GUNS IN THE NIGHT
Time sped swiftly for the young miner and his sweetheart, and Daniel told
his friend Prowse, as a piece of extraordinary information, that he had
killed nothing that ran, or swam, or flew, for the space of three weeks.
Seeing that these innocent days formed part of the month of September,
the greatness of the occasion may be judged. Every moment of the man’s
leisure was spent at Hangman’s Hut; and once he took a whole holiday
and went with Minnie to Plymouth, that he might spend ten pounds on
furniture. He also purchased a ready-made suit of grey cloth spotted with
yellow, which seemed well adapted for his wedding day. It proved too
small in the back, but Daniel insisted on buying it, and Minnie promised
to let out the shoulders.
Then came the night before his wedding, and the young man looked round
his new home and reflected that he would not enter it again until he came
with a wife on his arm. Mrs Beer had proved of precious worth during
these preparations, and now all was ready. Even the little evening meal
that would greet Minnie on her arrival had been prepared. A cold tongue,
a cold fowl, two big red lettuces from Johnny Beer’s garden, cakes, a
bottle of pale ale, and other delicacies were laid in. Groceries and
stores had been secured; and many small matters destined to surprise
and delight the housewife were in their places; for, unknown to Minnie,
Daniel had spent five pounds--the gift of his mother--and the money
represented numerous useful household contrivances.
It began to grow dusk when young Sweetland’s work was done. Then the
ruling passion had play with him and an enterprise long since planned
occupied his attention for the rest of his last bachelor night. It was
now October.
“A brace of pheasants would look mighty fine in Minnie’s larder,” thought
Dan, “an’ there they shall be afore I go home to-night.”
He had some vague idea of giving up his dishonest sport after marriage,
but in his heart he knew that no such thing would happen.
Much talk of poaching was in the air at Moretonhampstead about this
season, and raids and rumours of raids at Middlecott and elsewhere kept
the keepers anxious and wakeful; but no sensation marked the opening of
the season, though Matthew Sweetland had secret troubles which he only
imparted to his second in command, a young and zealous man called Adam
Thorpe. Birds had gone and there were marks in the preserves that told
ugly tales to skilled eyes; but Sweetland failed to bring the evil-doers
to justice, and a cloud presently rose between his subordinate and
himself. For Thorpe did not hesitate to declare that the headkeeper’s
own son was responsible. With all his soul Daniel’s father resented this
suspicion, and yet too well he knew the other had just grounds for it.
Once only the father taxed Daniel, and the younger man fell into a rage
and reminded old Sweetland how, long ago, he had sworn upon his oath
never to enter Middlecott preserves.
“You ought to know me better than think it,” he said bitterly. “Be I what
I may, you’ve no just right to hold me an oath-breaker; an’ if I meet
that blustering fool, Thorpe, I’ll mark him so’s he’ll carry my anger
to the grave. Any fool could hoodwink him. He walks by night like an
elephant. There’s no fun in taking Middlecott pheasants. Anyway I never
have, an’ never will.”
But the preserves at Westcombe, Daniel regarded differently. They
extended under Hameldon on the skirt of the Moor; and this night
he meant to visit them and kill a bird or two. The moon would rise
presently, and he knew where the pheasants roosted quite as well as the
keeper who had bred them.
In the one spare room of Hangman’s Hut were possessions of the young
couple not yet arranged. Here stood the two little tin boxes that held
all Minnie’s possessions; and various parcels and packages belonging
to Daniel were also piled together in the chamber. A certain square
wooden case was locked, and now, lighting a candle and pulling down
the window-blind, Dan opened it. Not a few highly suspicious objects
appeared. There were nets and wires here, with night-lines and a variety
of mysterious things whose uses were known to the owner only. None other
had ever set eyes upon them. A long black weapon of heavy metal lay at
the bottom of the box, and this the poacher drew forth. Then he oiled it,
pumped it, and loaded it. The thing was an air gun, powerful enough to
destroy ground game at fifty yards. For a moment, however, Dan hesitated
between this engine and another. Among his property was a neat yellow
leather case with D.S. painted in black letters upon it. Within reposed
the gun that Henry Vivian had given his friend as a wedding present.
The owner hesitated between these weapons. His inclination was towards
the fowling-piece; his instinct turned him to the silent air-gun.
“Two shots at most, then a bolt,” he reflected. “Anyway, there won’t be a
soul that side to-night, for Wilkins and the others at Westcombe will all
be down on the lower side, where they are having a battoo to-morrow. So
I’ll chance it.”
He broke open a box of cartridges, loaded the gun, and then left
Hangman’s Hut, locking the door behind him.
