Brothers & Sisters - John & Anna Buchan Edition (Collection of Their Greatest Works). Buchan John

of the packs,” said Mr Craw, and, his future having cleared a little, and being conscious of better behaviour, he stepped out with a certain alacrity and ease.

      Presently they left the road, which descended into the Gled valley, and took a right-hand turning which zigzagged up the containing ridge and came out on a wide benty moor, once the best black-game country in Scotland, which formed the glacis of the chief range of the hills. A little after midday they lunched beside a spring, and Mr Craw was moved to commend Mrs Catterick’s scones, which at breakfast he had despised. He accepted one of Jaikie’s cigarettes. There was even a little conversation. Jaikie pointed out the main summits among a multitude which had now become ominously blue and clear, and Mr Craw was pleased to show a certain interest in the prospect of the Muneraw, the other side of which, he said, could be seen from the upper windows of Castle Gay. He became almost confidential. Landscape, he said, he loved, but with a temperate affection; his major interest was reserved for humanity. “In these hills there must be some remarkable people. The shepherds, for instance—”

      “There’s some queer folk in the hills,” said Jaikie. “And I doubt there’s going to be some queer weather before this day is out. The wind’s gone to the south-west, and I don’t like the way the mist is coming down on the Black Dod.”

      He was right in his forecast. About two o’clock there came a sudden sharpness into the air, the hills were blotted out in vapour, and a fine rain descended. The wind rose; the drizzle became a blast, and then a deluge, the slanting, drenching downfall of October. Jaikie’s tattered burberry and Mr Craw’s smart raincoat were soon black with the rain, which soaked the legs of their trousers and trickled behind their upturned collars. To the one this was a common experience, but to the other it was a revelation, for he had not been exposed to weather for many a year. He thought darkly of rheumatism, the twinges he had suffered from two years ago and had gone to Aix to cure. He might get pneumonia—it was a common complaint nowadays— several of his acquaintances had fluffed out like a candle with it— healthy people, too, as healthy as himself. He shivered, and thought he felt a tightness in his chest. “Can we not shelter?” he asked, casting a woeful eye round the wet periphery of moor.

      “It’ll last the day,” said Jaikie. “We’d better step out, and get under cover as soon as we can. There’s no house till Watermeeting.”

      The thought of Watermeeting did not console Mr Craw. A wetting was bad enough, but at the end of it there was no comforting hot bath and warm dry clothes, and the choice between bed and a deep armchair by a fire. They would have to pig it in a moorland inn, where the food would certainly be execrable, and the bed probably damp, and he had no change of raiment. Once again Mr Craw’s mind became almost hysterical. He saw sickness, possibly death, in the near future. His teeth were chattering, and, yes—he was certain he had a pain in his side.

      Something loomed up in the haze, and he saw that it was a man with, in front of him, a bedraggled flock of sheep. He was a loutish fellow, much bent in the shoulders, with leggings, which lacked most of the buttons, over his disreputable breeks. By his side padded a big ruffianly collie, and he led by a string a miserable-looking terrier, at which the collie now and then snapped viciously.

      The man did not turn as they came abreast. He had a bag slung on his shoulders by a string, from which protruded the nose of a bottle and the sodden end of a newspaper. The peak of his cap hid the upper part of his face; the lower part was composed of an unshaven chin, a gap-toothed mouth, and a red ferrety nose.

      “Ill weather,” said Jaikie.

      “Hellish,” was the answer. A sharp eye stole a sidelong glance and took in Mr Craw’s prosperous but water-logged garments. The terrier sniffed wistfully at Jaikie’s leg. Jaikie looked like the kind of person who might do something for him.

      “Hae ye a smoke?” the drover asked. Jaikie reluctantly parted with a cigarette, which the other lit by making a shelter of his cap against the wind. The terrier, in order to avoid the collie, wove its string round his legs and received a savage kick.

      “Where are you bound for?” Jaikie asked.

      “Near by. I’ve brocht thae sheep frae Cumnock way.” Then, as an overflow of water from the creases of his cap reached his unwashen neck, he broke into profanity about the weather, concluding with a malediction on the unhappy terrier, who showed signs of again entangling his lead. The dog seemed to be a cross between wire-haired and Sealyham, a wretched little fellow with a coat as thick as a sheep’s, a thin piebald face, whiskers streaked backwards by the wet, and a scared eye. The drover brought his stick down hard on its hind quarters, and as it jumped howling away from him the collie snapped at its head. It was a bad day for the terrier.

      “That’s a nice little beast,” said Jaikie.

      “No bad. Pure-bred Solomon. He’s yours if ye’ll pay my price.”

      “I’ve no use for a dog. Where did you get him?”

      “A freend bred him. I’m askin’ a couple o’ quid. I brocht him along wi’ me to sell. What about the other yin o’ ye? He’d be the better o’ a dug.”

      Mr Craw did not look as if such an acquisition would ease his discomfort. He was glancing nervously at the collie which had turned on him an old-fashioned eye. Jaikie quickened his pace, and began to circumvent the sheep.

      “Haud on,” said the drover. “I turn up the next road. Gie’s your crack till the turn.”

      But Jaikie had had enough of him, and the last they heard was the whining of the terrier, who had again been maltreated.

      “Is that one of the hill shepherds?” Mr Craw asked.

      “Hill shepherd! He’s some auction-ring tout from Glasgow. Didn’t you recognise the tongue? I’m sorry for that little dog. He stole it, of course. I hope he sells it before he kills it.”

      The high crown of the moorland now began to fall away into a valley which seemed to be tributary to the Gled. The two were conscious that they were descending, but they had no prospect beyond a yard or two of dripping roadside heather. Already the burns were rising, and tawny rivulets threaded the road, all moving in the direction they were going. Jaikie set a round pace, for he wanted to save his companion from a chill, and Mr Craw did his best to keep up with it. Sometimes he stopped, put his hand to his side, and gasped—he was looking for the pain which was the precursor of pneumonia. Soon he grew warm, and his breath came short, and there had to be frequent halts to relieve his distress. In this condition of physical wretchedness and the blackest mental gloom Mr Craw became aware of a roaring of flooded waters and a bridge which spanned a porter-coloured torrent. The sight of that wintry stream combined with the driving rain and the enveloping mist to send a chill almost of terror to Mr Craw’s heart. He was terribly sundered from the warm kindly world which he knew. Even so, from an icy shore, might some lost Arctic explorer have regarded the approach of the Polar night.

      “That’s the Gryne burn,” said Jaikie reverentially. “It’s coming down heavy. It joins the Water of Stark out there in the haugh. The inn’s not a hundred yards on.”

      Presently they reached a low building, a little withdrawn from the road, on which a half-obliterated sign announced that one Thomas Johnston was licensed to sell ale and tobacco. Jaikie’s memory was of a sunny place visited once in a hot August noon, when he had drunk ginger beer on the settle by the door, and amid the sleepy clucking of hens and the bleating of sheep had watched the waters of Gryne and Stark beginning their allied journey to the lowlands. Now, as it came into view through the veils of rain, it looked a shabby place, the roughcast of the walls blotched and peeling, the unthatched stacks of bog-hay sagging drunkenly, and a disconsolate up-ended cart with a broken shaft blocking one of the windows. But at any rate here was shelter, and the smell of peat reek promised a fire.

      In the stone-flagged kitchen a woman was sitting beside a table engaged in darning socks—a thin-faced elderly woman with spectacles. The kitchen was warm and comfortable, and, since she had been baking earlier in the day, there was an agreeable odour of food. On the big old-fashioned hearth a bank of peats glowed dully, and sent out fine blue spirals.

      The