THE END OF STORM
By her silence, by the sob that followed, Hardcastle learned the measure of Causleen’s dread of what lay behind them. He learned, too, the depth of his fear for her—a terror that ate still at his heart and goaded him to effort. The very chance of release, the nearness of it, made him the more eager to win through with haste, lest Garsykes came at them just too soon.
“The cave drives us mad,” said Causleen, light-headed for a moment between strain of fear and stress of hope. “How can there be little threads of light, stealing from outside—from God’s good out of doors, Dick? It’s night out there, except for the fire that Nita lit, far away. Surely it was far away. We’ve journeyed many a mile since then.”
Hardcastle, seeing how it went with her, put a firm hand on hers. “Would you faint at journey’s end? And where’s your Highland pride?”
He loathed himself for saying it, though it brought her back from sickness.
“Here, Dick,” she said, and was quiet awhile. “Here, Dick,” she said again, her whole body quivering with release from dread. “There are Highland pipers stepping down the cave—and pride marches with them. But we two are mad to dream that light comes from out of doors. How could it? We watched the sun go down—years since—before Nita lit her fire.”
Again he was compelled to rally her. She had gone through more than should be asked of any woman; but needs must that she kept weariness at bay.
“There’s a wall to be broken down,” he said sharply. “Take my gun, Causleen.”
The command steadied her again. Obediently she took the fowling-piece and watched him tear at the rock-wall, getting his fingers in where the grey-blue light rippled at its widest. Piece after piece of wet-worn rock crumbled to his grasp, till he got his arm through at last.
Causleen saw a broader stream of light break softly through the dark. Storm, the sheep-slayer, was pressing his rough snout against her, and somehow he, like the Master, brought courage home again.
“How can the light break through?” she asked, as a child might.
Hardcastle glanced back from the sweat of his toil. “There’s a full moon on Logie-side, and we’re winning fast to it.”
“Oh, God be thanked,” said Causleen. “And shall we see the hills again, Dick, and hear the winds go by?”
“With luck, we shall,” said Hardcastle, riving at the wall-face afresh.
He was checked now by a thicker and less yielding slab of rock. Tug as he would, his grip was powerless to widen the breach, and again the sense of desperate haste returned. They were so near freedom, but behind them was all the stealth of Garsykes.
He felt about in the rubble at his feet till his hands closed on a round boulder-stone, and with this he hammered feverishly wherever a crack showed. He was steaming now with the effort, and the slender breeze that drifted in through the opening he had made, did little to relieve the cavern’s dank, lifeless air.
At last there was an answer to his toil. The cracks broadened suddenly, and the next hard blow brought a mass of splintered stones to ground.
Hardcastle went at it with fresh, dogged hope. Slow as the work was, he could get one shoulder through the opening now, and the thought came, across the dull confusion of his mind, that Causleen needed a narrower doorway out than he. Another fall like the last, and she could creep sideways into safety.
The thought was food and drink to his strength. Once she was safe, the worst was passed; and Storm and he, surely, could hold this narrow way till no pursuit could reach her.
Once more he fell to hammering wherever the blue-grey moonlight showed a crack, but the reward was long in coming; and, as he rested for a moment from sheer lack of breath, Storm broke the quiet with a low, purring growl.
No ghosts were troubling the sheep-slayer now, So much was plain. His hide was stiff, not with dread, but with eagerness to be at the throat of some menace threatening from behind.
Hardcastle quietened him with one sharp whisper, and took the gun from Causleen’s hands. Then he pushed his fowling-piece into the gloom, and waited.
Twice Storm growled, so low that Hardcastle could scarcely catch the note. And still they waited—bond-brothers, side by side—for what was coming through the stealthy dark.
Then Hardcastle felt a bulk of flesh steal against the muzzle of his gun, and plucked the trigger. The back-throw—not of the butt against his shoulder, but the answering uproar of the cave’s low roof—drove him staggering back.
Two had come against them, it seemed. He heard Storm’s eager yelp, a man’s sudden scream of anguish, and an answering howl from Storm. And then there came a din of falling rocks, a rush of clean, cold wind that brought a flood of moonlight with it.
“Are you safe, Causleen?” he cried through his dizziness.
A low voice answered. “That was your first thought? Yes, I’m safe, Dick—doubly safe.”
Her touch made light of hardship. Two more of Nita’s men were blocking the cavern behind them with their dead, ill-kempt bodies, and there was time enough now to hack a way through for Causleen and himself.
