'
him, so she was.”
An angry flush stole over the little man's face. Well he understood the
implied rebuke; and it hurt him like a knife.
“Ay, ay, Mrs. Moore,” he began. Then breaking off, and looking about
him--“Where's ma Wullie?” he cried excitedly. “James Moore!” whipping
round on the Master, “ma Wullie's gone--gone, I say!”
Elizabeth Moore turned away indignantly. “I do declar' he tak's more
fash after yon little yaller beastie than iver he does after his own
flesh,” she muttered.
“Wullie, ma we doggie! Wullie, where are ye? James Moore, he's gone--ma
Wullie's gone!” cried the little man, running about the yard, searching
everywhere.
“Cannot 'a' gotten far,” said the Master, reassuringly, looking about
him.
“Niver no tellin',” said Sam'l, appearing on the scene, pig-bucket
in hand. “I misdoot yo'll iver see your dog agin, mister.” He turned
sorrowfully to M'Adam.
That little man, all dishevelled, and with the perspiration standing on
his face, came hurrying out of the cow-shed and danced up to the Master.
“It's robbed I am--robbed, I tell ye!” he cried recklessly. “Ma wee
Wull's bin stolen while I was ben your hoose, James Moore!”
“Yo' munna say that, ma mon. No robbin' at Kenmuir,” the Master answered
sternly.
“Then where is he? It's for you to say.”
“I've ma own idee, I 'aye,” Sam'l announced opportunely, pig-bucket
uplifted.
M'Adam turned on him.
“What, man? What is it?”
“I misdoot yo'll iver see your dog agin, mister,” Sam'l repeated, as if
he was supplying the key to the mystery.
“Noo, Sam'l, if yo' know owt tell it,” ordered his master.
Sam'l grunted sulkily.
“Wheer's oor Bob, then?” he asked.
At that M'Adam turned on the Master.
“'Tis that, nae doot. It's yer gray dog, James Moore, yer ---- dog. I
might ha' kent it,”--and he loosed off a volley of foul words.
“Sweerin' will no find him,” said the Master coldly. “Noo, Sam'l.”
The big man shifted his feet, and looked mournfully at M'Adam.
“'Twas 'appen 'aif an hour agone, when I sees oor Bob goin' oot o'
yard wi' little yaller tyke in his mouth. In a minnit I looks agin--and
theer! little yaller 'un was gone, and oor Bob a-sittin' a-lickin'
his chops. Gone foriver, I do reck'n. Ah, yo' may well take on, Tammas
Thornton!” For the old man was rolling about the yard, bent double with
merriment.
M'Adam turned on the Master with the resignation of despair.
“Man, Moore,” he cried piteously, “it's yer gray dog has murdered ma wee
Wull! Ye have it from yer ain man.”
“Nonsense,” said the Master encouragingly. “'Tis but yon girt oof.”
Sam'l tossed his head and snorted.
“Coom, then, and i'll show yo',” he said, and led the way out of the
yard. And there below them on the slope to the stream, sitting like
Justice at the Courts of Law, was Owd Bob.
Straightway Sam'l whose humor was something of the calibre of old
Ross's, the sexton, burst into horse-merriment. “Why's he sittin' so
still, think 'ee? Ho! Ho! See un lickin' his chops--ha! ha!”--and he
roared afresh. While from afar you could hear the distant rumbling of
'Enry and oor Job.
At the sight, M'Adam burst into a storm of passionate invective, and
would have rushed on the dog had not James Moore forcibly restrained
him.
“Bob, lad,” called the Master, “coom here!”
But even as he spoke, the gray dog cocked his ears, listened a moment,
and then shot down the slope. At the same moment Tammas hallooed: “Theer
he be! yon's yaller un coomin' oot o' drain! La, Sam'l!” And there,
indeed, on the slope below them, a little angry, smutty-faced figure was
crawling out of a rabbit-burrow.
“Ye murderin' devil, wad ye duar touch ma Wullie?” yelled M'Adam, and,
breaking away, pursued hotly down the hill; for the gray dog had picked
up the puppy, like a lancer a tent-peg, and was sweeping on, his captive
in his mouth, toward the stream.
Behind, hurried James Moore and Sam'l, wondering what the issue of the
comedy would be. After them toddled old Tammas, chuckling. While over
the yard-wall was now a little cluster of heads: 'Enry, oor Job, Maggie
and David, and Vi'let Thornton, the dairy-maid.
Straight on to the plank-bridge galloped Owd Bob. In the middle he
halted, leant over, and dropped his prisoner; who fell with a cool plop
into the running water beneath.
Another moment and M'Adam had reached the bank of the stream. In he
plunged, splashing and cursing, and seized the struggling puppy; then
waded back, the waters surging about his waist, and Red Wull, limp as
a wet rag, in his hand. The little man's hair was dripping, for his cap
was gone; his clothes clung to him, exposing the miserableness of his
figure; and his eyes blazed like hot ashes in his wet face.
He sprang on to the bank, and, beside himself with passion, rushed at
Owd Bob.
“Curse ye for a ----”
“Stan' back, or yo'll have him at your throat!” shouted the Master,
thundering up. “Stan' back, I say, yo' fule!” And, as the little man
still came madly on, he reached forth his hand and hurled him back; at
the same moment, bending, he buried the other hand deep in Owd Bob's
shaggy neck. It was but just in time; for if ever the fierce desire of
battle gleamed in gray eyes, it did in the young dog's as M'Adam came
down on him.
The little man staggered, tottered, and fell heavily. At the shock, the
blood gushed from his nose, and, mixing with the water on his face, ran
down in vague red streams, dripping off his chin; while Red Wull, jerked
from his grasp, was thrown afar, and lay motionless.
“Curse ye!” M'Adam screamed, his face dead-white save for the running
red about his jaw. “Curse ye for a cowardly Englishman!” and, struggling
to his feet, he made at the Master.
But Sam'l interposed his great bulk between the two.
“Easy, little mon,” he said leisurely, regarding the small fury before
him with mournful interest. “Eh, but thee do be a little spit-cat,
surely!”
James Moore stood, breathing deep, his hand still buried in Owd Bob's
coat.
“If yo'd touched him,” he explained, “I couldna ha' stopped him. He'd
ha' mauled yo' afore iver I could ha' had him off. They're bad to hold,
the Gray Dogs, when they're roosed.”
“Ay, ma word, that they are!” corroborated Tammas, speaking from the
experience of sixty years. “Once on, yo' canna get 'em off.”
The little man turned away.
“Ye're all agin me,” he said, and his voice shook. A pitiful figure he
made, standing there with the water dripping from him. A red stream was
running slowly from his chin; his head was bare, and face working.
James Moore stood eyeing him with some pity and some contempt. Behind
was Tammas, enjoying the scene. While Sam'l regarded them all with an
impassive melancholy.
M'Adam turned and bent over Red Wull, who still lay like a dead thing.
As his master handled him, the button-tail quivered feebly; he opened
his eyes, looked about him, snarled faintly, and glared with devilish
hate at the gray dog and the group with him.
The little man picked him up, stroking him tenderly. Then he turned away
and on to the bridge. Half-way across he stopped. It rattled feverishly
beneath him, for he still trembled like a palsied man.
“Man, Moore!” he called, striving to quell the agitation in his
voice--“I wad shoot yon dog.”
Across the bridge he turned again. “Man, Moore!” he called and paused.
“Ye'll not forget this day.” And with that the blood flared up a dull
crimson into his white face.
PART II THE LITTLE MAN
Chapter V. A MAN'S SON
THE storm, long threatened, having once burst, M'Adam allowed loose rein
to his bitter animosity against James Moore.
The two often met. For the little man frequently returned home from the
village by the footpath across Kenmuir. It was out of his way, but
he preferred it in order to annoy his enemy and keep a watch upon his
doings.
He haunted Kenmuir like its evil genius. His sallow face was perpetually
turning up at inopportune moments. When Kenmuir Queen, the prize
short-horn heifer, calved unexpectedly and unattended in the dip by the
lane, Tammas and the Master, summoned hurriedly by Owd Bob, came running
up to find the little man leaning against the stile, and shaking with
silent merriment. Again, poor old Staggy, daring still in his dotage,
took a fall while scrambling on the steep banks of the Stony Bottom.
There he lay for hours, unnoticed and kicking, until James Moore and
Owd Bob came upon him at length, nearly exhausted. But M'Adam was before
them. Standing on the far bank with Red Wull by his side, he called
across the gulf with apparent concern: “He's bin so sin' yesternight.”
Often James Moore, with all his great strength of character, could
barely control himself.
There were two attempts to patch up the feud. Jim Mason, who went about
the world seeking to do good, tried in his shy way to set things right.
But M'Adam and his Red Wull between them soon shut him and Betsy up.
“You mind yer letters and yer wires, Mr. Poacher-Postman. Ay, I saw 'em
baith: th' ain doon by the Haughs, t'ither in the Bottom. And there's
Wullie, the humorsome chiel, havin' a rare game wi' Betsy.” There,
indeed, lay the faithful Betsy, suppliant on her back, paws up, throat
exposed, while Red Wull, now a great-grown puppy, stood over her, his
habitually evil expression intensified into a fiendish grin, as with
wrinkled muzzle and savage wheeze he waited for a movement as a pretext
to pin: “Wullie, let the leddy be--ye've had yer dinner.”
Parson Leggy was the other would-be mediator; for he hated to see the
two principal parishioners of his tiny cure at enmity. First he tackled
James Moore on the subject; but that laconic person cut him short with,
“I've nowt agin the little mon,” and would say no more. And, indeed, the
quarrel was none of his making.
Of the parson's interview with M'Adam, it is enough to say here that,
in the end, the angry old minister would of a surety have assaulted his
mocking adversary had not Cyril Gilbraith forcibly withheld him.
And after that the vendetta must take its course unchecked.
David was now the only link between the two farms. Despite his father's
angry commands, the boy clung to his intimacy with the Moores with a
doggedness that no thrashing could overcome. Not a minute of the day
when out of school, holidays and Sundays included, but was passed at
Kenmuir. It was not till late at night that he would sneak back to the
Grange, and creep quietly up to his tiny bare room in the roof--not
supperless, indeed, motherly Mrs. Moore had seen to that. And there he
would lie awake and listen with a fierce contempt as his father, hours
later, lurched into the kitchen below, lilting liquorishly:
“We are na fou, we're nae that fou,
But just a drappie in our e'e;
The cock may craw, the day may daw',
And ay we'll taste the barley bree!”
And in the morning the boy would slip quietly out of the house while his
father still slept; only Red Wull would thrust out his savage head as
the lad passed, and snarl hungrily.
Sometimes father and son would go thus for weeks without sight of one
another. And that was David's aim--to escape attention. It was only his
cunning at this game of evasion that saved him a thrashing.
The little man seemed devoid of all natural affection for his son. He
lavished the whole fondness of which his small nature appeared capable
on the Tailless Tyke, for so the Dalesmen called Red Wull. And the dog
he treated with a careful tenderness that made David smile bitterly.
The little man and his dog were as alike morally as physically they were
contrasted. Each owed a grudge against the world and was determined to
pay it. Each was an Ishmael among his kind.
You saw them thus, standing apart, leper-like, in the turmoil of life;
and it came quite as a revelation to happen upon them in some quiet spot
of nights, playing together, each wrapped in the game, innocent, tender,
forgetful of the hostile world.
The two were never separated except only when M'Adam came home by the
path across Kenmuir. After that first misadventure he never allowed his
friend to accompany him on the journey through the enemy's country; for
well he knew that sheep-dogs have long memories.
To the stile in the lane, then, Red Wull would follow him. There he
would stand, his great head poked through the bars, watching his master
out of sight; and then would turn and trot, self-reliant and defiant,
sturdy and surly, down the very centre of the road through the
village--no playing, no enticing away, and woe to that man or dog who
tried to stay him in his course! And so on, past Mother Ross's shop,
past the Sylvester Arms, to the right by Kirby's smithy, over the
Wastrel by the Haughs, to await his master at the edge of the Stony
Bottom.
The little man, when thus crossing Kenmuir, often met Owd Bob, who had
the free run of the farm. On these occasions he passed discreetly by;
for, though he was no coward, yet it is bad, single-handed, to attack
a Gray Dog of Kenmuir; while the dog trotted soberly on his way, only
a steely glint in the big gray eyes betraying his knowledge of the
presence of his foe. As surely, however, as the little man, in his
desire to spy out the nakedness of the land, strayed off the public
path, so surely a gray figure, seeming to spring from out the blue,
would come fiercely, silently driving down on him; and he would turn and
run for his life, amid the uproarious jeers of any of the farm-hands who
were witness to the encounter.
On these occasions David vied with Tammas in facetiousness at his
father's expense.
“Good on yo', little un!” he roared from behind a wall, on one such
occurrence.
“Bain't he a runner, neither?” yelled Tammas, not to be outdone.
“See un skip it--ho! ho! Look to his knees a-wamblin'! from the
undutiful son in ecstasy. An' I'd knees like yon, I'd wear petticoats.”
As he spoke, a swinging box on the ear nearly knocked the young
reprobate down.
“D'yo' think God gave you a dad for you to jeer at? Y'ought to be
ashamed o' yo'self. Serve yo' right if he does thrash yo' when yo' get
home.” And David, turning round, found James Moore close behind him, his
heavy eyebrows lowering over his eyes.
Luckily, M'Adam had not distinguished his son's voice among the others.
But David feared he had; for on the following morning the little man
said to him:
“David, ye'll come hame immediately after school to-day.”
“Will I?” said David pertly.
''Ye will.
“Why?”
“Because I tell ye to, ma lad”; and that was all the reason he would
give. Had he told the simple fact that he wanted help to drench a
“husking” ewe, things might have gone differently. As it was, David
turned away defiantly down the hill.
The afternoon wore on. Schooltime was long over; still there was no
David.
The little man waited at the door of the Grange, fuming, hopping from
one leg to the other, talking to Red Wull, who lay at his feet, his head
on his paws, like a tiger waiting for his prey.
At length he could restrain himself no longer; and started running down
the hill, his heart burning with indignation.
“Wait till we lay hands on ye, ma lad,” he muttered as he ran. “We'll
warm ye, we'll teach ye.”
At the edge of the Stony Bottom he, as always, left Red Wull. Crossing
it himself, and rounding Langholm How, he espied James Moore, David, and
Owd Bob walking away from him and in the direction of Kenmuir. The gray
dog and David were playing together, wrestling, racing, and rolling. The
boy had never a thought for his father.
The little man ran up behind them, unseen and unheard, his feet softly
pattering on the grass. His hand had fallen on David's shoulder before
the boy had guessed his approach.
“Did I bid ye come hame after school, David?” he asked, concealing his
heat beneath a suspicious suavity.
“Maybe. Did I say I would come?”
