Bob, Son of Battle - Alfred Ollivant (ereader ebook TXT) 📗

the little man on the mound had ceased to chuckle; Andrew’s sobs were hushed; and in the background the huddled flock edged closer. The world hung balanced on the pinpoint of the moment. Every eye was in the one direction,

With dull, uncomprehending gaze James Moore stared as bidden. There was the gray dog naked in the moonlight, heedless still of any witnesses; there the murdered sheep, lying within and without that distorted shade; and there the humpbacked boulder.

He stared into the shadow, and still stared.

Then he started as though struck. The shadow of the boulder h~d moved!

Motionless, with head shot forward and bulging eyes, he gazed.

Ay, ay, ay; he was sure of it—a huge dim outline as of a lion couchant, in the very thickest of the blackness.

At that he was seized with such a palsy of trembling that he must have fallen but for the strong arm about his waist.

Clearer every moment grew that crouching figure; till at length they plainly could discern the line of arching loins, the crest, thick as a ~stallion’s, the massive, wagging head. No mistake this time. There he lay i the deep..est black, gigantic, revelling in hi horrid debauch—the Black Killer!

And they watched him at his feast. Now he burrowed into the spongy flesh; now turned to lap the dark pool which glittered in the moonlight at his side like claret in a silver cup. Now lifting his head, he snapped irritably at the rain-drops, and the moon caught his wicked, rolling eye and the red shreds of flesh dripping from his jaw. And again, raising his great muzzle as if about to howl, he let the delicious nectar trickle down his throat and ravish his palate.

So he went on, all unsuspicious, wisely nodding in slow-mouthed gluttony. And in the stillness, between the claps of wind, they could hear the smacking of his lips.

While all the time the gray dog stood before him, motionless, as though carved in stone.

At last, as the murderer rolled his great. head from side to side, he saw that still figure. At the sight he leaped back, dismayed. Then with a deep-mouthed roar that shook the waters of the Tarn he was up and across his. victim with fangs bared, his coat standing’ erect in wet, rigid furrows from topknot to tail.

So the two stood, face to face, with perhaps~ a yard of rain-pierced air between them.

The wind hushed its sighing to listen. The moon stared down, white and dumb. Away at the back the sheep edged closer. While save for the everlasting thunder of the rain, there was utter stillness.

An age, it seemed, they waited so. Then a voice, clear yet low and far away, like a bugle in a distant city, broke the silence.

“Eh, Wullie!” it said.

There was no anger in the tones, only an incomparable reproach; the sound of the cracking of a man’s heart.

At the call the great dog leapt round, snarling in hideous passion. He saw the small,’ familiar figure, clear-cut against the tumbling sky; and for the only time in his life Red Wull was afraid.

His blood-foe was forgotten; the dead sheep’ was forgotten; everything was sunk in the agony of that moment. He cowered upon the ground, and a cry like that of a lost sbul was wrung from him; it rose on the still night air and floated, wailing, away; and the white waters of the Tarn thrilled in cold pity; out of the lonely hollow; over the desolate Marches; into the night.

On the mound above stood his master. The little man’s white hair was bared to the night wind; the rain trickled down his face; and his hands were folded behind his back. He stood there, looking down into the dell below him, as a man may stand at the tomb of his lately buried wife. And there was such an expression on his face as I cannot describe.

“Wullie, Wullie, to me!” he cried at length; and his voice sounded weak and far, like a distant memory.

At that, the huge brute came crawling toward him~,,on his belly, whimpering as he came, very pitiful in his distress. He knew his fate as every sheepdog knows it. That troubled him not. His pain, insufferable, was that this, his friend and father, who had trusted him, should have found him in his sin.

So he crept up to his master’s feet; and the little man never moved.

“Wullie—ma Wullie!” he said very gently. “They’ve aye bin agin me—and noo you! A man’s mither—a man’s wife—a man’s dog! they’re all I’ve iver had; and noo am o’ they three has turned agin me! Indeed I am alone!”

At that the great dog raised himself, and placing his forepaws on his master’s chest tenderly, lest he should hurt him who was already hurt past healing, stood towering above him; while the little man laid his two colds hands on the dog’s shoulders.

So they stood, looking at one another, like a man and his love.

At M’Adam’s word, Owd Bob looked up, and for the first time saw his master.

He seemed in nowise startled, but trotted over to him. There was nothing fearful in his carriage, no haunting blood-guiltness in the true gray eyes which never told a lie, which never, dog-like, failed to look you in the face. Yet his tail was low, and, as he stopped at his master’s feet~ he was quivering. For he, too, knew, and was not unmoved.

For weeks he had tracked the Killer; for weeks he had followed him as he crossed Kenmuir, bound on his bloody errands; yet always had lost him on the Marches. Now, at last, he had r‘1n him to ground. Yet his heart went. out to his enemy in his distress.

“I thowt t’had been yo’, lad,” the Master whispered, his hand on the dark head at his knee— “I thowt t’had bin yo’!”

Rooted to the ground, the three watched the scene between M’Adam and his Wull.

In the end the Master was whimpering; Andrew crying; and David turned his back.

