THE BATTLE OF THE FLEECE
Michael Draycott rubbed his hands together as he saw the five shrink
back. They were not used to such frank and instant challenge. Hardcastle
had reminded them, moreover, of what he had done to certain men of
theirs; and they looked on with sullen wonder as Brant brought up the
twenty ewes.
It was Jake Bramber who first spoke. “Leave us those ewes, and maybe
we’ll call it quits.”
“Quits?”
“There’s been a long peace between you Logie Folk and ours. You wouldn’t
break it for a matter of a few sheep?”
“He’s talking sense, Master,” quavered Geordie Wiseman. “Let him have
’em, and save us all from being murdered every night of our lives.”
A laugh went up; but Hardcastle was in no mood for merriment.
“There are two roads, Geordie,” he said sharply—“to Logie or the
Wilderness. You’ve got to choose. If a tenant of mine gives any sort of
tribute—aye, if it’s a penny to a brat of theirs—he crosses over to
Garsykes. And may hell deal softly with him there.”
The five men drew further back from Hardcastle. More than his rugged
strength, more than memory of the battered three who had returned they
feared this man’s strength of spirit, revealed suddenly—feared the ring
of his voice, the upright head and brawny shoulders.
“A hard man, you,” said Jake.
“Yes, a hard man, I, and God be thanked for that.”
“But an arrow-head left on a gate? It can weaken the hardest—by
degrees. A blow in the dark say, or a boulder in the road when you and
yours drive home o’ nights—and your women-folk not safe at any
time——”
“I have no women-folk,” said Hardcastle—“except old Rebecca. And she’s
a match for any two of you.”
Still Jake laboured to get the better of him. He knew that, if he could
persuade the Master of Logie to buy peace at the small price of twenty
ewes, the Wilderness was free to go its way again, robbing the weak,
never needing to tackle stronger folk than ale-silly drovers and the
like.
“There’s the house of Logie. They say no woman could ever be to
Hardcastle what Logie is.”
“That’s true.”
“We shall come to burn it, on near night.”
“Thanks for the warning,” said Hardcastle, and told Brant to get busy
with the ewes.
Wiseman paused for a backward glance, and the Master gripped his arm.
“I’ll not hinder you either way—but, Geordie, you’ve to choose once for
all.”
So Geordie, as his way was, went with those who had prevailed in the
last battle. And Brant went driving the stolen ewes before him, more
thankful for them than for all the hundreds that had gone before in
safety. And Michael Draycott laughed.
“I could scarce tell you why,” he said, answering a question in the
Master’s glance. “Perhaps I was thinking of me on my death-bed, and the
bonnier times you kicked me up to share.”
Storm, the sheep-slayer, watched it all from his lair at the foot of
Pengables. He saw the last of the ewes go in a rainbow-steam round the
wide curve of the track, and with them Brant his enemy, and Hardcastle
his friend—his friend from this till death ended loyalty for one
unwanted dog.
The land grew quiet again, basking in the tranquil heat, until a whistle
broke the silence. Storm knew the shepherd’s call, the whistle of hale
farm-lads when they climbed the pastures; but this had another note. It
was shrill and sinister.
He waited. Broken dogs, like broken men, learn a patience that is not
contentment—a patience wide-eyed to observe all details and quick to
interpret them.
Nothing happened for awhile, till the whistle was repeated. And then
Storm saw the doors of Garsykes open wide, and men pour out from them
and run into the wide, green road the Logie Men had taken. He saw Jake
point first at their empty pinfold, then down the track—heard the deep,
evil roar that died as they went grimly in pursuit.
Storm understood it all, and a great song came into his blood. He was
not concerned with his own needs now, but with Hardcastle’s. As he went
between the brackens and kept pace with the running folk below, he could
see the men of Logie moving slowly, hidden as yet from the enemy, but
with only a few hundred yards to spare. And they did not know their
peril.
The song in Storm’s blood had the gale’s speed now. Like all
great-hearted sinners, he was sick of skulking. Reason had nothing to do
with the long, howling wail he gave—a wail like the cry of all the lost
who had ever lived and died in Garsykes—but instinct told him he was
serving Hardcastle.
Hardcastle himself glanced backward, to learn the meaning of it; and
round the bend he saw a company of the Lost Folk, their shuffling run
stopped for a moment by the eerie cry that still whined and sobbed from
the bracken-lands above. He took advantage of their superstition—they
fancied Guytrash was calling them to death—and glanced ahead again,
down the track the sheep were taking over a grey, narrow bridge.
“Get the ewes over, Brant,” he said quietly, as if he called him to
supper up at Logie. “Get them over, man, and be quick. We two must hold
the bridge.”
Sixty years of weather on the heights had only toughened Brant’s lean
body and he warmed to this queer happening. He got the sheep across, and
left them in Geordie Wiseman’s charge.
“Your knees are all a-twitter, Geordie,” he growled, “but there’s use
enough in you, maybe, to keep a few ewes from straying into what’s to
come.”
“How will it end, shepherd?”
“As it will end. What can I tell you more than that?”