The pertness of tone and words, alike, fanned his father's resentment
into a blaze. In a burst of passion he lunged forward at the boy with
his stick. But as he smote, a gray whirlwind struck him fair on the
chest, and he fell like a snapped stake, and lay, half stunned, with a
dark muzzle an inch from his throat.
“Git back, Bob!” shouted James Moore, hurrying up. “Git back, I tell
yo'!” He bent over the prostrate figure, propping it up anxiously.
“Are yo' hurt, M'Adam? Eh, but I am sorry. He thought yo' were going for
to strike the lad.”
David had now run up, and he, too, bent over his father with a very
scared face.
“Are yo' hurt, feyther?” he asked, his voice trembling.
The little man rose unsteadily to his feet and shook off his supporters.
His face was twitching, and he stood, all dust-begrimed, looking at his
son.
“Ye're content, aiblins, noo ye've seen yer father's gray head bowed in
the dust,” he said.
“'Twas an accident,” pleaded James Moore. “But I _am_ sorry. He thought
yo' were goin' to beat the lad.”
“So I was--so I will.”
“If ony's beat it should be ma Bob here tho' he nob'but thought he was
doin' right. An' yo' were aff the path.”
The little man looked at his enemy, a sneer on his face.
“Ye canna thrash him for doin' what ye bid him. Set yer dog on me, if ye
will, but dinna beat him when he does yer biddin'!”
“I did not set him on yo', as you know,” the Master replied warmly.
M'Adam shrugged his shoulders.
“I'll no argie wi' ye, James Moore,” he said. “I'll leave you and
what ye call yer conscience to settle that. My business is not wi'
you.--David!” turning to his son.
A stranger might well have mistaken the identity of the boy's father.
For he stood now, holding the Master's arm; while a few paces above
them was the little man, pale but determined, the expression on his face
betraying his consciousness of the irony of the situation.
“Will ye come hame wi' me and have it noo, or stop wi' him and wait till
ye get it?” he asked the boy.
“M'Adam, I'd like yo' to--”
“None o' that, James Moore.--David, what d'ye say?”
David looked up into his protector's face.
“Yo'd best go wi' your feyther, lad,” said the Master at last, thickly.
The boy hesitated, and clung tighter to the shielding arm; then he
walked slowly over to his father.
A bitter smile spread over the little man's face as he marked this new
test of the boy's obedience to the other.
“To obey his frien' he foregoes the pleasure o' disobeyin' his father,”
he muttered. “Noble!” Then he turned homeward, and the boy followed in
his footsteps.
James Moore and the gray dog stood looking after them.
“I know yo'll not pay off yer spite agin me on the lad's head, M'Adam,”
he called, almost appealingly.
“I'll do ma duty, thank ye, James Moore, wi'oot respect o' persons,” the
little man cried back, never turning.
Father and son walked away, one behind the other, like a man and his
dog, and there was no word said between them. Across the Stony Bottom,
Red Wull, scowling with bared teeth at David, joined them. Together the
three went up the bill to the Grange.
In the kitchen M'Adam turned.
“Noo, I'm gaein' to gie ye the gran'est thrashin' ye iver dreamed of.
Tak' aff yer coat!”
The boy obeyed, and stood up in his thin shirt, his face white and set
as a statue's. Red Wull seated himself on his haunches close by, his
ears pricked, licking his lips, all attention.
The little man suppled the great ash-plant in his hands and raised it.
But the expression on the boy's face arrested his arm.
“Say ye're sorry and I'll let yer aff easy.”
“I'll not.”
“One mair chance--yer last! Say yer 'shamed o' yerself'!”
“I'm not.”
The little man brandished his cruel, white weapon, and Red Wull shifted
a little to obtain a better view.
“Git on wi' it,” ordered David angrily.
The little man raised the stick again and--threw it into the farthest
corner of the room.
It fell with a rattle on the floor, and M'Adam turned away.
“Ye're the pitifulest son iver a man had,” he cried brokenly. “Gin
a man's son dinna haud to him, wha can he expect to?--no one. Ye're
ondootiful, ye're disrespectfu', ye're maist ilka thing ye shouldna be;
there's but ae thing I thocht ye were not--a coward. And as to that,
ye've no the pluck to say ye're sorry when, God knows, ye might be. I
canna thrash ye this day. But ye shall gae nae mair to school. I send
ye there to learn. Ye'll not learn--ye've learnt naethin' except
disobedience to me--ye shall stop at hame and work.”
His father's rare emotion, his broken voice and working face, moved
David as all the stripes and jeers had failed to do. His conscience
smote him. For the first time in his life it dimly dawned on him that,
perhaps, his father, too, had some ground for complaint; that, perhaps,
he was not a good son.
He half turned.
“Feyther--”
“Git oot o' ma sight!” M'Adam cried.
And the boy turned and went.
Chapter VI. A LICKING OR A LIE
THENCEFORWARD David buckled down to work at home, and in one point only
father and son resembled--industry. A drunkard M'Adam was, but a drone,
no.
The boy worked at the Grange with tireless, indomitable energy; yet he
could never satisfy his father.
The little man would stand, a sneer on his face and his thin lips
contemptuously curled, and flout the lad's brave labors.
“Is he no a gran' worker, Wullie? 'Tis a pleasure to watch him, his
hands in his pockets, his eyes turned heavenward!” as the boy snatched
a hard-earned moment's rest. “You and I, Wullie, we'll brak' oorsel's
slavin' for him while he looks on and laffs.”
And so on, the whole day through, week in, week out; till he sickened
with weariness of it all.
In his darkest hours David thought sometimes to run away. He was
miserably alone on the cold bosom of the world. The very fact that he
was the son of his father isolated him in the Daleland. Naturally of a
reserved disposition, he had no single friend outside Kenmuir. And it
was only the thought of his friends there that withheld him. He could
not bring himself to part from them; they were all he had in the world.
So he worked on at the Grange, miserably, doggedly, taking blows and
abuse alike in burning silence. But every evening, when work was ended,
he stepped off to his other home beyond the Stony Bottom. And on Sundays
and holidays--for of these latter he took, unasking, what he knew to be
his due--all day long, from cock-crowing to the going down of the sun,
he would pass at Kenmuir. In this one matter the boy was invincibly
stubborn. Nothing his father could say or do sufficed to break him of
the habit. He endured everything with white-lipped, silent doggedness,
and still held on his way.
Once past the Stony Bottom, he threw his troubles behind him with a
courage that did him honor. Of all the people at Kenmuir two only ever
dreamed the whole depth of his unhappiness, and that not through David.
James Moore suspected something of it all, for he knew more of M'Adam
than did the others. While Owd Bob knew it as did no one else. He could
tell it from the touch of the boy's hand on his head; and the story was
writ large upon his face for a dog to read. And he would follow the lad
about with a compassion in his sad gray eyes greater than words.
David might well compare his gray friend at Kenmuir with that other at
the Grange.
The Tailless Tyke had now grown into an immense dog, heavy of muscle and
huge of bone. A great bull head; undershot jaw, square and lengthy and
terrible; vicious, yellow-gleaming eyes; cropped ears; and an expression
incomparably savage. His coat was a tawny, lion-like yellow, short,
harsh, dense; and his back, running up from shoulder to loins, ended
abruptly in the knob-like tail. He looked like the devil of a dogs'
hell. And his reputation was as bad as his looks. He never attacked
unprovoked; but a challenge was never ignored, and he was greedy of
insults. Already he had nigh killed Rob Saunderson's collie, Shep; Jem
Burton's Monkey fled incontinently at the sound of his approach; while
he had even fought a round with that redoubtable trio, the Vexer, Venus,
and Van Tromp.
Nor, in the matter of war, did he confine himself to his own kind.
His huge strength and indomitable courage made him the match of almost
anything that moved. Long Kirby once threatened him with a broomstick;
the smith never did it again. While in the Border Ram he attacked Big
Bell, the Squire's underkeeper, with such murderous fury that it took
all the men in the room to pull him off.
More than once had he and Owd Bob essayed to wipe out mutual memories,
Red Wull, in this case only, the aggressor. As yet, however, while they
fenced a moment for that deadly throat-grip, the value of which each
knew so well, James Moore had always seized the chance to intervene.
“That's right, hide him ahint yer petticoats,” sneered M'Adam on one of
these occasions.
“Hide? It'll not be him I'll hide, I warn you, M'Adam,” the Master
answered grimly, as he stood, twirling his good oak stick between the
would-be duellists. Whereat there was a loud laugh at the little man's
expense.
It seemed as if there were to be other points of rivalry between the two
than memories. For, in the matter of his own business--the handling of
sheep--Red Wull bid fair to be second only throughout the Daleland to
the Gray Dog of Kenmuir. And M'Adam was patient and painstaking in the
training of his Wullie in a manner to astonish David. It would have been
touching, had it not been so unnatural in view of his treatment of his
own blood, to watch the tender carefulness with which the little man
moulded the dog beneath his hands. After a promising display he would
stand, rubbing his palms together, as near content as ever he was.
“Weel done, Wullie! Weel done. Bide a wee and we'll show 'em a thing or
two, you and I, Wullie.
“'The warld's wrack we share o't,
The warstle and the care o't.'
For it's you and I alane, lad.” And the dog would trot up to him, place
his great forepaws on his shoulders, and stand thus with his great head
overtopping his master's, his ears back, and stump tail vibrating.
You saw them at their best when thus together, displaying each his one
soft side to the other.
From the very first David and Red Wull were open enemies: under the
circumstances, indeed, nothing else was possible. Sometimes the great
dog would follow on the lad's heels with surly, greedy eyes, never
leaving him from sunrise to sundown, till David could hardly hold his
hands.
So matters went on for a never-ending year. Then there came a climax.
One evening, on a day throughout which Red Wull had dogged him thus
hungrily, David, his work finished, went to pick up his coat, which he
had left hard by. On it lay Red Wull.
“Git off ma coat!” the boy ordered angrily, marching up. But the great
dog never stirred: he lifted a lip to show a fence of white, even teeth,
and seemed to sink lower in the ground; his head on his paws, his eyes
in his forehead.
“Come and take it!” he seemed to say.
Now what, between master and dog, David had endured almost more than he
could bear that day.
“Yo' won't, won't yo', girt brute!” he shouted, and bending, snatched
a corner of the coat and attempted to jerk it away. At that, Red Wull
rose, shivering, to his feet, and with a low gurgle sprang at the boy.
David, quick as a flash, dodged, bent, and picked up an ugly stake,
lying at his feet. Swinging round, all in a moment, he dealt his
antagonist a mighty buffet on the side of the head. Dazed with the blow,
the great dog fell; then, recovering himself, with a terrible, deep roar
he sprang again. Then it must have gone hard with the boy, fine-grown,
muscular young giant though he was. For Red Wull was now in the first
bloom of that great strength which earned him afterward an undying
notoriety in the land.
As it chanced, however, M'Adam had watched the scene from the kitchen.
And now he came hurrying out of the house, shrieking commands and curses
at the combatants. As Red Wull sprang, he interposed between the two,
head back and eyes flashing. His small person received the full shock
of the charge. He staggered, but recovered, and in an imperative voice
ordered the dog to heel.
Then he turned on David, seized the stake from his hand, and began
furiously belaboring the boy.
“I'll teach ye to strike--a puir--dumb--harmless--creetur,
ye--cruel--cruel---lad!” he cried. “Hoo daur ye strike--ma----Wullie?
yer--father's----Wullie? Adam--M 'Adam's--Red Wull?” He was panting from
his exertions, and his eyes were blazing. “I pit up as best I can wi'
all manner o' disrespect to masel'; but when it comes to takin' ma puir
Wullie, I canna thole it. Ha' ye no heart?” he asked, unconscious of the
irony of the question.
“As much as some, I reck'n,” David muttered.
“Eh, what's that? What d'ye say?”
“Ye may thrash me till ye're blind; and it's nob'but yer duty; but if
only one daurs so much as to look at yer Wullie ye're mad,” the boy
answered bitterly. And with that he turned away defiantly and openly in
the direction of Kenmuir.
M'Adam made a step forward, and then stopped.
“I'll see ye agin, ma lad, this evenin',” he cried with cruel
significance.
“I doot but yo'll be too drunk to see owt--except, 'appen, your bottle,”
the boy shouted back; and swaggered down the hill.
* * * * *
At Kenmuir that night the marked and particular kindness of Elizabeth
Moore was too much for the overstrung lad. Overcome by the contrast of
her sweet motherliness, he burst into a storm of invective against his
father, his home, his life--everything.
“Don't 'ee, Davie, don't 'ee, dearie!” cried Mrs. Moore, much
distressed. And taking him to her she talked to the great, sobbing boy
as though he were a child. At length he lifted his face and looked up;
and, seeing the white, wan countenance of his dear comforter, was struck
with tender remorse that he had given way and pained her, who looked so
frail and thin herself.
He mastered himself with an effort; and, for the rest of the evening,
was his usual cheery self. He teased Maggie into tears; chaffed stolid
little Andrew; and bantered Sam'l Todd until that generally impassive
man threatened to bash his snout for him.
Yet it was with a great swallowing at his throat that, later, he turned
down the slope for home.
James Moore and Parson Leggy accompanied him to the bridge over the
Wastrel, and stood a while watching as he disappeared into the summer
night.
“Yon's a good lad,” said the Master half to himself.
“Yes,” the parson replied; “I always thought there was good in the boy,
if only his father'd give him a chance. And look at the way Owd Bob
there follows him. There's not another soul outside Kenmuir he'd do that
for.”
“Ay, sir,” said the Master. “Bob knows a mon when he sees one.”
“He does,” acquiesced the other. “And by the by, James, the talk in the
village is that you've settled not to run him for the Cup. Is, that so?”
The Master nodded.
“It is, sir. They're all mad I should, but I mun cross 'em. They say
he's reached his prime--and so he has o' his body, but not o' his brain.
And a sheep-dog--unlike other dogs--is not at his best till his brain
is at its best--and that takes a while developin', same as in a mon, I
reck'n.”
“Well, well,” said the parson, pulling out a favorite phrase, “waiting's
winning--waiting's winning.”
* * * * *
David slipped up into his room and into bed unseen, he hoped. Alone with
the darkness, he allowed himself the rare relief of tears; and at length
fell asleep. He awoke to find his father standing at his bedside. The
little man held a feeble dip-candle in his hand, which lit his sallow
face in crude black and white. In the doorway, dimly outlined, was the
great figure of Red Wull.
“Whaur ha' ye been the day?” the little man asked. Then, looking down on
the white stained face beneath him, he added hurriedly: “If ye like to
lie, I'll believe ye.”
David was out of bed and standing up in his night-shirt. He looked at
his father contemptuously.
“I ha' bin at Kenmuir. I'll not lie for yo' or your likes,” he said
proudly.
The little man shrugged his shoulders.
