"Why, yes. We heard trouble was brewing up 'twixt King and Parliament, and we got our arms in order. What else? Folk sharpen sickles when the corn is ripening."
"And you have these lusty rascals at command—sharp to the word?"
Squire Metcalf smiled, a big, capacious smile. "They've felt the weight o' my hand lang syne, and know it. My father before me trained me that way—as you train a dog, no more, no less."
He drew rein and whistled sharply. The horsemen, fifty yards behind, pressed forward, and the heir of Nappa galloped at their head, drew rein, saluted his father with sharp precision, and waited for commands.
"Oh, naught at all, Christopher," said the Squire. "This guest of ours doubted whether I could whistle my lads to heel, and now he knows I can."
The messenger said nothing. The quiet, hard-bitten humour of these northerners appealed to him; and Mallory, the governor of Skipton, had been right when he sent him out to Nappa, sure that the Metcalf clan would be worth many times their actual number to the Royalists in Yorkshire.
They came to the rise of the road where Bishopdale, with its hedges of fast-ripening hazel nuts, strode up into the harsher lands that overlooked Wharfedale. They rode down the crumbly steep of road, past Cray hamlet, set high above its racing stream; and at Buckden, half a league lower down, they encountered a hunting-party come out to slay the deer. They were too busy to join either party, King's or Parliament's, and offered a cheery bidding to the Metcalf men to join them in the chase.
"We're after bigger deer," laughed the Squire of Nappa. "Who rides for the King?"
Hats were lifted, and a great cheer went up. "All of us," said a grey, weather-beaten horseman.
"Ay, it seems like it," growled the Squire. "Much good you're doing Skipton-in-Craven by hunting deer instead of Roundheads."