II
Hardcastle rode slowly home to Logie, after his encounter in the wayside ditch. For a week he had been restless, wondering what Garsykes meant to do with him. Now they had shot their bolt, and he survived. Never in his life had he known this keen, hard joy that was growing with the feud. Once they had tried to take him at the pinfold—and once a man had come to fire his house and been over-blown by snow. Now they had stretched a rope across the road to hinder him, and he was up in saddle again. Whatever the future had in store, he had given no tribute to Garsykes, and would give none.
At a bend of the road he met Shepherd Brant, who greeted him with taciturn relief.
“It’s better to be quick than dead, Master.”
“It is, Stephen,” said Hardcastle, answering dryness with dryness.
“Rebecca was in such a rare taking about you—thinking you were murdered on the Norbrigg road—that I set off in search. Has it been raining in those parts?”
“Raining? No.”
“I only wondered, seeing you dripping-wet.”
“There was one from Garsykes in a ditch, and I had to get him out of it—by the scruff of his neck.
“Oh,” said Brant, lighting his pipe. “And which of ’em was he like to look at, if I might ask?”
“He was very like Long Murgatroyd.”
“And you maimed him for life, and so put him out o’ harm’s way?”
“The last I saw of him, he was standing like a dazed fool in the roadway—too soft for a man to hit.”
“It was like you, Master,” growled Brant, and touched his cap with chill respect as he turned for home.
Hardcastle only laughed as he rode forward. He knew Brant as he knew himself. If Stephen had seen Long Murgatroyd in the roadway, grey-faced and quavering, the shepherd would have understood.
They came by High Ghyll Wood, with the merry breeze in their faces, and the Master’s horse was thinking only of oats in the near-by stable when he halted in his stride and shied at nothing, so far as Hardcastle could tell. His head was turned toward the wood, and a shiver ran down his sturdy flanks.
Then Hardcastle drew rein, and listened. There might be another ambush waiting for him before he got to Logie. A horse had quicker hearing than a man. And now he heard a far-off crying in the wood—the yelping cry of a beast in pain—and thought a fox had got into one of the foresters’ many traps.
As he listened, he knew it was no fox in trouble, but a dog; and he had a soft heart for all that breed. Riding forward till he came to the gate near ahead, he tethered his horse to the trunk of a gnarled thorn-bush, and plunged into the wood.
The yelping cries were mingled now with fierce, tortured howls that guided him, step by step, to a clump of brackens where something lay and writhed, beating down the shelter it had sought in need. The moon shone clear through the leafless branches of the silver-birches overhead—shone on a dog’s bloodshot eyes and hairy face.
“Why, Storm, what ails you?” asked Hardcastle.
For a moment the sheep-slayer knew him and strove to wriggle to his hand; then his wounds were rawed again by the wind. He yelped and growled by turns when Hardcastle approached and felt down his body to find what limbs were broken; and suddenly a madness seized him. He bit at the hands that touched his wounds. All of him that was unmaimed was quick for attack. Hardcastle, to him, was Shepherd Brant, who had pursued him with a hate that would not let him rest—Brant, who had put gunshot into him at last.
Hardcastle had found the second ambush, after all, and one hard to meet. He strove with Storm, his hands bitten to the bone. This sheep-killer had come in time of need, when he scattered the Garsykes Men awhile since. There was a big debt owing by the house of Logie.
Then Storm’s strength was spent. He let the Master shoulder him, a dead-weight of weariness, and carry him to the horse tethered to the thorn-tree. The horse neighed and fidgetted as Hardcastle lifted Storm to the saddle, and held him there.
“Get up to Logie,” he said. “There are all jobs in a day, even for a thoroughbred.”