“'Tell a lee and stick to it,' is my rule, and a good one, too, in
honest England. I for one 'll no think ony the worse o' ye if yer memory
plays yer false.”
“D'yo' think I care a kick what yo' think o' me?” the boy asked
brutally. “Nay; there's 'nough liars in this fam'ly wi'oot me.”
The candle trembled and was still again.
“A lickin' or a lie--tak' yer choice!”
The boy looked scornfully down on his father. Standing on his naked
feet, he already towered half a head above the other and was twice the
man.
“D'yo' think I'm fear'd o' a thrashin' fra yo'? Goo' gracious me!” he
sneered. “Why, I'd as lief let owd Grammer Maddox lick me, for all I
care.”
A reference to his physical insufficiencies fired the little man as
surely as a lighted match powder.
“Ye maun be cauld, standin' there so. Rin ye doon and fetch oor little
frien'”--a reference to a certain strap hanging in the kitchen. “I'll
see if I can warm ye.”
David turned and stumbled down the unlit, narrow stairs. The hard, cold
boards struck like death against his naked feet. At his heels followed
Red Wull, his hot breath fanning the boy's bare legs.
So into the kitchen and back up the stairs, and Red Wull always
following.
“I'll no despair yet o' teachin' ye the fifth commandment, though I kill
masel' in doin' it!” cried the little man, seizing the strap from the
boy's numb grasp.
* * * * *
When it was over, M'Adam turned, breathless, away. At the threshold
of the room he stopped and looked round: a little, dim-lit, devilish
figure, framed in the door; while from the blackness behind, Red Wull's
eyes gleamed yellow.
Glancing back, the little man caught such an expression on David's
face that for once he was fairly afraid. He banged the door and hobbled
actively down the stairs.
Chapter VII. THE WHITE WINTER
M'ADAM--in his sober moments at least--never touched David again;
instead, he devoted himself to the more congenial exercise of the
whiplash of his tongue. And he was wise; for David, who was already
nigh a head the taller of the two, and comely and strong in proportion,
could, if he would, have taken his father in the hollow of his hand and
crumpled him like a dry leaf. Moreover, with his tongue, at least, the
little man enjoyed the noble pleasure of making the boy wince. And so
the war was carried on none the less vindictively.
Meanwhile another summer was passing away, and every day brought fresh
proofs of the prowess of Owd Bob. Tammas, whose stock of yarns anent Rex
son of Rally had after forty years' hard wear begun to pall on the
loyal ears of even old Jonas, found no lack of new material now. In
the Dalesman's Daughter in Silverdale and in the Border Ram at
Grammoch-town, each succeeding market day brought some fresh tale. Men
told how the gray dog had outdone Gypsy Jack, the sheep-sneak; how he
had cut out a Kenmuir shearling from the very centre of Londesley's
pack; and a thousand like stories.
The Gray Dogs of Kenmuir have always been equally heroes and favorites
in the Daleland. And the confidence of the Dalesmen in Owd Bob was now
invincible. Sometimes on market days he would execute some unaccountable
maneuvre, and... strange shepherd would ask: “What's the gray dog at?”
To which the nearest Dalesman would reply: “Nay, I canno tell ye! But
he's reet enough. Yon's Owd Bob o' Kenmuir.”
Whereon the stranger would prick his ears and watch with close
attention.
“Yon's Owd Bob o' Kenmuir, is he?” he would say; for already among the
faculty the name was becoming known. And never in such a case did the
young dog fail to justify the faith of his supporters.
It came, therefore, as a keen disappointment to every Dalesman, from
Herbert Trotter, Secretary of the Trials, to little Billy Thornton, when
the Master persisted in his decision not to run the dog for the Cup in
the approaching Dale Trials; and that though parson, squire, and even
Lady Eleanour essayed to shake his purpose. It was nigh fifty years
since Rex son o' Rally had won back the Trophy for the land that gave
it birth; it was time, they thought, for a Daleland dog, a Gray Dog of
Kenmuir--the terms are practically synonymous--to bring it home again.
And Tammas, that polished phrase-maker, was only expressing the feelings
of every Dalesman in the room when, one night at the Arms, he declared
of Owd Bob that “to ha' run was to ha' won.” At which M'Adam sniggered
audibly and winked at Red Wull. “To ha' run was to ha' one--lickin'; to
rin next year'll be to--”
“Win next year.” Tammas interposed dogmatically. “Onless”--with
shivering sarcasm--“you and yer Wullie are thinkin' o' winnin'.”
The little man rose from his solitary seat at the back of the room and
pattered across. “Wullie and I are thinkin' o' t,” he whispered loudly
in the old man's ear. “And mair: what Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull think
o' doin', that, ye may remairk, Mr. Thornton, they do. Next year we rin,
and next year--we win. Come, Wullie, we'll leave 'em to chew that”; and
he marched out of the room amid the jeers of the assembled topers.
When quiet was restored, it was Jim Mason who declared: “One thing
certain, win or no, they'll not be far off.”
* * * * *
Meanwhile the summer ended abruptly. Hard on the heels of a sweltering
autumn the winter came down. In that year the Daleland assumed very
early its white cloak. The Silver Mere was soon ice-veiled; the Wastrel
rolled sullenly down below Kenmuir, its creeks and quiet places tented
with jagged sheets of ice; while the Scaur and Muir Pike raised hoary
heads against the frosty blue. It was the season still remembered in the
North as the White Winter--the worst, they say, since the famous 1808.
For days together Jim Mason was stuck with his bags in the Dalesman's
Daughter, and there was no communication between the two Dales. On
the Mere Marches the snow massed deep and impassable in thick, billowy
drifts. In the Devil's Bowl men said it lay piled some score feet deep.
And sheep, seeking shelter in the ghylls and protected spots, were
buried and lost in their hundreds.
That is the time to test the hearts of shepherds and sheep-dogs, when
the wind runs ice-cold across the waste of white, and the low woods on
the upland walks shiver black through a veil of snow, and sheep must be
found and folded or lost: a trial of head as well as heart, of resource
as well as resolution.
In that winter more than one man and many a dog lost his life in the
quiet performance of his duty, gliding to death over the slippery
snow-shelves, or overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of the warm,
suffocating white: “smoored,” as they call it. Many a deed was done,
many a death died, recorded only in that Book which holds the names of
those--men or animals, souls or no souls--who tried.
They found old Wrottesley, the squire's head shepherd, lying one morning
at Gill's foot, like a statue in its white bed, the snow gently blowing
about the venerable face, calm and beautiful in death. And stretched
upon his bosom, her master's hands blue, and stiff, still clasped about
her neck, his old dog Jess. She had huddled there, as a last hope, to
keep the dear, dead master warm, her great heart riven, hoping where
there was no hope.
That night she followed him to herd sheep in a better land. Death from
exposure, Dingley, the vet., gave it; but as little M'Adam, his eyes
dimmer than their wont, declared huskily; “We ken better, Wullie.”
Cyril Gilbraith, a young man not overburdened with emotions, told with
a sob in his voice how, at the terrible Rowan Rock, Jim Mason had stood,
impotent, dumb, big-eyed, watching Betsy--Betsy, the friend and partner
of the last ten years--slipping over the ice-cold surface, silently
appealing to the hand that had never failed her before--sliding to
Eternity.
In the Daleland that winter the endurance of many a shepherd and his
dog was strained past breaking-point. From the frozen Black Water to
the white-peaked Grammoch Pike two men only, each always with his shaggy
adjutant, never owned defeat; never turned back; never failed in a thing
attempted.
In the following spring, Mr. Tinkerton, the squire's agent, declared
that James Moore and Adam M'Adam--Owd Bob, rather, and Red Wull--had
lost between them fewer sheep than any single farmer on the whole March
Mere Estate--a proud record.
Of the two, many a tale was told that winter. They were invincible,
incomparable; worthy antagonists.
It was Owd Bob who, when he could not drive the band of Black Faces over
the narrow Razorback which led to safety, induced them to _follow_ him
across that ten-inch death-track, one by one, like children behind
their mistress. It was Red Wull who was seen coming down the precipitous
Saddler's How, shouldering up that grand old gentleman, King o' the
Dale, whose leg was broken.
The gray dog it was who found Cyril Gilbraith by the White Stones, with
a cigarette and a sprained ankle, on the night the whole village was out
with lanterns searching for the well-loved young scapegrace. It was the
Tailless Tyke and his master who one bitter evening came upon little
Mrs. Burton, lying in a huddle beneath the lea of the fast-whitening
Druid's Pillar with her latest baby on her breast. It was little M'Adam
who took off his coat and wrapped the child in it; little M'Adam who
unwound his plaid, threw it like a breastband across the dog's great
chest, and tied the ends round the weary woman's waist. Red Wull it was
who dragged her back to the Sylvester Arms and life, straining like a
giant through the snow, while his master staggered behind with the babe
in his arms. When they reached the inn it was M'Adam who, with a smile
on his face, told the landlord what he thought of him for sending _his_
wife across the Marches on such a day and on his errand. To which: “I'd
a cauld,” pleaded honest Jem.
For days together David could not cross the Stony Bottom to Kenmuir.
His enforced confinement to the Grange led, however, to no more frequent
collisions than usual with his father. For M'Adam and Red Wull were out,
at all hours, in all weathers, night and day, toiling at their work of
salvation.
At last, one afternoon, David managed to cross the Bottom at a point
where a fallen thorn-tree gave him a bridge over the soft snow. He
stayed but a little while at Kenmuir, yet when he started for home it
was snowing again.
By the time he had crossed the ice-draped bridge over the Wastrel, a
blizzard was raging. The wind roared past him, smiting him so that he
could barely stand; and the snow leaped at him so that he could not see.
But he held on doggedly; slipping, sliding, tripping, down and up
again, with one arm shielding his face. On, on, into the white darkness,
blindly on sobbing, stumbling, dazed.
At length, nigh dead, he reached the brink of the Stony Bottom. He
looked up and he looked down, but nowhere in that blinding mist could he
see the fallen thorn-tree. He took a step forward into the white morass,
and 'sank up to his thigh. He struggled feebly to free himself, and sank
deeper. The snow wreathed, twisting, round him like a white flame, and
he collapsed, softly crying, on that soft bed.
“I canna--I canna!” he moaned.
* * * * *
Little Mrs. Moore, her face whiter and frailer than ever, stood at the
window, looking out into the storm.
“I canna rest for thinkin' o' th' lad,” she said. Then, turning, she saw
her husband, his fur cap down over his ears, buttoning his pilot-coat
about his throat, while Owd Bob stood at his feet, waiting.
“Ye're no goin', James?” she asked, anxiously.
“But I am, lass,” he answered; and she knew him too well to say more.
So those two went quietly out to save life or lose it, nor counted the
cost.
Down a wind-shattered slope--over a spar of ice--up an eternal hill--a
forlorn hope.
In a whirlwind chaos of snow, the tempest storming at them, the white
earth lashing them, they fought a good fight. In front, Owd Bob, the
snow clogging his shaggy coat, his hair cutting like lashes of steel
across eyes, his head lowered as he followed the finger of God; and
close behind, James Moore, his back stern against the storm, stalwart
still, yet swaying like a tree before the wind.
So they battled through to the brink of the Stony Bottom--only to arrive
too late.
For, just as the Master peering about him, had caught sight of a
shapeless lump lying motionless in front, there loomed across the
snow-choked gulf through the white riot of the storm a gigantic figure
forging, doggedly forward, his great head down to meet the hurricane.
And close behind, buffeted and bruised, stiff and staggering, a little
dauntless figure holding stubbornly on, clutching with one hand at the
gale; and a shrill voice, whirled away on the trumpet tones of the wind,
crying:
'Noo, Wullie, wi' me!
Scots wha' hae wi' Wallace bled!
Scots wham Bruce has often led!
Welcome to ----!'
“Here he is, Wullie!”
'--or to victorie!”
The brave little voice died away. The quest; was over; the lost sheep
found. And the last James Moore saw of them was the same small, gallant
form, half carrying, half dragging the rescued boy out of the Valley of
the Shadow and away.
David was none the worse for his adventure, for on reaching home M'Adam
produced a familiar bottle.
“Here's something to warm yer inside, and”--making a feint at the strap
on the walls--' “here's something to do the same by yer ----. But,
Wullie, oot again!”
And out they went--unreckoned heroes.
* * * * *
It was but a week later, in the very heart of the bitter time, that
there came a day when, from gray dawn to grayer eve, neither James Moore
nor Owd Bob stirred out into the wintry white. And the Master's face was
hard and set as it always was in time of trouble.
Outside, the wind screamed down the Dale; while the snow fell
relentlessly; softly fingering the windows, blocking the doors, and
piling deep against the walls. Inside the house there was a strange
quiet; no sound save for hushed voices, and upstairs the shuffling of
muffled feet.
Below, all day long, Owd Bob patrolled the passage like some silent,
gray spectre.
Once there came a low knocking at the door; and David, his face and hair
and cap smothered in the all-pervading white, came in with an eddy of
snow. He patted Owd Bob, and moved on tiptoe into the kitchen. To him
came Maggie softly, shoes in hand, with white, frightened face. The two
whispered anxiously awhile like brother and sister as they were; then
the boy crept quietly away; only a little pool of water on the floor and
wet, treacherous foot-dabs toward the door testifying to the visitor.
Toward evening the wind died down, but the mourning flakes still fell.
With the darkening of night Owd Bob retreated to the porch and lay down
on his blanket. The light from the lamp at the head of the stairs shone
through the crack of open door on his dark head and the eyes that never
slept.
The hours passed, and the gray knight still kept his vigil. Alone in the
darkness--alone, it almost seemed, in the house--he watched. His head
lay motionless along his paws, but the steady gray eyes never flinched
or drooped.
Time tramped on on leaden foot, and still he waited; and ever the pain
of hovering anxiety was stamped deeper in the gray eyes.
At length it grew past bearing; the hollow stillness of the house
overcame him. He rose, pushed open the door, and softly pattered across
the passage.
At the foot of the stairs he halted, his forepaws on the first step, his
grave face and pleading eyes uplifted, as though he were praying. The
dim light fell on the raised head; and the white escutcheon on his
breast shone out like the snow on Salmon.
At length, with a sound like a sob, he dropped to the ground, and stood
listening, his tail dropping and head raised. Then he turned and began
softly pacing up and down, like some velvet-footed sentinel at the gate
of death.
Up and down, up and down, softly as the falling snow, for a weary, weary
while.
Again he stopped and stood, listening intently, at the foot of the
stairs; and his gray coat quivered as though there were a draught.
Of a sudden, the deathly stillness of the house was broken. Upstairs,
feet were running hurriedly. There was a cry, and again silence.
A life was coming in; a life was going out.
The minutes passed; hours passed; and, at the sunless dawn, a life
passed.
