Chapter VI: The Watchers by Night

Darkness overtook Muckle John to the south of Loch Garry in the Macdonald country. He had travelled without halt all day, keeping to the less frequented roads, and seeing on every side traces of the panic that followed Culloden. In every village was the same terror and the same frantic haste--some burying claymores with desperate hands so that they remained only half covered--others taking to the hills with their wives and little ones. Once a party of two hundred or more passed him on the road making for the south-west. They wore the look of men utterly dispirited, limping in broken ranks for all the blithe playing of a piper at their head.

Then plunging on through the heather he put mile after mile between him and Fort Augustus.

It was about three on the same afternoon that he pulled in his horse very sharply and swinging about gazed back. He was not sure that he had heard anything. It was more a premonition than anything else, but a northerner pays close heed to such things.

Everything was very lifeless and dreary on the road he had come. There was no sign of man or beast. With a grim look in his eyes Muckle John continued his journey.

But about an hour later he swerved behind a ledge of rock and cantered swiftly up the hill, keeping behind a huddle of crag for some hundred yards. Then turning as rapidly he watched the back trail. Several minutes passed and there was no sign of living thing. Presently, however, something moved ever so slightly just where the last rock towered out of the heather. A man's head rose and fell again.

With a faint smile Muckle John continued his way. His horse was very tired--twice it had nearly fallen through pure weariness. That it could carry him little further he realized at once. He did not know how many pursuers were on his track, but he put them down as Highland caterans ready to cut a throat for a purse. In that case they would wait till he slept, and rush upon him. It was, therefore, a matter of life or death for him to find a place of refuge before the sun fell.

The evening was closing in and he was so tired that he nodded as he rode. Nowhere in that rolling desolate country could he see a house or any trace of clachan or croft. And behind him waiting for darkness were men as crafty and cruel as Indians and just as patient. If not to-night then to-morrow, and he might wander over--miles of heather for days on end.

Meanwhile the brain of Muckle John was working. The future lay open to him like a man reading a map. He must throw them off the scent or perish. If not to-night--to-morrow. He would never come to grips with them--that he knew too well. It would be in his heavy sleep in the blackness of a Highland night. It must not be thought Muckle John was much concerned at the prospect. Those were days when life was not held dearly, and when a soldier of fortune might be hard put to it several times in a week. It was more the indignity of the business that irritated him. He was not accustomed to being stalked like a young stag. Most men gave Muckle John a wide berth.

Even as he brooded on the matter the grey horse tripped and fell. No power on earth could have kept it on its feet. It was utterly done. With a groan it collapsed upon its knees and rolled over on its side. Muckle John had slipped off as it staggered and now stood above it studying the next move. He was above all anxious to get a glimpse of his pursuers. Loosening his sword and taking a pistol from his great-coat pocket, he lay alongside the horse as though his leg were securely fastened beneath it in its fall. It was an old trick, but this was a country of few horses and worth a trial. He knew that they would close in on him if they saw him apparently crippled and at their mercy. Slowly the minutes passed and there was no sound, while a mist rose from the moist bed of the valley and hung in wreaths between the hills. Muckle John lay perfectly still, his pistol hidden beneath the tail of his coat, one leg stretched over the horse's flank, the other doubled up beneath him.

Near at hand a stone clinked at the burnside. It might have been a hill fox creeping away, but Muckle John knew that a fox does not do such things. He felt the eyes of some one upon him--but he could see nothing, and all the time the darkness was falling swiftly and his nerves were strained to the uttermost, waiting as he was upon his side for the rush of perhaps a dozen men.

Up the hill he heard an owl call and at that he smiled, for he knew--who better--that it was not the night for owls to cry Glengarry way, and that there is a world of difference between the call of a man and the call of an owl except to those who have never made it their business to note such things.

It was all falling out as he had expected, and he waited quite coolly for what was to come, foreseeing nothing of what really happened. Indeed it all came about so swiftly and so silently that few save Muckle John would have lived to learn another lesson in methods of attack.

