The Rogues (28 page)

“That book I saw in yer cave?”

He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Found that, did ye? Aye,
Robinson Crusoe
, by a man named Defoe. I wish I had it with me now. A book like that's a wondrous thing for settling a man's mind.”

“I've never read a book,” I confessed. “All I know is the bits of the Bible the minister tells us, and Ma and Ishbel have read out to us. That and stories about fairies and giants. Aye—and the Bonnie Prince.”

“This book's a bit different from those tales,” said Dunbar gently. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. They were as washed out as the grey skies. “Then again, maybe not so much so. It's about a man named Crusoe, shipwrecked on an island where he lives alone for many a long year with only God for company. The two of them have some rare conversations that set Crusoe to thinking. Then one day he finds a companion, a savage running from his enemies, and Crusoe's wee world grows bigger.”

“An island, eh?” I said. “Is that what ye're looking for?”

Dunbar shook his head. “Nay, lad. No more. Like Crusoe, I've had enough of tending to my own wants and hurts and nothing else. If we get clear of all this—of the redcoats who are as mired down right now as we—I'm minded to make something more of my life. Something bigger. Something real. And I'll not live it alone any longer.”

29 AT A RUN

We slept cold and wet and weary, but we slept nonetheless. By early morning the sky had cleared, and the sun set about its work of drying out the rain-soaked ground. There were three light layers of clouds, white streamers across the blue. The streams were swollen from the rain, and we filled our flasks, drinking thirstily, careful not to be seen.

Dunbar smacked his lips and surveyed the wild landscape. “This is how the world must have looked to Noah when he landed his boat on the mountain,” he said. “Fresh scrubbed and new.”

“I was thinking we might have need of a boat ourselves.” It was as if we'd all but forgotten the redcoats, the night terrors, the dead man behind us.

“A pair of stout legs will serve us just fine,” said Dunbar. “By day's end we'll have made it to lower ground, where the forests will keep us hid.”

“Hiding will be good,” I said, suddenly aware of how open the ground was around us.

All at once Dunbar stiffened, his sharp ears picking up some sound too soft for my hearing. I turned as he raised his musket and took aim. On the slope above us a redcoat was descending, carefully picking out his footing on the rocks.

How had he found us? Why had we not noticed him before? My heart leapt in my chest like a frightened hare.

When the redcoat saw that he'd been spotted, he tried to level his gun, but Dunbar fired first. His bullet smacked into the stock of the soldier's musket, knocking it clear out of his hands. The shock of it made the man lose his footing and he fell onto his back, sliding down the wet slope toward us.

“Here!” he yelled to his comrades. “I have them!”

He dug in his heels and struggled to his feet, pulling a bayonet from his belt. Then he lunged at me with the long, sharp blade. Only a desperate instinct made me grab his knife arm, twisting it and using his own momentum to throw him over my shoulder.

“Well done, lad!” Dunbar cried as the redcoat went tumbling head over heels down into the thick undergrowth far below us.

“How did he know where we were?” I asked.

But Dunbar hardly listened to my question. “Damn yon mud slide!” he cursed. “They must have found firmer ground than we to have gained on us so fast.”

For a moment I stood there frozen until the Rogue yanked at my sleeve. “Come on!” he said. “The hounds are on our trail for sure now!”

I managed to keep pace with him, even though my feet slithered wildly in the damp earth. We circled away from the place where the redcoat had fallen and crouched low.

“There!” cried a voice from above us. “There's the two of them!”

A musket rang out. I flinched at the noise, but the shot missed us both by nearly twenty yards.

“Dinna mind that,” said Dunbar, as if he could read my fears. “They're trained to shoot into enemy ranks, not pick off a running target. Keep moving. Zigzag. Dinna stay in one place.” He ran, and I followed.

Another shot came and then another. Each time I tensed for the thump of a bullet into my body but nothing even came close. Dunbar was right. As long as we kept moving, we were safe.

Still, by the time we reached some sparse cover among a scattering of firs, I was soaked in a cold, nervous sweat. A sharp pain stabbed at my side. “Ye'd best go on without me,” I gasped. “I'll just slow ye down.”

