Storm, the sheep-slayer, watched it all from his lair at the foot of Pengables. He saw the last of the ewes go in a rainbow-steam round the wide curve of the track, and with them Brant his enemy, and Hardcastle his friend—his friend from this till death ended loyalty for one unwanted dog.
The land grew quiet again, basking in the tranquil heat, until a whistle broke the silence. Storm knew the shepherd’s call, the whistle of hale farm-lads when they climbed the pastures; but this had another note. It was shrill and sinister.
He waited. Broken dogs, like broken men, learn a patience that is not contentment—a patience wide-eyed to observe all details and quick to interpret them.
Nothing happened for awhile, till the whistle was repeated. And then Storm saw the doors of Garsykes open wide, and men pour out from them and run into the wide, green road the Logie Men had taken. He saw Jake point first at their empty pinfold, then down the track—heard the deep, evil roar that died as they went grimly in pursuit.
Storm understood it all, and a great song came into his blood. He was not concerned with his own needs now, but with Hardcastle’s. As he went between the brackens and kept pace with the running folk below, he could see the men of Logie moving slowly, hidden as yet from the enemy, but with only a few hundred yards to spare. And they did not know their peril.
The song in Storm’s blood had the gale’s speed now. Like all great-hearted sinners, he was sick of skulking. Reason had nothing to do with the long, howling wail he gave—a wail like the cry of all the lost who had ever lived and died in Garsykes—but instinct told him he was serving Hardcastle.
Hardcastle himself glanced backward, to learn the meaning of it; and round the bend he saw a company of the Lost Folk, their shuffling run stopped for a moment by the eerie cry that still whined and sobbed from the bracken-lands above. He took advantage of their superstition—they fancied Guytrash was calling them to death—and glanced ahead again, down the track the sheep were taking over a grey, narrow bridge.
“Get the ewes over, Brant,” he said quietly, as if he called him to supper up at Logie. “Get them over, man, and be quick. We two must hold the bridge.”
Sixty years of weather on the heights had only toughened Brant’s lean body and he warmed to this queer happening. He got the sheep across, and left them in Geordie Wiseman’s charge.
“Your knees are all a-twitter, Geordie,” he growled, “but there’s use enough in you, maybe, to keep a few ewes from straying into what’s to come.”