The Collected Western Classics & Adventures Novels. William MacLeod Raine
A few yards from us a sorely wounded Highland officer was lying. Macdonald recognized him as Charles Fraser, younger of Inverallachie, the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fraser regiment and in the absence of the Master of Lovat commander. We found no time to drag him to safety before the English officers were upon us.
The approaching party turned out to be the Duke of Cumberland himself, Major Wolfe, Lord Boyd, Sir Robert Volney, and a boy officer of Wolfe’s regiment. Young Fraser raised himself on his elbow to look at the Duke. The Butcher reined in his horse, frowning blackly down at him.
“To which side do you belong?” he asked.
“To the Prince,” was the undaunted answer.
Cumberland, turning to Major Wolfe, said,
“Major, are your pistols loaded?”
Wolfe said that they were.
“Then shoot me that Highland scoundrel who dares look on me so insolently.”
Major Wolfe looked at his commander very steadily and said quietly: “Sir, my commission is at the disposal of your Royal Highness, but my honour is my own. I can never consent to become a common executioner.”
The Duke purpled, and burst out with, “Bah! Pistol him, Boyd.”
“Your Highness asks what is not fitting for you to require nor for me to perform,” answered that young nobleman.
The Duke, in a fury, turned to a passing dragoon and bade him shoot the young man. Charles Fraser dragged himself to his feet by a great effort and looked at the butcher with a face of infinite scorn while the soldier was loading his piece.
“Your Highness,” began Wolfe, about to remonstrate.
“Sir, I command you to be silent,” screamed the Duke.
The trooper presented his piece at the Fraser, whose steady eyes never left the face of Cumberland.
“God save King James!” cried Inverallachie in English, and next moment fell dead from the discharge of the musket.
The faces of the four Englishmen who rode with the Duke were stern and drawn. Wolfe dismounted from his horse and reverently covered the face of the dead Jacobite with a kerchief.
“God grant that when our time comes we may die as valiantly and as loyally as this young gentleman,” he said solemnly, raising his hat.
Volney, Boyd, and Wolfe’s subaltern uncovered, and echoed an “Amen.” Cumberland glared from one to another of them, ran the gamut of all tints from pink to deepest purple, gulped out an apoplectic Dutch oath, and dug the rowels deep into his bay. With shame, sorrow, and contempt in their hearts his retinue followed the butcher across the field.
My face was like the melting winter snows. I could not look at the Macdonald, nor he at me. We mounted in silence and rode away. Only once he referred to what we had seen.
“Many’s the time that Charlie Fraser and I have hunted the dun deer across the heather hills, and now——” He broke into Gaelic lamentation and imprecation, then fell as suddenly to quiet.
We bore up a ravine away from the roads toward where a great gash in the hills invited us, for we did not need to be told that the chances of safety increased with our distance from the beaten tracks of travel. A man on horseback came riding behind and overhauled us rapidly. Presently we saw that he was a red-coated officer, and behind a huge rock we waited to pistol him as he came up. The man leaped from his horse and came straight toward us. I laid a hand on Captain Roy’s arm, for I had recognized Major Wolfe. But I was too late. A pistol ball went slapping through the Major’s hat and knocked it from his head. He stooped, replaced it with the utmost composure, and continued to advance, at the same time calling out that he was a friend.
“I recognized you behind the birches, Montagu, and thought that you and your friend could use another horse. Take my Galloway. You will find him a good traveller.”
I ask you to believe that we stared long at him. A wistful smile touched his sallow face.
“We’re not all ruffians in the English army, lad. If I aid your escape it is because prisoners have no rights this day. My advice would be for you to strike for the hills.”
“In troth and I would think your advisings good, sir,” answered Donald. “No glen will be too far, no ben too high, for a hiding-place from these bloody Sassenach dogs.” Then he stopped, the bitterness fading from his voice, and added: “But I am forgetting myself. God, sir, the sights I have seen this day drive me mad. At all events there iss one English officer Captain Macdonald will remember whatever.” And the Highlander bowed with dignity.
I thanked Wolfe warmly, and lost no time in taking his advice. Captain Roy’s foot had by this time so swollen that he could not put it in the stirrup. He was suffering a good deal, but at least the pain served to distract him from the gloom that lay heavy on his spirits. From the hillside far above the town we could see the lights of Inverness beginning to glimmer as we passed. A score of times we had to dismount on account of the roughness of the ground to lead our horses along the steep incline of the mountainsides, and each time Donald set his teeth and dragged his shattered ankle through bracken and over boulder by sheer dour pluck. Hunger gnawed at our vitals, for in forty-eight hours we had but tasted food. Deadly weariness hung on our stumbling footsteps, and in our gloomy hearts lurked the coldness of despair. Yet hour after hour we held our silent course, clambering like heather-cats over cleugh and boggy moorland, till at last we reached Bun Chraobg, where we unsaddled for a snatch of sleep.
We flung ourselves down on the soft heather wrapped in our plaids, but for long slumber was not to be wooed. Our alert minds fell to a review of all the horrors of the day: to friends struck down, to the ghastly carnage, to fugitives hunted and shot in their hiding-places like wild beasts, to the mistakes that had ruined our already lost cause. The past and the present were bitter as we could bear; thank Heaven, the black shadow of the future hung as yet but dimly on our souls. If we had had the second sight and could have known what was to follow—the countryside laid waste with fire and sword, women and children turned out of their blazing homes to perish on the bleak moors, the wearing of the tartan proscribed and made a crime punishable with death, a hundred brave Highlanders the victim of the scaffold—we should have quite despaired.
Except the gentle soughing of the wind there was no sound to stir the silent night. A million of night’s candles looked coldly down on an army of hunted stragglers. I thought of the Prince, Cluny, Lord Murray, Creagh, and a score of others, wondering if they had been taken, and fell at last to troubled sleep, from which ever and anon I started to hear the wild wail of the pibroch or the ringing Highland slogans, to see the flaming cannon mouths vomiting death or the fell galloping of the relentless Hanoverian dragoons.
In the chill dawn I awoke to a ravening hunger that was insistent to be noted, and though my eyes would scarce believe there was Donald Roy cocked tailor fashion on the heath arranging most temptingly on a rock scone sandwiches of braxy mutton and a flask of usquebaugh (Highland whiskey). I shut my eyes, rubbed them with my forefingers, and again let in the light. The viands were still there.
The Macdonald smiled whimsically over at me. “Gin ye hae your appetite wi’ you we’ll eat, Mr. Montagu, for I’m a wee thingie hungry my nainsell (myself). ’Deed, to mak plain, I’m toom (empty) as a drum, and I’m thinkin’ that a drappie o’ the usquebaugh wad no’ come amiss neither.”
“But where in the world did you get the food, Donald?”
“And where wad you think, but doon at the bit clachan yonder? A very guid freend of mine named Farquhar Dhu lives there. He and Donald Roy are far ben (intimate), and when I came knocking at his window at cock-craw he was no’ very laithe to gie me a bit chack (lunch).”
“Did you climb down the mountain and back with your sore ankle?”
He coloured. “Hoots, man! Haud your whitter (tongue)! Aiblins (perhaps) I wass just wearying for a bit exercise to test it. And gin I were you I wadna sit cocking on that stane speiring at me upsitten (impertinent) questions