Dunbar grabbed me by the arm. “Ye're doing fine, lad,” he said.

“No, really, leave me.”

“Hold yer nerve. I dinna desert my comrades.” His voice was as hard and sure as the very mountain we were standing on, and I felt my own spirit take strength from him.

Comrade
, I thought.

He looked down at me. “I promise I'll get ye out of this, lad.”

The answer sprang to my lips by his will rather than mine. “I know ye will.”

“Ahead there!” barked a redcoat. “We'll have them this time, my boys!” It was a deep, harsh voice, and suddenly I was once more deathly afraid.

The words spurred us to dash even faster until we came to a hollow in the ground. Dunbar dived in, dragging me down beside him. He reloaded his musket faster than I could tie a knot, and then he set his eye to sight down the barrel. “If we're to get clear, we must give them pause,” he said calmly.

A soldier appeared through the trees at a run, looking more intent on clinging to his gun than anything else. “This is going to sting,” whispered Dunbar. He squeezed the trigger and shot the redcoat in the shoulder. The man fell with a grunt of pain, clutching at the wound as he rolled over.

“That should fix up easy once the sawbones gets to work on it,” Dunbar said under his breath as he reloaded.

We could see more soldiers now, slowing as they came under the shadows of the trees. Dunbar shot off a branch right over one of their heads. At this, they all dropped to the ground, cursing.

“Unlike the king's soldiers,” he said, patting his musket, “I've spent these past years learning to shoot rabbits and wild birds. Needs a steadier hand and a surer eye than hitting a man.”

We rolled out the far side of the hollow and wriggled off through the undergrowth, keeping low and out of sight. Beneath me the ground smelled musky and damp and full of life. We heard muskets bang behind us as the redcoats fired at random, but the shots were far off, as if the soldiers hadn't yet worked up the nerve to follow. Dunbar's pinpoint shooting had indeed given them pause.

Once we'd put a good distance between us and them, we got to our feet and began running again. For nearly fifteen minutes, we ran without slowing until we reached a tall, grey rock. Sheltering behind it, I watched Dunbar cast an appraising eye over the nearby crags, grey and slatey.

“If I reckon this right,” he said, “I've a trick up my sleeve yet.”

“Have ye an army lying in wait, then?” I was panting. “If we had even a small one, we could ambush the redcoats.”

“Nae army.” He laughed. “But I know this spot because I'd reason to hide out here once.” He was still looking around. “An old man showed me an escape route. The Devil's Reach, it's called. Up there.” He pointed to a horseshoe-shaped peak, its curved side tilted up toward the sky.

I squinted up. “Devil's Reach? Doesna sound all that inviting. And …” I paused, gauging the height of the slope. “It's very far away.” Not only far away, but bare rock rising out of thickly wooded slopes, with no hiding place for fugitives like us.

Dunbar clapped me on the shoulder and we started climbing again. “Some folks say it's the very rock where Satan took Jesus Christ to offer him all the kingdoms of the world. Others that anyone going up there is snatched away by the devil and never seen again.”

“And that's supposed to make me feel better?” I asked, clambering over a fallen tree trunk. “It looks more like a trap than an escape.”

“That's the beauty of it.” Dunbar chuckled. “After Culloden many a fleeing Jacobite clansman slipped through the fingers of the Duke of Cumberland's men by this very path.”

“Maybe they're all just lying dead on the other side.”

“Show a little faith, lad,” urged the Rogue. “Show a little faith.”

I paused to catch a breath and to pull away some gorse that had tangled around my leg. “Faith? You're leading us into the devil's grasp!”

Dunbar gave me a sly wink over his shoulder. “Did ye not learn from the Bible that salvation lies in taking the hard road?” Then he kept going on down the mountainside.

30 DEVIL'S REACH

To get to the Devil's Reach, we had to make our way along a sparsely wooded ridge, darting in and out of the trees. It took a full day. Whenever we broke from hiding, the redcoats tried to pick us off. I counted at least a dozen of them.

“Pay them no mind,” Dunbar told me. “They're not taking the time to get their range. It makes me think they dinna know who they're chasing. Or care.”