And all through that night of age-long agony the gray figure stood,
still as a statue, at the foot of the stairs. Only, when, with the first
chill breath of the morning, a dry, quick-quenched sob of a strong man
sorrowing for the helpmeet of a score of years, and a tiny cry of a
new-born child wailing because its mother was not, came down to his
ears, the Gray Watchman dropped his head upon his bosom, and, with a
little whimpering note, crept back to his blanket.
A little later the door above opened, and James Moore tramped down the
stairs. He looked taller and gaunter than his wont, but there was no
trace of emotion on his face.
At the foot of the stairs Owd Bob stole out to meet him. He came
crouching up, head and tail down, in a manner no man ever saw before or
since. At his master's feet he stopped.
Then, for one short moment, James Moore's whole face quivered.
“Well, lad,” he said, quite low, and his voice broke; “she's awa'!”
That was all; for they were an undemonstrative couple.
Then they turned and went out together into the bleak morning.
Chapter VIII. M'ADAM AND HIS COAT
To David M'Adam the loss of gentle Elizabeth Moore was as real a grief
as to her children. Yet he manfully smothered his own aching heart and
devoted himself to comforting the mourners at Kenmuir.
In the days succeeding Mrs. Moore's death the boy recklessly neglected
his duties at the Grange. But little M'Adam forbore to rebuke him. At
times, indeed, he essayed to be passively kind. David, however, was too
deeply sunk in his great sorrow to note the change.
The day of the funeral came. The earth was throwing off its ice-fetters;
and the Dale was lost in a mourning mist.
In the afternoon M'Adam was standing at the window of the kitchen,
contemplating the infinite weariness of the scene, when the door of the
house opened and shut noiselessly. Red Wull raised himself on to the
sill and growled, and David hurried past the window making for Kenmuir.
M'Adam watched the passing figure indifferently; then with an angry oath
sprang to the window.
“Bring me back that coat, ye thief!” he cried, tapping fiercely on the
pane. “Tak' it aff at onst, ye muckle gowk, or I'll come and tear it aff
ye. D'ye see him, Wullie? the great coof has ma coat--me black coat, new
last Michaelmas, and it rainin' 'nough to melt it.”
He threw the window up with a bang and leaned out.
“Bring it back, I tell ye, ondootiful, or I'll summons ye. Though ye've
no respect for me, ye might have for ma claithes. Ye're too big for yer
ain boots, let alane ma coat. D'ye think I had it cut for a elephant?
It's burst-in', I tell ye. Tak' it aff! Fetch it here, or I'll e'en send
Wullie to bring it!”
David paid no heed except to begin running heavily down the hill. The
coat was stretched in wrinkled agony across his back; his big, red
wrists protruded like shank-bones from the sleeves; and the little tails
flapped wearily in vain attempts to reach the wearer's legs.
M'Adam, bubbling over with indignation, scrambled half through the open
window. Then, tickled at the amazing impudence of the thing, he paused,
smiled, dropped to the ground again, and watched the uncouth, retreating
figure with chuckling amusement.
“Did ye ever see the like o' that, Wullie?” he muttered. “Ma puir
coat--puir wee coatie! it gars me greet to see her in her pain. A man's
coat, Wullie, is aften unco sma' for his son's back; and David there
is strainin' and stretchin' her nigh to brakin', for a' the world as he
does ma forbearance. And what's he care aboot the one or t'ither?--not a
finger-flip.”
As he stood watching the disappearing figure there began the slow
tolling of the minute-bell in the little Dale church. Now near, now far,
now loud, now low, its dull chant rang out through the mist like the
slow-dropping tears of a mourning world.
M'Adam listened, almost reverently, as the bell tolled on, the only
sound in the quiet Dale. Outside, a drizzling rain was falling; the
snow dribbled down the hill in muddy tricklets; and trees and roofs and
windows dripped.
And still the bell tolled on, calling up relentlessly sad memories of
the long ago.
It was on just such another dreary day, in just such another December,
and not so many years gone by, that the light had gone forever out of
his life.
The whole picture rose as instant to his eyes as if it had been but
yesterday. That insistent bell brought the scene surging back to him:
the dismal day; the drizzle; the few mourners; little David decked out
in black, his fair hair contrasting with his gloomy clothes, his face
swollen with weeping; the Dale hushed, it seemed in death, save for the
tolling of the bell; and his love had left him and gone to the happy
land the hymn-books talk of.
Red Wull, who had been watching him uneasily, now came up and shoved
his muzzle into his master's hand. The cold touch brought the little man
back to earth. He shook himself, turned wearily away from the window,
and went to the door of the house.
He stood there looking out; and all round him was the eternal drip, drip
of the thaw. The wind lulled, and again the minute-bell tolled out clear
and inexorable, resolute to recall what was and what had been.
With a choking gasp the little man turned into the house, and ran up the
stairs and into his room. He dropped on his knees beside the great chest
in the corner, and unlocked the bottom drawer, the key turning noisily
in its socket.
In the drawer he searched with feverish fingers, and produced at length
a little paper packet wrapped about with a stained yellow ribbon. It was
the ribbon she had used to weave on Sundays into her soft hair.
Inside the packet was a cheap, heart-shaped frame, and in it a
photograph.
Up there it was too dark to see. The little man ran down the stairs, Red
Wull jostling him as he went, and hurried to the window in the kitchen.
It was a sweet, laughing face that looked up at him from the frame,
demure yet arch, shy yet roguish--a face to look at and a face to love.
As he looked a wintry smile, wholly tender, half tearful, stole over the
little man's face.
“Lassie,” he whispered, and his voice was infinitely soft, “it's lang
sin' I've daured look at ye. But it's no that ye're forgotten, dearie.”
Then he covered his eyes with his hand as though he were blinded.
“Dinna look at me sae, lass!” he cried, and fell on his knees, kissing
the picture, hugging it to him and sobbing passionately.
Red Wull came up and pushed his face compassionately into his master's;
but the little man shoved him roughly away, and the dog retreated into a
corner, abashed and reproachful.
Memories swarmed back on the little man.
It was more than a decade ago now, and yet he dared barely think of that
last evening when she had lain so white and still in the little room
above.
“Pit the bairn on the bed, Adam man,” she had said in low tones. “I'll
be gaein' in a wee while noo. It's the lang good-by to you--and him.”
He had done her bidding and lifted David up. The tiny boy lay still a
moment, looking at this white-faced mother whom he hardly recognized.
“Minnie!” he called piteously. Then, thrusting a small, dirty hand into
his pocket, he pulled out a grubby sweet.
“Minnie, ha' a sweetie--ain o' Davie's sweeties!” and he held it out
anxiously in his warm plump palm, thinking it a certain cure for any
ill.
“Eat it for mither,” she said, smiling tenderly; and then: “Davie, ma
heart, I'm leavin' ye.”
The boy ceased sucking the sweet, and looked at her, the corners of his
mouth drooping pitifully.
“Ye're no gaein' awa', mither?” he asked, his face all working. “Ye'll
no leave yen wee laddie?”
“Ay, laddie, awa'--reet awa'. HE's callin' me.” She tried to smile; but
her mother's heart was near to bursting.
“Ye'll tak' yen wee Davie wi' ye mither!” the child pleaded, crawling up
toward her face.
The great tears rolled, unrestrained, down her wan cheeks, and M'Adam,
at the head of the bed, was sobbing openly.
“Eh, ma bairn, ma bairn, I'm sair to leave ye!” she cried brokenly.
“Lift him for me, Adam.”
He placed the child in her arms; but she was too weak to hold him. So he
laid him upon his mother's pillows; and the boy wreathed his soft arms
about her neck and sobbed tempestuously.
And the two lay thus together.
Just before she died, Flora turned her head and whispered:
“Adam, ma man, ye'll ha' to be mither and father baith to the lad noo”;
and she looked at him with tender confidence in her dying eyes.
“I wull! afore God as I stan' here I wull!” he declared passionately.
Then she died, and there was a look of ineffable peace upon her face.
* * * * *
“Mither and father baith!”
The little man rose to his feet and flung the photograph from him. Red
Wull pounced upon it; but M'Adam leapt at him as he mouthed it.
“Git awa', ye devil!” he screamed; and, picking it up, stroked it
lovingly with trembling fingers.
“Maither and father baith!”
How had he fulfilled his love's last wish? How!
“Oh God! “--and he fell upon his knees at the table-side, hugging the
picture, sobbing and praying.
Red Wull cowered in the far corner of the room, and then crept whining
up to where his master knelt. But M'Adam heeded him not, and the great
dog slunk away again.
There the little man knelt in the gloom of the winter's afternoon, a
miserable penitent. His gray-flecked head was bowed upon his arms; his
hands clutched the picture; and he prayed aloud in gasping, halting
tones.
“Gie me grace, O God! 'Father and mither baith,' ye said, Flora--and I
ha'na done it. But 'tis no too late--say it's no, lass. Tell me there's
time yet, and say ye forgie me. I've tried to bear wi' him mony and mony
a time. But he's vexed me, and set himself agin me, and stiffened my
back, and ye ken hoo I was aye quick to tak' offence. But I'll mak' it
up to him--mak' it up to him, and mair. I'll humble masel' afore him,
and that'll be bitter enough. And I'll be father and mither baith to
him. But there's bin none to help me; and it's bin sair wi'oot ye.
And--. but, eh, lassie, I'm wearyin' for ye!”
* * * * *
It was a dreary little procession that wound in the drizzle from Kenmuir
to the little Dale Church. At the head stalked James Moore, and close
behind David in his meagre coat. While last of all, as if to guide the
stragglers in the weary road, come Owd Bob.
There was a full congregation in the tiny church now. In the squire's
pew were Cyril Gilbraith, Muriel Sylvester, and, most conspicuous, Lady
Eleanour. Her slender figure was simply draped in gray, with gray fur
about the neck and gray fur edging sleeves and jacket; her veil was
lifted, and you could see the soft hair about her temples, like waves
breaking on white cliffs, and her eyes big with tender sympathy as she
glanced toward the pew upon her right.
For there were the mourners from Kenmuir: the Master, tall, grim, and
gaunt; and beside him Maggie, striving to be calm, and little Andrew,
the miniature of his father.
Alone, in the pew behind, David M'Adam in his father's coat.
The back of the church was packed with farmers from the whole March Mere
Estate; friends from Silverdale and Grammoch-town; and nearly every
soul in Wastrel-dale, come to show their sympathy for the living and
reverence for the dead.
At last the end came in the wet dreariness of the little churchyard, and
slowly the mourners departed, until at length were left only the parson,
the Master, and Owd Bob.
The parson was speaking in rough, short accents, digging nervously
at the wet ground. The other, tall and gaunt, his face drawn and
half-averted, stood listening. By his side was Owd Bob, scanning his
master's countenance, a wistful compassion deep in the sad gray eyes;
while close by, one of the parson's terriers was nosing inquisitively in
the wet grass.
Of a sudden, James Moore, his face still turned away, stretched out a
hand. The parson, broke off abruptly and grasped it. Then the two men
strode away in opposite directions, the terrier hopping on three legs
and shaking the rain off his hard coat.
* * * * *
David's steps sounded outside. M'Adam rose from his knees. The door of
the house opened, and the boy's feet shuffled in the passage.
“David!” the little man called in a tremulous voice.
He stood in the half-light, one hand on the table, the other clasping
the picture. His eyes were bleared, his thin hair all tossed, and he was
shaking.
“David,” he called again; “I've somethin' I wush to say to ye!”
The boy burst into the room. His face was stained with tears and rain;
and the new black coat was wet and slimy all down the front, and on the
elbows were green-brown, muddy blots. For, on his way home, he had flung
himself down in the Stony Bottom just as he was, heedless of the wet
earth and his father's coat, and, lying on his face thinking of
that second mother lost to him, had wept his heart out in a storm of
passionate grief.
Now he stood defiantly, his hand upon the door.
“What d'yo' want?”
The little man looked from him to the picture in his hand.
“Help me, Flora--he'll no,” he prayed. Then raising his eyes, he began:
“I'd like to say--I've bin thinkin'--I think I should tell ye--it's no
an easy thing for a man to say--”
He broke off short. The self-imposed task was almost more than he could
accomplish.
He looked appealingly at David. But there was no glimmer of
understanding in that white, set countenance.
“O God, it's maist mair than I can do!” the little man muttered; and the
perspiration stood upon his forehead. Again he began: “David, after I
saw ye this afternoon steppin' doon the hill--” Again he paused. His
glance rested unconsciously upon the coat. David mistook the look;
mistook the dimness in his father's eyes; mistook the tremor in his
voice.
“Here 'tis! tak' yo' coat!” he cried passionately; and, tearing it off,
flung it down at his father's feet. “Tak' it--and---and--curse yo'.”
He banged out of the room and ran upstairs; and, locking himself in,
threw himself on to his bed and sobbed.
Red Wull made a movement to fly at the retreating figure; then turned
to his master, his stump-tail vibrating with pleasure. But little M'Adam
was looking at the wet coat now lying in a wet bundle at his feet.
“Curse ye,” he repeated softly. “Curse ye--ye heard him. Wullie?”
A bitter smile crept across his face. He looked again at the picture now
lying crushed in his hand.
“Ye canna say I didna try; ye canna ask me to agin,” he muttered, and
slipped it into his pocket. “Niver agin, Wullie; not if the Queen were
to ask it.”
Then he went out into the gloom and drizzle, still smiling the same
bitter smile.
* * * * *
That night, when it came to closing-time at the Sylvester Arms, Jem
Burton found a little gray-haired figure lying on the floor in the
tap-room. At the little man's head lay a great dog.
“Yo' beast!” said the righteous publican, regarding the figure of his
best customer with fine scorn. Then catching sight of a photograph in
the little man's hand:
“Oh, yo're that sort, are yo', foxy?” he leered. “Gie us a look at 'er,”
and he tried to disengage the picture from the other's grasp. But at
the attempt the great dog rose, bared his teeth, and assumed such a
diabolical expression that the big landlord retreated hurriedly behind
the bar.
“Two on ye!” he shouted viciously, rattling his heels; “beasts baith!”
PART III THE SHEPHERDS' TROPHY
Chapter IX. RIVALS
M'ADAM never forgave his son. After the scene on the evening of the
funeral there could be no alternative but war for all time. The
little man had attempted to humble himself, and been rejected; and
the bitterness of defeat, when he had deserved victory, rankled like a
poisoned barb in his bosom.
Yet the heat of his indignation was directed not against David, but
against the Master of Kenmuir. To the influence and agency of James
Moore he attributed his discomfiture, and bore himself accordingly. In
public or in private, in tap-room or market, he never wearied of abusing
his enemy.
“Feel the loss o' his wife, d'ye say?” he would cry. “Ay, as muckle as
I feel the loss o' my hair. James Moore can feel naethin', I tell ye,
except, aiblins, a mischance to his meeserable dog.”
