The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

BRANDED

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      § 1

      June 17th (continued).

      Ian Stewart knew his kinsman well enough to divine that he was in a towering rage, though a stranger might not have guessed it. Across the room the red-haired young man returned his own bow by a slight inclination of the head.

      “Your servant, Mr. Stewart.—Perhaps hardly an unbiassed witness, Ardroy, in view of that kinship; but let that pass. Truth will always out.”

      Ian heard his cousin give an exclamation under his breath. “Is it possible that you are learning that at last?” he asked.

      The new Chief moved forward a little from his stand by the hearth. “You’ll not advance your cause by being offensive, Ewen Cameron!” he retorted, his eyes lighting up. “There’s one thing you have certainly no need to learn, and that’s the advantage of having some relative or other at your heels in your dealings with me! This time, however, I trust that your intervention will not be required to save me from assassination by your henchman, as it was in the case of Mr. Grant. I owe you thanks for that intervention, if for nothing else.”

      A brief but tingling silence succeeded this speech, to Ian so startling that he almost thought his ears could not have conveyed its purport aright. But one glance at Ewen’s face and pose convinced him that battle was now joined between him and the speaker over a matter more serious than a few supposedly stolen cattle.

      “Since you have brought up what occurred at our last meeting, Mr. MacPhair,” said Ardroy with extreme grimness “—though I should have thought you would have preferred it to remain in oblivion—we had best go into it thoroughly. If you wish, I will ask Mr. Stewart to withdraw.”

      “By no means,” responded Finlay the Red, folding his arms. “For I do not know what account you may have given him of that occasion.” He turned to Ian. “Your kinsman here, Mr. Stewart, most unwarrantably invaded my premises in London, and his satellite, Mr. Hector Grant, took from me, at the point of the sword, a treacherous paper of his own writing which, since it came by good chance into my hands, I had been able to hinder from fulfilling its black purpose. I——”

      He got no further. Ewen had stridden forward, overriding him. “Don’t listen to him, Ian! God’s name, this impudence surpasses everything.—Who stole that letter, Finlay MacPhair, who deciphered it and sent it to the English Government, who——”

      “ ’Tis much more to the point,” broke in Glenshian with an unpleasant smile, “to ask who wrote it, full of secret information as it was, and handed it over, under pretext of having been robbed, to a Government agent in the Highlands? Mr. Stewart had better know the answer to that. It was the same Mr. Hector Grant who was so anxious to get his damning property into his own hands again that he was ready to cut my throat for it!”

      “That’s a foul lie!” cried Ewen passionately. “Hector Grant’s letter was written and intended for the eyes of Cluny Macpherson and no man else.”

      “And had no direction upon it!” sneered Glenshian. “A curious kind of ‘letter.’ ’Twas nothing else but a paper of information, and if I had not rescued it——”

      “ ‘Rescued it!’ ” burst out Ardroy, unable to contain himself. “You ‘rescued’ it from your ally, Mr. Pelham, I suppose! Did you also ‘rescue’ the letter from that dirty traitor, Samuel Cameron, which was in your pocket that day? You did not save him from being drummed out of the regiment for his complicity. And the noblest blood that has been shed in England this many a year . . . do you ever look at your hands, Glenshian?”

      At that unmistakeable insinuation the much perturbed Ian expected the Chief either to spring at his accuser’s throat or to crumple up entirely. He himself felt both bewildered and revolted, for he knew Ewen Cameron too well to suppose that he would ever make random accusations of such terrible gravity, especially against a fellow-Jacobite. But Finlay MacPhair, though his face seemed suddenly drained of colour, neither sprang nor flinched. He again moved forward a little until he was quite near the table, and, drawing himself up to his full six feet of height said, with surprising coolness:

      “If by that hyperbole you mean the late Dr. Cameron’s blood, then I can only assume that your affection for that unfortunate gentleman has unsettled your intellects, and that I need not therefore take with you the course I should pursue with any other man who had made such a suggestion to me.” Here his hand fell upon Ewen’s riding whip, which was now lying within his reach, and he fingered it significantly, looking the while at its owner, who stood with clenched hands well within range of a slash across the face. Ian, afraid to move for fear of precipitating such a catastrophe, nevertheless braced his muscles to fling himself upon the assailant the moment he should grasp the handle.

      But Finlay MacPhair went on contemptuously, “You were once good enough to assure me that some day in the Highlands we should settle accounts over the question of the late Dr. Cameron’s connection with the Loch Arkaig treasure. But I don’t think I am disposed ever to go out with a man who has not yet disproved that he is . . . a cattle-thief!”

      The word came out with all the sting of the lash which had not been lifted from the table. Ewen took a step backward and gripped one hand hard round the wrist of the other. With an immense effort he succeeded in answering quietly, though he was exceedingly pale, and his eyes sparkled like blue diamonds.

      “I have already undertaken to disprove that. If you will wait a moment, I will go and give the necessary orders.” And, turning abruptly on his heel, he went out of the room. Ian followed him.

      “Ewen,” he burst out, “that man—he’s insufferable! What are you going to do now?”

      There was sweat on Ardroy’s brow. He put up his hand and wiped it off. “Give orders instantly to have all my cattle driven in and go through the tally,” he answered, gritting his teeth together. “God give me patience! . . . And I have not seen Alison yet . . . I’d best not, I think, till this business is over, and he’s out of my house.” And he flung through the porch, almost into the midst of Glenshian’s waiting gillies, and Ian heard him calling, “Angus—where is Angus MacMartin?”

      § 2

      An immense, blood-red and ominous sunset was towering in the west, high over the heads of antlike men and their dwarf cattle, ere the business of disproving the Chief of Glenshian’s accusation was finished. Yet a warm, brown dusk was already beginning to rest upon the great spaces of bloomless heather, seeming, indeed, rather to be breathed out by the ground itself, just as from Ardroy’s own little loch, Loch na h-Iolaire, the Loch of the Eagle, there was already rising a ghostly film of mist. Ewen’s shaggy cattle, thus unusually driven down and herded together in this comparatively level stretch not far from the loch, lowed uneasily, pushed at each other with their spreading horns, or looked about from under their tawny fringes in mild perplexity. Hours of the hardest and hottest work had gone to their collecting, not because they were so numerous, but because they were so scattered in their grazing.

      “There still want three,” said Ewen, glancing at the list in his hand. He and Ian stood on the edge of the herd, with never a glance behind them, where on a little knoll Glenshian sat with a gillie at his back. The only person who occasionally turned his eyes that way was eight year old Donald, who, heated from his assistance in the chase, now stood by his father’s side and perpetually counted the cattle, reaching a different total every time.

      “Those will be the three,” said Ewen, “which gave Duncan the slip up there. But he sent a couple of men after them.”

      “And there they come, I fancy,” observed Ian, pointing to a small group of cattle and two men who were making their way slowly round the end of the loch. “But your list is incorrect, Ewen, or else the beasts have been miscounted, for there are five steers there