I tried to treat our escape as casually as he did, but I still twitched at every shot, as if a swarm of bees were trying to sting the back of my neck. And even though not a single shot came near us, that didn't make me feel any less frightened.

By late afternoon, we'd gained the lower slopes. There we had better cover—larch and fir, mostly—but our pursuers were hurrying over the ridge after us. The Rogue took up a position between two pines and loosed off a pair of well-aimed shots that quickly had the redcoats taking shelter among the trees.

“Have ye the strength left to make that climb without me kicking ye all the way?” he asked, pointing his gun barrel at the horseshoe-shaped mass of the Devil's Reach that loomed above us.

I was puzzled. “Why are ye asking such a thing?”

“That summit is too exposed for us to climb it without taking a bullet in the back. The far side is even worse. They could stand right above us and pick their shots at their leisure.”

“Then why did we come here?”

Dunbar reached into his pocket and brought out the Blessing. “So ye can take this to yer family where it belongs,” he said.

When I hesitated, he pressed it into my hand. “This is what the whole adventure has been about, lad,” he said. “And if ye dinna get it safe away, it's all been for naught. And then Josie will really have my hide.”

I realized then that his mind was bent on Bonnie Josie and had been all along. Why I'd not understood before is still unclear to me, except that I was only a boy with little understanding of a man's heart. But suddenly I remembered the looks he'd given her, how quickly he'd listened to her and fallen in with her plans. I remembered how angry he'd been when Rood had accosted her. And I knew that if we managed to escape, he would seek Bonnie Josie, out as surely as I would be seeking out my family.

“I'm truly sorry, Alan,” I said, slipping the Blessing into my pocket. “If no for me, ye'd no be in this trouble. Ye said as much, and ye were right.”

“Dinna heed words that are spoken in anger, lad.” He waved my apology away as if it were just some pesky insect. “I'd have fallen foul of the laird in my own good time and most likely gotten in a worse pother than this.”

But I couldn't stop apologizing. It was suddenly important that he hear it all. “I've said some harsh words to ye, Alan Dunbar, and about ye too, and they were undeserved.” I held out my hand. “I hope ye forgive me.” For a moment I stood there, hand outstretched, feeling more than a little foolish and more than a little shamed.

“We've been a pair of stiff-necked gowks, and that's for sure,” said Dunbar, reaching over to shake my hand. “But we'll be friends now, as Josie would have us, and that's how we'll part.” Then he returned to loading his musket.

I felt cold all over, as if I'd fallen into a bank of new snow. “What do ye mean:
part
?”

“I told ye, there's no way we can both make it up to the peak with those guns at our backs,” he answered dourly. “So I'm leaving ye to make that climb alone.”

“But what are ye going to do?”

He didn't answer directly. “Keep yerself hid here among the pines.”

I saw where this was going. “No, Alan …”

“Listen, lad, this will work if ye listen.” He hefted the gun, pointing it toward the ridge where the rest of the soldiers seemed to be biding their time. “I'll sneak over that way, making sure the redcoats keep their heads down. Then I'll lead them into the glen below. Ye've to choose yer moment, then race for the summit as fast as yer legs will shift ye.”

“But there's nothing up there except bare rock,” I objected.

“I already told ye, that's just appearances,” said the Rogue, turning suddenly to take aim at three soldiers who were now advancing along the ridge, their captain's voice goading them on. He put a bullet right into the pack of the foremost man and sent him and his comrades cowering behind the nearest rock.

As Dunbar quickly reloaded, he gave me further instruction. “Once ye reach the top, move to yer left, where ye'll find the split stump of a dead pine. Directly below it, under a flinty overhang, there's a fissure in the rock. It's the only way down, and it's as good as invisible to them that don't know it. Follow it down and ye'll come to thick woodland on a gentle lower slope.”

He fired another shot, keeping the redcoats hugging cover. But for all their caution, they were still closing in on us.

“But what of yerself, Alan?”

“Och, I'll lead them a merry chase through the glens. With only my own skin to care for I've a better chance of giving them the slip.”