The Wilderness Men were still halting, for Storm’s long-drawn howl had
taken a deeper note. They looked for some ghostly death to overtake
them, till Jake rallied their oozing pluck.
“It’s naught. We live too near those durned old miners up at
Weathersett, with their talk of trolls and weir-dogs——”
“Aye, but it’s Guytrash calling us, all the same,” broke in a lad of the
company. “I heard him once, and my father hanged himself that night.”
“The more fool he,” laughed Jake. “He’d have been hanged any way, soon
or late; but no man should run to meet a halter.”
Hardcastle, fronting them at the bridge, knew that the odds must
overmaster himself and Brant, once these folk came at them in dead
earnest. They were thirty paces away as yet, irresolute for a moment
that seemed endless, and Hardcastle’s thoughts ran swiftly, like those
of a drowning man. This end was better, after all, than the
long-drawn-out stealthy warfare he had been prepared to meet. And
Logie’s honour would be safe. Yet he felt an odd, wistful regret for
Brant the shepherd. The pity of it that Brant was old, with a heart
reared on upland solitude. The fights he was trained to share were clean
battles between a man and such weather as the skies chose to ding about
his ears. But they were here together and must face it out.
Brant’s thoughts were busy, too, in this long moment of inaction. The
deep, running cry, that sounded ceaselessly through the brackens up
above, was a cry known to him. It had roused him many a night as he
slept in his hut, up yonder on the roof of the high fells, had got him
out of doors with a gun in his hand to follow a useless hunt in the dark
for a sheep-slayer who yapped and growled across the wastes. He knew
Storm’s voice now, as one knows the voice of his dearest enemy.
The ewes behind him knew it, and pressed together in a sweat of fright.
Storm the sheep-slayer was among them once again—Storm, who had made
nightmares of their slumber for time out of mind.
Then Hardcastle’s voice sounded, rough and sturdy, as he answered Jake’s
gibe that no man should run to meet a halter.
“No man runs to meet my fists, I notice.”
Still the Wilderness Men held back. Attack in daylight was a trade they
had not learned, and they were clumsy at it.
Hardcastle’s blood was red in him, as when he had stood above old Roy,
slain foully by these people. The struggle could not last, he knew. Soon
they would gather bastard courage from force of numbers, and there would
be an end to him and Shepherd Brant. But joy was with him. There was a
sharp memory of Logie, the house dearer to him than all else except his
lands. Parting was hard, till he remembered that they would carry him
there a true Hardcastle. Dead or alive, he asked for Logie’s honour.
Up above this battle that could only have one end, Storm was pressing
through the brackens. He had warned the Master, and afterwards had
watched the score of grey-fleeced ewes. And the old wolf-call had
reached him.
Storm went on his own business now. He went at speed, but craftily, and
never left cover till he crossed the brook that, further down, ran under
the bridge where Hardcastle fronted the Lost Folk. Then he turned
downhill. He was in the open now, and the sheep that fool Geordie
guarded turned face about as the slayer’s hunting-note came down the
lean, steep pasture-lands. They knew that Storm loved to chase them from
behind before at last he leaped and fastened his teeth in wool and
flesh. So they turned about, with bleating courage to resist, till the
cry of the slayer came near and eager.
Geordie Wiseman pranced up and down, shouting that the ewes were all
gone daft. Hardcastle and Brant turned to see the frenzied mob of sheep
charge them from behind; and just in time they left the bridge. The
sheep came skeltering over in resistless panic, drove through the
Wilderness Folk and scattered them like chaff to one side and the other
of the road. Fear of man was lost in the wilder dread of what pursued.
After them came Storm, at a tearing gallop that checked as he neared the
Garsykes Men. The sheep were in front of him, a sure quarry later on;
and here were enemies who had harried him up and down the country-side
for many a day. He bit right and left with savage yelps. He paused to
maul one here and there of those who had been stamped into the
breeze-blown dust of the roadway. Then he passed, as a roaring gale
might do, and followed the grey ewes—out and up, till he was hidden by
a bluff of rock.
The Garsykes Men were broken. They forgot Hardcastle at the bridge,
forgot all but superstition, and the look of Storm as he went by, with
his fangs bared and his muzzle dripping red with blood of theirs.
Terror-stricken as the sheep whose cries still came fitfully down-wind,
they made for home, some limping as they went.
Hardcastle passed a hand across his eyes. A moment since he had been
ready for the struggle that was to end all strife for him on this side
of things; and now he was a free man again. It was unbelievable how
sweet life was, with all its harsh ups-and-downs.
Brant came to his side, and together they stood looking down on the mean
village in the hollow just below them. It was packed with women, and one
of them—a plump, brazen hussy—sent a great laugh up.
“Good grief, our men come home,” she cried—“_our men_.”
The laughter spread, till the broken warriors rallied and made for their
own women-folk with ready fists.
“It’s about time we went,” said Shepherd Brant. “If the men and the
women both come out against us after their fratching’s done—why, God
help us.”
