The McBrides Part 14

"I gave her to drink of the foamy milk--warm, and the bubbles of froth in it. 'Drink, my lost la.s.s,' said I, 'for ye loved me well once,' and all the time I would be telling her that death was coming with the white milk. And she took up the fine nice milk and drank, because she had loved me well once, she that loved me yet but feared--the coward, the soft, soft, white coward that would lie on another man's heart after I had keeled her for myself. Ay, she took up the milk and drank, and I took my ways, and they came running to Glen Darruach to tell me she had died.

"Oh, oh! the dark, the dark, and never more the sun s.h.i.+ning on the bonny blooms of dark Darruach, never mair the white lambs running, and the gleam on the wing of the moorc.o.c.k.

"Ay, they would be for the killing of me, and I lay among the rafters, under the thatch of my mother's house, and listened to them miscalling me, the black killer--the b.l.o.o.d.y man that had the black art and the evil eye; and it came over my heart to catch them by the hair, and pull them up to me as they were speaking, and let my black knife kiss their hearts. It was all red, red before me, up there under the thatch, and them down below, and my sisters shaking when they saw me watching down in the dark. It's droll, droll--because a soft white coward died--they would kill me, me that would kill a man when I drew my dirk--ho, ho, ho!

"I lay hid among the rocks above the Herring Slap, alane day and night, and the blue rockdoos left their nestlings and circled above my lair, till I was feart that folk wid see them, and come peering down and get me. But a herrin' skiff took me away from that place in the dark of the night, and I drifted to the warm South Seas and the darkling women and the white glistening houses; but she came with me, she that had died. I would be seeing her rising before the bows o' the s.h.i.+p, rising from the sea, and waving on me to follow, and the weather was worse and worse at her every coming. An' there was a man o' the Western Isles in the crew, and he had the sight, and would be telling o' the woman rising from the sea, and her hair blowing over the yeast o' the waves, and her eyes staring, staring, and the waving of her hand when I was at the tiller; and so bad the weather got, and the sickness among the crew, that the captain swore he would send the woman's man to her, and he lay aft in his cabin, and drank rum till his boy was feart to venture near him; and then he came on deck--a fine wild man, all in his finery o' lace and golden earrings, and he called his sailors aft to make choice of the woman's man. There was many there that would have been making choice of me, but my hand was quick on the dirk, and no man spoke above a whisper, and then I looked over the bows, and I would be seeing her coming, and the man of the Western Isles cried out in his fear--

"'She's wavin', she's wavin', Chrisht's mercy.' He was pointing to the grey seas, and the froth was on his lips.

"And as he was standing gazing I creeped round behind him like a cat, so quiet, and I had my arms round him before his eyes were winking.

"'Go to your wet love,' I cried, and I flung him over the rail by the p.o.o.p, and the captain was at the laughing.

"'The curse is lifted, my lads,' he roared. 'Crowd the sail on her.

Heigh-ho for the North and the gay adventures!' But after that there were two to be watching in the darkness when I took the tiller--ay, and I crawled from the sea at last, and came to the hills again--in the dark.

"Oh, the dark, the dark, and never mair the sun s.h.i.+ning on the heather howes of dark Glen Darruach." As we lay on the heather beds the Nameless Man wandered through the cave, and the booming of his voice rumbled in the heart of the hill, as he wandered through unknown galleries in the dark. The day came at last, and I saw a wee shaft of light filter down some way on the cavern walls, but we could only lie still till the dusk would come again, and we might make our way among the hills, for after our sleeping Dan and Ronny and me had a great confab.

"I canna lie here like a rat in a hole a' my days," said Dan.

"Ye'll never sleep sound till there's many a mile o' blue sea between you and Dol Beag's hunters," said I. "If we could pa.s.s the word for a skiff. . . ."

"We're daft, we're clean daft," cried Ronny. "McGilp is lying at the north end, standing off and on. If we can just make Loch Ranza, ye're safe."

"Ay," said Dan. "I'm thinking it's the Low Country now for me, Hamish.

Whatever money is due me, ye'll leave wi' McGilp, and he'll find a way for sending it on. I'm sair sweirt tae part frae my bonny horses for yon mauk's sake. . . . And there's the bonny spaewife, Hamish; if anything comes wrong tae that la.s.s I'll be relying on you." And then for a long time he sat brooding at the fire.

In the afternoon a change came over the Nameless Man. He crawled on his knees about the cave, whining and howling like a beast. He glared at the black pool, and pointed.

"She's there in the water." And then with a yell to the dog, "Had her, Marr; tear her sinery; rive her sinery, good Marr." And he hissed the hound on to his vision, and the dog, frenzied at his crying, breenged into the pool, and the man whined with joy, and caressed the soaking coat. Later on in the day, after we had had a meal, he sat at the pa.s.sage-way and eyed us, and the dog girned and showed his teeth.

"They'll no come creepin' into the dim places where the queer things are hidden, no--spying and spying." And when we paid no heed to his ravings, except that we kept the fire bright and had armed ourselves, he lay down and slept across the pa.s.sage-way, his head on the hound's flank. At every movement of our bodies the growling rumbled to our ears, and the bristles rose on the dog's back. But when it was nearly dark the sleeper wakened, and we left the dreadful place called McAllan's Locker, and took to the hills again.

CHAPTER XIII.

DAN McBRIDE SAILS FROM LOCH RANZA.

