The Leithen Stories. Buchan John
that night after dinner two very weary men occupied the deepest arm-chairs. Lamancha was struggling with sleep; Palliser-Yeates was limp with fatigue, far too weary to be sleepy. ‘I’ve had the devil of a day,’ said the latter. ‘Wattie took me at a racing gallop about thirty miles over bogs and crags. Lord! I’m stiff and footsore. I believe I crawled more than ten miles, and I’ve no skin left on my knees. But we spied the deuce of a lot of ground, and I see my way to the rudiments of a plan. You start off, Charles, while I collect my thoughts.’
But Lamancha was supine.
‘I’m too drunk with sleep to talk,’ he said. ‘I prospected all the south side of Haripol – all this side of the Reascuill, you know. I got a good spy from Sgurr Mor, and I tried to get up Sgurr Dearg, but stuck on the rocks. That’s a fearsome mountain, if you like. Didn’t see a blessed soul all day – no rifles out – but I heard a shot from the Machray ground. I got my glasses on to several fine beasts. It struck me that the best chance would be in the corrie between Sgurr Mor and Sgurr Dearg – there’s a nice low pass at the head to get a stag through and the place is rather tucked away from the rest of the forest. That’s as far as I’ve got at present. I want to sleep.’
Palliser-Yeates was in a very different mood. With an ordnance map spread out on his knees he expounded the result of his researches, waving his pipe excitedly.
‘It’s a stiff problem, but there’s just the ghost of a hope. Wattie admitted that on the way home. Look here, you fellows – Glenraden is divided, like Gaul, into three parts. There’s the Home beat – all the low ground of the Raden glen and the little hills behind the house. Then there’s the Carnbeg beat to the east, which is the best I fancy – very easy going, not very high and with peat roads and tracks where you could shift a beast. Last there’s Carnmore, miles from anywhere, with all the highest tops and as steep as Torridon. It would be the devil of a business, if I got a stag there, to move it. Wattie and I went round the whole marches, mostly on our bellies. No, we weren’t seen – Wattie took care of that. What a noble shikari the old chap is!’
‘Well, what’s your conclusion?’ Leithen asked.
Palliser-Yeates shook his head. ‘That’s just where I’m stumped. Try to put yourself in old Raden’s place. He has only one stalker and two gillies for the whole forest, for he’s very short-handed, and as a matter of fact he stalks his beasts himself. He’ll consider where John Macnab is likeliest to have his try, and he’ll naturally decide on the Carnmore beat, for that’s by far the most secluded. You may take it from me that he has only enough men to watch one beat properly. But he’ll reflect that John Macnab has got to get his stag away, and he’ll wonder how he’ll manage it on Carnmore, for there’s only one bad track up from Inverlarrig. Therefore he’ll conclude that John Macnab may be more likely to try Carnbeg, though it’s a bit more public. You see, his decision isn’t any easier than mine. On the whole, I’m inclined to think he’ll plump for Carnmore, for he must think John Macnab a fairly desperate fellow who will aim first at killing his stag in peace, and will trust to Providence for the rest. So at the moment I favour Carnbeg.’
Leithen wrinkled his brow. ‘There are three of us,’ he said. ‘That gives us a chance of a little finesse. What about letting Charles or me make a demonstration against Carnmore, while you wait at Carnbeg?’
‘Good idea! I thought of that too.’
‘You’d better assume Colonel Raden to be in very full possession of his wits,’ Leithen continued. ‘The simple bluff won’t do – he’ll see through it. He’ll think that John Macnab is the same wary kind of old bird as himself. I found out in the war that it didn’t do to underrate your opponent’s brains. He’s pretty certain to expect a feint and not to be taken in. I’m for something a little subtler.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that you feint in one place, so that your opponent believes it to be a feint and pays no attention – and then you sail in and get to work in that very place.’
Palliser-Yeates whistled. ‘That wants thinking over … How about yourself?’
‘I’ve studied the river, and you never in your life saw such a hopeless proposition. All the good pools are as open as the Serpentine. Wattie stated the odds correctly.’
‘Nothing doing there?’
‘Nothing doing, unless I take steps to shorten the odds. So I’ve taken in a partner.’
The others stared, and even Lamancha woke up.
‘Yes. I interviewed him in the stable before dinner. It’s the little ragamuffin who sells fish – Fish Benjie is the name he goes by. Archie, I hope you don’t mind, but I told him to resume his morning visits. They’re my best chance for consultations.’
‘You’re taking a pretty big risk, Ned,’ said his host. ‘D’you mean to say you’ve let that boy into the whole secret?’
‘I’ve told him everything. It was the only way, for he had begun to suspect. I admit it’s a gamble, but I believe I can trust the child. I think I know a sportsman when I see him.’
Archie still shook his head. ‘There’s something else I may as well tell you. I met one of the Raden girls to-day – the younger – she was on the bank when I fell into the Larrig. She asked me point-blank if I knew anybody called John Macnab?’
Lamancha was wide awake. ‘What did you say?’ he asked sharply.
‘Oh, lied of course. Said I supposed she meant the distiller. Then she told me the whole story – said she had written the letter her father signed. She’s mad keen to win the extra fifty quid, for it means a hunter for her this winter down in Warwickshire. Yes, and she asked me to help. I talked a lot of rot about my game leg and that sort of thing, but I sort of promised to go and lunch at Glenraden the day after tomorrow.’
‘That’s impossible,’ said Lamancha.
‘I know it is, but there’s only one way out of it. I’ve got to have smallpox again.’
‘You’ve got to go to bed and stay there for a month,’ said Palliser-Yeates severely. ‘Now, look here, Archie. We simply can’t have you getting mixed up with the enemy, especially the enemy women. You’re much too susceptible and far too great an ass.’
‘Of course not,’ said Archie, with a touch of protest in his voice. ‘I see that well enough, but it’s a black look-out for me. I wish to Heaven you fellows had chosen to take your cure somewhere else. I’m simply wreckin’ all my political career. I had a letter from my agent tonight, and I should be touring the constituency instead of playin’ the goat here. All I’ve got to say is that you’ve a dashed lot more than old Raden against you. You’ve got that girl, crazy about her hunter, and anyone can see that she’s as clever as a monkey.’
But the laird of Crask was not thinking of Miss Janet Raden’s wits as he went meditatively to bed. He was wondering why her eyes were so blue, and as he ascended the stairs he thought he had discovered the reason. Her hair was spun-gold, but she had dark eye-lashes.
ON THE ROADS of the north of Scotland, any time after the last snow-wreaths have melted behind the dykes, you will meet a peculiar kind of tinker. They are not the copper-nosed scarecrows of the lowlands, sullen and cringing, attended by sad infants in ramshackle perambulators. Nor are they in any sense gipsies, for they have not the Romany speech or colouring. They travel the roads with an establishment, usually a covered cart and one or more lean horses, and you may find their encampments any day by any burnside. Of a rainy night you can see their queer little tents, shaped like a segment of sausage, with a fire hissing at the door, and the horses cropping the roadside