Chapter XXX. THE TAILLESS TYKE AT BAY

ON the following morning there was a sheep-auction at the Dalesman’s Daughter.

Early as many of the farmers arrived, there was one earlier. Tupper, the first man to enter the sand-floored parlor, found M’Adam before him.

He was sitting a little forward in his chair; his thin hands rested on his knees; and on his face was a gentle, dreamy expression such as no man had ever seen there before. All the harsh wrinkles seemed to have fled in the night; and the sour face, stamped deep with the bitterness of life, was softened now, as if at length at peace.

“When I coom doon this mornin’,” said Teddy Bolstock in a whisper, “I found ‘im sittin’ just so. And he’s nor moved nor spoke since.”

“Where’s th’ Terror, then?” asked Tupper, awed somehow into like hushed tones.

“In t’ paddock at back,” Teddy answered, “marchin’ hoop and doon, hoop and doon, for a’ the world like a sentry-soger. And so he was when I looked oot o’ window when I wake.”

Then Londesley entered, and after him, Ned Hoppin, Rob Saunderson, Jim Mason, and others, each with his dog. And each man, as he came in and saw the little lone figure for once without its huge attendant genius, put the same question; while the dogs sniffed about the little man, as though suspecting treachery. And all the time M’Adam sat as though he neither heard nor saw, lost in some sweet, sad dream; so quite, so silent, that more than one thought he slept.

After the first glance, however, the farmers paid him little heed, clustering round the publican at the farther end of the room to hear the latest story of Owd Bob.

It appeared that a week previously, James Moore with a pack of sheep had met the new Grammochtown butcher at the Dalesmen’s Daughter. A bargain concluded, the butcher started with the flock for home. As he had no dog, the Master offered him Th’ Owd Un. “And he’ll pick me i’ th’ town to-morrow,” said he.

Now the butcher was a stranger in the land. Of course he had heard of Owd Bob o’ Ken.. muir, yet it never struck him that this handsome gentleman with the quiet, resolute manner, who handled sheep as he had never seen them handled, was that hero—” the best sheepdog in the North.”

Certain it is that by the time the flock was penned in the enclosure behind the shop, he coveted the dog—ay, would even offer ten pounds for him!

Forthwith the butcher locked him up in an outhouse—summit of indignity; resolving to make his offer on the morrow.

When the morrow came he found no dog in the outhouse, and, worse, no sheep in the enclosure. A sprung board showed the way of escape of the one, and a displaced hurdle that of the other. And as he was making the discovery, a gray dog and a flock of sheep, travelling along the road toward the Dalesman’s Daughter, met the Master.

From the first, Owd Bob had mistrusted the man. The attempt to confine him set the seal on his suspicions. His master’s sheep were not for such a rogue; and he worked his own way out and took the sheep along with him.

The story was told to a running chorus of— “Ma word! Good, Owd Un !—Ho! ho! did he thot?”

Of them all, only M’Adam sat strangely silent. Rob Saunderson, always glad to draw the little man, remarked it.

“And what d’yo’ think o’ that, Mr. M’Adam, for a wunnerfu’ story of a wunnerfu’ tyke?” he asked.

“It’s a gude tale, a vera gude tale,” the little man answered dreamily. “And James Moore didna invent it; he had it from the Christmas number o’ the Flock-keeper in saxty.” (On the following Sunday, old Rob, from sheer curiosity, reached down from his shelf the specified number of the paper. To his amazement he found the little man was right. There was the story almost identically. None the less is it also true of Owd Bob o’ Kenmuir.)

“Ay, ay,” the little man continued, “and in a day or two James Moore’ll ha’ anither tale to tell ye—a better tale, ye’ll think it—mair laffable. And yet—ay–no–I’ll no believe it! I niver loved James Moore, but I think, as Mr. Hornbut aince said, he’d rather die than lie. Owd Bob o’ Kenmuir!” he continued in a whisper. “Up till the end I canna shake him aff. Hafflins I think that where I’m gaein’ to there’ll be gray dogs sneakin’ around me in the twilight. And they’re aye behind and behind, and I canna, canna—”

Teddy Bolstock interrupted, lifting his hand for silence.

“D’yo’ hear thot?—Thunder!”

They listened; and from without came a gurgling, jarring roar, horrible to hear.

“It’s comin’ nearer!”

“Nay, it’s goin’ away!”

“No thunder thot!”

“More like the Lea in flood. And yet—Eh, Mr. M’Adam, what is it?”

The little man had moved at last. He was on his feet, staring about him, wild-eyed.

“Where’s yer dogs?” he almost screamed.

“Here’s ma— Nay, by thunder! but he’s not!” was the astonished cry.

In the interest of the story no man had noticed that his dog had risen from his side; no one had noticed a file of shaggy figures creeping out of the room.

“I tell ye it’s the tykes! I tell ye it’s the tykes! They’re on ma Wullie—fifty to one they’re on him! My God! My God! And me not there! Wullie, Wullie! “—in a scream —“I’m wi’ ye!”

At the same moment Bessie Boistock rushed in, white-faced.

“Hi! Feyther! Mr. Saunderson! all o’ you! T’tykes fightin’ mad! Hark!”

There was no time for that. Each man seized his stick and rushed