Westcombe lay midway between Middlecott and the Moor. Of old there had
existed great rivalry between the houses of Vivian and Giffard as to
their game, but for many years the first-named estates produced heavier
bags, and, after the death of Sir George Giffard, Westcombe went steadily
down, for Sir George’s son and heir had little love of sport. Old Lady
Giffard, however, still dwelt at Westcombe, and rejoiced to entertain the
decreasing numbers of her late husband’s friends. A shooting party was
now collected at the old house, and a big battue had been planned for the
following day.
“’Twould keep any but Mister Henry away from my wedding,” thought Daniel.
“Of course not one man in a million would put another chap’s wedding
afore a battoo. I wouldn’t. But he will. ’Tis an awful fine thing never
to break your word, no doubt. You can trust that man like you can the
sun.”
The young poacher pursued his way without incident and sank into the
underwoods of Westcombe as the moon rose. He waited an hour hidden within
ten yards of the keepers’ path, but silence reigned in the forest,
and only the faint tinkle of frost under white moonlight reached his
ear. Once or twice an uneasy cry or flutter from a bird that felt the
gathering cold fell upon the night; and once, far away, Dan’s ears marked
gun-fire. The sound interested him exceedingly, for it certainly meant
that somebody else was engaged upon his own rascally business. Long he
listened, and presently other shots in quick succession clearly echoed
across the peace of the hour. They were remote, but they came from
Middlecott, as Daniel well knew.
“’Tis Thorpe an’ my father for sartain,” he said to himself. “Well, I
hope father haven’t met with no hurt to keep him away from my wedding.”
Now Dan turned his attention to his own affairs and was soon in the
coverts. He crept slowly through the brushwood and lifted his head
cautiously at every few steps. Often for five minutes together he
remained motionless as the dead fern in which he stood, often he might
have been a stock or stone, so still was he. Only the light in his eyes
or the faint puff of steam at his lips indicated that he was alive. The
pheasants slept snug aloft, and Dan heard a fox bark near him and smiled.
“You’m wanting your supper, my red hero, no doubt, an’ can’t reach it.
Well, well, you’ll have to go content wi’ a rabbit; the long-tails be for
your betters.”
He had crossed a drive ten minutes later and was now in the midst of the
preserves. Presently, at a spinney edge, he got the moon between himself
and the fringe of the wood, and sneaked stealthily along examining the
boughs above him as they were thrown into inky relief against the shining
sky. Many birds he passed until at length he came to two sitting near
together. Then, working to a point from which one bird came half into
line with the other, he fired and dropped both. Like thunder the gun
bellowed in that deep silence, and a lurid flame dimmed the silver of the
night. Then peace returned, and long before a flat layer of smoke had
risen above the tree-tops and dislimned under the moon; while still a
subdued flutter and cry in the woods told of alarm, and the sharp smell
of burnt powder hung in the air, Daniel Sweetland was off the Moor with
two fine pheasants under his coat and his gun on his shoulder.
A mile away three keepers, watching round the best and richest covers
of Westcombe, heard the poacher’s gun and used bad language. Then two
started whence the sound had come.
“I’ve christened you, anyway,” said Dan to his new weapon. “Come to think
of it, old Wilkins, the keeper at Westcombe, never gived my Minnie a
wedding present, though a cousin by marriage. So now these here birds
will do very nice instead, an’ make us quits.”
Within the hour he was back in the Moor and soon returned to his cottage.
But a surprise awaited him, for upon the high road, as he passed the
Warren Inn and prepared to turn off to where Hangman’s Hut lay, with its
two little windows glimmering like eyes under the moon, Daniel heard
steady feet running slowly behind him and saw a man approaching along
the way. Dan leapt off the high road instantly and hid himself beside
the path. But the other apparently had not seen him, for he trotted past
and went forward. Daniel left his hiding-place just in time to see a man
vanishing into the night.
No little remained to be done before he sought the room he occupied in
his father’s house at Middlecott lodge gates. First he returned to
Hangman’s Hut; then he put up his gun and, taking a hammer, a big nail,
and a piece of string, entered his garden and lifted the cover off a
little well that stood there. He then bent over it and drove in his
nail as far down as he could reach from the top. Next he fastened his
pheasants to the string and lowered them twenty-five yards into the gloom
beneath. The string he fastened to the nail.
“They’ll do very nice an’ comfortable there till us feel to want ’em,” he
thought. Then he locked up the house once more and started for Middlecott.
Again, as he passed over the Moor to the main road, did he hear the sound
of feet not far off, and again did a man take shape out of the darkness
and move away before him. This time the figure leapt up out of the heath
right in his path, and hastened in the direction of Hangman’s Hut.
