The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

And that, though an easily memorable, is, I can bear witness, not a bonny sight.

My charger stretched away as though he had been a beagle running conies of the down into their holes. But John Mure's horse went every whit as fast. I saw well that he made for the deep, trackless spaces of Killochan wood. The oak trees that grew along its edge stretched out their arms to hide him; the birken shaw waved all its green boughs with a promise of security. I shortened my grip upon the stout golden-crowned staff which the King carried at the pommel of his saddle.

Yet as John Mure drave madly towards the wood, and sometimes looked over his shoulder to see how I came on, I was overjoyed to notice a wide ditch before him which he must needs overleap—and at that business, if at no other, I thought to beat him, being slim and of half his weight.

So I kept my horse to the right upon better ground, though it took me a little out of the straight course for the wood. His horse at the first refused the leap, and I counted upon him as mine. But I counted too soon, for he went down the bankside a short way to an easier place, where there was a landward man's bridge of trees and sods. Here he easily walked his horse across, and, having mounted the bank, he waved his hand at me and set off again toward the wood.

But now while he had an uneven country to overpass I had only the green fields, rich in old pasture and undulating like the waves of an oily tide when the sea is deep, and there is no break of the water. He was at the very edge of the wood before I came upon his flank. Then I gave a loud shout as I set my horse to his speed and circled about to head him off. But John Mure, though an old man, only settled himself firmer in his saddle, and with his sword in his hand rode soldierly and straight at the wood, as though I had not been in front of him at all.

It was wisely enough done, for his heavier beast took mine upon the shoulder and almost rolled me in the dust. He came upon me, not front to front as a rider meets his foe in the lists, but, as it were stem to side, like two boats that meet upon converging tacks.

Yet I managed to avoid him, being light and supple, though he leaned far over and struck savagely at me as he passed. Again at the third shock he had almost overridden me and made me die the death. But I had not practised horsemanship and the art of fighting in the saddle so long for nothing. Indeed, on all the seaboard of Ayr there was no one that could compare with me in these things. Therefore, it was easy for me, by dint of my quickness and skill, to swerve off to the right and receive the sword stroke in my cloak, which I carried twisted about my left arm.

Then keeping still between the wood and John Mure, I met him this time face to face, with my eyes watching the direction of his eye and the crook of his elbow, that I might know where he meant to strike. For a good sworder knows the enemy's intent, and his blade meets it long ere thought can pass into action.

So it was no second-sight which told me that he meant to slash me across the thigh when he came a-nigh me. I knew it or ever his blade was raised. So that when he struck I was ready for him and measured his sword, proving my distance as it had been upon parade. And as the blade whistled by me, I judged that it was my turn, and struck him with all the force I could muster a crashing blow upon the face with the heavy butt of the King's stave, which stunned and unsettled him so that he pitched forward upon his horse, yet not so as to lose his seat.

Nevertheless, owing to the swing of my arm, the stroke fell also partly upon his horse's back, which affrighted the beast and set him harder than ever to the running. So that I was passed ere I knew it, and the wood was won. But I was not thirty yards behind him, and looked to make the capture ere we reached the further side. And but for a foul trick I should have done it. It so happens that there is a little hill in the woods of Killochan, and I, seeing that John Mure was riding about one side, took round the other, thinking that I had the shorter line of it.