William Black - Donald Ross of Heimra (Volume 3 of 3)

But that was not at all the view that Fred Stanley took of this amazing and incomprehensible incident.

"There's some trick in it, Frank," he said vehemently, as he hurried his friend along with him, on their way back to the house. "There's some underhand trick in it, and I want to know what it means. I tell you, we must get the keepers, and go up the hill at once, and see what is going on. There's something at the bottom of all this jugglery."

"Jugglery or no jugglery," his companion said, with much good-humour, "it has come in very handy. If a riot had been started, who knows what the end might have been? It wasn't the raid into the Glen Orme forest that concerned me, nor yet the driving of the sheep off Meall-na-Fearn; but I confess I was anxious about your sister. If she had been denounced before an angry and excited meeting – "

"Oh, we should have been able to take care of ourselves!" the younger man said, dismissing that matter contemptuously.

"And if it was Ross of Heimra who stepped in to prevent all this," Meredyth continued, "I, for one, am very much obliged to him."

"Oh, don't be an ass, Frank!" the other said, with angry impatience. "If it is Donald Ross who has done all this, I'll swear he has done it for his own purposes. And I want to know. I want to find out. I want to see what the trick means. And of one thing I am absolutely certain, and that is, that Donald Ross is up on the moor at this very moment. Oh, yes," the young man went on, seeing that his wild suspicions received no encouragement from his more cautious companion, "a fine stratagem, to keep us idling and kicking our heels about here all the morning – and on the Twelfth, too! I thought it was odd that the meeting should be fixed for the Twelfth; but now I begin to see. Now I begin to understand why Donald Ross came over from Heimra yesterday afternoon."

"Well, what do you imagine?" Meredyth asked.

"Why, it's as clear as daylight!" the younger man exclaimed – jumping from vague surmises to definite conclusions. "Here have we been hanging about all the morning, like a couple of simpletons, waiting for a general riot or some nonsense of that kind, while Ross and his gang of poachers have been up on the moor, sweeping the best beats clean of every bird! That has been the little programme! – and a fine consignment of game to be sent away to Inverness to-night, as soon as the dark comes down. But they may not be off the hill yet; and we'll hurry up Hector and Hugh, and have a look round." And then he added, vindictively: "I'd let the Twelfth go – I shouldn't mind a bit having had the Twelfth spoilt – if only I could catch those scoundrels – and the chief of them – red-handed."

"All I have to say is," observed the more phlegmatic Meredyth, "that if we are going up the hill we may as well take our guns with us and a brace of dogs. We can have an hour or two. The fag-end of the Twelfth is better than no Twelfth; and your sister says she wants some birds."

"Birds?" the other repeated. "What do you expect to find on the ground after those poaching thieves have been over it?"

However, in the end he consented; and as they found that Hector – undisturbed by all those alarming rumours of riot and pillage – had kept everything in readiness for them, the two young men snatched a hasty sandwich and set forth. It was not a very eager shooting party. There was a sensation that the great possibilities of the Twelfth had been ruined for them. Nevertheless, there would be some occupation for the afternoon, and the mistress of the household wanted some grouse.

But, indeed, it soon became evident that it was not shooting that was uppermost in Fred Stanley's mind. He overruled Hector's plan for taking the nearest beats. He would have his companions hold away up the Corrie Bhreag, which leads to the Glen Orme forest; and ever he was making for the higher ranges – scanning the ground far ahead of him, and listening intently in the strange silence; while he was clearly unwilling to have the dogs uncoupled.

"Look here, man," at length said Meredyth, who, though new to the place, had a trained eye for the features of a moor; "surely we have come down wind far enough? It will take us all our time to get back before dinner, even if we pick the beats on the way home – "

The answer was unexpected – a half-smothered exclamation of mingled anger and triumph.

"Didn't I tell you so?" young Stanley exclaimed, with his eyes fixed on a small, dark object a long distance up the glen. "Didn't I tell you we should find him here? Don't you see him – away up yonder? My lad, when you come poaching, you shouldn't put on sailor's clothes; they're too conspicuous. What do you say, Hector: can you make him out? Well, whether you can or not, I will tell you his name. That is Mr. Donald Ross, if you want to know – and I guessed we should find him here or hereabouts!"

"I am not sure," said Hector, slowly, also with his eyes fixed on the distant and dark figure.

"But I am!" Fred Stanley went on. "And perhaps you can tell me what he is doing up on our shooting?"

"Mebbe," said the serious-visaged keeper, with a little hesitation, "mebbe he was waiting to see that none of the lads would be for going into the forest. Or mebbe he was up at Glen Orme."

"Oh, stuff and nonsense!" the young man cried, scornfully. "Do you think we are children! I tell you, we have caught him at last; and wherever the rest of the gang have sneaked off to, he is bound to come along here and face it out. Yes, he is coming: I can see he is moving this way. Very well, Frank, you have the dogs uncoupled now, and begin to shoot back home: I'm going to meet my gentleman – and I will take my gun with me, just to keep a wholesome check on insolence."

"You will not," said Meredyth, with decision – for he knew not whither this young man's obvious wrath and enmity might not lead him. "I will wait here with you: whoever that is, he is clearly coming this way."

"Why, of course he must!" was the rejoinder. "He sees he is caught: what else is there left for him but to come along and try to put some kind of face on it?" Then presently he exclaimed: "Well, of all the effrontry that I ever beheld! He is carrying a gun under his arm! – how's that for coolness?"

"I am not thinking it is a gun, sir," said the tall, brown-bearded keeper; "it is more like a steeck."

"Yes, it is a stick, Fred," Meredyth put in, after a moment.

"Oh, why should he have a gun? What does he want with a gun?" the young man said, without being disconcerted for a moment. "He has only to direct the operations of his confederates. A stick? – very likely! – the master-poacher doesn't want to be encumbered with a gun!"

And so they waited. It was a singular scene for the Twelfth of August on the side of a Highland hill: no ranging of dogs, no cracking of breechloaders, no picking up of a bird here and there from the thick heather, but a small group, standing silent and constrained, and dimly aware that pent-up human passions were about to burst forth amid these vast and impressive solitudes. Young Ross of Heimra – for it was unmistakably he – came leisurely along; his attention was evidently fixed on the sportsmen; perhaps he was wondering that they did not let loose the dogs and get to work. But as he drew nearer he must have perceived that they were awaiting his approach; and so – with something of interrogation and surprise in his look – he came up to them.

"I hope you have had good sport," said Fred Stanley.

Donald Ross stared: there was something in the young man's tone that seemed to strike him.

"I – I don't quite understand," said he.

"Oh, well, it's only this," replied the other, striving to keep down his rising rage, and speaking in a deliberately taunting fashion, "that when you find anyone on a Highland moor on the Twelfth of August you naturally suppose that he has come for grouse. And why not? I am sorry we have interrupted you. When you have the fishing and the stalking, why shouldn't you have the shooting as well? I am sorry if we have disturbed you – "