Читать книгу Where the Golden Eagle Soars - W E Johns - Страница 5

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“Not much traffic here,” observed Frank, presently.

“No,” agreed Malcolm. “That’s the danger.”

Frank frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“You so seldom see another vehicle you’re apt to get careless and imagine you have the road to yourself. If you do meet a car it’s as well to suppose the driver of it can’t see you.”

“Why can’t he see you?”

“Because the chances are he’ll be looking at anything but the road. If the driver is a stranger he’ll probably be admiring the landscape. If he’s a local man he may be a farmer, wandering along in bottom gear with a spy-glass to his eye counting his sheep on a distant hillside. With no fences to stop them sheep blunder along the roads, too. Cattle are worse, particularly the black Aberdeen-Angus. They come down at night and sleep on the road. Being black you can’t see ’em. Or you may bump into a deer, dazzled by your headlights. One night I had one jump clean over my bonnet. Gave me a rare fright, I can tell you. If you lose control you can easily go over the brae, and it’s a long drop down to the river. So you see, there are just as many hazards here, if not more, than you meet in a city, where things are kept in order.”

“I’m glad you warned me,” said Frank, seriously. “I’d never have guessed it.”

Malcolm smiled. “As I’ve already told you, you’ll have a lot to learn while you’re here.”

“That’s okay with me, Mac,” returned Frank, using the abbreviated name he had found for Malcolm. “You show me the ropes and I’ll do my best to pick ’em up.”

“That’s the spirit. It’s the visitors who won’t be told anything who get into trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Yes, and before you leave here you’ll understand why.”

The brake ran on between steep banks of pine, fir, mountain ash and silver birch. Just before reaching the open country at the top of the brae an animal bounded across the road to vanish in the undergrowth on the other side. Malcolm, who had dry-skidded to avoid it, took his foot off the brake. “See what I mean,” he said, significantly.

“What was it—a young deer?”

“A roebuck. He’ll get himself shot.”

“Why?”

“I’d wager he’s been in Gordon’s roots. That may mean trouble for me. I hate shooting the pretty little beasts but the Ministry of Agriculture and the Forestry Commission are hot on them being kept down. The bill for damages can be steep.”

“They eat the roots?”

“It isn’t so much what they eat. One will walk along a row of turnips and bite the top off every one. To make matters worse they say a sheep won’t touch a root that’s been bitten by a deer. Don’t ask me why. In the forestry plantations they kill the young trees by standing on their hind legs and stripping the bark from top to bottom. The trouble is, there are now so many plantations, and the trees are so thick it’s almost impossible to get into them. We’ve a solid block of a thousand acres on our ground. We’re finding it a nuisance because it’s a perfect sanctuary for vermin. The Forestry Commission can take what land they want. Murray, the head forester, was at me the other day about the damage being done to the young trees by roe. As if I can help it. But we can talk about that presently.”

The brake was now running across an apparently limitless ocean of heather. To the left a succession of waves mounted a long slope to a deeply indented skyline, with the pinky-purple spray of heather broken by sprawling clumps of gorse and dark green close-knit spikes of juniper. Red-brown streaks showed where the peat had been exposed by minor landslides or broken open by erosion, sometimes to reveal an upthrust ridge of the underlying limestone. As Frank remarked, it looked as if the landscape had been tilted up for them to see.

Away to the right, beyond the river valley with its crowding pines, larch, firs and birch, rolled range after range of rounded hills, rising and falling, pink on the nearer slopes, mauve in the middle distance and fading at last in piles of deep blue shadows that could only be mountains.

“If you’re game I have a plan to camp out in that direction,” said Malcolm. “It’s the most perfect spot imaginable, with everything laid on, fresh water from a spring and an old luncheon hut to sleep in. No one, except perhaps our gamekeeper, goes there from one year to another, so the ground is never disturbed. That’s what the wild creatures like, so we should see some interesting things. With luck I’ll be able to show you our eagles. There are plenty of berries there of one sort or another, blaeberries, snowberries and so on, which many birds adore.”