For a while we lay silent on the giant's step of McAllan's Locker, and I felt my spirits lighten to be outside of that place. The hills were silent, but from the cave came a baying and growling of dog and man, at first as from a distance, and growing louder and louder, as though the Nameless Man and his grim hound ranged through the unknown caverns. We three sprauchled upwards, for we had no relish to meet these two, and as we neared the rise of the hill the baying filled the night, and suddenly the great hound bounded down the hillside with great twisting leaps, and at his heels the wild figure of his master followed. In the valley they played like gambolling puppies, rus.h.i.+ng at one another and wrestling, with whiles the brute worrying the man playfully, and whiles the man kneeling on the dog; then away they would dash separately, wheeling and leaping and rubbing their flanks in the snow. For a long time the game went on, and then the players slunk closer, the s.h.a.ggy heads thrust skywards, and the long whining cry rose on the night; then away they ranged, running flank to flank through the peat hags and over the rise of the hill we had crossed the night before.

"He'll be a bold man that shepherds these hills in the lambing," said Dan.

All through this night we held our course a little to the west of the pole-star, though McKinnon and Dan had travelled the way before. We were now in the middle of the great barren range, frowning mountains menaced our path, and burns rumbled in the darkness; and when Dan spoke his voice was thick with anger--

"I lifted a snipe o' a man, and I flung him the back of the fire. What is there in that to be running from?

"If the man has freens, I'll meet them a' wherever they like; but this running sticks in my gizzard. It's just ain brother tae caul' fear,"

and we marched on in grim silence.

On the mountains my feet were almost without feeling at all with the cold, and my clothes sticking to my shoulders with sweat; and on the last of the hills McKinnon clapped like a startled hare.

"Look at yon," he whispered; "they're to win'ward o' us after a'."

Far below us a little light flickered and blinked on the hillside, and we watched it, hardly breathing, and again I heard my heart begin to pound.

After some wee while of watching, Dan grunted--

"Umph!" says he. "Ye see droll things in the hills when ye're rinnin'

for dear life. Yon's just Tchonie Handy Ishable and his lantern."

"I never would be believing that story," said Ronny.

"Man, if I had the time I would get his secret this night," says Dan.

"Ye see, Hamish, yon's an old man down yonder, and they'll be saying he pays the Duke's rent in the big money. They've the story of how he found a h.o.a.rd o' it among the hills; and it's likely enough, for many's the bold stark lad took to the Southern Seas from these glens. Och, an' I ken folk mysel' that found an iron pot o' doubloons in the peat bink; but aul' Tchonie, he just takes what he will be needin', and he takes it at night when the folks are abed. They used to be following him, but he was skilly among the rocks, and they would maybe come on his lantern sitting lighted, and once they found a dagger stuck at the entrance to a cave to keep the wee folk from shuttin' it when a man was inside; but they were never able to get the secret, for Tchonie Handy Ishable would be sittin' over his peat fire when the lads came back in the mornin'."

At the screich o' day we came from Glen Chalmadale into the thatched village of Loch Ranza. At a house some way back from the others McKinnon stopped us.

"The man that lives here is a farmer and a fisherman," said he, "and a very po-lite man in his taalk moreover, for I know him well," and he mimicked the Loch Ranza speech, which, indeed, is very proper speech, and I was very startled at one time to hear the very weans with the polite way of it.

"Ye will be havin' the dogs on us," says Dan in a low voice; "and there's folks here that are unfreens o' mine."

"Alaister Jock has weans enough to do without the dogs," says Ronny, "for dogs are unchancy beasts in the smuggling nights, and Alaister himsel' will be always up wi' the drake's dridd."

In a little time Ronny came back to us, and we made our way into Alastair's house, a place where a grown man could stand broad-soled on the clay floor and touch the rafters of the roof with the flat of his palms. The peat fire was smouldering on the floor, and the reek made its way out at the rigging. Alastair himself, a tall stooped man with a red beard and a thin beak of a nose, brought peats and threw them on the fire.

"There was one came for you in the night yesterday," says he to Dan in his very proper polite way. "I would not be having her in my house at all, for I am a reeleegious man with a family to rear before the Lord.

I put her into the byre with the kye, for she is of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; and my wife sprinkled a little meal and a little saut over the rumps of the kye to keep away her spells, for we must meet spell with spell--not that I will be believing in these evil-doers of the Black Art."

"Och, I kent, I kent," cried Dan, long before Alastair had done with his speaking, and disappeared through a door which gave me a glimpse of a cow's head looking over its biss, and it struck me that the byre was the handy place to get at in Loch Ranza. Ronny and Alastair were thrang at the talking, with the farmer laying off with his hands, and wagging his head like a minister in the pulpit, and all in a voice so raised in tone that I believed from hearing him what our folks say, that when two farmers are ploughing at the north end they can talk comfortably across three fields, and they are great at the handling of their skiffs and bold sailors. I heard Dan--

"Och, my la.s.s, my ain la.s.s; it went sair against my heart to be leaving without seein' you at all."

I heard her brave voice with a crooning quiver like a mother's.

"I ran, I ran all the long road, for I kent it all from the first o'

it," and in the dimness of the byre I could see these two clinging to each other.

"Is it the sight[1] ye think ye have now, my droll dark la.s.s?" says Dan, looking down at her, one arm holding her away from him and the great love in his eyes.

"There's whiles I come near to hating you when you will be talking like that," said the swarthy girl. "Mirren Stuart brought me word."

"You'll be glad to be rid o' me then. You'll be forgetting me soon,"

and the man let his arm drop from her shoulders, and the cold intolerant pride of his voice stung like a whip-lash, for he never could thole that the woman he loved could even have a thought different from his own, let alone a love-hatred.

I expected a proud heart-breaking lie from the sombre beauty, but for all his answer she crept close, and clung to him with both hands, and hid her face on his breast; then holding him at the stretch of her arms she raised her head, and looked Dan in his eyes.