And then there was Flemington’s sudden departure. It did not look so strange since he had heard what the beggar had to say. He began to think of his own surprise at finding Archie in pain from a wound which seemed to have troubled him little, so far, and to suspect that his reliable wits had been stimulated to find a new use for his injured arm by the sight of Huntly Hill combined with the news in his pocket. His gorge rose at the thought that he had been riding all these days side by side with a very prince among traitors. His face hardened. His own duty was not plain to him, and that perturbed him so much that his habitual outward self-repression gave way. He could not sit still while he was driven by his perplexities. He sprang up, walking up and down between the trees. Ought he to send a man straight off to Brechin with a summary of the beggar’s statement? He could not vouch for the truth of his information, and there was every chance of it being disregarded, and himself marked as the discoverer of a mare’s nest. There was scarcely anything more repugnant to Callandar than the thought of himself in this character, and for that reason, if for no other, he inclined to the risk; for he had the overwhelmingly conscientious man’s instinct for martyrdom.
His mind was made up. He took out his pocket-book and wrote what he had to say in the fewest and shortest words. Then he called the corporal, and, to his extreme astonishment, ordered him to ride to Brechin. When the man had saddled his horse, he gave him the slip of paper. He had no means of sealing it, here in the fir-wood, but the messenger was a trusted man, one to whom he would have committed anything with absolute conviction. He was sorry that he had to lose him, for he could not tell how long he might be kept on the edge of the Muir, nor how much country he would have to search with his tiny force; but there was no help for it, and he trusted that the corporal would be sent back to him before the morrow. He was the only person to whom he could give the open letter. When the soldier had mounted, Callandar accompanied him to the confines of the wood, giving him instructions from the map he carried.
Wattie sat on the ground beside his cart; his back was against a little raised bank. Where his feet should have been, the yellow dog was stretched, asleep. As Callandar and his corporal disappeared among the trees, he began to sing ‘The Tod’ in his rich voice, throwing an atmosphere of dramatic slyness into the words that made his hearers shout with delight at the end of each verse.
When he had finished the song, he was barely suffered to take breath before being compelled to begin again; even the prisoner, who lay resting, still bound, within sight of the soldiers, listened, laughing into his red beard. But suddenly he stopped, rising to his feet:
“A lang-leggit deevil wi’ his hand upon the gate,
An’ aye the Guidwife cries to him——”
Wattie’s voice fell, cutting the line short, for a rush of steps was bursting through the trees—was close on them, dulled by the pine-needles underfoot—sweeping over the stumps and the naked roots. The beggar stared, clutching at the bank. His three companions sprang up.
The wood rang with shots, and one of the soldiers rolled over on his face, gasping as he tried to rise, struggling and snatching at the ground with convulsed fingers. The remaining two ran, one towards the prisoner, and one towards the horses which were plunging against each other in terror; the latter man dropped midway, with a bullet through his head.
The swiftness of the undreamed-of misfortune struck panic into Wattie, as he sat alone, helpless, incapable either of flight or of resistance. One of his dogs was caught by the leaden hail and lay fighting its life out a couple of paces from where he was left, a defenceless thing in this sudden storm of death. Two of the remaining three went rushing through the trees, yelping as the stampeding horses added their share to the danger and riot. These had torn up their heel-pegs, which, wrenched easily from a resistance made for the most part of moss and pine-needles, swung and whipped at the ends of the flying ropes behind the crazy animals as they dashed about. The surviving trooper had contrived to catch his own horse, and was riding for his life towards the road by which they had come from Edzell. The only quiet thing besides the beggar was the yellow cur who stood at his master’s side, stiff and stubborn and ugly, the coarse hair rising on his back.
Wattie’s panic grew as the drumming of hoofs increased and the horses dashed hither and thither. He was more afraid of them than of the ragged enemy that had descended on the wood. The dead troopers lay huddled, one on his face and the other on his side; the wounded dog’s last struggles had ceased. Half a dozen men were pursuing the horses with outstretched arms, and Callandar’s charger had broken loose with its comrades, and was thundering this way and that, snorting and leaping, with cocked ears and flying mane.
The beggar watched them with a horror which his dislike and fear of horses made agonizing, the menace of these irresponsible creatures, mad with excitement and terror, so heavy, so colossal when seen from his own helpless nearness to the earth that was shaking under their tread, paralyzed him. His impotence enwrapped him, tragic, horrible, a nightmare woven of death’s terrors; he could not escape; there was no shelter from the thrashing hoofs, the gleaming iron of the shoes. The cumbrous perspective of the great animals blocked out the sky with its bulk as their rocking bodies went by, plunging, slipping, recovering themselves within the cramped circle of the open space. He knew nothing of what was happening, nor did he see that the prisoner stood freed from his bonds. He knew James Logie by sight, and he knew Ferrier, but, though both were standing by the red-bearded man, he recognized neither. He had just enough wits left to understand that Callandar’s bivouac had been attacked, but he recked of nothing but the thundering horses that were being chased to and fro as the circle of men closed in. He felt sick as it narrowed and he could only flatten himself, stupefied, against the bank. The last thing he saw was the yellow coat of his dog, as the beast cowered and snapped, keeping his post with desperate tenacity in the din.