THE EWE-GATHERING
They were gathering their sheep from the fells under Pengables, to bring
them down into the warmer lands below. To a stranger it would have
seemed odd that so many shepherds, and master-farmers with their hinds,
should have chosen the same day. The farmers, indeed, might have done
the work at haphazard, choosing a time here and there as occasion
served; but their shepherds lived nearer the fell-tops where true
weather-lore was taught by countless little signs and tokens. And the
shepherds had decreed that within eight-and-forty hours the wind hounds
of the north would be driving snow before them.
The Logie country, if it guessed what was to come, made merry with the
time left it. Quiet wisps of cloud lay bosomed on a sky of blue. The
belt of woodland under Pengables—larches, pines and rowans, their feet
set deep in the heather—glowed in the hot sun glare with rich array of
russet and amber, and wide-flung crimson—the riot of it all subdued by
the still majesty of the pines, who kept their burnished livery secure
against all onset of the seasons.
All the land was filled with uproar—dogs barking their throats hoarse,
sheep crying witless and forlorn, men cursing ewes and dogs and
neighbour-folk in rich upland speech. When each shepherd had only his
own ewes to look after, and his own dog to work them, they went silently
about the business, save for a whistle or a quiet call. But now the dogs
were mad with rivalry. The sudden busy-ness of these quiet fells was to
them what market day in Shepperton meant to the shepherds when they went
there once in a while and were amazed by the town’s confusion.
Shepherd Brant, a great leader of dogs and ewes, began at last to get
order out of havoc, and all was going well when Michael Draycott—he
that was lying on his death-bed a fortnight since, till Hardcastle
persuaded him to get out of it—came driving a flock of three-score down
the lane the bracken-sledges took. They came plump into a company that
Brant was shepherding along the track to Logie, and a bleak-witted cry
went up to heaven from two hundred sheep that turned all ways at once.
Brant took command in earnest now. “Durn you, Michael, will you leave
shepherding to shepherds. What’s the use of you, quavering with a stick
and walking as if your toes were on hot bricks? A figure of fun, I call
you.”
“I’ll leave it to you gladly, Brant,” chuckled Michael, the sweat
dripping from his cheery face. “For my part I’ve had enough and to spare
of the game.”
“Then get a hand into the collar of that fool-dog of yours, and see how
mine has learned to work.”
Michael obeyed. Brant and he were old enough in friendship to make small
account of plain speech between them, and the farmer watched the other’s
dog at work with growing approbation—watched him as he drove some of
the ewes in front, thrust others aside, getting his own and those that
did not matter into two companies.
“A gift, I call it—a fair marvel,” he muttered, talking to the dog he
held by the collar. “See ’em at it—Brant and his snod-haired collie.
We’re a rough couple, lad, when it comes to rounding sheep up.”
The flocks were separate at last, and Brant’s dog padded up and down
with restless question what was asked of him.
“Home to Logie,” said the shepherd, “I’ll follow soon.”
Michael grew wide-eyed with wonderment as he saw the ewes go down the
slope, the collie shepherding a straggler now and then with quiet
persuasion.
“He can do almost aught but talk, Brant.”
“And does it better for that lack,” said the shepherd, filling his pipe.
“Dogs have the pull of us there. They work instead of talking. Lordie,
it’s been a warm job, this.”
“Thanks to you shepherds. What fool’s tale did you come telling, about
north wind and snow?” put in Geordie Wiseman, sauntering to join them
from a neighbouring farm lane.
“Bide a day or two, and you’ll learn. For myself, I’m glad of a
breathing-time, while Scamp yonder takes ’em home to Logie.”
“You haven’t a pup of his fathering, Brant?”
“I have, as it happens, but I’d never trust him to your lowland
training,” growled Brant.
The shepherd fell into great moodiness, till Michael rallied him.
“What’s gone amiss?”
“Storm’s gone amiss,” snapped Brant. “Scamp does well enough—a good
second of the twins I reared—but Storm was known from this to Carlisle
for what he was—the best dog in the north for sheep. And now he’s
tasted flesh, and no cure for him but the barrels of a gun.”
“A rare dog,” assented Wiseman, “but too clever, as you might say. He
went past himself. You’ve not chanced on him yet, I take it?”
“Not I. I begin to fancy he’s savaging another man’s flocks by now.”
Storm, if they had known it, was watching them from above, where he lay
coiled in a clump of bracken under Pengables. For a week and a day,
since Hardcastle first gave him house-room, he had roamed at large,
raiding and sleeping and skulking by turns; and, as he came warily
across the moor this morning, the uproar from the fells below roused
ancient memories. With slow craftiness, his body crouched to take
advantage of such cover as rocks and heather gave him, he had wormed his
way to the foot of Pengables, and now looked on, an outlaw, at the work
speeding forward.
He had shared that work in other years, had heard men praise him, had
seen his fellow-dogs give jealous homage to his fame. And now he lay
here, with the blood of a late-slain ewe scarce dried on his rough
muzzle. None praised him to-day. He had lost repute, and every hand was
turned against him—even Brant’s, his old master; and across Storm’s
hard, relentless eyes there stole a mist of grief. That weakness passed.
The wolf-lust in him blazed afresh, kindled in the old-time of his
ancestors. He remembered last night’s slaughter—the mad joy of killing,
just for slaughter’s sake. He thought of the night to come. Then he
turned three times in his bracken lair, and his head dropped on his
forepaws. For he was full fed and sleepy.