When the two met, as they often must, it was always M'Adam's endeavor
to betray his enemy into an unworthy expression of feeling. But James
Moore, sorely tried as he often was, never gave way. He met the little
man's sneers with a quelling silence, looking down on his asp-tongued
antagonist with such a contempt flashing from his blue-gray eyes as hurt
his adversary more than words.
Only once was he spurred into reply. It was in the tap-room of
the Dalesman's Daughter on the occasion of the big spring fair in
Grammoch-town, when there was a goodly gathering of farmers and their
dogs in the room.
M'Adam was standing at the fireplace with Red Wull at his side.
“It's a noble pairt ye play, James Moore,” he cried loudly across the
room, “settin' son against father, and dividin' hoose against hoose.
It's worthy o' ye we' yer churchgoin', and yer psalm-singin', and yer
godliness.”
The Master looked up from the far end of the room.
“Happen yo're not aware, M'Adam,” he said sternly, “that, an' it had not
bin for me, David'd ha' left you years agone--and 'twould nob'but ha'
served yo' right, I'm thinkin'.”
The little man was beaten on his own ground, so he changed front.
“Dinna shout so, man--I have ears to hear, Forbye ye irritate Wullie.”
The Tailless Tyke, indeed, had advanced from the fireplace, and now
stood, huge and hideous, in the very centre of the room. There was
distant thunder in his throat, a threat upon his face, a challenge in
every wrinkle. And the Gray Dog stole gladly out from behind his master
to take up the gage of battle.
Straightway there was silence; tongues ceased to wag, tankards to clink.
Every man and every dog was quietly gathering about those two central
figures. Not one of them all but had his score to wipe off against the
Tailless Tyke; not one of them but was burning to join in, the battle
once begun. And the two gladiators stood looking past one another,
muzzle to muzzle, each with a tiny flash of teeth glinting between his
lips.
But the fight was not to be; for the twentieth time the Master
intervened.
“Bob, lad, coom in!” he called, and, bending, grasped his favorite by
the neck.
M'Adam laughed softly.
“Wullie, Wullie, to me!” he cried. “The look o' you's enough for that
gentleman.”
“If they get fightin' it'll no be Bob here I'll hit, I warn yo',
M'Adam,” said the Master grimly.
“Gin ye sae muckle as touched Wullie d'ye ken what I'd do, James Moore?”
asked the little man very smoothly.
“Yes--sweer,” the other replied, and strode out of the room amid a roar
of derisive laughter at M'Adam's expense.
Owd Bob had now attained wellnigh the perfection of his art. Parson
Leggy declared roundly that his like had not been seen since the days
of Rex son of Rally. Among the Dalesmen he was a heroic favorite, his
prowess and gentle ways winning him friends on every hand. But the point
that told most heavily for him was that in all things he was the very
antithesis of Red Wull.
Barely a man in the country-side but owed that ferocious savage a
grudge; not a man of them all who dared pay it. Once Long Kirby, full
of beer and valor, tried to settle his account. Coming on M'Adam and Red
Wull as he was driving into Grammoch-town, he leant over and with his
thong dealt the dog a terrible sword-like slash that raised an angry
ridge of red from hip to shoulder; and was twenty yards down the road
before the little man's shrill curse reached his ear, drowned in a
hideous bellow.
He stood up and lashed the colt, who, quick on his legs for a young un,
soon settled to his gallop. But, glancing over his shoulder, he saw a
hounding form behind, catching him as though he were walking. His face
turned sickly white; he screamed; he flogged; he looked back. Right
beneath the tail-board was the red devil in the dust; while racing a
furlong behind on the turnpike road was the mad figure of M'Adam.
The smith struck back and flogged forward. It was of no avail. With a
tiger-like bound the murderous brute leapt on the flying trap. At the
shock of the great body the colt was thrown violently on his side; Kirby
was tossed over the hedge; and Red Wull pinned beneath the debris.
M'Adam had time to rush up and save a tragedy.
“I've a mind to knife ye, Kirby,” he panted, as he bandaged the smith's
broken head.
After that you may be sure the Dalesmen preferred to swallow insults
rather than to risk their lives; and their impotence only served to fan
their hatred to white heat.
The working methods of the antagonists were as contrasted as their
appearances. In a word, the one compelled where the other coaxed.
His enemies said the Tailless Tyke was rough; not even Tammas denied he
was ready. His brain was as big as his body, and he used them both
to some purpose. “As quick as a cat, with the heart of a lion and the
temper of Nick's self,” was Parson Leggy's description.
What determination could effect, that could Red Wall; but achievement
by inaction--supremest of all strategies--was not for him. In matters of
the subtlest handling, where to act anything except indifference was
to lose, with sheep restless, fearful forebodings hymned to them by the
wind, panic hovering unseen above them, when an ill-considered movement
spelt catastrophe--then was Owd Bob o' Kenmuir incomparable.
Men still tell how, when the squire's new thrashing-machine ran amuck
in Grammoch-town, and for some minutes the market square was a turbulent
sea of blaspheming men, yelping dogs, and stampeding sheep, only one
flock stood calm as a mill-pond by the bull-ring, watching the riot with
almost indifference. And in front, sitting between them and the storm,
was a quiet gray dog, his mouth stretched in a capacious yawn: to yawn
was to win, and he won.
When the worst of the uproar was over, many a glance of triumph was shot
first at that one still pack, and then at M'Adam, as he waded through
the disorder of huddling sheep.
“And wheer's your Wullie noo?” asked Tapper scornfully.
“Weel,” the little man answered with a quiet smile, “at this minute he's
killin' your Rasper doon by the pump.” Which was indeed the case; for
big blue Rasper had interfered with the great dog in the performance of
his duty, and suffered accordingly.
* * * * *
Spring passed into summer; and the excitement as to the event of the
approaching Trials, when at length the rivals would be pitted
against one another, reached such a height as old Jonas Maddox, the
octogenarian, could hardly recall.
Down in the Sylvester Arms there was almost nightly a conflict
between M'Adam and Tammas Thornton, spokesman of the Dales men. Many a
long-drawn bout of words had the two anent the respective merits and Cup
chances of red and gray. In these duels Tammas was usually worsted. His
temper would get the better of his discretion; and the cynical debater
would be lost in the hot-tongued partisan.
During these encounters the others would, as a rule, maintain a rigid
silence. Only when their champion was being beaten, and it was time for
strength of voice to vanquish strength of argument, they joined in
right lustily and roared the little man down, for all the world like the
gentlemen who rule the Empire at Westminster.
Tammas was an easy subject for M'Adam to draw, but David was an easier.
Insults directed at himself the boy bore with a stolidity born of long
use. But a poisonous dart shot against his friends at Kenmuir never
failed to achieve its object. And the little man evinced an amazing
talent for the concoction of deft lies respecting James Moore.
“I'm hearin',” said he, one evening, sitting in the kitchen, sucking his
twig; “I'm hearin' James Moore is gaein' to git married agin.”
“Yo're hearin' lies--or mair-like tellin' 'em,” David answered shortly.
For he treated his father now with contemptuous indifference.
“Seven months sin' his wife died,” the little man continued
meditatively. “Weel, I'm on'y 'stonished he's waited sae lang. Ain
buried, anither come on--that's James Moore.”
David burst angrily out of the room.
“Gaein' to ask him if it's true?” called his father after him. “Gude
luck to ye--and him.”
David had now a new interest at Kenmuir. In Maggie he found an endless
source of study. On the death of her mother the girl had taken up the
reins of government at Kenmuir; and gallantly she played her part,
whether in tenderly mothering the baby, wee Anne, or in the sterner
matters of household work. She did her duty, young though she was,
with a surprising, old-fashioned womanliness that won many a smile
of approval from her father, and caused David's eyes to open with
astonishment.
And he soon discovered that Maggie, mistress of Kenmuir, was another
person from his erstwhile playfellow and servant.
The happy days when might ruled right were gone, never to be recalled.
David often regretted them, especially when in a conflict of tongues,
Maggie, with her quick answers and teasing eyes, was driving him sulky
and vanquished from the field. The two were perpetually squabbling now.
In the good old days, he remembered bitterly, squabbles between them
were unknown. He had never permitted them; any attempt at independent
thought or action was as sternly quelled as in the Middle Ages. She must
follow where he led on--“Ma word!”
Now she was mistress where he had been master; hers was to command, his
to obey. In consequence they were perpetually at war. And yet he would
sit for hours in the kitchen and watch her, as she went about her
business, with solemn, interested eyes, half of admiration, half of
amusement. In the end Maggie always turned on him with a little laugh
touched with irritation.
“Han't yo' got nothin' better'n that to do, nor lookin' at me?” she
asked one Saturday about a month before Cup Day.
“No, I han't,” the pert fellow rejoined.
“Then I wish yo' had. It mak's me fair jumpety yo' watchin' me so like
ony cat a mouse.”
“Niver yo' fash yo'sel' account o' me, ma wench,” he answered calmly.
“Yo' wench, indeed!” she cried, tossing her head.
“Ay, or will be,” he muttered.
“What's that?” she cried, springing round, a flush of color on her face.
“Nowt, my dear. Yo'll know so soon as I want yo' to, yo' may be sure,
and no sooner.”
The girl resumed her baking, half angry, half suspicious.
“I dunno' what yo' mean, Mr. M'Adam,” she said.
“Don't yo', Mrs. M'A----”
The rest was lost in the crash of a falling plate; whereat David laughed
quietly, and asked if he should help pick up the bits.
* * * * *
On the same evening at the Sylvester Arms an announcement was made that
knocked the breath out of its hearers.
In the debate that night on the fast-approaching Dale Trials and the
relative abilities of red and gray, M'Adam on the one side, and Tammas,
backed by Long Kirby and the rest, on the other, had cudgelled each
other with more than usual vigor. The controversy rose to fever-heat;
abuse succeeded argument; and the little man again and again was hooted
into silence.
“It's easy laffin',” he cried at last, “but ye'll laff t'ither side o'
yer ugly faces on Cup Day.”
“Will us, indeed? Us'll see,” came the derisive chorus.
“We'll whip ye till ye're deaf, dumb, and blind, Wullie and I.”
''Yo'll not!''
“We will!”
The voices were rising like the east wind in March.
“Yo'll not, and for a very good reason too,” asseverated Tammas loudly.
“Gie us yer reason, ye muckle liar,” cried the little man, turning on
him.
“Becos----” began Jim Mason and stopped to rub his nose.
“Yo' 'old yo' noise, Jim,” recommended Rob Saunderson.
“Becos----” it was Tammas this time who paused.
“Git on wi' it, ye stammerin' stirk!” cried M'Adam. “Why?”
“Becos--Owd Bob'll not rin.”
Tammas sat back in his chair.
“What!” screamed the little man, thrusting forward.
“What's that!” yelled Long Kirby, leaping to his feet.
“Mon, say it agin!” shouted Rob.
“What's owd addled eggs tellin'?” cried Liz Burton.
“Dang his 'ead for him!” shouts Tupper.
“Fill his eye!” says Ned Hoppin.
They jostled round the old man's chair: M'Adam in front; Jem Burton and
Long Kirby leaning over his shoulder; Liz behind her father; Saunderson
and Tupper tackling him on either side; while the rest peered and
elbowed in the rear.
The announcement had fallen like a thunderbolt among them.
Tammas looked slowly up at the little mob of eager faces above him.
Pride at the sensation caused by his news struggled in his countenance
with genuine sorrow for the matter of it.
“Ay, yo' may well 'earken all on yo'. Tis enough to mak' the deadies
listen. I says agin: We's'll no rin oor Bob fot' Cup. And yo' may guess
why. Bain't every mon, Mr. M'Adam, as'd pit aside his chanst o' the Cup,
and that 'maist a gift for him”--M'Adam's tongue was in his cheek--“and
it a certainty,” the old man continued warmly, “oot o' respect for his
wife's memory.”
The news was received in utter silence. The shock of the surprise,
coupled with the bitterness of the disappointment, froze the slow
tongues of his listeners.
Only one small voice broke the stillness.
“Oh, the feelin' man! He should git a reduction o' rent for sic a
display o' proper speerit. I'll mind Mr. Hornbut to let auld Sylvester
ken o't.”
Which he did, and would have got a thrashing for his pains had not Cyril
Gilbraith thrown him out of the parsonage before the angry cleric could
lay hands upon him.
Chapter X. RED WULL WINS
TAMMAS had but told the melancholy truth. Owd Bob was not to run for the
cup. And this self-denying ordinance speaks more for James Moore's love
of his lost wife than many a lordly cenotaph.
To the people of the Daleland, from the Black Water to the market-cross
in Grammoch-town, the news came with the shock of a sudden blow. They
had set their hearts on the Gray Dog's success; and had felt serenely
confident of his victory. But the sting of the matter lay in this: that
now the Tailless Tyke might well win.
M'Adam, on the other hand, was plunged into a fervor of delight at the
news. For to win the Shepherds' Trophy was the goal of his ambition.
David was now less than nothing to the lonely little man, Red Wull
everything to him. And to have that name handed down to posterity,
gallantly holding its place among those of the most famous sheep-dogs of
all time, was his heart's desire.
As Cup Day drew near, the little man, his fine-drawn temperament
strung to the highest pitch of nervousness, was tossed on a sea of
apprehension. His hopes and fears ebbed and flowed on the tide of the
moment. His moods were as uncertain as the winds in March; and there was
no dependence on his humor for a unit of time. At one minute he paced up
and down the kitchen, his face already flushed with the glow of victory,
chanting:
“Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled!”
At the next he was down at the table, his head buried in his hands, his
whole figure shaking, as he cried in choking voice: “Eh, Wullie, Wullie,
they're all agin us.”
David found that life with his father now was life with an unamiable
hornet. Careless as he affected to be of his father's vagaries, he was
tried almost to madness, and fled away at every moment to Kenmuir; for,
as he told Maggie, “I'd sooner put up wi' your h'airs and h'imperences,
miss, than wi' him, the wemon that he be!”
* * * * *
At length the great day came. Fears, hopes, doubts, dismays, all
dispersed in the presence of the reality.
Cup Day is always a general holiday in the Daleland, and every soul
crowds over to Silverdale. Shops were shut; special trains ran in
to Grammoch-town; and the road from the little town was dazed with
char-a-bancs, brakes, wagonettes, carriages, carts, foot-passengers,
wending toward the Dalesman's Daughter.
And soon the paddock below that little inn was humming with the crowd
of sportsmen and spectators come to see the battle for the Shepherd's
Trophy.
There, very noticeable with its red body and yellow wheels, was the
great Kenmuir wagon. Many an eye was directed on the handsome young pair
who stood in it, conspicuous and unconscious, above the crowd: Maggie,
looking in her simple print frock as sweet and fresh as any mountain
flower; while David's fair face was all gloomy and his brows knit.
