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

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 masses of stone, ancient rockfalls from the mountain, lay thick as the cottages in a hamlet. At first sight the place seemed to be without deer. Lamancha, scanning it with his glass, could detect no living thing among the debris.

      Wattie was calling fiercely on his Maker.

      “God, it’s the auld hero,” he muttered, his eyes glued to his telescope.

      At last Lamancha got his glasses adjusted, and saw what his companion saw. Far up the corrie, on a patch of herbage—the last before the desert of the rocks began—stood three stags. Two were ordinary beasts, shootable, for they must have weighed sixteen or seventeen stone, but with inconsiderable heads. The third was no heavier, but he had a head like a blasted pine—going back fast, for the beast was old, but still with thirteen clearly marked points and a most noble spread of horn.

      “It’s him,” Wattie crooned. “It’s the auld hero. Fine I ken him, for I seen him on Crask last back-end rivin’ at the stacks. There’s no a forest hereaways but they’ve had a try for him, but the deil’s in him, for the grandest shots aye miss. What’s your will, my lord? Dod, if John Macnab gets yon lad, he can cock his bonnet.”

      “I don’t know, Wattie. Is it fair to kill the best beast in the forest?”

      “Keep your mind easy about that. Yon’s no a Haripol beast. He’s oftener on Crask than on Haripol. He’s a traiveller, and in one season will cover the feck o’ the Hielands. I’ve heard that oreeginally he cam oot o’ Kintail. He’s terrible auld—some says a hundred year—and if ye dinna kill him he’ll perish next winter, belike, in a snaw-wreath, and that’s a puir death to dee.”

      “It’s a terrible pull to the Beallach.”

      “It will be that, but there’s the nicht afore us. If we don’t take that beast—or one o’ the three—I doubt we’ll no get anither chance.”

      “Push on, then, Wattie. It looks like a clear coast.”

      “I’m no so sure. There’s that deevil o’ a hind somewhere afore us.”

      Down through the gaps of the Pinnacle Ridge blew fine streams of mist. They were the precursors of a new storm, for long before the two men had wormed