CHAPTER XII
THE SHEEP-SLAYER
I
For a week the days went at Logie as if Garsykes had no feud with it. That was the way of the Wilderness Folk, and the nameless dreads that came at such waiting times began to patter up and down the house. Storm, after staying for a night and a day, had heard the wolf-call once again, and was gone. The Master rode much abroad, and would tire two horses out between dawn and gloaming. That was his way of stifling suspense. Rebecca’s was to quarrel with the brindled cat who was her shadow and familiar.
Donald was neither better nor worse, though both by turns; and Causleen, whenever she met Hardcastle, baffled him by her chill aloofness. It seemed to him that she would rather have died in the snow than owe her life to him.
Near the end of the week, Brant the shepherd came at nightfall, and knocked at the kitchen door, and came stamping in, a gun under his arm and quiet good humour in his face.
“Draw me a mug of ale, Rebecca,” he said, “for I’ve earned it.”
“Aye, all men fancy that, at any hour o’ day or night. What have you done, Stephen?”
“I’ve shot Storm at last. A son of Belial, I call him, and he skulked to the last—got away into the brackens, but his hind legs were trailing. I’d like to have found his carcase.”
Something hidden in Rebecca leaped into fury: Storm was dear to her, as to Hardcastle, whatever his backslidings. Jonah and he had been comrades in old days, the cat sitting on his back and playing pranks with him. She had fed him by stealth, when the Master brought him home to the cupboard under the stair, had rated him for the life he was leading these days—finishing with a “there, you can’t help it, like, and get sleep and victuals while you can.”
“There’s no ale for you to-night, Stephen,” she said, gaunt and truculent.
“And why, if I might ask?”
“Because you come boasting you’ve shot the dog that saved you all at Garsykes. There were few of Logie’s Men, and many of theirs; and he scattered them for you, to some purpose.”
“But, woman, he kills sheep.”
“And saves men, it seems. The Master mightn’t be here—or you either—if it hadn’t been for Storm.”
The shepherd was nonplussed for a moment. “That’s true enough,” he muttered, plucking at his thin, wiry beard. “They were in a mind to kill us that day, with their women egging them on.”
“Yet you come here, snug as a toad in its hole, and tell me you’ve killed Storm. A queer way of showing thankfulness for what life there’s left in your old bones.”
“You don’t understand. You never could, not being a shepherd.”
“Without a heart in his body.”
“With a heart for ravished ewes. There’s a law among us, fixed as old Pengables. A dog turned wolf is hunted till he’s shot.”
“Well, there’s a law in my kitchen, too. No ale for the man that murdered Storm. I was talking to Jonah here about the uses of a besom when you stepped in—but I’m minded to thwack you instead.”
“I’m fairish dry, Rebecca,” said the shepherd, with sudden wistfulness.
“I hope as much. The drier you get, the better I’ll like it.”
They stood at bay, regarding each other with dour enmity, till Rebecca thought of Hardcastle, riding home from Norbrigg market and late to come.
“The Garsykes sort lie quiet,” she said, “and it’s getting hard to bear. I wish the Master would listen to sense, and not go taking his journeys as if naught had happened at the pinfold.”
“He’s made that way. An earthquake wouldn’t alter him.”
“Obstinate, like his father before him.”
“A rare plucked ’un, like his father. After all, if he’s got to be killed, he’s wise to seek it in the open. When my time comes, says I, give me God’s sky to turn my toes to, and curlews singing me to sleep.”
“Now that’s all nonsense, Brant. You live too lonely on the heights yonder, and your fancies breed like maggots. When my time comes, give me a cosy hearth and the taste of a treacle-posset in my throat. That’s how I’d say my last good-bye to Logie. And here we stand chattering, while the Master lies murdered, like Storm, somewhere ’twixt here and Norbrigg.”
“Nay, now, you’re running to meet trouble before it comes. And as for Storm, he wasn’t murdered, I’d have you know. Justice was what he got, and if I’d my way, they’d tar such-like and hang ’em in chains at the cross-roads, same as human footpads.”
“Oh, hold your whisht, Stephen. Cannot you see that I’m sick with wondering why the Master’s late?”
“So will the pedlar’s girl be, if all they say be true.”
“When all they say is true, all the geese in the world will be dead—not one of ’em left to cackle. I was out in that blizzard, and ran fairish quick for shelter.”
“So did I, and was near over-blown at that.”
“And so did Master and Donald’s girl. They were prisoned for the night; but it’s only Garsykes way they think worse of them for that.”
Brant fidgetted about the kitchen, warming himself at the fire one moment, then going to the door as if he listened for some cry of trouble out of doors. “I’m not easy in mind myself,” he said at last. “Maybe I’ll step out Norbrigg way and see what’s happening to him. This gun of mine may come in useful.”
