Читать книгу Storm - Henry James Halliwell Sutcliffe - Страница 14
ОглавлениеTHE EWE-GATHERING
They were gathering their sheep from the fells under Pengables, to bring them down into the warmer lands below. To a stranger it would have seemed odd that so many shepherds, and master-farmers with their hinds, should have chosen the same day. The farmers, indeed, might have done the work at haphazard, choosing a time here and there as occasion served; but their shepherds lived nearer the fell-tops where true weather-lore was taught by countless little signs and tokens. And the shepherds had decreed that within eight-and-forty hours the wind hounds of the north would be driving snow before them.
The Logie country, if it guessed what was to come, made merry with the time left it. Quiet wisps of cloud lay bosomed on a sky of blue. The belt of woodland under Pengables—larches, pines and rowans, their feet set deep in the heather—glowed in the hot sun glare with rich array of russet and amber, and wide-flung crimson—the riot of it all subdued by the still majesty of the pines, who kept their burnished livery secure against all onset of the seasons.
All the land was filled with uproar—dogs barking their throats hoarse, sheep crying witless and forlorn, men cursing ewes and dogs and neighbour-folk in rich upland speech. When each shepherd had only his own ewes to look after, and his own dog to work them, they went silently about the business, save for a whistle or a quiet call. But now the dogs were mad with rivalry. The sudden busy-ness of these quiet fells was to them what market day in Shepperton meant to the shepherds when they went there once in a while and were amazed by the town’s confusion.
Shepherd Brant, a great leader of dogs and ewes, began at last to get order out of havoc, and all was going well when Michael Draycott—he that was lying on his death-bed a fortnight since, till Hardcastle persuaded him to get out of it—came driving a flock of three-score down the lane the bracken-sledges took. They came plump into a company that Brant was shepherding along the track to Logie, and a bleak-witted cry went up to heaven from two hundred sheep that turned all ways at once.
Brant took command in earnest now. “Durn you, Michael, will you leave shepherding to shepherds. What’s the use of you, quavering with a stick and walking as if your toes were on hot bricks? A figure of fun, I call you.”
“I’ll leave it to you gladly, Brant,” chuckled Michael, the sweat dripping from his cheery face. “For my part I’ve had enough and to spare of the game.”
“Then get a hand into the collar of that fool-dog of yours, and see how mine has learned to work.”
Michael obeyed. Brant and he were old enough in friendship to make small account of plain speech between them, and the farmer watched the other’s dog at work with growing approbation—watched him as he drove some of the ewes in front, thrust others aside, getting his own and those that did not matter into two companies.
“A gift, I call it—a fair marvel,” he muttered, talking to the dog he held by the collar. “See ’em at it—Brant and his snod-haired collie. We’re a rough couple, lad, when it comes to rounding sheep up.”
The flocks were separate at last, and Brant’s dog padded up and down with restless question what was asked of him.
“Home to Logie,” said the shepherd, “I’ll follow soon.”
Michael grew wide-eyed with wonderment as he saw the ewes go down the slope, the collie shepherding a straggler now and then with quiet persuasion.
“He can do almost aught but talk, Brant.”
“And does it better for that lack,” said the shepherd, filling his pipe. “Dogs have the pull of us there. They work instead of talking. Lordie, it’s been a warm job, this.”
“Thanks to you shepherds. What fool’s tale did you come telling, about north wind and snow?” put in Geordie Wiseman, sauntering to join them from a neighbouring farm lane.
“Bide a day or two, and you’ll learn. For myself, I’m glad of a breathing-time, while Scamp yonder takes ’em home to Logie.”
“You haven’t a pup of his fathering, Brant?”
“I have, as it happens, but I’d never trust him to your lowland training,” growled Brant.
The shepherd fell into great moodiness, till Michael rallied him.
“What’s gone amiss?”
“Storm’s gone amiss,” snapped Brant. “Scamp does well enough—a good second of the twins I reared—but Storm was known from this to Carlisle for what he was—the best dog in the north for sheep. And now he’s tasted flesh, and no cure for him but the barrels of a gun.”
“A rare dog,” assented Wiseman, “but too clever, as you might say. He went past himself. You’ve not chanced on him yet, I take it?”
“Not I. I begin to fancy he’s savaging another man’s flocks by now.”
Storm, if they had known it, was watching them from above, where he lay coiled in a clump of bracken under Pengables. For a week and a day, since Hardcastle first gave him house-room, he had roamed at large, raiding and sleeping and skulking by turns; and, as he came warily across the moor this morning, the uproar from the fells below roused ancient memories. With slow craftiness, his body crouched to take advantage of such cover as rocks and heather gave him, he had wormed his way to the foot of Pengables, and now looked on, an outlaw, at the work speeding forward.
He had shared that work in other years, had heard men praise him, had seen his fellow-dogs give jealous homage to his fame. And now he lay here, with the blood of a late-slain ewe scarce dried on his rough muzzle. None praised him to-day. He had lost repute, and every hand was turned against him—even Brant’s, his old master; and across Storm’s hard, relentless eyes there stole a mist of grief. That weakness passed. The wolf-lust in him blazed afresh, kindled in the old-time of his ancestors. He remembered last night’s slaughter—the mad joy of killing, just for slaughter’s sake. He thought of the night to come. Then he turned three times in his bracken lair, and his head dropped on his forepaws. For he was full fed and sleepy.
