John MacNab (8 page)

‘You're for it all right, my son,' cried Sir Archie, ‘and so am I. Here's the beastly announcement. “A
Great Conservative Meeting will be held in the Town Hall, Muirtown, on Thursday, September 4th, to be addressed by the Right Hon. the Earl of Lamancha, M.P., His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Dominions. The chair will be taken at 3 p.m. by His Grace the Duke of Angus, K. G. Among the speakers will be Colonel Wavertree, M.P., the Hon. W.J. Murdoch, Ex-Premier of New Caledonia, and Captain Sir Archibald Roylance, D.S.O., prospective Conservative candidate for Wester Ross.”
Oh, will he? Not by a long chalk! Catch me going to such a fiasco, with Charles hidin' here and the show left to the tender mercies of two rotten bad speakers and a prosy chairman.'

‘Did you forget about it too?' Leithen asked.

‘ ‘Course I did,' said Archie wildly. ‘How could I think of anything with you fellows turnin' my house into a den of thieves? I forgot about it just as completely as Charles, only it doesn't matter about me, and it matters the devil of a lot about him. I don't stand an earthly chance of winnin' the seat, if, first of all, I mustn't canvass because of smallpox, and, second, my big meetin', on which all my fellows counted, is wrecked by Charles playin' the fool.'

Lamancha's dark face broke into a smile.

‘Don't worry, old chap. I won't let you down. But it looks as if I must let down John Macnab, and just when I was gettin' keen about him . . . Hang it, no! There must be a way. I'm not going to be beaten either by Claybody or this damned Tory rally. Ned, you slacker, what's your advice?'

‘Have a try at the double event,' Leithen drawled. ‘You'll probably make a mess of both, but it's a sporting proposition.'

Archie's face brightened. ‘You don't realise how sportin' a proposition it is. The Claybodys will be there, and they'll be all over you – brother nobleman, you know, and you goin' to poach their stags next day! Hang it, why shouldn't you turn the affair into camouflage? “Out of my stony griefs Bethel I'll raise,” says the hymn . . . We'll have to think the thing out ve-ry carefully. - Anyway, Charles, you've got to help me with my speech. I don't mind so much lyin' doggo here if I can put in a bit of good work on the 5th .. . Now, Benjie my lad, for your report.'

Benjie, not without a certain shyness, cleared his throat and began. He narrated how, following his instructions, he had secured Macpherson's permission to cut heather for besoms on the Raden haugh. He had duly taken up his post there, had remained till four o'clock, and had seen such and such people and heard this and that talk. He recounted what he could remember of the speeches of Macpherson and the gillies.

‘They've got accustomed to the sight of you, I suppose,' Palliser-Yeates said at length.

‘Aye, they're accustomed right enough. Both the young lady and Macpherson was tellin' me to keep a look-out for poachers.' Benjie chuckled.

‘Then tomorrow you begin to move up to the high ground by the Carnmore peat-road. Still keep busy at your besoms. You understand what I want you for, Benjie? If I kill a stag I have to get it off Glenraden land, and your old fish-cart won't be suspected.'

‘Aye, I see that fine. But I've been thinkin' that there's maybe a better way.'

‘Go ahead, and let's have it.'

Benjie began his speech nervously, but he soon warmed to it, and borrowed a cigar-box and the fire-irons to explain his case. The interest of his hearers kindled, until all four men were hanging on his words. When he concluded and had answered sundry questions, Sir Archie drew a deep breath and laughed excitedly.

‘I suppose there's nothing in that that isn't quite cricket ... I thought I knew something about bluff, but this – this absolutely vanquishes the band. Benjie, I'm goin' to have you taught poker. You've the right kind of mind for it.'