“What are those queer bare patches I can see?”

“That’s where the heather has been burnt off. It’s an awful job; and it can be dangerous, too. You have to choose the day carefully, in late autumn or winter, because should the fire get out of hand, and that does happen, you can burn the country for miles, trees and everything.”

“Why burn the heather, anyway?”

“Chiefly to provide grazing for the sheep. They eat the fresh young shoots in spring. There’s nothing else.”

“Is it public land?”

“No, but every crofter has the right to put so many sheep on the hill according to the rent he pays. The sheep can’t eat the old stick heather, as we call it, so unless you get rid of it by burning, and that’s the only way, they starve. Some do starve in a hard winter, anyway. What’s an even worse nuisance is the bracken. Look at that enormous patch of it over there.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It kills the heather, and there’s getting more and more of it. We used not to be troubled with it.”

“Why? Why should it suddenly increase now?”

“I’ll tell you. For centuries the only cattle here hardy enough to stand our winter were the native, shaggy, big-horned Highlanders. They’d eat bracken, and so in time bleed it to death. They’ve been replaced almost everywhere by the black Aberdeen-Angus, which are said to carry more beef. They won’t eat bracken, so now it spreads and is smothering everything else. Nothing can be done about it, so it looks as if Scotland, instead of being a land of purple heather, will be a jungle of bracken.”

“How much of this land is yours?”

“Nearly all that you can see.”

“Say, that’s an awful lot of ground.”

“We run back from the river for about twelve miles. That isn’t a big estate in these parts, where forty or fifty thousand acres is not uncommon. We’ve only about twenty thousand.”

“Then what do you come to?”

“More heather. The next estate. From our back door, if you were crazy enough to try, you’d walk the best part of forty miles before you saw a house, a road, or a living soul. It’s all wild country, as you’ll see. There’s the Lodge, below us on the right, near the river.”

Malcolm indicated a long low mansion house, with a turret at each end, standing with several outbuildings in its own grounds, protected from the north by a thick belt of firs.

“Say, that’s some house,” exclaimed Frank. “Why do you have a place that size?”

“Because it happens to be like that. Believe me, Mother wishes it was a quarter the size.”

“How many people live in it?”

“Five. Mother, myself, a cook and two maids—local girls. The cottage you see just beyond the trees is where Donald Macdonald lives with his wife. He’s our gamekeeper. He was born here and his father and grandfather before him, so he knows his way about. He’s a great character. You’ll meet him presently. The Lodge was built in the days when people had plenty of money and friends came up for the fishing and shooting. But that’s all finished. People can’t afford to entertain any more.”

The brake ran down a winding road, badly in need of repair, towards the Lodge, and in so doing passed the gamekeeper’s cottage. Several dogs, labradors and spaniels, standing on their hind legs clawed at the iron bars of their kennels as they set up a clamour of barking. With them, looking incongruous, was a Cairn terrier. A buxom woman, who was hanging out washing, waved.

“That’s Mrs. Macdonald,” said Malcolm.

“That reminds me. I noticed you touched your cap to the gillie. Do you usually touch your hat to an employee?”

“If he touches his hat to me, certainly. Heaven forbid that Duncan should teach me manners. There’s nothing subservient in that, as some people in the south seem to think. With us it’s merely a sign of mutual respect.”

“What are the dogs making all that fuss about?”

Malcolm smiled. “They know the brake and hope they may be going out hunting.”

“What’s a Cairn doing there? A pet I suppose.”

“Not on your life. We don’t make pets of dogs in these parts. Pals, if you like, since you’re always working together. Here a dog has to do something for its living. That Cairn you saw is Teresa. She’s as tough as they come. The Cairn was originally a sporting dog, not a lapdog, as too often it is now in England.”

“What’s her job here?”