In front of the wagon was a black cluster of Dalesmen, discussing
M'Adam's chances. In the centre was Tammas holding forth. Had you passed
close to the group you might have heard: “A man, d'yo say, Mr. Maddox? A
h'ape, I call him”; or: “A dog? more like an 'og, I tell yo'.” Round the
old orator were Jonas, 'Enry, and oor Job, Jem Burton, Rob Saunderson,
Tupper, Jim Mason, Hoppin, and others; while on the outskirts stood
Sam'l Todd prophesying rain and M'Adam's victory. Close at hand Bessie
Bolstock, who was reputed to have designs on David, was giggling
spitefully at the pair in the Kenmuir wagon, and singing:
“Let a lad aloan, lass, Let a lad a-be.”
While her father, Teddy, dodged in and out among the crowd with tray and
glasses: for Cup Day was the great day of the year for him.
Past the group of Dalesmen and on all sides was a mass of bobbing
heads--Scots, Northerners, Yorkshiremen, Taffies. To right and left
a long array of carriages and carts, ranging from the squire's quiet
landau and Viscount Birdsaye's gorgeous barouche to Liz Burton's
three-legged moke-cart with little Mrs. Burton, the twins, young Jake
(who should have walked), and Monkey (ditto) packed away inside. Beyond
the Silver Lea the gaunt Scaur raised its craggy peak, and the Pass,
trending along its side, shone white in the sunshine.
At the back of the carriages were booths, cocoanut-shies, Aunt Sallies,
shows, bookmakers' stools, and all the panoply of such a meeting.
Here Master Launcelot Bilks and Jacky Sylvester were fighting; Cyril
Gilbraith was offering to take on the boxing man; Long Kirby was
snapping up the odds against Red Wull; and Liz Burton and young Ned
Hoppin were being photographed together, while Melia Ross in the
background was pretending she didn't care.
On the far bank of the stream was a little bevy of men and dogs,
observed of all.
The Juvenile Stakes had been run and won; Londesley's Lassie had carried
off the Locals; and the fight for the Shepherds' Trophy was about to
begin.
“Yo're not lookin' at me noo,” whispered Maggie to the silent boy by her
side.
“Nay; nor niver don't wush to agin.” David answered roughly. His gaze
was directed over the array of heads in front to where, beyond the
Silver Lea, a group of shepherds and their dogs was clustered. While
standing apart from the rest, in characteristic isolation, was the bent
figure of his father, and beside him the Tailless Tyke.
“Doest'o not want yo' feyther to win?” asked Maggie softly, following
his gaze.
“I'm prayin' he'll be beat,” the boy answered moodily.
“Eh, Davie, hoo can ye?” cried the girl, shocked.
“It's easy to say, 'Eh, David,'” he snapped. “But if yo' lived along
o' them two “--he nodded toward the stream--“'appen yo'd understand a
bit.... 'Eh, David,' indeed! I never did!”
“I know it, lad,” she said tenderly; and he was appeased.
“He'd give his right hand for his bless'd Wullie to win; I'd give me
right arm to see him beat.... And oor Bob there all the while,”--he
nodded to the far left of the line, where stood James Moore and Owd Bob,
with Parson Leggy and the Squire.
When at length Red Wull came out to run his course, he worked with the
savage dash that always characterized him. His method was his own; but
the work was admirably done.
“Keeps right on the back of his sheep,” said the parson, watching
intently. “Strange thing they don't break!” But they didn't. There was
no waiting, no coaxing; it was drive and devilry all through. He
brought his sheep along at a terrific rate, never missing a turn, never
faltering, never running out. And the crowd applauded, for the crowd
loves a dashing display. While little M'Adam, hopping agilely about,
his face ablaze with excitement, handled dog and sheep with a masterly
precision that compelled the admiration even of his enemies.
“M'Adam wins!” roared a bookmaker. “Twelve to one agin the field!”
“He wins, dang him!” said David, low.
“Wull wins!” said the parson, shutting his lips.
“And deserves too!” said James Moore.
“Wull wins!” softly cried the crowd.
“We don't!” said Sam'l gloomily.
And in the end Red Wull did Win; and there were none save Tammas, the
bigot, and Long Kirby, who had lost a good deal of his wife's money and
a little of his own, to challenge the justice of the verdict.
The win had but a chilling reception. At first there was faint cheering;
but it sounded like the echo of an echo, and soon died of inanition.
To get up an ovation, there must be money at the back, or a few roaring
fanatics to lead the dance. Here there was neither; ugly stories,
disparaging remarks, on every hand. And the hundreds who did not know
took their tone, as always, from those who said they did.
M'Adam could but remark the absence of enthusiasm as he pushed up
through the throng toward the committee tent. No single voice hailed
him victor; no friendly hand smote its congratulations. Broad backs were
turned; contemptuous glances levelled; spiteful remarks shot. Only the
foreign element looked curiously at the little bent figure with the
glowing face, and shrank back at the size and savage aspect of the great
dog at his heels.
But what cared he? His Wullie was acknowledged champion, the best
sheep-dog of the year; and the little man was happy. They could turn
their backs on him; but they could not alter that; and he could afford
to be indifferent. “They dinna like it, lad--he! he! But they'll e'en
ha' to thole it. Ye've won it, Wullie--won it fair.”
He elbowed through the press, making for the rope-guarded inclosure in
front of the committee tent, round which the people were now packing. In
the door of the tent stood the secretary, various stewards, and members
of the committee. In front, alone in the roped-off space, was Lady
Eleanour, fragile, dainty, graceful, waiting with a smile upon her face
to receive the winner. And on a table beside her, naked and dignified,
the Shepherd's Trophy.
There it stood, kingly and impressive; its fair white sides inscribed
with many names; cradled in three shepherds' crooks; and on the top, as
if to guard the Cup's contents, an exquisitely carved collie's head. The
Shepherds' Trophy, the goal of his life's race, and many another man's.
He climbed over the rope, followed by Red Wull, and took off his hat
with almost courtly deference to the fair lady before him.
As he walked up to the table on which the Cup stood, a shrill voice,
easily recognizable, broke the silence.
“You'd like it better if 'twas full and yo' could swim in it, you and
yer Wullie,” it called. Whereat the crowd giggled, and Lady Eleanour
looked indignant.
The little man turned.
“I'll mind drink yer health, Mr. Thornton, never fear, though I ken ye'd
prefaire to drink yer ain,” he said. At which the crowd giggled afresh;
and a gray head at the back, which had hoped itself unrecognized,
disappeared suddenly.
The little man stood there in the stillness, sourly smiling, his face
still wet from his exertions; while the Tailless Tyke at his side
fronted defiantly the serried ring of onlookers, a white fence of teeth
faintly visible between his lips.
Lady Eleanour looked uneasy. Usually the lucky winner was unable to
hear her little speech, as she gave the Cup away, so deafening was the
applause. Now there was utter silence. She glanced up at the crowd, but
there was no response to her unspoken appeal in that forest of hostile
faces. And her gentle heart bled for the forlorn little man before her.
To make it up she smiled on him so sweetly as to more than compensate
him.
“I'm sure you deserve your success, Mr. M'Adam,” she said. “You and Red
Wull there worked splendidly--everybody says so.”
“I've heard naethin' o't,” the little man answered dryly. At which some
one in the crowd sniggered.
“And we all know what a grand dog he is; though”--with a reproving smile
as she glanced at Red Wull's square, truncated stern--“he's not very
polite.”
“His heart is good, your Leddyship, if his manners are not,” M'Adam
answered, smiling.
“Liar!” came a loud voice in the silence. Lady Eleanour looked up, hot
with indignation, and half rose from her seat. But M'Adam merely smiled.
“Wullie, turn and mak' yer bow to the leddy,” he said. “They'll no hurt
us noo we're up; it's when we're doon they'll flock like corbies to the
carrion.”
At that Red Wull walked up to Lady Eleanour, faintly wagging his tail;
and she put her hand on his huge bull head and said, “Dear old Ugly!” at
which the crowd cheered in earnest.
After that, for some moments, the only sound was the gentle ripple of
the good lady's voice and the little man's caustic replies.
“Why, last winter the country was full of Red Wull's doings and yours.
It was always M'Adam and his Red Wull have done this and that and the
other. I declare I got quite tired of you both, I heard such a lot about
you.”
The little man, cap in hand, smiled, blushed and looked genuinely
pleased.
“And when it wasn't you it was Mr. Moore and Owd Bob.”
“Owd Bob, bless him!” called a stentorian voice. “There cheers for oor
Bob!”
“'Ip! 'ip! 'ooray!” It was taken up gallantly, and cast from mouth
to mouth; and strangers, though they did not understand, caught the
contagion and cheered too; and the uproar continued for some minutes.
When it was ended Lady Eleanour was standing up, a faint flush on her
cheeks and her eyes flashing dangerously, like a queen at bay.
“Yes,” she cried, and her clear voice thrilled through the air like a
trumpet. “Yes; and now three cheers for Mr. M'Adam and his Red Wull!
Hip! hip--”
“Hooray!” A little knowt of stalwarts at the back--James Moore,
Parson Leggy, Jim Mason, and you may be sure in heart, at least, Owd
Bob--responded to the call right lustily. The crowd joined in; and, once
off, cheered and cheered again.
“Three cheers more for Mr. M'Adam!”
But the little man waved to them.
“Dinna be bigger heepocrites than ye can help,” he said. “Ye've done
enough for one day, and thank ye for it.”
Then Lady Eleanour handed him the Cup.
“Mr. M'Adam, I present you with the Champion Challenge Dale Cup, open to
all comers. Keep it, guard it, love it as your own, and win it again if
you can. Twice more and it's yours, you know, and it will stop forever
beneath the shadow of the Pike. And the right place for it, say I--the
Dale Cup for Dalesmen.”
The little man took the Cup tenderly.
“It shall no leave the Estate or ma hoose, yer Leddyship, gin Wullie and
I can help it,” he said emphatically.
Lady Eleanour retreated into the tent, and the crowd swarmed over the
ropes and round the little man, who held the Cup beneath his arm.
Long Kirby laid irreverent hands upon it.
“Dinna finger it!” ordered M'Adam.
“Shall!''
“Shan't! Wullie, keep him aff.” Which the great dog proceeded to do amid
the laughter of the onlookers.
Among the last, James Moore was borne past the little man. At sight of
him, M'Adam's face assumed an expression of intense concern.
“Man, Moore!” he cried, peering forward as though in alarm; “man, Moore,
ye're green--positeevely verdant. Are ye in pain?” Then, catching sight
of Owd Bob, he started back in affected horror.
“And, ma certes! so's yer dog! Yer dog as was gray is green. Oh, guid
life! “--and he made as though about to fall fainting to the ground.
Then, in bantering tones: “Ah, but ye shouldna covet ----”
“He'll ha' no need to covet it long, I can tell yo',” interposed
Tammas's shrill accents.
“And why for no?”
“Becos next year he'll win it fra yo'. Oor Bob'll win it, little mon.
Why? thot's why.”
The retort was greeted with a yell of applause from the sprinkling of
Dalesmen in the crowd.
But M'Adam swaggered away into the tent, his head up, the Cup beneath
his arm, and Red Wull guarding his rear.
“First of a' ye'll ha' to beat Adam M'Adam and his Red Wull!” he cried
back proudly.
Chapter XI. OOR BOB
M'ADAM'S pride in the great Cup that now graced his kitchen was supreme.
It stood alone in the very centre of the mantelpiece, just below the old
bell-mouthed blunderbuss that hung upon the wall. The only ornament in
the bare room, it shone out in its silvery chastity like the moon in a
gloomy sky.
For once the little man was content. Since his mother's death David had
never known such peace. It was not that his father became actively kind;
rather that he forgot to be actively unkind.
“Not as I care a brazen button one way or t'ither,” the boy informed
Maggie.
“Then yo' should,” that proper little person replied.
M'Adam was, indeed, a changed being. He forgot to curse James Moore; he
forgot to sneer at Owd Bob; he rarely visited the Sylvester Arms, to the
detriment of Jem Burton's pocket and temper; and he was never drunk.
“Soaks 'isseif at home, instead,” suggested Tammas, the prejudiced. But
the accusation was untrue.
“Too drunk to git so far,” said Long Kirby, kindly man.
“I reck'n the Cup is kind o' company to him,” said Jim Mason. “Happen
it's lonesomeness as drives him here so much.” And happen you were
right, charitable Jim.
“Best mak' maist on it while he has it, 'cos he'll not have it for
long,” Tammas remarked amid applause.
Even Parson Leggy allowed--rather reluctantly, indeed, for he was but
human--that the little man was changed wonderfully for the better.
“But I am afraid it may not last,” he said. “We shall see what happens
when Owd Bob beats him for the Cup, as he certainly will. That'll be the
critical moment.”
As things were, the little man spent all his spare moments with the Cup
between his knees, burnishing it and crooning to Wullie:
“I never saw a fairer,
I never lo'ed a dearer,
And neist my heart I'll wear her,
For fear my jewel tine.”
“There, Wullie! look at her! is she no bonnie? She shines like a
twinkle--twinkle in the sky.” And he would hold it out at arm's length,
his head cocked sideways the better to scan its bright beauties.
The little man was very jealous for his treasure. David might not touch
it; might not smoke in the kitchen lest the fumes should tarnish its
glory; while if he approached too closely he was ordered abruptly away.
“As if I wanted to touch his nasty Cup!” he complained to Maggie. “I'd
sooner ony day--”
“Hands aff, Mr. David, immediate!” she cried indignantly. “'Pertinence,
indeed!” as she tossed her head clear of the big fingers that were
fondling her pretty hair.
So it was that M'Adam, on coming quietly into the kitchen one day,
was consumed with angry resentment to find David actually handling
the object of his reverence; and the manner of his doing it added a
thousandfold to the offence.
The boy was lolling indolently against the mantelpiece, his fair head
shoved right into the Cup, his breath dimming its lustre, and his two
hands, big and dirty, slowly revolving it before his eyes.
Bursting with indignation, the little man crept up behind the boy. David
was reading through the long list of winners.
“Theer's the first on 'em,” he muttered, shooting out his tongue to
indicate the locality: “'Andrew Moore's Rough, 178--.' And theer agin--'
James Moore's Pinch, 179--.' And agin--'Beck, 182--.' Ah, and theer's
'im Tammas tells on! 'Rex, 183--,' and Rex, 183--.' Ay, but he was a
rare un by all tell-in's! If he'd nob'but won but onst agin! Ah, and
theer's none like the Gray Dogs--they all says that, and I say so
masel'; none like the Gray Dogs o' Kenmuir, bless 'em! And we'll win
agin too--” he broke off short; his eye had travelled down to the last
name on the list.
“'M'Adam's Wull'!” he read with unspeakable contempt, and put his great
thumb across the name as though to wipe it out. “'M'Adam's Wull'! Goo'
gracious sakes! P-hg-h-r-r! “--and he made a motion as though to spit
upon the ground.