Now there was an eminence immediately above him, such a natural frontage of rock as one sees on many a hill-side--places naturally avoided by the wild things unless they travel up wind or come upon them from above. Muckle John was looking upward when it happened. He was quite aware of the danger he ran, but he was waiting for a man's head to show itself against the sky-line just over the ledge. Suddenly, without warning but with only a muffled scraping like small pebbles scattered wildly, the sky was blotted out altogether, and at that Muckle John leaped like a hare and leaped just a thousandth fraction too late. The boulder, for that was of course what had been launched to crush him, killed the dying horse on the instant. But it also smashed the pistol of Muckle John and crumpled his sword like a thin strip of tin, imprisoning the tail of his great-coat in the ruin. It was neck or nothing now, and wrenching himself free he gave one glance at his arms and flinging them down set off through the trees that fringed the hill-side--running for his life. Knowing that his pursuers were probably tired men he set the pace in the hope of flinging them off, keeping the upper part of the hill, seldom stumbling for all his riding-boots and the darkness, and sometimes pausing for a breath of time to hear whether he had cast them off. But always at the same distance behind him he caught the dull padding of feet like wolves on the trail--tireless as deer. He made use of every feint he knew. He doubled on his tracks, he took refuge in places beneath crags. But always silently, patiently, utterly undaunted they came on. He could not see them but he heard them moving ever nearer, biding their time. There might be six or there might be twenty--he could not tell.

A desperate plan occurred to him to carry the war into the enemy's country--to pick off single men and throttle them noiselessly in the heather. But there was danger in that. He was unarmed now, and some one might give the alarm and they would overcome him in the struggle. Stumbling on he looked about him for a river or a loch in which he could swim to safety, or some cleft in a rock where he could hope to meet his assailants single-handed.

But there was nothing in all that dreary maze of darkness, and with anger and despair in his heart he settled down to a long tireless trot, waiting to outwit them if he could.

It was about two hours later that the moon filtered thin shafts of grey light through the scurrying clouds, and in a twinkling the landscape showed dimly and Muckle John found himself at a narrow pass running between two hills with a precipice of rock reaching up hundreds of feet on either side. Then the moon disappeared and he set off at a great pace up the rocky track, knowing that here, if at all, there lay a way to safety. On each side was the smooth surface of rock. There was no place to take refuge, but who could tell what use might be made of such a place? He must have covered half a mile at a quick pace--all the quicker because he knew that those upon his heels, running barefoot, would be handicapped by the loose stones and jagged edges of rock--when he came out upon the open moorland again and on the breath of the wind he caught the smell of cattle. And at once he saw a way.

Again the moon trailed out upon the misty sky and with eager eyes Muckle John searched the vapour. A clump of shaggy dripping coats huddled in a sheltered place to his right, that was all, but it satisfied Muckle John, for very quickly, knowing that there was not a moment to lose, he drew near to them and running amongst them, with a great shout brought them lumbering and snorting wildly to their feet. A vast Highland bull bellowed in the driving mist, but seeing nothing stamped his feet and shook his horns uncertainly. Then unsheathing a small knife, Muckle John drove the blade into a heifer beside him and sent it at a gallop towards the pass. Running hither and thither, but always avoiding the bull, he kept them moving, moving, until the head of the narrow way was reached, and at that he drew back and halted for the moon.

It came again in all serenity, streaming on to the desolate place with a thin forlorn kind of light, making the shadow of Muckle John look very large and the clump of cattle, some fifty of them and their perplexed and irritated leader, look like the cattle of a dream.

The time was ripe. With a strange noise in his throat like the roar of a stag Muckle John dropped upon his hands and made towards them on all fours--a weird enough spectacle on a lonely moor and very unnerving under a hazed moon. It was the last straw to the agitated beasts packed at the head of the pass. For a moment the bull stood his ground, but his heart failed him, being a bull barely three years old, and losing his head he set the panic ablaze. It was helter-skelter down the gorge and Muckle John at the back of them with his naked knife in their flanks. Again and again his wild cry rose and fell, faster and faster they thundered on until nothing could have stopped them--least of all three Frasers caught just midway like rats in a trap. What happened can never be known in its grim detail. But the herd passed on, and the beat of their feet died down and was swallowed up in the silent night.

And after them Muckle John, scanning the ground behind them, treading leisurely down the moonlit pass. Suddenly he paused and shivered at what he saw. Then walking on he paused again, and once more about fifty yards away he bent his head, and this time he took up a flutter of blood-stained tartan and peered at it very closely.

Presently he grinned like a dog.

"Fraser," he said, "what brings Frasers so far from Lovat at such a time--except to carry a message at the end of a dirk? What will Lovat say when he waits for news of the killing of Muckle John and he waits in vain?"

He stared at the strip of tartan for a long time, and then setting it on a ledge of rock he cut it into three equal parts.

"I doubt," he said grimly, "but there'll be a coronach playing when the last of you comes home."

Then making his way to the head of the pass he lay down underneath the shadow of a rock and settled himself to sleep.