When he turned to batter at the rock-face again, he found the work done already. The gunfire shock that had driven him back and roared loud as an earthquake in the narrow space, had probed into every crevice of a barrier near to falling long ago. The way now lay open to them, over broken rocks that showed fantastic in the moon-glow.
Hardcastle, exultant, was reaching for her hand, to guide her through the wreckage, when he remembered Storm and whistled sharply.
A snout was pushed against his knee, and he reached down to pat the dog’s rough hide.
“You’re as drenched with sweat as I am, lad,” he said.
So Storm was, though he had no speech to tell them that the sweat ran crimson. He had killed his man, but in the doing had taken a knife-wound that raked half down his body.
“Don’t whimper. Storm,” murmured Causleen. “The cave’s full of ghosts, I know, but we’re free of it.”
The sheep-slayer whimpered no more. With extreme pain he followed them across the broken way, till they reached smooth going again. Storm was not sure that they were free, and to the last edge of his strength he meant to guard these two.
Hardcastle saw now a wide arch of moonlight close ahead. He could hazard no guess as to the corner of Logie-land that it opened on. He did not care, for beyond it lay the free sky and the fells; and whatever battle waited would not be clogged by prison walls.
Before they had covered half the short way to liberty, Causleen’s hand gripped his with sudden dread. Behind them was a rumble, as of thunder, followed by a cracking and a rending overhead. Hardcastle, it seemed, when he first made space enough to get a shoulder through the barrier, had loosened the frail keystone of the roof, and they were stifled by the dust and uproar of the falling rocks behind.
He drew Causleen sharply back and through the moonlit opening, and Storm had scarcely struggled after them when a second tumult sounded from the cave behind, and a pile of shattered rocks came crashing to the very mouth by which they had escaped.
Then Hardcastle, his arm round Causleen still, drew a deep breath and glanced in silence at the moonlight flooding all the land in front. He had not known how sweet and all-sufficing a night wind could be, had never tasted until now the fullest joy in sight—sight to see the strong free spaces of his own good country-side.
For awhile he did not care to ask where they were standing. It was enough to remember the cave’s unclean nightmare, and to wash in this swift moorland air.
“The joy of it,” sobbed Causleen, her head against his sleeve.
And now he remembered that joy was apt to be short-lived, with Garsykes as close neighbour. For aught he knew, Nita and the men who watched the bonfire at the other entry might be close at hand. The track through the cavern, long as it was, twisted so constantly that it might have led them back within a stone’s throw of the start.
He glanced this way and that, listening. No sound came, save the wind’s voice, till a screech-owl hooted from somewhere far below. A raven’s sleepy croak answered. That was all.
They stood on a spur of pasture-land that dipped sharply down in front, and Hardcastle went forward in search of landmarks. Moonlight is apt to play strange tricks with the most familiar hills and cloughs; but he could not mistake the ravine that gaped below, black with shadow under the radiance that lit its upper banks.
He saw where it narrowed at Nevison’s Leap, and where it broadened to the mist-white flats. And, beyond again, Pengables Hill looked out at him with the gaze of an old and proven friend.
“We’re in Drumly Ghyll, sweetheart,” he said, “and a clear road home for us.”
A yelp of pain sounded from behind—so sharp, so strong with anguish, that joy in freedom went from them. They turned to see Storm dragging himself forward, wincing at every step, and Hardcastle ran back.
The sheep-slayer paused a moment, to gather his failing strength. Then he got his forepaws up to the Master’s shoulders, with a farewell that gushed crimson, licked his face once and then fell back.
“Oh, the good brute,” said Hardcastle, with a grim, sudden oath. “His hunting days are over.”
“He’s not dead?” Causleen pleaded, knowing the futility of what she asked.
He did not hear, and her own sorrow was checked for a moment at sight of his. In silence and in grief he stood looking down at this lost comrade who had been with him through the long, unequal fight of Logie against the Wilderness.
“We can’t leave him here to the corbie-crows,” he growled at last—“or for the Garsykes sort to mock at.”
Causleen’s tears were running fast as she knelt beside the gaunt, still body. “Storm, come back,” she whispered. “You’re too brave and dear to die like this. We need you, Storm.”
Hardcastle watched her in gloomy silence, till thought of all she had gone through overmastered him with a sharp rush of pity. He lifted her with a strength that was persuasion, too, and held her close.
“I’d rather have it this way, child. He died for Logie—not at Brant’s hands.”