Shortly after midnight of the 28th day of August three men foregathered at the door of Macpherson's cottage, and after a few words took each a different road into the dark wastes of wood and heather. Macpherson contented himself with a patrol of the low ground in the glen, for his legs were not as nimble as they once had been and his back had a rheumaticky stiffness. Alan departed with great strides for the Carnbeg tops, and James Fraser, the youngest and the leanest, set out for Carnmore, with the speed of an Indian hunter . . . Darkness gave place to the translucence of early dawn: the badger trotted home from his wanderings: the hill-fox barked in the cairns to summon his household: sleepy pipits awoke: the peregrine who lived above the Grey Beallach drifted down into the glens to look for breakfast: hinds and calves moved up from the hazel shaws to the high fresh pastures: the tiny rustling noises of night disappeared in that hush which precedes the awakening of life: and then came the flood of morning gold from behind the dim eastern mountains, and in an instant the earth had wheeled into a new day. A thin spire of smoke rose from Mrs Macpherson's chimney, and presently the three wardens of the marches arrived for breakfast. They reported that the forest was still unviolated, that no alien foot had yet entered its sacred confines. Herd-boys, the offspring of Alan and James Fraser, had taken up their post at key-points, so that if a human being was seen on the glacis of the fort the fact would at once be reported to the garrison.

‘I'm thinkin' he'll no come to-day,' said Macpherson after his third cup of tea. ‘It will be the morn. The day he will be tryin' to confuse our minds, and that will no be a difficult job wi' you, Alan, my son.'

‘He'll come in the da-ark,' said Alan crossly.

‘And how would he be gettin' a beast in the dark? The Laird was sayin' that this man John Macnab was a gra-and sportsman. He will not be shootin' at any little staggie, but takin' a sizeable beast, and it's not a howlet could be tellin' a calf from a stag in these da-ark nights. Na, he will not shoot in the night, but he might be travellin' in the night and gettin' his shot in the early mornin'.'

‘What for,' Alan asked, ‘should he not be havin' his shot in the gloamin' and gettin' the beast off the ground in the da-ark?'

‘Because we will be watchin' all hours of the day. Ye heard what the Laird said, Alan Macdonald, and you, James Fraser. This John Macnab is not to shoot a Glenraden beast at all, at all, but if he shoots one he is not to move it one foot. If it comes to fightin', you are young lads and must break the head of him. But the Laird said for God's sake you was to have no guns, but to fight like honest folk with your fists, and maybe a wee bit stick. The Laird was sayin' the law was on our side, except for shootin' . . . Now, James Fraser, you will take the outer marches the day, and keep an eye on the peat-roads from Inverlarrig, and you, Alan, will watch Carnbeg, and I will be takin' the woods myself. The Laird was sayin' that it would be Carnmore the man Macnab would be tryin', most likely at skreigh of day the morn, and he would be hidin' the beast, if he got one, in some hag, and waitin' till the da-ark to shift him. So the morn we will all be on Carnmore, and I can tell you the Laird has the ground planned out so that a snipe would not be movin' without us seein' him.'

The early morning broadened into day, and the glen slept in the windless heat of late August. Janet Raden, sauntering down from the Castle towards the river about eleven o'clock, thought that she had never seen the place so sabbatically peaceful. To her unquiet soul the calm seemed unnatural, like a thick cloak covering some feverish activity. All the household were abroad since breakfast – her father on a preliminary reconnaissance of Carnmore, Agatha and Mr Junius Bandicort on a circuit of Carnbeg, while the gillies and their youthful allies sat perched with telescopes on eyries surveying every approach to the forest. The plans seemed perfect, but the dread of John Macnab, that dark conspirator, would not be exorcised. It was she who had devised the campaign, based on her reading of the enemy's mind; but had she fathomed it, she asked herself? Might he not even now be preparing some master-stroke which would crumble their crude defences? Horrible stories which she had read of impersonation and the shifts of desperate characters recurred to her mind. Was John Macnab perhaps old Mr Bandicort disguised as an archaeologist? Or was he one of the Strathlarrig workmen?

She walked over the moor to the Piper's Ring and was greeted by a mild detonation and a shower of earth. Old Mr Bandicort, very warm and stripped to his shirt, was desperately busy and most voluble about his task. There was no impersonation here, nor in the two fiery-faced labourers who were burrowing their way towards the resting-place of Harald Blacktooth. Nevertheless, her suspicion was not allayed, she felt herself in the antechamber of plotters, and looked any moment to see on the fringes of the wood or on the white ribbon of road a mysterious furtive figure which she would know for a minion of the enemy.