“Bolting foxes from their earths. These hills are not short of villains and the fox is one of them. Here we show him no mercy. We can’t afford to. I suppose the poor brute can’t help being a fox, but the things he does puts a price on his head, or to be precise, on his tail, for which the Ministry of Agriculture will pay ten shillings.”

“What’s his crime?”

“Killing lambs. By killing them as they’re being born, a favourite trick since the ewe is helpless, he kills the mother, too. On the hills among the rocks he can’t be hunted in the ordinary way, but he has to be kept down somehow or there would be no sheep and precious little poultry. Having seen some of the things foxes have done, such as killing more than they need to eat, for the sheer devilment of it, I don’t mind shooting one, given a chance. I allow traps, provided they’re visited every day to make sure the poor brute doesn’t suffer; but I won’t have poison used, which is the way some of the farmers would deal with them if they had their way. I suppose it’s pardonable.”

“The fox has to live.”

“So has the farmer. There’s plenty of food for the fox on the hill without him raiding the farmyards.”

“Do you shoot anything else beside foxes?”

“One or two villains. I’ll tell you about them later. Donald mostly attends to that. In the winter we have to kill rabbits and hares, and perhaps a deer, to provide meat for the dogs. Being thirty odd miles from a town we can’t just slip round the corner and buy it from a butcher, anyway not when the road is iced up or we’re snowed in for weeks at a time. The dogs eat a lot of oatmeal, but for the work they have to do it isn’t enough. Take the sheep dogs, for instance. They’re out in all weathers, summer and winter. A farmer would be helpless without his dogs. He wouldn’t be able to find his sheep, let alone bring them in. Sheep and cattle wander miles away. Meat of some sort is essential for a dog if it’s to keep fit. After all, that’s its natural food. Without it a dog gets anaemic. In its wild state it would find its own food. It would be unfair to deprive it of it because it works for us. My dogs sometimes get a feed of salted salmon. They like that.”

“You don’t mind killing things?”

“I don’t enjoy killing anything, if that’s what you mean, but in a place like this there are times when it has to be done. I agree that everything has a right to live, but for some illogical reason most people dislike killing some things more than others. Sympathy often goes to a creature that’s pretty to look at, when in fact its character may be worse than something that looks repulsive. Some creatures by their very natures arouse our hatred. Stoats and weasels, for instance, I can shoot without a qualm because they’re such shocking little murderers, killing not so much for food as for the sheer joy of it.”

“You don’t mind killing salmon?”

“Fish, to me, come into a different category. They’re cold-blooded. They all kill and eat each other, anyway.”

“There’s nothing else for a fish to eat except another fish.”

“That’s true. There’s nothing more beautiful than a fresh-run salmon, but, let’s face it, it happens to be good to eat. I hate hitting a salmon on the head, and in fact, if one has put up a good fight I often throw it back into the river. Many gillies feel like that. You watch Duncan. When he gives a salmon the ‘priest’, that is, an instrument for knocking a fish on the head, he always raises his cap and says, ‘sorry old man’. If one gets away you’ll hear him say, ‘Good luck to you. It’s my sport but it’s your life.’ ”

“That’s the right spirit.”

“The trouble about killing things is, when man steps in, in his determination to have everything his own way, killing this and trying to preserve that, he almost invariably upsets the balance of nature; and that can have such far-reaching results that you’d be amazed. Later on I’ll give you some examples. Here we are.”

The brake turned sharply through an open gateway into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by outbuildings, most of them in a sad state of disrepair.

“Well, this is home,” announced Malcolm, bringing the brake to a stop. “Welcome to Glenarder Lodge. When I’ve shown you round I hope you’ll regard it as your own home. Here’s Donald, coming out of the gun-room. You’d better call him Mr. Macdonald till you know him better. We don’t use Christian names until you’re on close terms with a man. If Donald seems a bit blunt take no notice. He’s nearly seventy and should have retired, but he won’t give up. Between you and me I suspect he hates handing over the ground he’s looked after for so long to someone else. He gets rheumatics, and that makes him a bit crabby. He’s a wonderful keeper; he has eyes like a hawk; he misses nothing. He’s more a friend to me than a servant.”