But a little shoulder was into his side, two small fists were beating
at his chest, and a shrill voice was yelling: “Devil! devil! stan'
awa'!”--and he was tumbled precipitately away from the mantelpiece, and
brought up abruptly against the side-wall.
The precious Cup swayed on its ebony stand, the boy's hands, rudely
withdrawn, almost overthrowing it. But the little man's first impulse,
cursing and screaming though he was, was to steady it.
“'M'Adam's Wull'! I wish he was here to teach ye, ye snod-faced,
ox-limbed profleegit!” he cried, standing in front of the Cup, his eyes
blazing.
“Ay, 'M'Adam's Wull'! And why not 'M'Adam's Wull'? Ha' ye ony objections
to the name?”
“I didn't know yo' was theer,” said David, a thought sheepishly.
“Na; or ye'd not ha' said it.”
“I'd ha' thought it, though,” muttered the boy.
Luckily, however, his father did not hear. He stretched his hands up
tenderly for the Cup, lifted it down, and began reverently to polish the
dimmed sides with his handkerchief.
“Ye're thinkin', nae doot,” he cried, casting up a vicious glance at
David, “that Wullie's no gude enough to ha' his name alangside o'
they cursed Gray Dogs. Are ye no? Let's ha' the truth for aince--for a
diversion.”
“Reck'n he's good enough if there's none better,” David replied
dispassionately.
“And wha should there be better? Tell me that, ye muckle gowk.”
David smiled.
“Eh, but that'd be long tellin', he said.
“And what wad ye mean by that?” his father cried.
“Nay; I was but thinkin' that Mr. Moore's Bob'll look gradely writ under
yon.” He pointed to the vacant space below Red Wull's name.
The little man put the Cup back on its pedestal with hurried hands. The
handkerchief dropped unconsidered to the floor; he turned and sprang
furiously at the boy, who stood against the wall, still smiling; and,
seizing him by the collar of his coat, shook him to and fro with fiery
energy.
“So ye're hopin', prayin', nae doot, that James Moore--curse him!--will
win ma Cup awa' from me, yer ain dad. I wonder ye're no 'shamed to crass
ma door! Ye live on me; ye suck ma blood, ye foul-mouthed leech. Wullie
and me brak' oorsel's to keep ye in hoose and hame--and what's yer
gratitude? Ye plot to rob us of oor rights.”
He dropped the boy's coat and stood back.
“No rights about it,” said David, still keeping his temper.
“If I win is it no ma right as muckle as ony Englishman's?”
Red Wull, who had heard the rising voices, came trotting in, scowled at
David, and took his stand beside his master.
“Ah, _if_ yo' win it,” said David, with significant emphasis on the
conjunction.
“And wha's to beat us?”
David looked at his father in well-affected surprise.
“I tell yo' Owd Bob's rinin',” he answered.
“And what if he is?” the other cried.
“Why, even yo' should know so much,” the boy sneered.
The little man could not fail to understand.
“So that's it!” he said. Then, in a scream, with one finger pointing to
the great dog: “And what o' him? What'll ma Wullie be doin' the while?
Tell me that, and ha' a care! Mind ye, he stan's here hearkenin'!” And,
indeed, the Tailless Tyke was bristling for battle.
David did not like the look of things; and edged away toward the door.
“What'll Wullie be doin', ye chicken-hearted brock?” his father cried.
“Im?” said the boy, now close on the door. “Im!” he said, with a slow
contempt that made the red bristles quiver on the dog's neck. “Lookin'
on, I should think--lookin' on. What else is he fit for? I tell yo' oor
Bob--”
“--'Oor Bob'!” screamed the little man darting forward. “'Oor Bob'! Hark
to him. I'll 'oor--' At him, Wullie! at him!”
But the Tailless Tyke needed no encouragement. With a harsh roar he
sprang through the air, only to crash against the closing door!
The outer door banged, and in another second a mocking finger tapped on
the windowpane.
“Better luck to the two on yo' next time!” laughed a scornful voice; and
David ran down the hill toward Kenmuir.
Chapter XII. HOW RED WULL HELD THE BRIDGE
FROM that hour the fire of M'Adam's jealousy blazed into a mighty flame.
The winning of the Dale Cup had become a mania with him. He had won it
once, and would again despite all the Moores, all the Gray Dogs, all the
undutiful sons in existence; on that point he was resolved. The fact of
his having tasted the joys of victory served to whet his desire. And now
he felt he could never be happy till the Cup was his own--won outright.
At home David might barely enter the room There the trophy stood.
“I'll not ha' ye touch ma Cup, ye dirty-fingered, ill-begotten wastrel.
Wullie and me won it--you'd naught to do wi' it. Go you to James Moore
and James Moore's dog.”
“Ay, and shall I tak' Cup wi' me? or will ye bide till it's took from
ye?”
So the two went on; and every day the tension approached nearer
breaking-point.
In the Dale the little man met with no sympathy. The hearts of the
Dalesmen were to a man with Owd Bob and his master.
Whereas once at the Sylvester Arms his shrill, ill tongue had been
rarely still, now he maintained a sullen silence; Jem Burton, at least,
had no cause of complaint. Crouched away in a corner, with Red Wull
beside him, the little man would sit watching and listening as the
Dalesmen talked of Owd Bob's doings, his staunchness, sagacity, and
coming victory.
Sometimes he could restrain himself no longer. Then he would spring
to his feet, and stand, a little swaying figure, and denounce them
passionately in almost pathetic eloquence. These orations always
concluded in set fashion.
“Ye're all agin us!” the little man would cry in quivering voice.
“We are that,” Tammas would answer complacently.
“Fair means or foul, ye're content sae lang as Wullie and me are beat.
I wonder ye dinna poison him--a little arsenic, and the way's clear for
your Bob.”
“'The way is clear enough wi'oot that,” from Tammas caustically.
Then a lengthy silence, only broken by that exceeding bitter cry: “Eh,
Wullie, Wullie, they're all agin us!”
* * * * *
And always the rivals--red and gray--went about seeking their
opportunity. But the Master, with his commanding presence and stern
eyes, was ever ready for them. Toward the end, M'Adam, silent and
sneering, would secretly urge on Red Wull to the attack; until, one day
in Grammoch-town, James Moore turned on him, his blue eyes glittering.
“D'yo' think, yo' little fule,” he cried in that hard voice of his,
“that onst they got set we should iver git either of them off alive?” It
seemed to strike the little man as a novel idea; for, from that moment,
he was ever the first in his feverish endeavors to oppose his small
form, buffer-like, between the would-be combatants.
* * * * *
Curse as M'Adam might, threaten as he might, when the time came Owd Bob
won.
The styles of the rivals were well contrasted: the patience, the
insinuating eloquence, combined with the splendid dash, of the one; and
the fierce, driving fury of the other.
The issue was never in doubt. It may have been that the temper of the
Tailless Tyke gave in the time of trial; it may have been that his sheep
were wild, as M'Adam declared; certainly not, as the little man alleged
in choking voice, that they had been chosen and purposely set aside to
ruin his chance. Certain it is that his tactics scared them hopelessly:
and he never had them in hand.
Act for Owd Bob, his dropping, his driving, his penning, aroused the
loud-tongued admiration of crowd and competitors alike. He was patient
yet persistent, quiet yet firm, and seemed to coax his charges in the
right way in that inimitable manner of his own.
When, at length, the verdict was given, and it was known that, after
an interval of half a century, the Shepherds' Trophy was won again by a
Gray Dog of Kenmuir, there was such a scene as has been rarely witnessed
on the slope behind the Dalesman's Daughter.
Great fists were slapped on mighty backs; great feet were stamped on the
sun-dried banks of the Silver Lea; stalwart lungs were strained to their
uttermost capacity; and roars of “Moore!” “Owd Bob o' Kenmuir!” “The
Gray Dogs!” thundered up the hillside, and were flung, thundering, back.
Even James Moore was visibly moved as he worked his way through the
cheering mob; and Owd Bob, trotting alongside him in quiet dignity,
seemed to wave his silvery brush in acknowledgment.
Master Jacky Sylvester alternately turned cart-wheels and felled the
Hon. Launcelot Bilks to the ground. Lady Eleanour, her cheeks flushed
with pleasure, waved her parasol, and attempted to restrain her son's
exuberance. Parson Leggy danced an unclerical jig, and shook hands with
the squire till both those fine old gentlemen were purple in the face.
Long Kirby selected a small man in the crowd, and bashed his hat down
over his eyes. While Tammas, Rob Saunderson, Tupper, Hoppin, Londesley,
and the rest joined hands and went raving round like so many giddy
girls.
Of them all, however, none was so uproarious in the mad heat of his
enthusiasm as David M'Adam. He stood in the Kenmuir wagon beside Maggie,
a conspicuous figure above the crowd, as he roared in hoarse ecstasy:
“Weel done, oor Bob! Weel done, Mr. Moore! Yo've knocked him! Knock him
agin! Owd Bob o' Kenmuir! Moore! Moore o' Kenmuir! Hip! Hip!” until the
noisy young giant attracted such attention in his boisterous delight
that Maggie had to lay a hand upon his arm to restrain his violence.
Alone, on the far bank of the stream, stood the vanquished pair.
The little man was trembling slightly; his face was still hot from his
exertions; and as he listened to the ovation accorded to his conqueror,
there was a piteous set grin upon his face. In front stood the defeated
dog, his lips wrinkling and hackles rising, as he, too, saw and heard
and understood.
“It's a gran' thing to ha' a dutiful son. Wullie,” the little man
whispered, watching David's waving figure. “He's happy--and so are they
a'--not sae much that James Moore has won, as that you and I are beat.”
Then, breaking down for a moment:
“Eh, Wullie, Wullie! They're all agin us. It's you and I alane, lad.”
Again, seeing the squire followed by Parson Leggy, Viscount Birdsaye,
and others of the gentry, forcing their way through the press to shake
hands with the victor, he continued:
“It's good to be in wi' the quality, Wullie. Niver mak' a friend of a
man beneath ye in rank, nor an enemy of a man aboon ye: that's a soond
principle, Wullie, if ye'd get on in honest England.”
He stood there, alone with his dog, watching the crowd on the far slope
as it surged upward in the direction of the committee tent. Only when
the black mass had packed itself in solid phalanges about that
ring, inside which, just a year ago, he had stood in very different
circumstances, and was at length still, a wintry smile played for a
moment about his lips. He laughed a mirthless laugh.
“Bide a wee, Wullie--he! he! Bide a wee.
'The best-laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft agley.'”
As he spoke, there came down to him, above the tumult, a faint cry of
mingled surprise and anger. The cheering ceased abruptly. There was
silence; then there burst on the stillness a hurricane of indignation.
The crowd surged forward, then turned. Every eye was directed across the
stream. A hundred damning fingers pointed at the solitary figure there.
There were hoarse yells of: “There he be Yon's him! What's he done wi'
it? Thief! Throttle him!”
The mob came lumbering down the slope like one man, thundering their
imprecations on a thousand throats. They looked dangerous, and their
wrath was stimulated by the knot of angry Dalesmen who led the van.
There was more than one white face among the women at the top of the
slope as they watched the crowd blundering blindly down the hill. There
were more men than Parson Leggy, the squire, James Moore, and the local
constables in the thick of it all, striving frantically with voice and
gesture, ay, and stick too, to stem the advance.
It was useless; on the dark wave rolled, irresistible.
On the far bank stood the little man, motionless, awaiting them with a
grin upon his face. And a little farther in front was the Tailless Tyke,
his back and neck like a new-shorn wheat-field, as he rumbled a vast
challenge.
“Come on, gentlemen!” the little man cried. “Come on! I'll bide for ye,
never fear. Ye're a thousand to one and a dog. It's the odds ye like,
Englishmen a'.”
And the mob, with murder in its throat, accepted the invitation and came
on.
At the moment, however, from the slope above, clear above the tramp of
the multitude, a great voice bellowed: “Way! Way! Way for Mr. Trotter!”
The advancing host checked and opened out; and the secretary of the
meeting bundled through.
He was a small, fat man, fussy at any time, and perpetually perspiring.
Now his face was crimson with rage and running; he gesticulated wildly;
vague words bubbled forth, as his short legs twinkled down the slope.
The crowd paused to admire. Some one shouted a witticism, and the crowd
laughed. For the moment the situation was saved.
The fat secretary hurried on down the slope, unheeding of any insult but
the one. He bounced over the plank-bridge: and as he came closer, M'Adam
saw that in each hand brandished a brick.
“Hoots, man! dinna throw!” he cried, making a feint as though to turn in
sudden terror.
“What's this? What's this?” gasped the secretary, waving his arms.
“Bricks, 'twad seem,” the other answered, staying his flight.
The secretary puffed up like a pudding in a hurry.
“Where's the Cup? Champion, Challenge, etc.,” he jerked out. “Mind, sir,
you're responsible! wholly responsible! Dents, damages, delays! What's
it all mean, sir? These--these monstrous creations “--he brandished the
bricks, and M'Adam started back--“wrapped, as I live, in straw, sir, in
the Cup case, sir! the Cup case! No Cup! Infamous! Disgraceful! Insult
me--meeting--committee--every one! What's it mean, sir?” He paused to
pant, his body filling and emptying like a bladder.
M'Adam approached him with one eye on the crowd, which was heaving
forward again, threatening still, but sullen and silent.
“I pit 'em there,” he whispered; and drew back to watch the effect of
his disclosure.
The secretary gasped.
“You--you not only do this--amazing thing--these monstrosities”--he
hurled the bricks furiously on the unoffending ground--“but you dare to
tell me so!”
The little man smiled.
“'Do wrang and conceal it, do right and confess it,' that's Englishmen's
motto, and mine, as a rule; but this time I had ma reasons.”
“Reasons, sir! No reasons can justify such an extraordinary breach of
all the--the decencies. Reasons? the reasons of a maniac. Not to say
more, sir. Fraudulent detention--fraudulent, I say, sir! What were your
precious reasons?”
The mob with Tammas and Long Kirby at their head had now well nigh
reached the plank-bridge. They still looked dangerous, and there were
isolated cries of:
“Duck him!”
“Chuck him in!”
“An' the dog!”
“Wi' one o' they bricks about their necks!”
“There are my reasons!” said M'Adam, pointing to the forest of menacing
faces. “Ye see I'm no beloved amang yonder gentlemen, and”--in a stage
whisper in the other's ear--“I thocht maybe I'd be 'tacked on the road.”
Tammas foremost of the crowd, had now his foot upon the first plank.
“Ye robber! ye thief! Wait till we set hands on ye, you and yer
gorilla!” he called.
M'Adam half turned.
“Wullie,” he said quietly, “keep the bridge.”