But the minion did not appear. As Janet stood on the rise before the bridge of Raden with her hat removed to let the faint south-west wind cool her forehead, she looked upon a scene of utter loneliness and peace. The party at the Piper's Ring were hidden, and in all the green amphitheatre nothing stirred but the stream. Even Fish Benjie and his horse had been stricken into carven immobility. He had moved away from the road a few hundred yards into the moor, not far from the waterside, and his little figure, as he whittled at his brooms, appeared from where Janet stood to be as motionless as a boulder, while the old grey pony mused upon three legs as rapt and lifeless as an Elgin marble. The two seemed to have become one with nature, and to be as much part of the sleeping landscape as the clump of birches whose leaves did not even shimmer in that bright silent noontide.

The quiet did something to soothe Janet's restlessness, but after luncheon, which she partook of in solitary state, she found it returning. A kind
of folk de doute
assailed her, not unknown to generals in the bad hours which intervene between the inception and execution of a plan. She had a strong desire to ride up to Crask and have a talk with Sir Archie, and was only restrained by the memory of that young man's last letter, and the hint it contained of grave bodily maladies. She did not know whether to believe in these maladies or not, but clearly she could not thrust her company upon one who had shown a marked distaste for it . . . Yet she had her pony saddled and rode slowly in the direction of Strathlarrig, half hoping to see a limping figure on the highway. But not a soul was in sight on the long blinding stretch or at the bridge where the Crask road started up the hill. Janet turned homeward with a feeling that the world had suddenly become dispeopled. She did not turn her head once, and so failed to notice first one figure and then another, which darted across the high road, and disappeared in the thick coverts of the Crask hillside.

At the Castle she found Agatha and Junius Bandicott having tea, and presently her father arrived in a state of heat and exhaustion. Stayed with a whisky-and-soda, Colonel Raden became communicative. He had been over the high tops of Carnmore, had visited the Carn Moss, and Corrie Gall, had penetrated the Grey Beallach, had heard the tales of the gillies and of the herd-boys in their eyries, and his report was ‘all clear'. The deer were undisturbed, according to James Fraser, since the morning. Moreover, the peat-road from Inverlarrig had relapsed owing to recent rains into primeval bog which no wheeled vehicle and few ponies could traverse. The main fortress seemed not only unassailed but unassailable, and Colonel Raden viewed the morrow with equanimity.

The Carnbeg party had a different story to tell, or rather the main members of it had no story at all. Agatha and Junius Bandicott appeared to have sauntered idly into the pleasant wilderness of juniper and heather which lay between the mossy summits, to have lunched at leisure by the famous Cailleach's Well, and to have sauntered home again. They reported that it had been divine weather, for a hill breeze had tempered the heat, and that they had observed the Claybodys' yacht far out at the entrance of Loch Larrig. Also Junius had seen his first blue hare, which he called a ‘jack rabbit'. Of anything suspicious there had been neither sign nor sound.

But at this moment a maid appeared with the announcement that ‘Macpherson was wanting to see the Colonel,' and presently the head stalker arrived in what John Bunyan calls a ‘pelting heat'. Generally of a pale complexion which never tanned, he was now as red as a peony, and his grey beard made a startling contrast with his flamboyant face. Usually he was an embarrassed figure inside the Castle, having difficulties in disposing of his arms and legs, but now excitement made him bold.

‘I've seen him, Cornel,' he panted. ‘Seen him crawlin' like an adder and runnin' like a sta-ag!'

‘Seen who? Get your breath, Macpherson!'

‘Him – the man – Macnab. I beg your pardon for my pechin', sir, but I came down the hill like I was a rollin' stone ... It was up on the backside of Craig Dhu near the old sheep-fauld. I seen a man hunkerin' among the muckle stones, and I got my glass on him, and he was a sma' man that I've never seen afore. I was wild to get a grip of him, and I started runnin' to drive him to the Cailleach's Well, where Miss Agatha and the gentleman was havin' their lunch. He seen me, and he took the road I ettled, and I thought I had him, for, thinks I, the young gentleman is soople and lang in the leg. But he seen the danger and turned off down the burn, and I couldna come near him. It would have been all right if I could have made the young gentleman hear, but though I was roarin' like a stot he was deafer than a tree. Och, it is the great peety.'