They took a last look at this village that had conquered Logie-side for
generations, and were turning homewards when a voice hailed them, and
they saw the plump hussy breasting the rise of the pastures up from
Garsykes.
“You’re Hardcastle of Logie?” she panted.
“Why, yes.”
“Then I’ve come to tell you two things. First, that you’ve a queer pluck
of your own, to come so near us after we’ve put the token on Logie’s
gate. A bit of a fool, I should call you.”
“Like most of us.”
She stood fronting them, her red arms folded across her ample breasts.
“Aye, laugh while you can; for it’s no easy road you’ve
chosen—’specially by night. Lord, what our men will put on you for this
day’s work.”
She left them as quickly as she had come, and Brant’s face was sombre as
Hardcastle and he crossed the bridge that would have seen their death if
Storm had not run wild awhile since.
“I’ve lost twenty ewes. There’s no denying that,” he grumbled. “And
Storm—that old, ancient devil—is with them up the pastures.”
“He saved you and me, Brant—saved us for Logie and the days to come.”
“You were always partial to him, as I’ve told you time and again. I’d
rather have died than be saved by a ravisher of ewes.”
“Maybe—but I’d rather live, to put fear of Logie on these Garsyke
swine.”
For a mile they went, Hardcastle and his shepherd, in sharp
disagreement. Then Brant turned, with a dry chuckle.
“There’s sense in that. After the few hundred years they’ve been putting
fear on Logie, it’s time we had our turn. But I cannot thole the thought
o’ Storm, and never will.”
As they rounded the bend where Widow Dyke’s cottage stood snug and
lonely, its garden-patch ablaze with red butterflies that feasted on the
tall-standing Michaelmas daisies, Nita Langrish met them in the road. A
little, toddling chap had hold of her hand, and she was singing a song
to him.
_Now grow you big, and grow you tall,_
_Lad o’ the Wilderness._
_You’ll give the Logie Folk a call_
_When nights are dark and drear and all,_
_Lad o’ the Wilderness._
She ceased her singing, and stood fronting Hardcastle. Supple and eager,
a thing radiant as the sunlit day, she brought harsh memories back. He
had been in slavery once to this beguilement, before he learned what lay
behind it.
“Whose brat have you with you?” he asked.
“Widow Mathison’s.” Nita’s voice was clear and bell-like as of old,
pleasant to hear. “You felled his uncle at the pinfold, and Murgatroyd
has not recovered yet.”
“That’s welcome news.”
She glanced at him with such hope of old dominion that Brant went
forward, disgruntled and at war with life. If the Master liked to be
fooled a second time, that was no concern of a shepherd who had kept his
eyes on the hills, instead of letting them rove women’s way.
“Have you forgotten Logie Woods?” asked Nita, tears in her grey,
pleading eyes.
“Except in nightmare. Yes, I’ve forgotten those days, Nita.”
“Bitter to the end?”
“Aye, and beyond.”
She fell to crying; and, when that did not serve, she glanced at him
through long, wet lashes. “If I cared for too many men—it was vanity,
and no more. There was never a man but you.”
Wrath came to Hardcastle—sudden, heedless tempest, like a north wind
from far, broken hills. “I’ll not say to any woman what’s on my tongue
for you. I gave you—all Logie and myself—gave you my heart to be held,
or played with. Tales came of other men, and I laughed at them—till I
found them true.”
“It was vanity. No man but you ever took my lips—though many wanted
to.”
She was weaving gossamer about him, this once again. Charm of the
slender body, supple as the willows she wove into her baskets—lilt of
her voice—the pleading in her eyes—were meshing him into her net.
He broke through. The new days had hardened him. Up yonder was
threatened Logie; and here was Nita of the Wilderness, wanting him not
for himself, but because he was the one man in the country-side she
could not play with.
“You were singing a song to Widow Mathison’s brat,” he said.
“The feud with Logie’s up again. It came out of the olden days, before I
knew.”
“Teach him a newer song. There’ll be no Garsykes when the lad grows up.”
Wrath had left him. Gruff and cold, sinewy with field-sports and hard
riding, he would never again be the lover she had known. He was in the
thick of peril, and seemed to have no fear. He was within reach of her
hands and lips, and would not take them. And now fury came to her in
turn, though it ran deep and out of sight.
“There are three things Hardcastle of Logie cared for,” she said,
counting them on slender fingers—“his house, his dog Roy, his pride.
And Roy has gone the way of hemlock. So two are left him now.”
“It was you sent one of yours to Roy?”
“And next I shall send one to fire your house,” laughed Nita gently,
counting the tally on her second finger. “Then there’ll be stillness for
a long while, till your pride takes fright and dies.”
He grew only a little harder. She had killed his heart long since, and
now had sent hemlock up to Roy. And she was glancing at him with
softened eyes, was reaching out slim hands he would not take.
“I have the Lost Folk at call—could turn the storm from Logie, if—if
you cared.”
Hardcastle was no bondsman now to Garsykes Men—still less to thraldom
of any woman who thought to glamour him from that side of the country.
“You’re asking tribute, Nita,” he said. “Logie gives none to the
Wilderness.”