The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales Part 15

Now at Vittoria the road towards Irun and the frontier runs almost due north for some distance and then bends about in a rough arc towards the east. Another road runs almost due east from Vittoria to Pamplona.

The first road would certainly be taken by my kinsman and his escort: Mina's camp lay above the second: but, a little way beyond, at Alsasua, a third road of about five leagues joins the two, and by this short cut I was certain of heading off our quarry.

There was no call to hurry. If, as I judged likely, the party meant to sleep the night at Vittoria, I had almost twenty-four hours in hand.

So we rode warily, on the look-out for French vedettes, and reaching Beasain a little before two in the morning took up a comfortable position on the hillside above the junction of the roads.

At dawn we s.h.i.+fted into better shelter--a shepherd's hut, dilapidated and roofless--and eked out a long day with tobacco and a greasy pack of cards. A few bullock carts pa.s.sed along the road below us, the most of them bound westward, and perhaps half-a-dozen peasants on mule-back. At about four in the afternoon a French patrol trotted by.

As the evening drew on I began to feel anxious.

A little before sunset I sent off one of my ruffians--Alonso something-or-other (I forget his magnificent surname)--to scout along the road. He had been gone half-an-hour when his fellow, Juan Gallegos, flung down his cards in the dusk--the more readily perhaps because he held a weak hand--and p.r.i.c.ked up his ears.

"Horses!" he whispered, and after a pause nodded confidently. "Three horses!"

We picked up our muskets and crept down towards the road. Halfway down we met Alonso ascending with the news. Yes, there were three hors.e.m.e.n on this side of Zumarraga and coming at a trot. One of them wore a red coat.

"Be careful, then, how you pick them off. The man in red must not be hurt; the money depends on that."

They nodded. Night was now falling fast, yet not so fast but that as the hors.e.m.e.n came up I could distinguish Captain Alan. He was riding on the left beside the young French officer, the orderly about six yards behind. As they came abreast of us Juan let fly, and the orderly's horse pitched forward at once and fell, flinging his man, who struck the road and lay either stunned or dead. At the noise of the report the other horses s.h.i.+ed violently and separated, thus giving us our chance without danger to the prisoner. Alonso and I fired together, and rushed out upon the officer, who groaned in the act of wheeling upon us. One of the bullets had shattered his sword arm.

Within the minute we had him prisoner, the captain not helping us at all.

"What is this?" he demanded in Spanish, peering at me out of the dusk and breaking off to quiet his frightened horse. "What is this, and who are you?"

"Well, it looks like a rescue," said I; "and I am your kinsman, Ma.n.u.s McNeill, and have been at some pains to effect it."

"You!" he peered at me. "I thank you," said he, "but you have done a bad evening's work. I am on parole, as a man so clever as you might have guessed by the size of my escort."

"We will talk of that later," I answered, and sent Juan and Alonso off to examine the fallen trooper. "Meanwhile the man here has fainted.

Oblige me by helping him a little way up the hill, or by leading his horse while I carry him. The road here is not healthy."

Captain Alan followed in silence while I bore my burden up to the hut.

Having tethered the horses outside, he entered and stood above me while I lit a lantern and examined the young officer's wound.

"Nothing serious," I announced, "a fracture of the forearm and maybe a splintered bone. I can fix this up in no time."

"You had better leave it to me and run," my kinsman answered. "This M. Gerard is an amiable young man and a friend of mine, and I charge myself to see him safe to Tolosa to-night. What are you doing?"

"Searching for his papers."

"I forbid it."

"_Alain mhic Neill_," said I, "you are not yet the head of our clan."

And I broke the seal of a letter addressed to the Governor of Bayonne.

"Ah! I thought as much," I added, having glanced over the missive. "It seems, my dear kinsman, that my knowledge of the Duke of Ragusa goes a bit deeper than yours. Listen to this: 'The prisoner I send you herewith is one Captain McNeill, a spy and a dangerous one, who has done infinite mischief to our arms. I have not executed him on the spot out of respect to something resembling an uniform which he wears.

But I desire you to place him at once in irons and send him up to Paris, where he will doubtless suffer as he deserves' ..."

Captain Alan took the paper from me and perused it slowly, biting his upper lip the while. "This is very black treachery," said he.

"It acquits you at any rate."

"Of my parole?" He pondered for a moment; then, "I cannot see that it does," he said. "If the Duke of Ragusa chooses to break an implied bond with me it does not follow that I can break an explicit promise to him."

"No? Well, I should have thought it did."

At once my kinsman put on that stiff pedantic tone which had irritated me at Huerta. "I venture to think," said he, "that no McNeill would say so unless he had been corrupted by traffic with the Scarlet Woman."

