Muckle John

by Frederick Watson

Everything was very lifeless and dreary on the road he had come. There was no sign of man or beast. With a grim look in his eyes Muckle John continued his journey.

But about an hour later he swerved behind a ledge of rock and cantered swiftly up the hill, keeping behind a huddle of crag for some hundred yards. Then turning as rapidly he watched the back trail. Several minutes passed and there was no sign of living thing. Presently, however, something moved ever so slightly just where the last rock towered out of the heather. A man's head rose and fell again.

With a faint smile Muckle John continued his way. His horse was very tired—twice it had nearly fallen through pure weariness. That it could carry him little further he realized at once. He did not know how many pursuers were on his track, but he put them down as Highland caterans ready to cut a throat for a purse. In that case they would wait till he slept, and rush upon him. It was, therefore, a matter of life or death for him to find a place of refuge before the sun fell.

The evening was closing in and he was so tired that he nodded as he rode. Nowhere in that rolling desolate country could he see a house or any trace of clachan or croft. And behind him waiting for darkness were men as crafty and cruel as Indians and just as patient. If not to-night then to-morrow, and he might wander over—miles of heather for days on end.

Meanwhile the brain of Muckle John was working. The future lay open to him like a man reading a map. He must throw them off the scent or perish. If not to-night—to-morrow. He would never come to grips with them—that he knew too well. It would be in his heavy sleep in the blackness of a Highland night. It must not be thought Muckle John was much concerned at the prospect. Those were days when life was not held dearly, and when a soldier of fortune might be hard put to it several times in a week. It was more the indignity of the business that irritated him. He was not accustomed to being stalked like a young stag. Most men gave Muckle John a wide berth.

Even as he brooded on the matter the grey horse tripped and fell. No power on earth could have kept it on its feet. It was utterly done. With a groan it collapsed upon its knees and rolled over on its side. Muckle John had slipped off as it staggered and now stood above it studying the next move. He was above all anxious to get a glimpse of his pursuers. Loosening his sword and taking a pistol from his great-coat pocket, he lay alongside the horse as though his leg were securely fastened beneath it in its fall. It was an old trick, but this was a country of few horses and worth a trial. He knew that they would close in on him if they saw him apparently crippled and at their mercy. Slowly the minutes passed and there was no sound, while a mist rose from the moist bed of the valley and hung in wreaths between the hills. Muckle John lay perfectly still, his pistol hidden beneath the tail of his coat, one leg stretched over the horse's flank, the other doubled up beneath him.

Near at hand a stone clinked at the burnside. It might have been a hill fox creeping away, but Muckle John knew that a fox does not do such things. He felt the eyes of some one upon him—but he could see nothing, and all the time the darkness was falling swiftly and his nerves were strained to the uttermost, waiting as he was upon his side for the rush of perhaps a dozen men.

Up the hill he heard an owl call and at that he smiled, for he knew—who better—that it was not the night for owls to cry Glengarry way, and that there is a world of difference between the call of a man and the call of an owl except to those who have never made it their business to note such things.

It was all falling out as he had expected, and he waited quite coolly for what was to come, foreseeing nothing of what really happened. Indeed it all came about so swiftly and so silently that few save Muckle John would have lived to learn another lesson in methods of attack.

Now there was an eminence immediately above him, such a natural frontage of rock as one sees on many a hill-side—places naturally avoided by the wild things unless they travel up wind or come upon them from above. Muckle John was looking upward when it happened. He was quite aware of the danger he ran, but he was waiting for a man's head to show itself against the sky-line just over the ledge. Suddenly, without warning but with only a muffled scraping like small pebbles scattered wildly, the sky was blotted out altogether, and at that Muckle John leaped like a hare and leaped just a thousandth fraction too late. The boulder, for that was of course what had been launched to crush him, killed the dying horse on the instant. But it also smashed the pistol of Muckle John and crumpled his sword like a thin strip of tin, imprisoning the tail of his great-coat in the ruin. It was neck or nothing now, and wrenching himself free he gave one glance at his arms and flinging them down set off through the trees that fringed the hill-side—running for his life. Knowing that his pursuers were probably tired men he set the pace in the hope of flinging them off, keeping the upper part of the hill, seldom stumbling for all his riding-boots and the darkness, and sometimes pausing for a breath of time to hear whether he had cast them off. But always at the same distance behind him he caught the dull padding of feet like wolves on the trail—tireless as deer. He made use of every feint he knew. He doubled on his tracks, he took refuge in places beneath crags. But always silently, patiently, utterly undaunted they came on. He could not see them but he heard them moving ever nearer, biding their time. There might be six or there might be twenty—he could not tell.