“Be blessed if the whole parish ban’t up an’ doing to-night!” laughed
Daniel. “’Tis some blackguard trapping Johnny Beer’s rabbits, I lay.”
Then he set off briskly homewards and did not stop until he passed the
corner of Westcombe woods and saw two men standing together at the stile
over which he had himself crept some hours before.
“Seen anybody upalong, mate?” asked one.
“Yes, I did,” answered Daniel. “A chap in a hurry, too--running for his
life.”
“You be Dan Sweetland!” cried the other man. “Did you hear a gun fire
awhile back, Sweetland?”
“I heard several,” replied the young man. “They’ve been busy down to
Middlecott, or I’m mistaken. For my part, I wish I’d been there; but I
wasn’t. Too much on my hands, you see, to trouble about sporting. I’m
going to be married to-morrow; an’ you can tell your old man, Wilkins,
that my sweetheart was rather astonished he didn’t give her a wedding
present--him being related by marriage.”
The keepers laughed. Both felt morally certain that Daniel had fired the
shot which brought them from the distant woods; both knew that to prove
it would be impossible.
“An’ I dare say there’ll be a nice pheasant for supper to-morrow night at
Hangman’s Hut--eh, Dan?” asked one.
“Oh, no, there won’t, Jack Bates. I like my game hung a bit, same as the
quality do. If you’ll come to supper this day week, I’ll see what I can
do for ’e.”
The keepers laughed again, and Sweetland went his way.
At home yet another surprise awaited him. His father’s cottage flamed
with lights. Instead of silence and sleep brooding here, with the
glimmering leaden statues standing like sentinels above, as he had often
seen them on returning from nocturnal enterprises, Dan found his father’s
cottage awake and full of stir and bustle. The door was open and from the
kitchen came Matthew’s voice.
When Dan entered Mr Sweetland was sitting in an old eared chair by the
fire in his nightshirt. A red nightcap covered his head, and his person
was largely exposed, where Mrs Sweetland applied vinegar and brown paper
to red bruises. The keeper evidently endured great agony, but no sign of
suffering escaped his lips.
He turned to Dan and spoke.
“Be that you? Where was you this night, Daniel?”
“Not in Middlecott Woods, father; that I’ll swear to. But I’m feared that
you was--to poor purpose. Have ’e catched anybody?”
“No; but Adam Thorpe was hit an’ went down. Me an’ him have long knowed
what was doing, an’ we gived it out at the White Hart bar in mixed
company that we was to be in Thorley Bottom to-night. Then we went to
the coverts instead, an’, sure enough, surprised my gentlemen. Two of
’em. They fired two shots, an’ we laid wait an’ went for ’em as they
came out wi’ birds. I got one down an’ he bested me. What he’ve broken,
if anything, I can’t say. T’other fired on Thorpe an’ he couldn’t get
up. Afterwards, when they’d got clear, I found he was alive but couldn’t
speak. Then I crawled to the house, an’ some of the gentlemen and a
indoor man or two comed out. ’Twas only eleven of the clock at latest.
They carried Thorpe to the cottage hospital at Moreton, an’ sent me home.
Us’ll hear to-morrow how he fares, poor soul.”
“I knowed he’d catch it sooner or late,” said Dan. “Such a cross-grained
bully as him. But I hope ’twill larn him wisdom. An’ you. Be you hurt in
the breathing? Will ’e be at my wedding to-morrow? It shall be put off if
you can’t come.”
“’Tis all right if you can swear you had no hand in this. That’s the best
plaster to my bruises,” answered his father.
“Of course I can. Why for won’t you trust me? I know nought about
it--God’s my judge.”
“Then you’d better get to your bed an’ sleep,” said his mother.
“All’s done at the Hut,” he answered, “an’ the carriage be ordered. After
us be married, we’ll walk over to Minnie’s aunt an’ have the spread as
the old woman have arranged; then we’ll drive straight away off to the
Moor. An’ if ’tis wet weather, us be going to have a covered cab; for I
won’t have Minnie drowned on her wedding-day. Please God, you’ll be up to
coming to church, father.”
“I shall be there,” said Matthew--“there an’ glad to be there, since
you wasn’t doing any harm this night. But Mr Henry may not come. I had
speech with him, for the gentlemen hadn’t gone to bed. Sir Reginald’s in
a proper fury. They’ll leave no stone unturned to take the rascals. My
man won’t travel far, I should reckon, for I gived him quite as good as I
got, maybe better.”
“You’ve got enough anyway,” declared the keeper’s wife. “Now lean on Dan
an’ me, an’ we’ll fetch ’e up to your chamber.”
Without a groan Matthew Sweetland let them help him to his bed; but not
until dawn did the pain of his bruises lessen and suffer him to sleep.