Bob, Son of Battle by Alfred Ollivant (crime books to read TXT) 📕

The candle trembled and was still again.

“A lickin’ or a lie—tak’ yer choice!”

The boy looked scornfully down on his father. Standing on his naked feet, he already towered half a head above the other and was twice the man.

“D’yo’ think I’m fear’d o’ a thrashin’ fra yo’? Goo’ gracious me!” he sneered. “Why, I’d as lief let owd Grammer Maddox lick me, for all I care.”

A reference to his physical insufficiencies fired the little man as surely as a lighted match powder.

“Ye maun be cauld, standin’ there so. Rin ye doon and fetch oor little frien’ “—a reference to a certain strap hanging in the kitchen. “I’ll see if I can warm ye.”

David turned and stumbled down the unlit, narrow stairs. The hard, cold boards struck like death against his naked feet. At his heels followed Red Wull, his hot breath fanning the boy’s bare legs.

So into the kitchen and back up the stairs, and Red Wull always following.

“I’ll no despair yet o’ teachin’ ye the fifth commandment, though I kill masel’ in doin’ it!” cried the little man, seizing the strap from the boy’s numb grasp.

When it was over, M’Adam turned, breathless, away. At the threshold of the room he stopped and looked round: a little, dim-lit, devilish figure, framed in the door; while from the blackness behind, Red Wull’s eyes gleamed yellow.

Glancing back, the little man caught such an expression on David’s face that for once he was fairly afraid. He banged the door and hobbled actively down the stairs.

Chapter VII. THE WHITE WINTER

M’ADAM—in his sober moments at least— never touched David again; instead, he devoted himself to the more congenial exercise of the whiplash of his tongue. And he was wise; for David, who was already nigh a head the taller of the two, and comely and strong in proportion, could, if he would, have taken his father in the hollow of his hand and crumpled him like a dry leaf. Moreover, with his tongue, at least, the little man enjoyed the noble pleasure of making the boy wince. And so the war was carried on none the less vindictively.

Meanwhile another summer was passing away, and every day brought fresh proofs of the prowess of Owd Bob. Tammas, whose stock of yarns anent Rex son of Rally had after forty years’ hard wear begun to pall on the loyal ears of even old Jonas, found no lack of new material now. In the Dalesman’s Daughter in Silverdale and in the Border Ram at Grammochtown, each succeeding market day brought some fresh tale. Men told how the gray dog had outdone Gypsy Jack, the sheep-sneak; how he had cut out a Kenmuir shearling from the very centre of Londesley’s pack; and a thousand like stories.

The Gray Dogs of Kenmuir have always been equally heroes and favorites in the Daleland. And the confidence of the Dalesmen in Owd Bob was now invincible. Sometimes on market days he would execute some unaccotmtable maneuvre, and .. strange shepherd would ask: “What’s the gray dog at?” To which the nearest Dalesman would reply: “Nay, I canno tell ye! But he’s reet enough. Yon’s Owd Bob o’ Kenmuir.”

Whereon the stranger would prick his ears and watch with close attention.

“Yon’s Owd Bob o’ Kenmuir, is he?” he would say; for already among the faculty the name was becoming known. And never in such a case did the young dog fail to justify the faith of his supporters.

It came, therefore, as a keen disappointment to every Dalesman, from Herbert Trotter, Secretary of the Trials, to little Billy Thornton, when the Master persisted in his decision not to run the dog for the Cup in the approaching Dale Trials; and that though parson, squire, and even Lady Eleanour essayed to shake his purpose. It was nigh fifty years since Rex son o’ Rally had won back the Trophy for the land that gave it birth; it was time, they thought, for a Daleland dog, a Gray Dog of Kenmuir—the terms are practically synonymous—to bring it home again. And Tarnmas, that polished phrase-maker, was only expressing the feelings of every Dalesman in the room when, one night at the Arms, he declared of Owd Bob that “to ha’ run was to ha’ won.” At which M’Adam sniggered audibly and winked at Red Wull. “To ha’ run was to ha’ one—lickin’; to rin next year’ll be to— Win next year.” Tammas interposed dogmatically. “Onless “—with shivering sarcasm

—“you and yer Wullie are thinkin’ o’ winnin’.” The little man rose from his solitary seat at the back of the room and pattered across.

“Wullie and I are thinkin’ o’ t,” he whispered loudly in the old man’s ear. “And mair:

what Adam M’Adam and his Red Wull think o’ doin’, that, ye may remairk, Mr. Thornton, they do. Next year we rin, and next year— we win. Come, Wullie, we’ll leave ‘em to chew that”; and he marched out of the room amid the jeers of the assembled topers. When quiet was restored, it was Jim Mason who declared: “One thing certain, win or no, they’ll not he far off.”

Meanwhile the summer ended abruptly. Hard on the heels of a sweltering autumn the winter came down. In that year the Daleland assumed very early its white cloak. The Silver Mere was soon ice-veiled; the Wastrel rolled sullenly down below Kenmuir, its creeks and quiet places tented with jagged sheets of ice; while the Scaur and Muir Pike raised hoary heads against the frosty blue. It was the season still remembered in the North as the White Winter—the worst, they say, since the famous i8o8.