She smiled wanly through her tears. “He had his faults—but I—I shall miss him. He used to come to the cupboard under the stair—so wise and penitent, Dick, so loyal—and now he’ll never come again.”
He put her from him, with the same gentle strength, and shouldered what was left of Storm. Then he went down into Drumly Ghyll, and presently returned.
“What have you done with him?” she asked piteously.
“He lies deep in Cobblers’ Gully, safe from crows and foxes.”
“Poor Storm,” she said, and was silent. Then, “Did you send a prayer with him?” she asked.
“What do I know of praying? He’s gone, and part of me went with him, somehow.”
They said no more as they went down together through the midnight of Drumly Ghyll—its high walls closing round them like another cave of dread—and out into the moonlit lowlands. It was only when they came near to Logie Bridge and all its memories that Causleen broke down again, remembering Storm.
“He lies so lonely, Dick, up there.”
“Storm hadn’t much of a life on this side. He was glad to go, maybe.”
So then Causleen knew that a prayer had gone with the dead dog into Cobblers’ Gully.
They went together up the steep, winding road to Logie—its guardian beeches comely in their winter’s nakedness—and at the bend they encountered Rebecca—the brindled cat snarling on her shoulder.
“Is it your ghost, Master?” she quavered.
“A fairly solid ghost, Rebecca.”
“Then God be thanked, say I.”
She was old, and shaken by her vigil. Her hair was driven by the breeze into grey, wispish threads; but her eyes, even in the tempering moonlight, showed like pools of living fire.
“I feared there’d be no home-coming for you two,” she said, the tang returning to her voice already—“especially when Brant and Michael Draycott came back with the tale of what they’d seen.”
“What should they know about the cave?” asked Hardcastle, with tired wonder.
“What I chose to tell Brant when he stumped into my kitchen, a half-hour after you’d gone, and grumbled that Storm had taken another ewe of his in the night. ‘I wouldn’t worrit about that,’ says I. ‘Garsykes has taken the Master, and I’m nigh out o’ my wits.’ That sobered the shepherd.”
She touched Hardcastle, to make sure that he was in the flesh before her, then told, in tart, brief speech, how Shepherd Brant had gone to raise Logie-side against the Wilderness—how all its strapping yeomen, except Michael Draycott, were at Skipton market—how Michael and Brant had stolen down to the Garsykes hollow, to see if they could put a fight up, and had found a company of devils dancing with Nita round a fire at the cave’s mouth.
Tired as he was, needing food and drink, and sleep’s forgetting of the cave, the Master warmed to Rebecca’s tale. There were two men at least who had cared to rouse the Dale for him and all that Logie stood for.
“They came back here,” said Rebecca, “for bite and sup before they left again to meet the Logie Men as they rode home from market. I wouldn’t daunt their spirit by telling ’em there was a full moon, and our men by that token would come late, with a plenty of good ale inside them.”
“That same full moon, Rebecca,” said Hardcastle, with chastened humour, “showed us the way out.”
She listened, her lean, old body tense with eagerness, as he told what had chanced. Then she was no longer the woman who had waited, every fear on edge, for news that could only be evil, so it had seemed through the long waiting-time.
The Master was home again, tall and limber, though his coat was drenched with blood. His old laugh was in the front of hardship. He was glad, with a clean, hard joy, to have brought Causleen safe to Logie, after all, through moil of the Garsykes Men. And Rebecca was glad with him—fiercely glad that the Wilderness had been outwitted once again.
Every sorrow she had known, since her own man died for Logie forty years ago, returned now to this grey henchwoman of the house—the wedded days she should have had, the bairns that might have been—and hate of Garsykes swept through her like a tempest.
Then she saw the Master and Causleen glance at each other with such silent, all-sufficing knowledge that jealousy chilled her to the bone. Why should they come in their young, insolent strength, and flaunt their caring in her face?
The brindled cat was in ill-humour, too. All day he had wandered from house to stable-yard in search of his boon-comrade, Storm, and now the friendly reek of him stole out from Hardcastle’s drenched coat. Jonah leaped from Rebecca’s shoulder, and purred and growled by turns, reaching up to sniff the scent that was Storm’s, but with a cold, dismaying difference. Then the cat neither growled nor purred. All the life seemed to dwindle in him. The fur, stiff with battle, fell limp and draggled, and he mewed with piteous appeal.
“Gone away, Jonah,” said Hardcastle, a queer break in his voice. “Storm’s sleeping up the fells.”