Wry humour came to Hardcastle. “What luck had you with Storm yesterday, after I left you up at Weathersett? Did you find the four-legged thief?”
“Not I,” growled Brant. “He’s just a slip of devildom, ravening up and down the pastures. There are times when I fancy he’s more than a sheep-dog that’s tasted flesh instead of guarding it—times when he seems to be Old Nick himself. Foxes at lambing-time? They’re honest, set side by side with Storm.”
“For all that, I’m finding a soft spot in my heart for the rogue.”
Brant took a long draught of ale, wiped the froth from his mouth, and set down his pewter mug. “Are you, Master? Then harden it. A sheep-slayer goes cursed from the minute he gets from his lair at dawn till daylight ends.”
“Yet you can’t take Storm. He’s hunted from the four quarters of the sky, day in, day out, and wins through. That’s the sort of dog I like—and the sort of man.”
Passion, with Brant, had the stillness of deep pools. His voice lost little of its quietness; but a hard note sounded in it. “It’s hard to tell what ewes mean to a shepherd. They’re like children, you might say. Happen it comes from mothering ’em from the day they first stand up on their four wambly legs—newborn and bleating at their dams. Happen it comes of tending ’em later on—blizzards and drifts and what all—comes of sleeping and waking for ’em. I couldn’t tell all that goes to the hate of a sheep-killer. But I know what every shepherd feels for every outlaw dog.”
“Just so,” said Hardcastle. “It’s for that reason I’m all for Storm—the lad with never a friend in the country-side.”
“It’s easy for you to lose a sheep here and there. What does it count if a few odd ewes are ravaged? Just a few pounds missing from your plenty. For me, it stands for murdered bairns—bairns I’ve reared and guarded better than their scant-wit mothers could.”
“There are good sheep-tenders in the Dale, but none quite like you. You do it all, Brant—the damned, lonely fight against Logie weather, and foot-rot, and marauders of all kinds—do it for love of silly sheep that to me are so much fleece and mutton.”
“They’re my life to me,” said the shepherd, “and I’m still wondering why you side with Storm. Best of his kind, he was once—knew how to round them up the pastures like a marvel. Then he fell from grace, as you might say, and he’s a hunted dog from this to Weathersett.”