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

sinister repetition of it. For the net which he had spread for the arch-rebel was not empty; it held a lesser but indubitable prize—a chieftain, Lochiel’s kinsman. With a wild sense of being in a net himself he realised the cogency of the arguments which he had used against Guthrie; if Ewen Cameron was too important to shoot out of hand, he was also too important to let go. . . . And he saw Ewen sent back to the scaffold after all, and by him: tied on a horse again, by his hands. . . . Or, since the boat was holed, and Ewen was lame, he would drown, perhaps, when it sank . . . the men were already pushing it nearer to the water. . . .

      Stabbed to alarm by that thought he stepped almost unconsciously out of his sheltering hazel bush, and stood at the edge of the shadow with some vague notion of shouting to warn Ardroy. . . . No, what he had to do was to fire, and bring the patrol here quickly and arrest him. He was to stop all communication, to allow no one to leave . . . much less a chieftain and a kinsman of Lochiel’s. . . .

      “God help me!” he said aloud, and put a hand over his eyes.

      There was a sudden crackling of broken stems, a fierce exclamation behind him, something glittered out of the shadow, and Keith swung quickly round just as the man who had been tracking him for over a week sprang down upon him. And so he did not receive Lachlan MacMartin’s dirk between the shoulders, as Lachlan had intended, but in his breast.

      * * * * *

      Leaning on young Angus’s shoulder by the boat, Ewen watched the Morar fisherman hastily fitting in the spare plug which he had brought with him (because, as he had explained, the redcoats had played the trick of removing one from Ranald Mor’s boat the other night). The fates had indeed been kind—no patrol this evening—if they were quick they would get out of the bay without a single shot being fired at them.

      The boat was being pushed down to the water when all at once the lad Angus gave a little cry, clutched at his master’s arm and pointed up the beach. Ewen, turning his head, saw two men locked together on the sandy slope, saw one drop and roll over, had a dim impression that he wore uniform, and a much clearer one of a wild figure running over the sand towards him with a naked dirk in his hand. Young Angus tried to throw himself in front of his chieftain, but the grip on his shoulder, suddenly tightening, stayed him. Moreover in another moment the spectre with the dirk was on his knees at Ewen’s feet, holding up the weapon, and, half sobbing with excitement, was pouring out a flood of words as hot as lava:

      “Mac ’ic Ailein, I have kept my vow, I have avenged you—and saved you, too, though I knew not till the biodag was bare in my hand that it was you who had passed. The Englishman would have betrayed you a second time . . . but he lies there and will not rise again. Oh, make haste, make haste to embark, for there are redcoats at Morar!”

      Despite his disfigured face, Ewen had recognised him at once, and the meaning of his words, for all their tumbling haste, was clearer still—horribly clear. Frozen, he tried to beat that meaning from him.

      “God’s curse on you, what have you done!” he exclaimed, seizing his foster-brother by the shoulder. “If you have really harmed Major Windham——” But the moon showed him the bloody dirk. With a shudder he thrust the murderer violently from him, and, deaf to young Angus’s shrill remonstrances, started to run haltingly back towards the slope. Surely, surely Lachlan had mistaken his victim, for what could Windham be doing here at Morar?

      But it was Keith Windham. He was lying on his side, full in the moonlight, almost at the bottom of the slope, as if he had been thrown there . . . stunned, perhaps, thought Ewen wildly, with a recollection of how he himself had lain on Culloden Moor—though how a dirk could stun him God alone knew. Half-way down the slope lay a pistol. Calling his name he knelt and took him into his arms. Oh, no hope; it was a matter of minutes! Lachlan had used that long blade too well.

      As he was lifted, Keith came back from a moment’s dream of a shore with long green rollers roaring loudly under a blood-red sunset, to pain and difficult breath and Ewen’s arms. He knew him.

      “I . . . I did not have to . . . fire,” he gasped; but Ewen could not realise what lay behind the words. “Go . . . go before . . . they come from Morar . . .”

      “My God, my God!” exclaimed Ewen, trying to staunch the blood which that spotless sand was already drinking. “Oh, Windham, if I could only have warned you—if I had known that he was here . . .”

      “There is a hole . . . in the boat,” said Keith with increasing difficulty. “I . . . took out . . . the plug.”

      “They have put in another—one they had in readiness. Windham, for God’s sake try to——”

      Try to do what? “Your letter . . . is still . . . I had no . . .”

      “Duncan—Angus!” called Ewen desperately, “have none of you any brandy?”

      But his men, who had run up, were intent on another matter. “Come, the boat is ready—and I think the redcoats are stirring over the river,” said Duncan Cameron, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Come, Mac ’ic Ailein, come!”

      Ewen answered him in Gaelic. “I shall not stir while he breathes.”

      But the dying man seemed to understand. “Go . . . Ardroy! . . . I implore you!” He began to fumble at one hand with the other, and managed to pull off the signet-ring which he always wore, and to hold it out a little way. Ewen took it, not knowing what he did.

      “I was watching for . . . the Pretender’s son,” went on Keith, lower and lower; “then I saw . . . it was you . . . and I had to try . . . to decide . . . duty . . . no, it is just as well . . . I could not . . . have borne . . .” He sighed and shut his eyes.

      Ewen held him closer, still trying to stay the flood, and trying, as he knew, in vain. Yet Keith only seemed to be going to sleep. He was murmuring something now which Ewen had to stoop his head close to hear. And then all that he could catch were the words, “. . . desire . . . friends . . . always . . .”

      “Yes, yes, always,” he answered in anguish. “Always!” But there would be no ‘always’. “Oh, if only you had not been in that madman’s path!”

      But that, at least, was not fortuitous. Yet to Keith the assassin had only been some man of Morar in league with the embarkation.

      He reopened his eyes. “Your hand . . .” Ewen gave it to him, and saw a little smile in the moonlight. “Have you been . . . burying any more cannon? . . . I always liked you,” said his enemy clearly; and a moment after, with his hand in Ewen’s, was gone to that place ‘where an enemy never entered and from whence a friend never went away’.

      Ewen laid him back on the patched sand, and, getting to his feet, stood looking down at the man to whom the heron had brought him—foe, enigma, saviour, victim of a terrible mistake. And friend—yes; but it was too late for friendship now. It had already been too late at their last meeting—which had not been the last after all—when he himself, as he thought, was standing on the threshold of death. But it was Keith Windham who had gone through that door, not he. . . . Had he known that he was dying? . . . Every word of the few he had spoken had been about him . . .

      Then through the haze of shock and grief penetrated the sound of a distant shot, and he remembered that there were other lives than his at stake.

      “Go—go and hide yourselves!” he commanded. But the two Camerons shook their heads. “Not until you are in the boat, Mac ’ic Ailein!”

      “I will come, then,” said Ewen. He would rather have stayed, now; but he knelt again and kissed Keith’s forehead. And that it should not be found on him, an equivocal possession, perhaps, he drew out his own letter to Alison and slipped it, all sodden, into his pocket. Then he suffered the gillies to hurry him down to the boat, for already it was clear that the soldiers were crossing the river, and some twenty yards away a couple of ill-aimed bullets raised spirts of sand.

      By the boat was waiting Lachlan, Lachlan who, directly he was recovered from the result of his first attempt by Loch Tarff, had once more set about the fulfilment of his vow, who had hung about Inverness through July