For days together Jim Mason was stuck with his bags in the Dalesman’s Daughter, and there was no communication between the two Dales. On the Mere Marches the snow massed deep and impassable in thick, billowy drifts. In the Devil’s Bowl men said it lay piled some score feet deep. And sheep, seeking shelter in the ghylls and protected spots, were buried and lost in their hundreds.

That is the time to test the hearts of shepherds and sheepdogs, when the wind runs ice-cold across the waste of white, and the low woods on the upland walks shiver black through a veil of snow, and sheep must be found and folded or lost: a trial of head as well as heart, of resource as well as resolution.

In that winter more than one man and many a dog lost his life in the quiet performance of his duty, gliding to death over the slippery snow-shelves, or overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of the warm, suffocating white: “smoored,” as they call it. Many a deed was done, many a death died, recorded only in that Book which holds the names of those—men or animals, souls or no souls—who tried.

They found old Wrottesley, the squire’s head shepherd, lying one morning at Gill’s foot, like a statue in its white bed, the snow gently blowing about the venerable face, calm and beautiful in death. And stretched upon his bosom, her master’s hands blue, and stiff, still clasped about her neck, his old dog Jess. She had huddled there, as a last hope, to keep the dear, dead master warm, her great heart riven, hoping where there was no hope.

That night she followed him to herd sheep in a better land. Death from exposure, Dingley, the vet., gave it; but as little M’Adam, his eyes dimmer than their wont, declared huskily; “We ken better, Wullie.”

Cyril Gilbraith, a young man not overburdened with emotions, told with a sob in his voice how, at the terrible Rowan Rock, Jim Mason had stood, impotent, dumb, big-eyed, watching Betsy—Betsy, the friend and partner of the last ten years—slipping over the ice-cold surface, silently appealing to the hand that had never failed her before—sliding to Eternity.

In the Daleland that winter the endurance o( many a shepherd and his dog was strained past breaking-point. From the frozen Black Water to the white-peaked Grammoch Pike two men only, each always with his shaggy adjutant, never owned defeat; never turned back; never failed in a thing attempted.

In the following spring, Mr. Tinkerton, the squire’s agent, declared that James Moore and Adam M’Adam—Owd Bob, rather, and Red Wull—had lost between them fewer sheep than any single farmer on the whole March Mere Estate-a proud record.

Of the two, many a tale was told that winter. They were invincible, incomparable; worthy antagonists.

It was Owd Bob who, when he could not drive the band of Black Faces over the narrow Razorback which led to safety, induced them to follow him across that ten-inch death-track, one by one, like children behind their mistress. It was Red Wull who was seen coming down the precipitous Saddler’s How, shouldering up that grand old gentleman, King o’ the Dale, whose leg was broken.

The gray dog it was who found Cyril Gilbraith by the White Stones, with a cigarette and a sprained ankle, on the night the whole village was out with lanterns searching for the well-loved young scapegrace. It was the Tailless Tyke and his master who one bitter evening came upon little Mrs. Burton, lying in a huddle beneath the lea of the fast-whitening Druid’s Pillar with her latest baby on her breast. It was little M’Adam who took off his coat and wrapped the child in it; little M’Adam who unwound his plaid, threw it like a breastband across the dog’s great chest, and tied the ends round the weary woman’s waist. Red Wull it was who dragged her back to the Sylvester Arms and life, straining like a giant through the snow, while his master staggered behind with the babe in his arms. When they reached the inn it was M’Adam who, with a smile on his face, told the landlord what he thought of him for sending his wife across the Marches on such a day and on his errand. To which:

“I’d a cauld,” pleaded honest Jem.

For days together David could not cross the Stony Bottom to Kenmuir. His enforced confinement to the Grange led, however, to no more frequent collisions than usual with his. father. For M’Adam and Red Wull were out, at all hours, in all weathers, night and day, toiling at their work of salvation.

At last, one afternoon, David managed to cross the Bottom at a point where a fallen thorn-tree gave him a bridge over the soft snow. He stayed but a little while at Kenmuir, yet when he started for home it was snowing again.

By the time he had crossed the ice-draped bridge over the Wastrel, a blizzard was raging. The wind roared past him, smiting him so that. he could barely stand; and the snow leaped at him so that he could not see. But he held on doggedly; slipping, sliding, tripping, down and up again, with one arm shielding his face. On, on, into the white darkness, blindly on sobbing, stumbling, dazed.

At length, nigh dead, he reached the brink of the Stony Bottom. He looked up and he looked down, but nowhere in that blinding mist could he see the fallen thorn-tree. He took a step forward into the white morass, and ‘sank up to his thigh. He struggled feebly to free himself, and sank deeper. The snow wreathed, twisting, round him like a white flame, and he collapsed, softly crying, on that soft bed.

“I canna—I canna!” he moaned.

Little Mrs. Moore, her face whiter and frailer than ever, stood at the window, lookiing out into the storm.

“I canna rest for thinkin’ o’ th’ lad,” she said. Then, turning, she saw ber husband, his fur cap down over his ears, buttoning his pilot-coat about his throat, while Owd Bob stood at his feet, waiting.

“Ye’re no goin’, James?” she