That, at all events, was how I felt as I took the road southward, across the hills towards Deeside, with a cracking wind to walk against. I would intercept the Black Colonel's raid on Marget and her mother, and break the whole scheme behind it—if I could!
So we scheme, we glorious little fellows of this world, bent on love or hatred, and the Great Beneficence smiles at us, at our cleverness, or it may be the Great Furies, however you will have it. Anyway, Nature has merely to move and our grandest plans may crinkle up like a feather held to a "cruisie," the rude lamp, fed with dried splinters of fir-wood, or mutton tallow and a wick, which our Highlanders used for lighting.
But that was not in my thoughts when I came to the top of the last hill dividing our strath from the Black Colonel's. My estimate was that if I got there by break of day and waited I should, being in a high eyrie with a wide view, see him come from the opposite direction. My information from my scouts was that he would travel alone, a fit thing, having regard to his mission at the Dower House, Corgarff.
Tired and hungry, I looked about for a rock which would shield me from the wind, and got out my fodder. It consisted only of "whisky bukky," oatmeal rolled with whisky, not delicate stuff to eat, but easily carried and sustaining. Haggis is better food for the march, because it is tastier and still harder to digest, so even more lasting, as the Highlanders, for whose war sustenance it was, perhaps, invented, knew, but on leaving Corgarff Castle I had just taken what I could lay my hand upon.
While I ate I half-marvelled at the splendour of the scene about me, half-rehearsed my catechism with the Black Colonel, when he should appear. I would put it to him as a gentleman that he must not intrude upon the Forbes ladies, and, indeed, must frankly abandon his designs there. If reason failed, then we might be driven to solve the knot by a single combat, as the custom of the Highlands permitted, and, indeed, sometimes ordered, very much like the duel in the land of France. Why not such a combat, because the test was an honest if barbaric tribute to plain manliness? Give me that rather than the snivel, the chicane, the shake-you-by-the-hand and stab-you-in-the-gloaming, which passes by the name of diplomacy, high diplomacy, I believe.
The tradition of single combat went back into the very mists of time in the Highlands; and merely the form varied. There was Cam-Ruadh, the early red-haired man of tradition, who, fallen prisoner among a batch of hostile "kern," or outlaws, was offered his liberty if he could make so many good arrow-shots. He drew and drew, with much seeming innocence, on the arrows of his captors, and wove a circle of stabs in the ground about the target, but never did he hit it; oh, no!
They jeered at him when he came to the last arrow possessed by the company, saying he had better reserve it for himself and save them the trouble of making an end to him. Instead, he sent it, as he could have sent the others, straight into the middle of the target, and flew there almost with it. Before the outlaws could realize the logic of events he had gathered all the arrows under his arm, put one to the string of the bow and cried, "I am Cam-Ruadh, who never misses, never before until now, and you who are without arrows had better take leg-bail," which they quickly did.
Nearer in time was the duel of valiant Donald Oig with the chief of a band of "broken men" who had a grudge against him. Donald was a famous swordsman, and the chief had no active relish to try skill with him. But, again, it was the custom of the country, and the invitation could not be refused if the chiefship of the "broken men" was to be held, because here was a test of both courage and honour.
He was a slim fellow, however, this head raider, one with the false doctrine, as ancient as human nature, that if you succeed it matters little how. When, then, he and Donald Oig stood up to fight he exclaimed, "Shake hands on it, first!" But he gripped the extended right hand hard, intending, with it thus prisoned, to strike a foul blow and close, in his own favour, a duel which had not begun. Swift of instinct and eye, Donald saw this, caught out his dagger with his left hand, and stabbed the foul fighter. The rest of the "broken men," being witnesses of it all, had nothing to complain about, and Donald went his way.
While my thoughts wandered like that, and I ate and, from my pocket flask, washed my dry eating down, the weather changed with a swiftness familiar enough among the Scottish mountains. The heavens passed behind a veil of drifting clouds, through which the sun flared in red, angry bursts. The elements had declared hostilities, and when I looked down into the valley, two thousand feet beneath me, I saw a great thunderstorm on the march, the very panoply of havoc.