“They’re gone,” said the Master—“dead and mouldered out of sight by now.”
“Are you a man at all, or just an oak-tree going on two feet about Logie-side?”
“A man?” echoed Hardcastle, with a quiet laugh. “That’s in the proving.”
With that he went up the road, and turned in at the gate that opened on Michael Draycott’s pastures. Nita thought he would glance back once at least, drawn by old allegiance. She would have forgiven him much for the glance; but he went up the slope and out of sight, cocking the hammers of his gun. He was thinking already of partridge, not of the random days behind.
She seated herself again on the parapet and took up her basket-work; and none could have guessed, seeing her tranquil beauty, what thoughts she was weaving now into the plaited withies. Crooning Water lapped and gurgled. A curlew was plaining across the fells, and from some wayside tree a starling was mimicking his note. No other sound broke the fragrant peace till the scrunch of feet sounded down the highway and a stocky, undersized man swung round the bend. He stopped on seeing Nita and touched his cap with rough deference. Bonnie, a temptress who flouted and smiled on them by turns, Nita had a strange hold on the regard of the Wilderness Men, though few of their women were of like mind. The men held her in honour, too; and this was due, maybe, to the knowledge that more than once she had set them an example of cold-blooded savagery that none could equal.
“I met him of Logie up Draycott’s pasture,” said the man, a still look in his beady eyes. “Walked as if he owned all from this to hell hereafter. ‘Got a gun with you. You’re wise,’ says I; ‘but why do you go sporting without a dog?’ and Hardcastle laughs. ‘The dog’s guarding Logie from such as you.’ ‘Then you’re wise again,’ says I, ‘for Logie will ask for a lot of guarding by and by.’ ”
“Is he a fool altogether?” asked Nita, glancing up from her basket.
“I wouldn’t say that—not by a long way.”
“It looks like it. He’s chosen to rouse the Wilderness round him, like a hive of bees. There can only be one end to that.”
“That’s true enough; but the ending mayn’t be this year or next. Fight sinks the fool in Hardcastle. That’s what our three Broken Men said when they came from the pinfold yesterday, and all the women laughing at them.”