Over the same moor that Storm had crossed, Hardcastle of Logie came from business he had at Nether Helstone. They liked to have him with them at the ewe-gathering, and he was later than he had meant; but for all that he halted when he reached the grim rockpile of Pengables, set four-square like a fortress on the hill-top. He, too, was looking down on a remembered scene, as Storm had done, and with a sense of utter loneliness.
He watched the wild gathering-scene below—the sheep scampering every way at once, the dogs half-crazied, the men who seemed, most of them, little surer of their wits. Then he saw order come from the bedevilment, till at last the whole of the wide fells below him took moving shape. There was no longer a waste of close-cropped pastures. It was hidden by long, swaying flocks that glided to their lowland shelter-fields.
As the grey sheep moved through the day’s heat, the sweat of their fleeces rose to a sunlight that turned it into rainbow mist; and Hardcastle stood looking down on old, familiar country changed to fairyland. The spell of it was on him. He had not known what glamour lay about this simple Gathering Day.
He shook himself free of dreams, and glanced across the valley. Garsykes, the village of the Lost Folk, was sending wood-smoke up into the quiet sky as if it were a haunt of peace. Yet it had put a token on his gate, had killed old Roy already, and would burn Logie next, no doubt. It seemed destined that he should lose the few things left him nowadays to care for.
Here on the heights he learned suddenly what Roy’s loss meant to him. First grief, when he found the dead body at his gate, had been tempered by the shock that stuns. Through the days that followed he had shut down the windows of his heart, lest he looked too closely through them. There were other dogs in plenty to be had. He must buy one to-morrow—or perhaps the morrow after. So he told himself; but now, as again he looked across at Garsykes, he hungered just for Roy. If all was in the losing, because he had battered three men of the Wilderness, he could have faced it better if Roy had been beside him. He had no fear now. But he had loneliness, that can bite like east wind into the marrow of a man.
The sheep-nibbled grass sloped sharply down on this side of Pengables, and when he reached the hill-foot—half running and half sliding, as fell-racers do—he was checked by a sudden growl from the brackens on his right. Storm’s sleep these days was light as the triggers of pursuing guns. He was on his feet already, his teeth bared behind the tell-tale ruddy lips. Then, as he saw who the intruder was, he just stood and looked at him, his air ludicrously changed. The brown eyes grew full of deprecation, appeal, assurances that he was a mishandled and misjudged fugitive.
Hardcastle laughed quietly. “I believe no word of it, but you’re safe from me. I give you my word for that. There’s Brant down there.”
Storm followed his pointing finger, then glanced at his face again.
“There’s Brant down there—and more fool you to make an uproar when a friend comes by.”
And now about these two there came sharp intuition, such as thrives in times of peril. Storm had always liked the smell of this man who had saved him twice—once, when he gave him shelter at Logie, and now when he might have betrayed him to Shepherd Brant below. He thrust his rough head into the Master’s hand—the head smeared by blood, and packed within by the Wilderness knew what of guile and wolf-lust—and of loyalty to his chosen man.
So then Hardcastle knew that in sober truth he had bought another dog—but not with money. He bade Storm keep close, and left him in his lair, and went swinging down the fells. Loneliness had gone, though in the peaceful days he would have sneered at any man who told him he could take cheer of heart from an outlaw such as Storm.
The last swaying companies of sheep went out of sight behind the shoulder of the track as he strode down. From time to time a man’s voice sounded, or a collie’s eager yelp, muffled by distance into softer melody. For the rest there was the intimate and friendly silence of a land ripe with autumn’s big content.
That lasted till he neared the road where Shepherd Brant was gossiping with Michael Draycott and filling another pipe before he took the home-track to Logie. Then the jar of men’s voices raised in quarrel killed all peace, and Hardcastle, glancing down, saw five of the Wilderness Folk confronting the two of Logie. He made light of the quarter-mile between himself and trouble, and Brant turned at sound of his coming.
“We’ve missed you,” he grumbled; “but better late than never.”
“What is it?”
“Nay, ask these lean swine from Garsykes.”
The five were tongue-tied and loutish, till one of them—Jake Bramber, who had talked with Nita on the bridge and afterwards gone to Logie to feed old Roy with meat and hemlock—strutted his squat impudence up to Hardcastle.
“There’s a dog called Storm,” he said.
“There is,” Hardcastle agreed, with bitter quiet.
“He’s taken many sheep of ours. So I just asked Brant if he’d missed any ewes of his own this morning when he counted the tally. He owned to a score.”
“Well?”
“Nay, you needn’t be so high and mighty about it. They’re in our pinfold yonder—tribute, as you might say, for what Storm’s done to ours.”
“There’s a pinfold over Logie way, and three sheep of yours tried to stop me there. Did I break all their bones, or only half? I’ve often wondered.”
And now the five men stared at Hardcastle, marvelling at his hardihood.
“There’s one of you killed a dog of mine,” said the Master, his eyes holding Jake’s, “and he’ll pay toll for that.”
“Seems as if times were changed,” growled the little man, strutting it still. “D’ye know what it means when the Lost Folk put an arrow on a gate?”
“We know,” said Hardcastle—“and, Brant, go down to their pinfold and bring back our ewes.”