‘Agatha, what on earth were you doing?' Janet asked severely.

Junius Bandicott blushed hotly. ‘I never heard a sound,' he said. ‘There must be something funny about the acoustics of that place.'

Colonel Raden, who knew the power of his stalker's lungs, looked in a mystified way from one to the other.

‘Didn't you see Macpherson, Agatha?' he asked. ‘He must have been in view coming over the shoulder of Craig Dhu.'

It was Agatha's turn to blush, which she did with vigour, and, to Mr Bandicott's eyes, with remarkable grace.

‘Ach, I was in view well enough,' went on the tactless Macpherson, ‘and I was routin' like a wild beast. But the twa of them was that busy talking they never lifted their eyes, and the man, as I tell you, slippit off down the burn. It is a gre-at peety, whatever.'

‘What did you do then?' the Colonel demanded.

‘I followed him till I lost him in that awful rough corrie . . . But I seen him again – aye, I seen him again, away over on the Maam above the big wud. Standin', as impident as ye please, on the sky-line.'

‘How long after you lost him in the corrie?' Janet asked.

‘Maybe half an hour.'

‘Impossible,' she said sharply. ‘No living man could cover three miles of that ground in half an hour.'

‘I was thinkin' the body was the Deevil.'

‘You saw a second man. John Macnab has an accomplice.'

Macpherson scratched his shaggy head. ‘I wouldn't say but ye're right, Miss Janet. Now I think of it, it was a bigger man. He didn't bide a moment after I caught sight of him, but I got my glass on him, and he was a bigger man. Aye, a bigger man, and, maybe, a younger man.'

‘This is very disturbing,' said Colonel Raden, walking to the window and twisting his moustache. ‘What do you make of it, Nettie?'

‘I think the affair is proceeding, as generals say about their battles, “according to plan”. We didn't know before that John Macnab had a confederate, but of course he was bound to have one. There was nothing against it in the terms of the wager.'

‘Of course not, of course not. But what the devil was he doing on Carnbeg? There was no shot, Macpherson?'

‘There was no shot, and there will be no shot. There wass no beasts the side they were on, and Alan is up there now with one of James's laddies.'

‘It's exactly what we expected,' said Janet. ‘It proves that we were right in guessing that John Macnab would take Carnmore. He came here today to frighten us about Carnbeg – make us think that he was going to try there, and get us to mass our forces. Tomorrow he'll be on Carnmore, and then he'll mean business. I hoped this would happen, and I was getting nervous when Agatha and Mr Bandicott came home looking as blank as the Babes in the Wood. But I wish I knew which was really John Macnab – the little one or the tall one.'

‘What does that matter?' her parent asked.

‘Because I should be happier if he were tall. Little men are far more cunning.'

Junius Bandicott, having recovered his composure, chose to be amused. ‘I take that as a personal compliment, Miss Janet. I'm pretty big, and I can't say I want to be thought cunning.'

‘Then John Macnab will get his salmon,' said Janet with decision.

Junius laughed. ‘You bet he won't. I've gotten the place watched like the Rum Fleet at home. A bird can't hardly cough without its being reported to me. My fellows are on to the game, and John Macnab will have to be a mighty clever citizen to come within a mile of the Strathlarrig water. Nobody is allowed to fish it but myself till the 3rd of September is past. I reckon angling just now is the forbidden fruit in this neighbourhood. I've seen but the one fellow fishing in the last three days – on the bit of slack water five hundred yards below the bridge. It belongs to Crask, I think.'

Janet nodded. ‘No good except with a worm after a spate. Crask has no fishing worth the name.'

‘I saw him from the automobile early this morning,' Junius continued. ‘Strange sight he was, too – dressed in pyjamas and rubbers – flogging away at the most helpless stretch you can imagine – dead calm, not a ripple. He had out about fifty yards of line, and when I passed he made a cast which fell with a flop about his ears. Who do you suppose he was? Somebody from Crask?'