When near enough, Andrew makes out the farmer in his shirt sleeves and then—can he believe his own eyes?—three, four, five miners against the turf-rick; Trevaskis is holding a tubbal in one hand and—yes, a furze-chopper in the other; picks and shovels are piled in front of the miners; Shellal is holding two buckets, no doubt containing water for the terriers; and, by all that’s good, it is a pair of badger-tongs that the Squire has just brought out of the house, his fingers fidgeting with the guard. In short, a more completely equipped party for an assault on a badger’s fortress and, judging by the laughter, a more merry one, it would be difficult to imagine. But the high spirits of Squire, farmer, and miner are not shared by the Earthstopper. The elaborate preparations, no less than the hilarity, seemed to mock him. He foresaw that the day’s proceedings would bring life-long ridicule on himself. The whole countryside would get to hear of Andrew leading the Squire a fool’s chase after a white badger, forsooth! and wherever he went people would jeer at his powers of observation or treat him with silent pity, according to their dispositions. Now after doing his duty to the best of his ability for seven-and-thirty years, and being “plagued to death” well-nigh every other week during the hunting season by badgers scratching out his stoppings and letting the foxes in—an annoyance that perhaps no other Earthstopper in the whole of England has to put up with—for the faithful henchman on whom success depended to be dragged willy-nilly into this business was enough not only to rouse his ire but to shake his fealty to his master. If Andrew was ever vexed in his life, he was vexed now, “vexed as fire.” Near the Squire he would not go, unless sent for, not he; to a peremptory summons he would turn a deaf ear. Still, enraged though he was, he would not shirk his duty, hopeless as his task might be. He would search till nightfall, though a dozen giggling louts dogged his heels. He knew that the badger’s holt might possibly be on Cairn Kenidzhek, but it was about one chance in a hundred. He jumped down from the trap before it reached the gate where the Squire was awaiting it, and seizing the opportunity whilst Sir Bevil was talking to the keeper, jumped the wall and going up to Trevaskis, asked him if he knew of a badger’s earth on the hill.
“Niver had no bisiness,” he replied in a very loud voice, “to climb un not even high by day. I laaves the furze-cuttin’ to Shellaal. The nighest eearth beknown to me es in the croft under the Goomp.” Muttering maledictions on the “git chucklehead,” Andrew shied off long before the harangue was finished and, without consulting Shellal, who stood there open-mouthed and still gripping the two buckets, crossed the lane and began with his long strides the ascent of the crag-topped hill. It was the best thing he could have done. Only by tremendous exertions could he hope to work off his rage, and how he did exert himself!
Seldom had he put his hard sinews and strong muscles to such a strain as he did that morning, when searching the rugged slope in quest of the badger’s earth.
Now, he was lost to sight in some tangled gulley where he tore through stunted blackthorn and brambles to reach its inmost recess; now, on hands and knees, he explored furze-screened places between small groups of boulders that dotted the higher slopes like outworks to the rocky citadel on their crest; now he scanned for beaten track the starved herbage that margined the Cairn; now the crevices between the rocks for trodden lichen that might betray the badger’s way to his fastness. All to no purpose! There remained the other side of the hill to explore; and thither he went. Some half-way down the slope there is a belt of ground so barren as to suggest a mineral lode just below the surface. Along it the Earthstopper proceeded at a rapid pace, his eyes scrutinising the edge of the sparse cover that skirted it. All at once he stopped in his stride as he lit on the run of some animal leading towards the Cairn. Some distance up it was joined, beneath a thorn bush, by a more clearly defined track, and a little way beyond the junction, where the single track passed between two boulders and was arched over with dead bracken and withered bents, so unmistakable was the “creep” that the Earthstopper knew that he was on the trail of a badger. His craft was scarcely needed now, but he followed the trodden path jealously as if once lost it could with difficulty be recovered. Farther up the slope it passed under a clump of furze that there ran up to the foot of the Cairn. The bushes were thick and luxuriant, with here and there a yellow bloom, being protected from the westerly wind by the Cairn, and spared by Trevaskis since Shellal had struck against working on that side of the rocks without further rise of wages. On all fours the Earthstopper crept under them, wormed his way quickly forward over the dry spines, parting the furze above his head now and again to let the light in, and convince himself that he was following the track.
Some distance in he came upon a heap of soil at the mouth of a badger’s earth. He restrains the delight he feels, for fear it may be abandoned. At once he examines the mouth of the set. The floor is well beaten and too hard to record footprints, no moss grows there, no spider’s web curtains the entrance.
Lying flat on the ground with his head well inside the hole, he sniffs the air of the tunnel, but can detect no taint of any inmate. “Hanrew, Hanrew, wheere are ee?” It is the voice of Shellal, whose weather-beaten and scared face shows round a big boulder, whence he can see the eastern face of the hill. The Earthstopper hears him, but is too engrossed in his work to reply, and too far in the earth to make anyone hear him, except possibly the badger, if he is at home. “Hanrew, Hanrew,” Shellal calls at the top of his voice; and getting no answer but the echo of the rocks, he hurries back, fully convinced that nothing more will ever be seen of the Earthstopper. Andrew then gets some matches out of his pocket and, striking one, holds it against the left wall of the earth. His face, which is all aglow, brightens as he inspects it. Lighting another match he removes something from the smooth surface and backs out along the track he came by, no longer angry and desperate, but excited and exultant. Sir Bevil and the rest of the party now arrived at that side of the Cairn are looking round and wondering what has become of Andrew, when they hear a rustling in the furze and at length see his hobnailed boots project from the thick bushes.
The Badger. [Face page 110.