The Leithen Stories. Buchan John
tilted, and, after some strenuous minutes, the carcase was heaved and pushed and levered on to its floor. Janet, hanging on to the shafts, with incredible exertions pulled them down, while Benjie – a tiny Atlas – prevented the beast from slipping back by bearing its weight on his shoulders. The backboard was put in its place, the mass of brooms and heather piled on the stag, the pony restored to the shafts, and the cortege was ready for the road. Benjie had his face adorned with a new scratch and a quantity of deer’s blood, Janet had nobly torn her jumper and one stocking; but these were trivial casulties for so great an action.
‘Drive straight to the Castle and tell them to leave the beast before the door. You understand, Benjie? Before the door – not in the larder. I’m going to strike home through the woods, for I’m an awful sight.’
‘Ye look very bonny, lady,’ said the gallant Benjie as he took up the reins.
Janet watched the strange outfit lumber from the hollow and nearly upset over a hidden boulder. It had the appearance of a moving peat-stack, with a solitary horn jutting heavenwards like a withered branch. Once again the girl subsided on the heather and laughed till she ached.
* * *
The highway by the Larrrig side slept in the golden afternoon. Not a conveyance had disturbed its peace save the baker’s cart from Inverlarrig, which had passed about three o’clock. About half-past five a man crossed it – a man who had descended from the hill and used the stepping-stones where Sir Archibald Roylance had come to grief. He was a tall man with a rifle, hatless, untidy and very warm, and he seemed to desire to be unobserved, for he made certain that the road was clear before he ventured on it. Once across, he found shelter in a clump of broom, whence he could command a long stretch of the highway, almost from Glenraden gates to the Bridge of Larrig.
Mr Palliser-Yeates, having reached sanctuary – for behind him lay the broken hillsides of Crask – mopped his brow and lit a pipe. He did not seem to be greatly distressed at the result of the afternoon. Indeed, he laughed – not wildly like Janet, but quietly and with philosophy. ‘A very neat hold-up,’ he reflected. ‘Gad, she came on like a small destroying angel … That’s the girl Archie’s been talking about … a very good girl. She looked as if she’d have taken on an army corps … Jolly romantic ending – might have come out of a novel. Only it should have been Archie, and a prospect of wedding bells – what? … Anyway, we’d have won out all right but for the girl, and I don’t mind being beaten by her …’
His meditations were interrupted by the sound of furious wheels on the lone highway, and he cautiously raised his head to see an old horse and an older cart being urged towards him at a canter. The charioteer was a small boy, and above the cart sides projected a stag’s horn.
Forgetting all precautions, he stood up, and at the sight of him Benjie, not without difficulty, checked the ardour of his much-belaboured beast, and stopped before him.
‘I’ve gotten it,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘The stag’s in the cairt. The lassie and me histed him in, and she tell’t me to drive to the Castle. But when I was out o’ sicht o’ her, I took the auld road through the wud and here I am. We’ve gotten the stag off Glenraden ground and we can hide him up at Crask, and I’ll slip doun i’ the cairt afore mornin’ and leave him ootbye the Castle wi’ a letter from John Macnab. Fegs, it was a near thing!’
Benjie’s voice rose into a shrill paean, his disreputable face shone with unholy joy. And then something in Palliser-Yeates’s eyes cut short his triumph.
‘Benjie, you little fool, right about turn at once. I’m much obliged to you, but it can’t be done. It isn’t the game, you know. I chucked up the sponge when Miss Raden challenged me, and I can’t go back on that. Back you go to Glenraden and hand over the stag. Quick, before you’re missed … And look here – you’re a first-class sportsman, and I’m enormously grateful to you. Here is something for your trouble.’
Benjie’s face grew very red as he swung his equipage round. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘If ye like to be beat by a lassie, dinna blame me. I’m no wantin’ your money.’
The next moment the fish-cart was clattering in the other direction.
To a mystified and anxious girl, pacing the gravel in front of the Castle, entered the fish-cart. The old horse seemed in the last stages of exhaustion, and the boy who drove it was a dejected and sparrow-like figure.
‘Where in the world have you been?’ Janet demanded.
‘I was run awa wi’, lady,’ Benjie whined. ‘The auld powny didna like the smell o’ the stag. He bolted in the wud, and I didna get him stoppit till verra near the Larrig Bridge.’
‘Poor little Benjie! Now you’re going to Mrs Fraser to have the best tea you ever had in your life, and you shall also have ten shillings.’
‘Thank you kindly, lady, but I canna stop for tea. I maun awa down to Inverlarrig for my fish.’ But his hand closed readily on the note, for he had no compunction in taking money from one who had made him to bear the bitterness of incomprehensible defeat.
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