Malcolm had stopped the brake outside a garage which from its size had obviously once been a coach-house. The two boys got out.

Said Malcolm, softly: “I have a suspicion there’s trouble in the wind.”

“What makes you think that?” asked Frank.

“Donald usually wears his best suit when he intends to be near the lodge. He’s wearing the old clothes he puts on for the hill.”

“You keep talking about the hill. What hill? Do you mean one particular hill?”

“No. Any high ground. The moor generally, although as a matter of fact most ground when you leave the road is hilly.”

The keeper walked to meet them. Although apparently not a man of remarkable physique he had a tough, forbidding, even fierce look about him. Clean shaven, his face was lean, with the skin, the colour and texture of leather, drawn into deep lines. There was still no grey to be seen in his black hair when he raised his tweed cap on being introduced to Frank, nor in the bushy eyebrows that bristled over dark, piercing eyes. His most prominent feature was his nose, which was large, and hooked like the beak of a bird of prey.

“You’ve been on the hill, or you’re going,” said Malcolm. “Is anything wrong?”

“Aye,” growled Donald, in a deep voice.

“What’s the trouble?”

“A dog.”

“Ah!” breathed Malcolm. “Gone wild?”

“Aye.

“What’s it doing?”

“Killing sheep.”

“Where?”

“His lair is somewhere in the Black Banks.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“I saw him first ten days ago. I’ve seen him three times since but there’s no getting near him. I’ve also seen his work.”

“What sort of dog is it?”

“Alsatian.”

“Recognize him?”

“Na. He’s a stranger in these parts.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“I reckoned to get the devil. But there’s no getting near him. He knows a gun when he sees one. I thought I had him once. He’s taken to digging out rabbits. I spotted him at it. He had nearly buried himself. I saw the dirt flying up in the air. But he must have been watching. Long before I was in range he was off like a streak o’ lightning.”

“Well, do what you can, and let me know if you get him.”

“Be careful if you go on the hill. Yon beast’s dangerous.”

“I’ll watch it. I must go now. Come on, Frank.”

As they walked towards a side door of the house Malcolm went on: “That’s another sort of villain we sometimes have to deal with, although fortunately not very often.”

“What do you do in a case like this?”

“There’s only one thing to do when a dog turns to crime and becomes an outlaw—shoot it, before it wipes out all the sheep on the hill. Once a dog decides to go wild and takes to the hills he’s beyond redemption. He gets a taste for blood. He never comes back. He has to be killed. There’s no argument about that. He’s worse than a wolf because he has more intelligence.”

“It seems awful to have to shoot a dog.”

“If he decides to behave like a wild beast he must be treated like one. Don’t you make any mistake, Frank. That animal knows perfectly well what it’s doing. He’s signed his own death warrant. Respectable dogs seem to sense that, too, and they’ll kill him if they get half a chance. Take it from me, dogs understand more than some people imagine. One day I’ll tell you a tale of a dog I knew—but here we are.”

Malcolm broke off as they reached the door. He pushed it open. A short corridor gave access to a room of some size, furnished more for comfort than any other purpose.

A woman of middle age, tall, well-groomed, wearing a tweed suit, who had been writing letters at a desk, rose and came forward, smiling, hands outstretched.

“Mother,” said Malcolm. “This is Frank.”

“Now I can thank you for what you did for Malcolm,” said Malcolm’s mother, warmly. “I’m delighted to have you here.”

“It was kind of you to ask me, ma’am,” returned Frank, as he took the proffered hand.

“Malcolm will show you your room. You must be tired after your long journey and no doubt you’ll want a wash. Don’t be too long. Lunch is nearly ready. We can talk then.”

“Come on, Frank. I’ll take you up,” said Malcolm. “We’ve given you a room next to mine.”