The Leithen Stories. Buchan John
for will they no let me come up to Crask ony mair?’ the voice demanded in a sort of tinker’s whine.
Leithen turned and found the boy of the ginger-beer.
‘Hullo! You oughtn’t to do that, my son. You’ll give people heart disease. What was it you asked?’
‘What … for … will … they … no … let … me come … up to Crask … ony mair?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know. What’s Crask?’
‘Ye ken it fine. It’s the big hoose up the hill. I seen you come doon frae it yoursel’ this mornin’.’
Leithen was tempted to deny this allegation and assert his title of tourist, but something in the extreme intelligence of the boy’s face suggested that such a course might be dangerous. Instead he said, ‘Tell me your name, and what’s your business at Crask?’
‘My name’s Benjamin Bogle, but I get Fish Benjie frae most folks. I’ve sell’t haddies and flukes to Crask these twa months. But this mornin’ I was tell’t no to come back, and when I speired what way, the auld wife shut the door on me.’
A recollection of Sir Archie’s order the night before returned to Leithen’s mind, and with it a great sense of insecurity. The argus-eyed child, hot with a grievance, had seen him descend from Crask, and was therefore in a position to give away the whole show. What chance was there for secrecy with this malevolent scout hanging around?
‘Where do you live, Benjie?’
‘I bide in my cairt. My father’s in jyle, and my mither’s lyin’ badly in Muirtown. I sell fish to a’ the gentry.’
‘And you want to know why you can’t sell them at Crask?’
‘Aye, I wad like to ken that. The auld wife used to be a kind body and gie me jeely pieces. What’s turned her into a draygon?’
Leithen was accustomed, in the duties of his profession, to quick decisions on tactics, and now he took one which was destined to be momentous.
‘Benjie,’ he said solemnly, ‘there’s a lot of things in the world that I don’t understand, and it stands to reason that there must be more that you don’t. I’m in a position in which I badly want somebody to help me. I like the look of you. You look a trusty fellow and a keen one. Is all your time taken up selling haddies?’
‘ ’Deed no. Just twa hours in the mornin’, and twa hours at nicht when I gang doun to the cobles at Inverlarrig. I’ve a heap o’ time on my hands.’
‘Good. I think I can promise that you may resume your trade at Crask. But first I want you to do a job for me. There’s a bicycle lying by the roadside. Bring it up to Crask this evening between six and seven. Have you a watch?’
‘No, but I can tell the time braw and fine.’
‘Go to the stables and wait for me there. I want to have a talk with you.’ Leithen produced half a crown, on which the grubby paw of Fish Benjie instantly closed.
‘And look here, Benjie. You haven’t seen me here, or anybody like me. Above all, you didn’t see me come down from Crask this morning. If anybody asks you questions, you only saw a man on a bicycle on the road to Inverlarrig.’
The boy nodded, and his solemn face flickered for a second with a subtle smile.
‘Well, that’s a bargain.’ Leithen got up from his couch and turned down the river, making for the Bridge of Larrig, where the highway crossed. He looked back once, and saw Fish Benjie wheeling his bicycle into the undergrowth of the wood. He was in two minds as to whether he had done wisely in placing himself in the hands of a small ragamuffin, who for all he knew might be hand-in-glove with the Strathlarrig keepers. But the recollection of Benjie’s face reassured him. He did not look like a boy who would be the pet of any constituted authority; he had the air rather of the nomad against whom the orderly world waged war. There had been an impish honesty in his face, and Leithen, who had a weakness for disreputable urchins, felt that he had taken the right course. Besides, the young sleuth-hound had got on his trail, and there had been nothing for it but to make him an ally.
He crossed the bridge, avoided the Crask road, and struck up hill by a track which followed the ravine of a burn. As he walked his mind went back to a stretch on a Canadian river, a stretch of still unruffled water warmed all day by a July sun. It had been as full as it could hold of salmon, but no artifice of his could stir them. There in the later afternoon had come an aged man from Boston, who fished with a light trout rod and cast a deft line, and placed a curious little dry fly several feet above a fish’s snout. Then, by certain strange manoeuvres, he had drawn the fly under water. Leithen had looked on and marvelled, while before sunset that ancient man hooked and landed seven good fish … Somehow that bit of shining sunflecked Canadian river reminded him of the unpromising stretch of the Larrig he had just been reconnoitring.
At a turn of the road he came upon his host, tramping homeward in the company of a most unprepossessing hound. I paused for an instant to introduce Mackenzie. He was a mongrel collie of the old Highland stock, known as ‘beardies,’ and his touzled head, not unlike an extra-shaggy Dandie Dinmont’s, was set upon a body of immense length, girth and muscle. His manners were atrocious to all except his master, and local report accused him of every canine vice except worrying sheep. He had been christened ‘The Bluidy Mackenzie’ after a noted persecutor of the godly, by someone whose knowledge of history was greater than Sir Archie’s, for the latter never understood the allusion. The name, however, remained his official one; commonly he was addressed as Mackenzie, but in moments of expansion he was referred to by his master as Old Bloody.
The said master seemed to be in a strange mood. He was dripping wet, having apparently fallen into the river, but his spirits soared, and he kept on smiling in a light-hearted way. He scarcely listened to Leithen, when he told him of his compact with Fish Benjie. ‘I daresay it will be all right,’ he observed idiotically. ‘Is your idea to pass off one of his haddies as a young salmon on the guileless Bandicott?’ For an explanation of Sir Archie’s conduct the chronicler must retrace his steps.
After Leithen’s departure it had seemed good to him to take the air, so, summoning Mackenzie from a dark lair in the yard, he made his way to the river – the beat below the bridge and beyond the high road, which was on Crask ground. There it was a broad brawling water, boulder-strewn and shallow, which an active man could cross dry-shod by natural stepping-stones. Sir Archie sat for a time on the near shore, listening to the sandpipers – birds which were his special favourites – and watching the whinchats on the hill-side and the flashing white breasts of the water-ousels. Mackenzie lay beside him, an uneasy sphinx, tormented by a distant subtle odour of badger.
Presently Sir Archie arose and stepped out on the half-submerged boulder. He was getting very proud of the way he had learned to manage his game leg, and it occurred to him that here was a chance of testing his balance. If he could hop across on the stones to the other side he might regard himself as an able-bodied man. Balancing himself with his stick as a rope-dancer uses his pole, he in duecourse reached the middle of the current. After that it was more difficult, for the stones were smaller and the stream more rapid, but with an occasional splash and flounder he landed safely, to be saluted with a shower of spray from Mackenzie, who had taken the deep-water route.
‘Not so bad that, for a crock,’ he told himself, as he lay full length in the sun watching the faint line of the Haripol hills overtopping the ridge of Crask.
Half an hour was spent in idleness till the dawning of hunger warned him to return. The crossing as seen from this side looked more formidable, for the first stones could only be reached by jumping a fairly broad stretch of current. Yet the jump was achieved, and with renewed confidence Sir Archie essayed the more solid boulders. All would have gone well had not he taken his eyes from the stones and observed on the bank beyond a girl’s figure. She had been walking by the stream and had stopped to stare at the portent of his performance. Now Sir Archie was aware that his style of jumping was not graceful and he