Carmen's Messenger

by Harold Bindloss

Ten minutes later, Foster left the inn and set off across the moor. The heath shone red, and here and there little pools, round which white stones lay in the dark peat, flashed in the sunshine. The pale-blue of the sky changed near the horizon to delicate green, and a soft breeze blew across the waste. Foster enjoyed the walk, although he was puzzled and somewhat disturbed. If inquiries had been made about Featherstone, he could have understood it, but the police were asking for a man with a glove on his left hand, which could only apply to him. Daly, of course, would be glad to get him out of the way, if he had learned that he was in Scotland, but the police could not arrest a man who had done nothing wrong.

Foster now regretted that he had helped the poachers, although he thought he had made friends who would not betray him and might be useful. He had met Border Scots in Ontario, and knew something about their character. They were marked by a stern independence, inherited from their moss-trooper ancestors, and he thought Pete was a typical specimen of the virile race. The man met him at the broken dyke, and leaving the road they turned east up the side of a sparkling burn.

The narrow strip of level ground was wet and covered with moss, in which their feet sank, but the hillside was too steep to walk along. It ran up, a slope of gray-white grass, to the ragged summit where the peat was gashed and torn. Here and there a stunted thorn tree grew in a hollow, but the glen was savagely desolate, and Foster, glancing at his companion, thought he understood why the men who wrung a living from these barren hills prospered when they came out to the rich wheat-soil of Canada. The Flowers of the Forest, who fell at Flodden, locking fast the Scottish square against the onslaught of England's finest cavalry, were bred in these wilds, and had left descendants marked by their dour stubbornness. Pete's hair was turning gray and his brown face was deeply lined, but he crossed the quaking moss with a young man's stride, and Foster thought his mouth could set hard as granite in spite of his twinkling smile. He was a man who would forget neither a favor nor an injury, and Foster was glad to feel that he was on his side.

At the head of the glen they climbed a long grassy slope and came to a tableland where the peat was torn into great black rifts and piled in hummocks. This was apparently Nature's work, but Foster could not see how the storms that burst upon the hills could have worked such havoc. Crossing the rugged waste to a distant cairn, they sat down upon the stones, and Pete filled his pipe from Foster's pouch.

"Ye'll haud east until ye find a burn that will lead ye doon to the road; then as ye cross the breist o' a fell ye'll see the reek o' Hawick," he said and added after a pause: "Maybe ye'll no' be stopping in the town?"

"I'll stay the night. After that, I think I'll take the hills again. I'm going south towards Liddesdale, but I expect that's out of your beat."

Pete smiled. "There's maist to be done in my regular line this side o' Hawick. Buccleugh looks after his hares and paltrigs weel, and his marches rin wide across the country from Teviot to Liddel. But I hae freends a' the way to the North Tyne, and there's no' many sheep sales I do not attend. If ye're wanting them, I could give ye a few directions that might help ye on the road."

Foster thanked him and listened carefully. It looked as if the poachers, who seemed to work now and then as honest drovers, knew each other well and combined for mutual protection. It might be useful to be made an honorary member of the gang.

"Weel," his companion concluded, "if ye stop at the inns I've told ye o', ye'll find folks who can haud a quiet tongue, and if ye see ony reason for it, ye can say ye're a freend o' mine."

Foster rather diffidently offered him some money, but was not surprised when the man refused the gift. Indeed, he felt that it would have jarred him had Pete taken it. The latter gave him his hand with a smile and turned back to the glen while Foster pushed on across the heath. He reflected with some amusement that Pete probably thought him a fugitive from the law.