“That’s the man I thought you,” snapped Rebecca. “Bide till you’ve had a pull at the ale, then get your best foot forward.”
Hardcastle himself, an hour before, had ridden up from Norbrigg through the dusk that showed no more than a glimpse of the track ahead. It was only when he came through Weathersett village, perched high on top of the rise, that he rode into keen frosty moonlight. His glance roved over the broken lands, the grey roads that wound across them. The waiting time at Logie, for what Garsykes spite could do to him, seemed far-off. He was not between house-walls now, but in the open.
Tang of the frosty wind, smell of the uplands, got into his blood. He plucked his horse to a canter, then checked him as they went by the pinfold where he had answered three men’s call for tribute. Again he looked out across the moonlit wastes, and down at the hollow where Garsykes village lurked. If the Lost Folk needed him, he was here, and glad of any onset after the quiet of these last days.
No onset came. The moonlight showed him only a grey-blue land of sleeping pastures, a glint of white where snow-drifts, still unmelted, hugged the walls. He felt thwarted of his due, somehow, and it seemed hard to get safe home again and wait for whatever devilry Garsykes had in mind. Then his mind yielded to the night’s persuasion as his horse trotted forward soberly between the heather and the pines.
Moist, wayward spurts of wind rustled the fallen leaves. The undergrowth was stealthy with the feet of things that fled, of bigger things that hunted. A night-jar cried harshly in the thickest of the wood. From the slopes beyond came the rough call of a buck to his mate, telling her to get behind him while he met some peril threatening both.
The streams had their own eerie music, too. Fed by swift-melting snow, they sobbed and crooned and wailed as they raced to Wharfe River far below. And the wind would not be still.
Hardcastle rode through the haunted land with a song at his heart, such as nothing brought to him these days except night-time on the Logie roads. They said he would never marry, and he knew they said it. They lied, as usual, for he had wived these grim and tender lands handed down to him by generations whose voices lived about the house of Logie.
The dusk of the forest kept him company till he rode into the open, and saw the free, spacious road wind up to Logie under the scudding moonlight. It was good to be alive, with such a heritage.
Then suddenly his horse blundered. Before he had time to try to break his fall, he was thrown across the road and into the dark hollow bordering the wood. One half of him lay soft and wet; the other jarred on something lean and bony—something that rapped out stifled curses, and turned under him with writhing fury, and strove to get a grip about his throat.
They fought together in the hollow, he and his unseen adversary, till their hands grew slippery with mud and it was hard to get any sort of hold.
“From Garsykes, you?” gasped Hardcastle, feeling for the grip that should settle all. “Swine love the ditches.”
No answer came. His enemy was striving, too, for the strangle-hold that constantly eluded him. The stealthy fight went on. The whole world was narrowed to this dark corner by the roadway, and the slime sucked and gurgled under the weight of their striving bodies.
Then Hardcastle found his chance, and took it. He got one arm under the man’s thighs, the other round his shoulders, lifted him with savage strength, and pitched him clear into the roadway.
When he clambered after him, the moonlight, clear and blue, showed him a lank figure getting up from the wet, grey road.
“So it’s you, Long Murgatroyd,” he said.
“Aye, it’s me.”
“Be damned to you, why did you hide in a muddy ditch if you wanted another fight?”
Murgatroyd, white-faced and spent, glanced at the rope swinging gently across the road, and the Master saw it for the first time.
“You’ve come as low as that?” The Master was shaken by passionate loathing. “As low as that, Murgatroyd?”
“Well, your blamed luck won’t last for ever. Any but you would have been pitched on his head when his horse got into the rope—and I’d have finished you, need being. So now your going to finish me instead.”
Hardcastle’s riding-whip was lifted to cut the man across the face; but Murgatroyd was laughing at him in the moonlight—a wan laugh enough, yet full of dogged will to endure whatever came.
“Nita sent you on the errand?” he asked sharply.
“She did, in a way. We know what her tongue is—me and you, we know it. She said you were my master any day if it came to a fight. So I stepped up to kill you.” Again he laughed. “I should have told her naught of the rope, you understand. There’d have been you ligging dead in the road, and happen she’d have given me a kiss or two for my pains. That’s how it was. And I’m here, and want to be rid o’ my life.”
Hardcastle could make nothing of it. Wrath died in him. The man was rough as a savage, simple beyond belief. He had come up to kill, and, failing, expected no mercy from his enemy.
“Oh, damn you all ways, Murgatroyd,” he said, and went to where his horse stood trembling, and felt its knees.
Murgatroyd looked on, with dazed wonder. “Broken are they?”
