The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

‘That’s a wise dog,’ said Mick. ‘I’d be glad of a dog the like of that on a moonlight night.’

Abner had guessed what he meant, but Mick, who could never resist the chance of producing a sensation, opened his coat and showed him the contents of a game pocket that he had constructed by making a slit in the lining. It was a fine cock-pheasant, splendid in its chestnut autumn plumage. Mick displayed it sentimentally. ‘Doesn’t that make your teeth water?’ he said. ‘God, you could ate it in your hand the way it is! And that bird do be worth a good half-crown in Craven Arms.’

‘Where d’you get him?’ said Abner.

‘You ask Mr bloody Badger,’ Mick replied with a wink.

Abner pressed him, and he went on to explain that he and Curly Atwell and one or two others had developed a plan of poaching on a commercial scale. A man named Harford, a rabbit merchant in Craven Arms, the railway junction and cattle-market over the hills, had arranged to deal with their produce. Naturally, in such a dangerous business, he bought cheap and sold dear; but the proceeds of their sport were enough to keep the whole gang in unlimited liquor, the thing that they needed most.

‘It’s the only way to keep clear of the buttermilk cure,’ said Mick, ‘the way they pay us in this cursed hole.’

He ended by pressing Abner to join them, pointing out that Spider would be a useful ally, and Abner, without any hesitation, accepted. He was glad of anything with a spice of adventure in it to give vent to his energies. He didn’t care much about the money even though he remembered that he had not yet been able to send Alice her two pounds, but it pleased him to think that this was another way of getting even with Badger, a feeling in which Mick, with no more definite reason than an instinctive hatred of gamekeepers, concurred.

In this way there began a series of midnight adventures that were a great joy to Abner and an even greater to George’s dog, who asked nothing better in her sport than the help of human allies. On these nights of misty moonlight the secret beauty of the country-side smote on Abner’s heart though he knew nothing of it but that he was happy. In the daytime the land was dead and nothing lived in it but he and his fellow men, but when evening came the hills, the woodlands, the rivers and the upland wastes of heather tingled with life. Something secret and timid that sunlight numbed into a protective sleep, now stirred and wakened. The voices of the rivers changed; they were no longer only torrents of swift water but living things. Trees that in day were silent awoke and whispered in the night. Amid miracles of nocturnal beauty Abner walked unseeing. He only knew that he lived more fully, more intensely in the night.

His senses quickened. His eyes were like the sharp eyes of a hunting owl so that he felt that in daylight he had been blind. His ears were tuned to an exquisite degree of sensitiveness. The cracking of a twig, a distant step on leaves, the least tremor of a growing tree, sent a shock of alert pleasure into his brain. And the impalpable cool mist of autumn sharpened his scent to a keenness that delighted him. This state of acute sensitiveness was the basis on which the more than physical thrill of imminent danger was imposed. The labourers who worked on the farms of Squire Delahay’s estate were naturally in league with Badger against the depredations of these foreigners. Each of them was himself a poacher in a quiet way; but they poached for the pot rather than for the market and felt that the presence of Mick and his gang was a menace to their privileges. These men, if less intelligent, were as skilled in woodcraft as the Irishman himself, and Mick’s friends followed their craft in a constant peril of discovery.

It was a profitable adventure. Abner soon found that his wages were trebled. Grouse from the mountains, pheasants from the spinneys, partridges from the stubbles, all found their way into Mick Connor’s bag and were driven in a ragman’s cart to Craven Arms. Mick was content to leave the rabbits to the labourers who spied upon him. He spent his money wildly. It even pleased him to treat Badger to drinks in the Pound House bar, knowing very well that the keeper guessed where the money came from.