Archie laughed.
“Why, man, do you think I ride for pleasure with the top half of a bone working east and the bottom half working west?”
“I thought——” began Callandar.
“You thought me churlish company, and maybe I have been so. But this ride has been no holiday for me.”
“I did not mean that. I would have said that I thought your wound was mended.”
“My flesh-wound is mended and so is my rib,” said Flemington, “but there are two handsome splinters hobnobbing above my elbow, and I can tell you that they dance to the tune of my horse’s jog.”
Callandar’s opinion of him rose. He had found him disappointing as a companion, but Archie had hid his pain, and he understood people who did that.
The Edzell villagers turned out to stare at them as they passed a short time later, when they took the road again. After the riders left its row of houses their way ran from the river-level through fields that had begun to oust the moor, rising to the crest of Huntly Hill, on the farther side of which the southern part of Angus spread its partial cultivation down to the Basin of Montrose. Archie’s discomfort seemed to grow; he shifted his sling again and again, and Callandar could see his mouth set in a hard line. Now and then an impatient sound of pain broke from him. They rode on, silent, the long rise of the hill barring their road like a wall, and the stems of the fir-strip that crowned it beginning to turn to a dusky black against the sky, which was cooling off for evening. Flemington’s horse was a slow walker, and he had begun to jog persistently. His rider, holding him back, had fallen behind. Callandar rode on, preoccupied, and when, roused from his thoughts, he turned his head, Archie waved him on, shouting that he would follow more slowly, for the troopers moved at a foot’s pace because of their prisoner, and he stayed abreast of them.
As Callandar passed a green sea of invading bracken that had struggled on to the road his jaw dropped and he pulled up. Behind the feathering waves an individual was sitting in a wooden box on wheels, and four dogs, harnessed to the rude vehicle, were lying on the ground in their leathern traces. He noticed with astonishment that the man had lost the lower parts of his legs.
“You’ll be Captain Callandar,” said Wattie, his twinkling eyes on the other’s uniform; “you’re terrible late.”