“Sound as a bell,” growled Hardcastle, as he swung into the saddle.
Long Murgatroyd watched him out of sight. The Master of Logie was a fool, no doubt, to leave him ripe for further mischief; but in some queer way he found a liking for him. He dealt fair with all about the country-side; and fairness appealed to this chastened mood of his.
“If only Nita would let him alone, he’d rather see Hardcastle live than die. If only Nita would let him alone.”
The words got into his muddled wits as he looked from the forest to the misty fells where Garsykes slept in the flooding moonlight. Some uncouth purpose stirred him. He went and unfastened the rope he had tied from tree to tree across the road. The knots were tight and his fingers clumsy; but at last he coiled it into a neat bundle, climbed the wall on his right, and lopped like a hare down the grey-blue pastures.
When he neared the little brig that crossed Crooning Water, a clear, sweet voice drifted up the breeze, singing a song.
There came a man to my house,
Love me well, said he;
There came a man to my house,
Nay, said I, I’m free.
Murgatroyd halted, swayed between longing and loathing. Then murder got into his heart again, as he turned the bend of the road.
Nita Langrish was sitting on the bridge-wall, threading her willows in and out.
“Making baskets by moonlight?” he asked.
“Finishing one for a lass up Dale that’s courting. So it’s only right to weave moonshine in between the withers.”
“We’re courting, Nita, you and me.”
“It takes two for that,” she said, and went on with her work as if she were alone.
A great madness came on Murgatroyd. She sat there in the moonlight so mocking and aloof, yet so enticing, that the helpless rage of years found tongue. He cursed the day she came into Garsykes first, cursed every meeting with her since, till his hoarse voice seemed like a flail about her. For a moment Nita was afraid—of him, and of the stark truth he spoke. Then she gathered her old dominion round her, her old self-will and vanity.
“You’ve been at the drinking again,” she said, with gentle insolence.
“I have—drinking the dregs, like many another that’s come your way. You draw your skirts away fro’ Widow Mathison at the inn, same as if she was dirt. But she’s got what you’ve not—a heart in her feckless body.”
Nita had finished her basket and stood, slim and straight, looking into the man’s face with grey, childlike eyes as she waited for what he had to say.
“She has a lad of her own—dotes on him, and naught too much to do, mending and fending for him. You dote on yourself, Nita.”
The man’s voice had grown quiet, and Nita thought his madness ended, till he took the rope from under his arm and began to uncoil it with a leisurely sort of haste.
“To be sure,” she said, “Garsykes will be smoked out soon, like a hornet’s nest. Time was when it bred men, not windle-straws. And you’re for trying how the noose will feel about your neck—when Logie gets you?”
“No,” said Murgatroyd, “I’m for fitting it about yours, Nita, and hanging you to a branch of yond big sycamore.”
She saw now the steady light of madness in his eyes, the purpose sure and downright. Fear unsteadied her again, but she remembered bygone years of blandishment. She came to him, and laid a hand on his sleeve.
“Could you hurt me? I’m such a little thing, and you’re so big. You couldn’t hurt me.”
“Aye, but I could.” The man’s voice was low and harsh as he put her away from him and fingered the rope with restless fingers. “I could hurt you to some purpose. Sometimes I fancy there’s naught I want any more.”
She put both hands on his shoulders now. Her lips were close to his, and her breath was warm and soft.
“Naught else?” she asked.
The old, daft longing stole about him. Little, baffling webs were spun across his sullen will to make an end of Nita and her devilries. He reached out his arms to gather her to him—but she had stepped back and stood smiling at him in the moonlight.
“To-morrow, maybe, or the next day after,” she said—“when you’ve forgotten about ropes and sycamores.”
He watched her go. He was too heartsick even to curse her, or to follow.
“It’s always to-morrow with her,” he muttered, shivering in the breeze that whimpered down from Drumly Ghyll.
Then he leaned over the bridge, listening to the stream as it swirled in the deep pool below. The water called him. Every sob and gurgle enticed him to a death found easily. The plunge would be cold, into broth of melted snow, but after that—well, they said it was a quiet way of going out.
Yet he could not take the plunge. For ever Nita’s voice was in his ear, with its promise of “to-morrow, maybe.” She drew him from the waters. It was a lying promise, but she drew him. Reluctantly he turned his face towards Garsykes, and down the fell Nita’s song came with the breeze.
There came a man to my house,
Love me well, said he;
There came a man to my house,
Nay, said I, I’m free.
Murgatroyd recalled the Master’s farewell to him awhile since. Hardcastle’s words had a way of sticking, he’d noticed.
“Damn you all ways, Nita Langrish,” he said, and laughed heavily, and took the field-track up to Garsykes.