Over the same moor that Storm had crossed, Hardcastle of Logie came from
business he had at Nether Helstone. They liked to have him with them at
the ewe-gathering, and he was later than he had meant; but for all that
he halted when he reached the grim rockpile of Pengables, set
four-square like a fortress on the hill-top. He, too, was looking down
on a remembered scene, as Storm had done, and with a sense of utter
loneliness.
He watched the wild gathering-scene below—the sheep scampering every
way at once, the dogs half-crazied, the men who seemed, most of them,
little surer of their wits. Then he saw order come from the bedevilment,
till at last the whole of the wide fells below him took moving shape.
There was no longer a waste of close-cropped pastures. It was hidden by
long, swaying flocks that glided to their lowland shelter-fields.
As the grey sheep moved through the day’s heat, the sweat of their
fleeces rose to a sunlight that turned it into rainbow mist; and
Hardcastle stood looking down on old, familiar country changed to
fairyland. The spell of it was on him. He had not known what glamour lay
about this simple Gathering Day.
He shook himself free of dreams, and glanced across the valley.
Garsykes, the village of the Lost Folk, was sending wood-smoke up into
the quiet sky as if it were a haunt of peace. Yet it had put a token on
his gate, had killed old Roy already, and would burn Logie next, no
doubt. It seemed destined that he should lose the few things left him
nowadays to care for.
Here on the heights he learned suddenly what Roy’s loss meant to him.
First grief, when he found the dead body at his gate, had been tempered
by the shock that stuns. Through the days that followed he had shut down
the windows of his heart, lest he looked too closely through them. There
were other dogs in plenty to be had. He must buy one to-morrow—or
perhaps the morrow after. So he told himself; but now, as again he
looked across at Garsykes, he hungered just for Roy. If all was in the
losing, because he had battered three men of the Wilderness, he could
have faced it better if Roy had been beside him. He had no fear now. But
he had loneliness, that can bite like east wind into the marrow of a
man.
The sheep-nibbled grass sloped sharply down on this side of Pengables,
and when he reached the hill-foot—half running and half sliding, as
fell-racers do—he was checked by a sudden growl from the brackens on
his right. Storm’s sleep these days was light as the triggers of
pursuing guns. He was on his feet already, his teeth bared behind the
tell-tale ruddy lips. Then, as he saw who the intruder was, he just
stood and looked at him, his air ludicrously changed. The brown eyes
grew full of deprecation, appeal, assurances that he was a mishandled
and misjudged fugitive.
Hardcastle laughed quietly. “I believe no word of it, but you’re safe
from me. I give you my word for that. There’s Brant down there.”
Storm followed his pointing finger, then glanced at his face again.
“There’s Brant down there—and more fool you to make an uproar when a
friend comes by.”
And now about these two there came sharp intuition, such as thrives in
times of peril. Storm had always liked the smell of this man who had
saved him twice—once, when he gave him shelter at Logie, and now when
he might have betrayed him to Shepherd Brant below. He thrust his rough
head into the Master’s hand—the head smeared by blood, and packed
within by the Wilderness knew what of guile and wolf-lust—and of
loyalty to his chosen man.
So then Hardcastle knew that in sober truth he had bought another
dog—but not with money. He bade Storm keep close, and left him in his
lair, and went swinging down the fells. Loneliness had gone, though in
the peaceful days he would have sneered at any man who told him he could
take cheer of heart from an outlaw such as Storm.
The last swaying companies of sheep went out of sight behind the
shoulder of the track as he strode down. From time to time a man’s voice
sounded, or a collie’s eager yelp, muffled by distance into softer
melody. For the rest there was the intimate and friendly silence of a
land ripe with autumn’s big content.
That lasted till he neared the road where Shepherd Brant was gossiping
with Michael Draycott and filling another pipe before he took the
home-track to Logie. Then the jar of men’s voices raised in quarrel
killed all peace, and Hardcastle, glancing down, saw five of the
Wilderness Folk confronting the two of Logie. He made light of the
quarter-mile between himself and trouble, and Brant turned at sound of
his coming.
“We’ve missed you,” he grumbled; “but better late than never.”
“What is it?”
“Nay, ask these lean swine from Garsykes.”
The five were tongue-tied and loutish, till one of them—Jake Bramber,
who had talked with Nita on the bridge and afterwards gone to Logie to
feed old Roy with meat and hemlock—strutted his squat impudence up to
Hardcastle.
“There’s a dog called Storm,” he said.
“There is,” Hardcastle agreed, with bitter quiet.
“He’s taken many sheep of ours. So I just asked Brant if he’d missed any
ewes of his own this morning when he counted the tally. He owned to a
score.”
“Well?”
“Nay, you needn’t be so high and mighty about it. They’re in our pinfold
yonder—tribute, as you might say, for what Storm’s done to ours.”
“There’s a pinfold over Logie way, and three sheep of yours tried to
stop me there. Did I break all their bones, or only half? I’ve often
wondered.”
And now the five men stared at Hardcastle, marvelling at his hardihood.
“There’s one of you killed a dog of mine,” said the Master, his eyes
holding Jake’s, “and he’ll pay toll for that.”
“Seems as if times were changed,” growled the little man, strutting it
still. “D’ye know what it means when the Lost Folk put an arrow on a
gate?”
“We know,” said Hardcastle—“and, Brant, go down to their pinfold and
bring back our ewes.”