SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan John

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СКАЧАТЬ the boulders, drifting aimlessly across the spouts of screes below the high cliffs, sheltering in the rushy gullies. There were groups of hinds and calves, and knots of stags, and lone beasts on knolls or in mud-baths, and, since all were restless, the numbers in each corrie were constantly changing.

      “Ye gods, what a sight!” Lamancha murmured, his head at Wattie’s elbow. “We won’t fail for lack of beasts.”

      “The trouble is,” said Wattie, “that there’s ower mony.” Then he added obscurely that “it might be the day o’ Pentecost.”

      Lamancha was busy with his glass. Just below him, not three hundred yards off, where the ravine which ran from the Beallach opened out into the nearest corrie, there was a group of deer—three hinds, a little stag, and farther on a second stag of which only the head could be seen.

      “Wattie,” he whispered excitedly, “there’s a beast down there—a shootable beast. It’s just what we’re looking for…close to the Beallach.”

      “Aye, I see it,” was the answer. “And I see something mair. There’s a man ayont the big corrie—d’ye see yon rock shapit like a puddock-stool?… Na, the south side o’ the waterfall…Well, follow on frae there towards Bheinn Fhada—have ye got him?”

      “Is that a man?” asked the surprised Lamancha.

      “Where’s your een, my lord? It’s a man wi’ grey breeks and a brown jaicket—an’ he’s smokin’ a pipe. Aye, it’s Macqueen. I ken by the lang legs o’ him.”

      “Is he a Haripol gillie?”

      “He’s the second stalker. He’s under notice, for him and young Mr Claybody doesna agree. Macqueen comes frae the Lowlands, and has a verra shairp tongue. They was oot on the hill last week, and Mr Johnson was pechin’ sair gaun up the braes, an’ no wonder, puir man. He cries on Macqueen to gang slow, and says, apologetic-like, ‘Ye see, Macqueen, I’ve been workin’ terrible hard the past year, and it’s damaged my wund.’ Macqueen, who canna bide the sight of him, says, ‘I’m glad to hear it, sir. I was feared it was maybe the drink.’ Gey impident!”

      “Shocking.”

      “Weel, he’s workin’ off his notice…I’m pleased to see him yonder, for it means that Macnicol will no be there. Macnicol”—Wattie chuckled like a dropsical corncrake—“Is maist likely beatin’ the roddydendrums for the wee dog. Macqueen is set there so as he can watch this Beallach and likewise the top of the Red Burn on the Machray side, which I was tellin’ ye was the easiest road. If ye were to kill that stag doun below he could baith see ye and hear ye, and ye’d never be allowed to shift it a yaird…Na, na. Seein’ Macqueen’s where he is, we maun try the wee corrie right under Sgurr Dearg. He canna see into that.”

      “But we’ll never get there through all those deer.”

      “It will not be easy.”

      “And if we get a stag we’ll never be able to get it over this Beallach.”

      “Indeed it will tak a great deal of time. Maybe a’ nicht. But I’ll no say it’s not possible…Onyway, it is the best plan. We will have to tak a lang cast roond, and we maunna forget Macqueen. I’d give a five-pun-note for anither blatter o’ rain.”

      The next hour was one of the severest bodily trials which Lamancha had ever known. Wattie led him up a chimney of Sgurr Mor, the depth of which made it safe from observation, and down another on the north face, also deep, and horribly loose and wet. This brought them to the floor of the first corrie at a point below where the deer had been observed. The next step was to cross the corrie eastwards towards Sgurr Dearg. This was a matter of high delicacy—first because of the number of deer, second because it was all within view of Macqueen’s watch-tower.

      Lamancha had followed in his time many stalkers, but he had never seen an artist who approached Wattie in skill. The place was littered with hinds and calves and stags, the cover was patchy at the best, and the beasts were restless. Wherever a route seemed plain the large ears and spindle shanks of a hind appeared to block it. Had he been alone Lamancha would either have sent every beast streaming before him in full sight of Macqueen, or he would have advanced at the rate of one yard an hour. But Wattie managed to move both circumspectly and swiftly. He seemed to know by instinct when a hind could be bluffed and when her suspicions must be laboriously quieted. The two went for the most part on their bellies like serpents, but their lowliness of movement would have been of no avail had not Wattie, by his sense of the subtle eddies of air, been able to shape a course which prevented their wind from shifting deer behind them. He well knew that any movement of beasts in any quarter would bring Macqueen’s vigilant glasses into use.

      Their task was not so hard so long as they were in hollows on the corrie floor. The danger came in crossing the low ridge to that farther corrie which was beyond Macqueen’s ken, for, as they ascended, the wind was almost bound to carry their scent to the deer through which they had passed. Wattie lay long with his chin in the mire and his eyes scanning the ridge till he made up his mind on his route. Obviously it was the choice of the least among several evils, for he shook his head and frowned.

      The ascent of the ridge was a slow business, and toilful. Wattie was clearly following an elaborate plan, for he zigzagged preposterously, and would wait long for no apparent reason in places where Lamancha was held precariously by half a foothold and the pressure of his nails. Anxious glances were cast over his shoulder at the post where Macqueen was presumably on duty. The stalker’s ears seemed of an uncanny keenness, for he would listen hard, hear something, and then utterly change his course. To Lamancha it was all inexplicable, for there appeared to be no deer on the ridge, and the place was so much in the lee that not a breath of wind seemed to be abroad to carry their scent. Hard as his condition was, he grew furiously warm and thirsty, and perhaps a little careless, for once or twice he let earth and stones slip under his feet. Wattie turned on him fiercely. “Gang as if ye was growin’,” he whispered. “There’s beasts on a’ sides.”

      Sobered thereby, Lamancha mended his ways, and kept his thoughts rigidly on the job before him. He crept docilely in Wattie’s prints, wondering why on a little ridge they should go through exertions that must be equivalent to the ascent of the Matterhorn. At last his guide stopped. “Put your head between thae rushes,” he enjoined. “Ye’ll see her.”

      “See what?” Lamancha gasped.

      “That sour devil o’ a hind.”

      There she was, a grey elderly beldame, with her wicked puck-like ears, aware and suspicious, not five yards off.

      “We canna wait,” Wattie hissed. “It’s ower dangerous. Bide you here like a stone.”

      He wriggled away to his right, while Lamancha, hanging on a heather root, watched the twitching ears and wrinkled nozzle…Presently from farther up the hill came a sharp bark, which was almost a bleat. The hind flung up her head and gazed intently…Five minutes later the sound was repeated, this time from a lower altitude. The beast sniffed, shook herself, and stamped with her foot. Then she laid back her ears, and trotted quietly over the crest.

      Wattie was back again by Lamancha’s side. “That puzzled the auld bitch,” was his only comment. “We can gang faster now, and God kens we’ve nae time to lose.”

      As Lamancha lay panting at last on the top of the ridge he looked down into the highest of the lesser corries, tucked right under the black cliffs of Sgurr Dearg. It was a little corrie, very steep, and threaded by a burn which after the rain was white like a snow-drift. Vast tumbled СКАЧАТЬ