“Give me the piper’s bonnet,” said the other. “There! push it into the crook of my arm between the poor brute and me. It will make him go the easier. You will need to scatter now. Leave the piper where he is. A few inches of earth will do him no good. Ferrier, I am going. You and I will have to lie low for awhile after this.”
The cur had grown exhausted, and ceased to fight; he shivered and snuffled feebly at the Kilmarnock bonnet, the knob of which made a red spot against the shirt on James’s broad breast. Ferrier and Gourlay glanced after him as he went off between the trees. But as they had no time to waste on the sight of his eccentricities, they disappeared in different directions.
Dusk was beginning to fall on the wood and on the dead beggar as he lay with his two silent comrades, looking towards the Grampians from the top of Huntly Hill.
[CHAPTER XXIII
THE MUIR OF PERT]
CALLANDAR watched his corporal riding away from the confines of the wood. His eyes followed the horse as it disappeared into hollows and threaded its way among lumps of rock. He stood for some time looking out over the landscape, now growing cold with the loss of the sun, his mind full of Flemington. Then he turned back with a sigh to retrace his way. His original intention in bringing Wattie up the hill came back to him, and he remembered that he had yet to discover whether he could identify the red-bearded man. It was at this moment that the fusillade from his halting-place burst upon him. He stopped, listening, then ran forward into the wood, the map from which he had been directing the corporal clutched in his hand.
He had gone some distance with the soldier, so he only reached the place when the quick disaster was over to hear the hoof-beats of the escaping horses dying out as they galloped down Huntly Hill. The smoke of the firearms hung below the branches like a grey canopy, giving the unreality of a vision to the spectacle before him. He could not see the beggar’s body, but the overturned cart was in full view, a ridiculous object, with its wooden wheels raised, as though in protest, to the sky. He looked in vain for a sign of his third man, and at the sight of the uniform upon the two dead figures lying on the ground he understood that he was alone. Of the three private soldiers who had followed him down Glen Esk there was not one left with him. Archie, the traitor, was gone, and only the red-bearded man remained. He could see him in the group that was watching James Logie as he captured the struggling dog.
Callandar ground his teeth; then he dropped on one knee and contemplated the sight from behind the great circle of roots and earth that a fallen tree had torn from the sod. Of all men living he was one of the last who might be called a coward, but neither was he one of those hot-heads who will plunge, to their own undoing and to that of other people, into needless disaster. He would have gone grimly into the hornet’s nest before him, pistol in hand, leaving heaven to take care of the result, had the smallest advantage to his king and country been attainable thereby. His own death or capture would do no more than prevent him from carrying news of what had happened to headquarters, and he decided, with the promptness hidden behind his taciturn demeanour, that his nearest duty was to identify James Logie, if he were present. Callandar’s duty was the only thing that he always saw quickly.
From his shelter he marked the two Jacobite officers, and, as he knew Ferrier very well from description, he soon made out the man he wanted. James was changed since the time when he had first come across Archie’s path. His clothes were worn and stained, and the life of wandering and concealment that he had led since he parted from the Prince had set its mark on him. He had slept in as many strange places of late as had the dead beggar at his feet; anxious watching and lack of food and rest were levelling the outward man to something more primitive and haggard than the gallant-looking gentleman of the days before Culloden, yet there remained to him the atmosphere that could never be obliterated, the personality that he could never lose until the earth should lie on him. He was no better clothed than those who surrounded him, but his pre-eminence was plain. The watcher devoured him with his eyes as he turned from his comrades, carrying the dog.
As soon as he was out of sight, the rebels scattered quietly, and Callandar crouched lower, praying fortune to prevent anyone from passing his retreat. None approached him, and he was left with the three dead men in possession of the wood.