"Scarlet grandmother!" I broke out. "You seem to forget that I have ridden a hundred leagues to effect this rescue, for which, by the way, Lord Wellington offers twelve thousand francs. I have promised them to the biggest scoundrel in Spain; but because he happens to be even a bigger scoundrel than the Duke of Ragusa must I break my bond with him and let you go to be shot for the sake of your silly punctilio?"

I spoke with heat, and bent over the groaning officer. My kinsman rubbed his chin. "What you say," he replied, "demands a somewhat complicated answer, or rather a series of answers. In the first place, I thank you sincerely for what you have done, and not the less sincerely because I am going to nullify it. I shall, perhaps, not cheat myself by believing that a clansman's spirit went some way to help your zeal"--here I might well have blushed in truth, for it had not helped my zeal a peseta. "I thank Lord Wellington, too, for the extravagant price he has set upon my services, and I beg you to convey my grat.i.tude to him. As for being shot, I might answer that my parole extends only to the Pyrenees; but I consider myself to have extended it tacitly to my young friend here, who has treated me with all possible consideration on the journey; and I shall go to Bayonne."

He spoke quietly and in the most matter-of-fact voice. But I have often thought since of his words; and often when I call up the figure of Marmont in exile at Venice, where, as he strode gloomily along the Riva dei Schiavoni, the very street urchins pointed and cried after him, "There goes the man who betrayed Napoleon!" I call up and contrast with it the figure of this humble gentleman of Scotland in the lonely hut declining simply and without parade to buy his life at the expense of a scruple of conscience.

"But," he continued, "I fancy I may persuade M. Gerard at least to delay the delivery of that letter, in which case I see my way at least to a chance of escape. For the rest, these _partidas_ have been promised twelve thousand francs for a service which they have duly rendered. My patrimony is not a rich one, but I can promise that this sum, whether I escape or not, shall be as duly paid. Hus.h.!.+" he ended as I sprang to my feet, and Juan and Alonso appeared in the doorway supporting the trooper, who had only been stunned after all.

"We did not care to kill him," Juan explained blandly, "until we had the senor's orders."

"You did rightly," I answered, and glanced at my kinsman. His jaw was set. I pulled out a couple of gold pieces for each. "An advance on your earnings," said I. "My orders are that you leave the trooper here with me, ride back instantly to your chief, report that your work has been well done and successfully, and the money for which he holds an order shall be forwarded as soon as I return and report to Lord Wellington in Beira."

MIDSUMMER FIRES

I

In the course of an eventful life John Penaluna did three very rash things.

To begin with, at seventeen, he ran away to sea.

He had asked his father's permission. But for fifty years the small estate had been going from bad to worse. John's grandfather in the piping days of agriculture had drunk the profits and mortgaged everything but the furniture. On his death, John's father (who had enlisted in a line regiment) came home with a broken knee-pan and a motherless boy, and turned market-gardener in a desperate attempt to rally the family fortunes. With capital he might have succeeded. But market-gardening required labour; and he could neither afford to hire it nor to spare the services of a growing lad who cost nothing but his keep. So John's request was not granted.

A week later, in the twilight of a May evening, John was digging potatoes on the slope above the harbour, when he heard--away up the first bend of the river--the crew of the _Hannah Hands_ brigantine singing as they weighed anchor. He listened for a minute, stuck his visgy into the soil slipped on his coat, and trudged down to the ferry-slip.

Two years pa.s.sed without word of him. Then on a blue and sunny day in October he emerged out of Atlantic fogs upon the Market Strand at Falmouth: a strapping fellow with a brown and somewhat heavy face, silver rings in his ears, and a suit of good sea-cloth on his back. He travelled by van to Truro, and thence by coach to St. Austell. It was Friday--market day; and in the market he found his father standing sentry, upright as his lame leg allowed, grasping a specimen apple-tree in either hand. John stepped up to him, took one of the apple-trees, and stood sentry beside him. Nothing was said--not a word until John found himself in the ramshackle market-cart, jogging homewards. His father held the reins.

"How's things at home?" John asked.

"Much as ever. Hester looks after me."

Hester was John's cousin, the only child of old Penaluna's only sister, and lately an orphan. John had never seen her.

"If I was you," said he, "I'd have a try with borrowed capital. You could raise a few hundreds easy. You'll never do anything as you'm going."

"If I was you," answered his father, "I'd keep my opinions till they was asked for."

And so John did, for three years; in the course of which it is to be supposed he forgot them. When the old man died he inherited everything; including the debts, of course. "He knows what I would have him do by Hester," said the will. It went on: "Also I will not be buried in consicrated ground, but at the foot of the dufflin apple-tree in the waste piece under King's Walk, and the plainer the better. In the swet of thy face shalt thou eat bread, amen. P.S.--John knows the tree."

But since by an oversight the will was not read until after the funeral, this wish could not be carried out. John resolved to attend to the other all the more scrupulously; and went straight from the lawyer to the kitchen, where Hester stood by the window scouring a copper pan.