At the order the Tailless Tyke shot gladly forward, and the leaders on
the bridge as hastily back. The dog galloped on to the rattling plank,
took his post fair and square in the centre of the narrow way, and stood
facing the hostile crew like Cerberus guarding the gates of hell: his
bull-head was thrust forward, hackles up, teeth glinting, and a distant
rumbling in his throat, as though daring them to come on.
“Yo' first, ole lad!” said Tammas, hopping agilely behind Long Kirby.
“Nay; the old uns lead!” cried the big smith, his face gray-white. He
wrenched round, pinned the old man by the arms, and held him forcibly
before him as a covering shield. There ensued an unseemly struggle
betwixt the two valiants, Tammas bellowing and kicking in the throes of
mortal fear.
“Jim Mason'll show us,” he suggested at last.
“Nay,” said honest Jim; “I'm fear'd.” He could say it with impunity; for
the pluck of Postie Jim was a matter long past dispute.
Then Jem Burton'd go first?
Nay; Jem had a lovin' wife and dear little kids at 'ome.
Then Big Bell?
Big Bell'd see 'isseif further first.
A tall figure came forcing through the crowd, his face a little paler
than its wont, and a formidable knob-kerry in his hand.
“I'm goin'!” said David.
“But yo're not,” answered burly Sam'l, gripping the boy from behind with
arms like the roots of an oak. “Your time'll coom soon enough by the
look on yo' wi' niver no hurry.”
And the sense of the Dalesmen was with the big man; for, as old Rob
Saunderson said:
“I reck'n he'd liefer claw on to your throat, lad, nor ony o' oors.”
As there was no one forthcoming to claim the honor of the lead, Tammas
came forward with cunning counsel.
“Tell yo' what, lads, we'd best let 'em as don't know nowt at all aboot
him go first. And onst they're on, mind, we winna let 'em off; but keep
a-shovin' and a-bovin 'on 'em forra'd. _Then_ us'll foller.”
By this time there was a little naked space of green round the
bridge-head, like a fairy circle, into which the uninitiated might not
penetrate. Round this the mob hedged: the Dalesmen in front, striving
knavishly back and bawling to those behind to leggo that shovin'; and
these latter urging valorously forward, yelling jeers and contumely at
the front rank. “Come on! 'O's afraid? Lerrus through to 'em, then,
ye Royal Stan'-backs!”--for well they knew the impossibility of their
demand.
And as they wedged and jostled thus, there stole out from their midst as
gallant a champion as ever trod the grass. He trotted out into the
ring, the observed of all, and paused to gaze at the gaunt figure on the
bridge. The sun lit the sprinkling of snow on the dome of his head; one
forepaw was off the ground; and he stood there, royally alert, scanning
his antagonist.
“Th' Owd Un!” went up in a roar fit to split the air as the hero of the
day was recognized. And the Dalesmen gave a pace forward spontaneously
as the gray knight-errant stole across the green.
“Oor Bob'll fetch him!” they roared, their blood leaping to fever heat,
and gripped their sticks, determined in stern reality to follow now.
The gray champion trotted up on to the bridge, and paused again, the
long hair about his neck rising like a ruff, and a strange glint in his
eyes; and the holder of the bridge never moved. Red and Gray stood thus,
face to face: the one gay yet resolute, the other motionless, his great
head slowly sinking between his forelegs, seemingly petrified.
There was no shouting now: it was time for deeds, not words. Only, above
the stillness, came a sound from the bridge like the snore of a giant in
his sleep, and blending, with it, a low, deep, purring thunder like some
monster cat well pleased.
“Wullie,” came a solitary voice from the far side, “keep the bridge!”
One ear went back, one ear was still forward; the great head was low and
lower between his forelegs and the glowing eyes rolled upward so that
the watchers could see the murderous white.
Forward the gray dog stepped.
Then, for the second time that afternoon, a voice, stern and hard, came
ringing down from the slope above over the heads of the many.
“Bob, lad, coom back!”
“He! he! I thocht that was comin',” sneered the small voice over the
stream.
The gray dog heard, and checked.
“Bob, lad, coom in, I say!”
At that he swung round and marched slowly back, gallant as he had come,
dignified still in his mortification.
And Red Wull threw back his head and bellowed a paean of
victory--challenge, triumph, scorn, all blended in that bull-like,
blood-chilling blare.
* * * * *
In the mean time, M'Adam and the secretary had concluded their business.
It had been settled that the Cup was to be delivered over to James Moore
not later than the following Saturday.
“Saturday, see! at the latest!” the secretary cried as he turned and
trotted off.
“Mr. Trotter,” M'Adam called after him. “I'm sorry, but ye maun bide
this side the Lea till I've reached the foot o' the Pass. Gin they
gentlemen”--nodding toward the crowd--“should set hands on me, why--”
and he shrugged his shoulders significantly. “Forbye, Wullie's keepin'
the bridge.”
With that the little man strolled off leisurely; now dallying to pick a
flower, now to wave a mocking hand at the furious mob, and so slowly on
to the foot of the Muirk Muir Pass.
There he turned and whistled that shrill peculiar note.
“Wullie, Wullie, to me!” he called.
At that, with one last threat thrown at the' thousand souls he had held
at bay for thirty minutes, the Tailless Tyke swung about and galloped
after his lord.
Chapter XIII. THE FACE IN THE FRAME
ALL Friday M'Adam never left the kitchen. He sat opposite the Cup, in a
coma, as it were; and Red Wull lay motionless at his feet.
Saturday came, and still the two never budged. Toward the evening
the little man rose, all in a tremble, and took the Cup down from the
mantelpiece; then he sat down again with it in his arms.
“Eh, Wullie, Wullie, is it a dream? Ha' they took her fra us? Eh, but
it's you and I alane, lad.”
He hugged it to him, crying silently, and rocking to and fro like a
mother with a dying child. And Red Wull sat up on his haunches, and
weaved from side to side in sympathy.
As the dark was falling, David looked in.
At the sound of the opening door the little man swung round noiselessly,
the Cup nursed in his arms, and glared, sullen and suspicious, at the
boy; yet seemed not to recognize him. In the half-light David could see
the tears coursing down the little wizened face.
“'Pon ma life, he's gaein' daft!” was his comment as he turned away to
Kenmuir. And again the mourners were left alone.
“A few hours noo, Wullie,” the little man wailed, “and she'll be gane.
We won her, Wullie, you and I, won her fair: she's lit the hoose for
us; she's softened a' for us--and God kens we needed it; she was the ae
thing we had to look to and love. And noo they're takin' her awa', and
'twill be night agin. We've cherished her, we've garnished her, we've
loved her like oor ain; and noo she maun gang to strangers who know her
not.”
He rose to his feet, and the great dog rose with him. His voice
heightened to a scream, and he swayed with the Cup in his arms till it
seemed he must fall.
“Did they win her fair, Wullie? Na; they plotted, they conspired, they
worked ilka ain o' them agin us, and they beat us. Ay, and noo they're
robbin' us--robbin' us! But they shallna ha' her. Oor's or naebody's,
Wullie! We'll finish her sooner nor that.”
He banged the Cup down on the table and rushed madly out of the room,
Red Wull at his heels. In a moment he came running back, brandishing a
great axe about his head.
“Come on, Wullie!” he cried. “'Scots wha hae'! Noo's the day and noo's
the hour! Come on!”
On the table before him, serene and beautiful, stood the target of his
madness. The little man ran at it, swinging his murderous weapon like a
flail.
“Oor's or naebody's Wullie! Come on! 'Lay the proud usurpers low'!” He
aimed a mighty buffet; and the Shepherds' Trophy--the Shepherds' Trophy
which had won through the hardships of a hundred years--was almost gone.
It seemed to quiver as the blow fell. But the cruel steel missed, and
the axe-head sank into the wood, clean and deep, like a spade in snow.
Red Wull had leapt on to the table, and in his cavernous voice was
grumbling a chorus to his master's yells. The little man danced up and
down, tugging and straining at the axe-handle.
“You and I, Wullie!
'Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!'”
The axe-head was as immoveable as the Muir Pike.
“'Let us do or die!'”
The shaft snapped, and the little man tottered back. Red Wull jumped
down from the table, and, in doing so, brushed against the Cup. It
toppled* over on to the floor, and rolled tinkling away in the dust.
And the little man fled madly out of the house, still screaming his
war-song.
*N.B.--You may see the dent in the Cup's white sides to this
day.
* * * * *
When, late that night, M'Adam returned home, the Cup was gone. Down on
his hands and knees he traced out its path, plain to see, where it had
rolled along the dusty floor. Beyond that there was no sign.
At first he was too much overcome to speak. Then he raved round the room
like a derelict ship, Red Wull following uneasily behind. He cursed;
he blasphemed; he screamed and beat the walls with feverish hands. A
stranger, passing, might well have thought this was a private Bedlam. At
last, exhausted, he sat down and cried.
“It's David, Wullie, ye may depend; David that's robbed his father's
hoose. Oh, it's a grand thing to ha' a dutiful son!”--and he bowed his
gray head in his hands.
David, indeed, it was. He had come back to the Grange during his
father's absence, and, taking the Cup from its grimy bed, had marched it
away to its rightful home. For that evening at Kenmuir, James Moore had
said to him:
“David, your father's not sent the Cup. I shall come and fetch it
to-morrow.” And David knew he meant it. Therefore, in order to save a
collision between his father and his friend--a collision the issue of
which he dared hardly contemplate, knowing, as he did, the unalterable
determination of the one and the lunatic passion of the other--the boy
had resolved to fetch the Cup himself, then and there, in the teeth, if
needs be, of his father and the Tailless Tyke. And he had done it.
When he reached home that night he marched, contrary to his wont,
straight into the kitchen.
There sat his father facing the door, awaiting him, his hands upon his
knees. For once the little man was alone; and David, brave though he
was, thanked heaven devoutly that Red Wull was elsewhere.
For a while father and son kept silence, watching one another like two
fencers.
“'Twas you as took ma Cup?” asked the little man at last, leaning
forward in his chair.
“'Twas me as took Mr. Moore's Cup,” the boy replied. “I thowt yo' mun
ha' done wi' it--I found it all bashed upon the floor.”
“You took it--pit up to it, nae doot, by James Moore.”
David made a gesture of dissent.
“Ay, by James Moore,” his father continued. “He dursena come hissel'
for his ill-gotten spoils, so he sent the son to rob the father. The
coward!”--his whole frame shook with passion. “I'd ha' thocht James
Moore'd ha' bin man enough to come himself for what he wanted. I see noo
I did him a wrang--I misjudged him. I kent him a heepocrite; ain o' yer
unco gudes; a man as looks one thing, says anither, and does a third;
and noo I ken he's a coward. He's fear'd o' me, sic as I am, five foot
twa in ma stockin's.” He rose from his chair and drew himself up to his
full height.
“Mr. Moore had nowt to do wi' it,” David persisted.
“Ye're lyin'. James Moore pit ye to it.”
“I tell yo' he did not.”
“Ye'd ha' bin willin' enough wi'oot him, if ye'd thocht o't, I grant ye.
But ye've no the wits. All there is o' ye has gane to mak' yer muckle
body. Hooiver, that's no matter. I'll settle wi' James Moore anither
time. I'll settle wi' you noo, David M'Adam.”
He paused, and looked the boy over from bead to foot.
“So, ye're not only an idler! a wastrel! a liar!”--he spat the words
out. “Ye're--God help ye--a thief!”
“I'm no thief!” the boy returned hotly. “I did but give to a mon what ma
feyther--shame on him!--wrongfully kept from him.”
“Wrangfully?” cried the little man, advancing with burning face.
“'Twas honorably done, keepin' what wasna your'n to keep! Holdin' back
his rights from a man! Ay, if ony one's the thief, it's not me: it's
you, I say, you!”--and he looked his father in the face with flashing
eyes.
“I'm the thief, am I?” cried the other, incoherent with passion. “Though
ye're three times ma size, I'll teach ma son to speak so to me.”
The old strap, now long disused, hung in the chimney corner. As he spoke
the little man sprang back, ripped it from the wall, and, almost before
David realized what he was at, had brought it down with a savage slash
across his son's shoulders; and as he smote he whistled a shrill,
imperative note:
“Wullie, Wullie, to me!”
David felt the blow through his coat like a bar of hot iron laid across
his back. His passion seethed within him; every vein throbbed; every
nerve quivered. In a minute he would wipe out, once and for all, the
score of years; for the moment, however, there was urgent business on
hand. For outside he could hear the quick patter of feet hard-galloping,
and the scurry of a huge creature racing madly to a call.
With a bound he sprang at the open door; and again the strap came
lashing down, and a wild voice:
“Quick, Wullie! For God's sake, quick!”
David slammed the door to. It shut with a rasping snap; and at the same
moment a great body from without thundered against it with terrific
violence, and a deep voice roared like the sea when thwarted of its
prey.
“Too late, agin!” said David, breathing hard; and shot the bolt home
with a clang. Then he turned on his father.
“Noo,” said he, “man to man!”
“Ay,” cried the other, “father to son!”
The little man half turned and leapt at the old musketoon hanging on the
wall. He missed it, turned again, and struck with the strap full at
the other's face. David caught the falling arm at the wrist, hitting it
aside with such tremendous force that the bone all but snapped. Then
he smote his father a terrible blow on the chest, and the little man
staggered back, gasping, into the corner; while the strap dropped from
his numbed fingers.
Outside Red Wull whined and scratched; but the two men paid no heed.
David strode forward; there was murder in his face. The little man
saw it: his time was come; but his bitterest foe never impugned Adam
M'Adam's courage.
He stood huddled in the corner, all dishevelled, nursing one arm with
the other, entirely unafraid.
“Mind, David,” he said, quite calm, “murder 'twill be, not
manslaughter.”
“Murder 'twill be,” the boy answered, in thick, low voice, and was
across the room.
Outside Red Wull banged and clawed high up on the door with impotent
pats.
The little man suddenly slipped his hand in his pocket, pulled out
something, and flung it. The missile pattered on his son's face like a
rain-drop on a charging bull, and David smiled as he came on. It dropped
softly on the table at his side; he looked down and--it was the face of
his mother which gazed up at him!
“Mither!” he sobbed, stopping short. “Mither! Ma God, ye saved him--and
me!”
He stood there, utterly unhinged, shaking and whimpering.
It was some minutes before he pulled himself together; then he walked to
the wall, took down a pair of shears, and seated himself at the table,
still trembling. Near him lay the miniature, all torn and crumpled, and
beside it the deep-buried axe-head.
He picked up the strap and began cutting it into little pieces.
“There! and there! and there!” he said with each snip. “An' ye hit me
agin there may be no mither to save ye.”
M'Adam stood huddling in the corner. He shook like an aspen leaf; his
eyes blazed in his white face; and he still nursed one arm with the
other.
“Honor yer father,” he quoted in small, low voice.
PART IV THE BLACK KILLER