CHAPTER XLVII.
THE GALLOWAY FLAIL.
When Wat and I found the cave empty, immediately we began to search thehill for traces of the lost ones. For some time we searched in vain. Buta little to the right of the entrance of the cave the whole was madeplain to us. Here we found the bent and heather trampled, and abundantstains of recent blood, as though one had been slain there and the bodycarried away. Also I found a silken snood and the colour of it was blue.It was not the hue, for that is worn by most of the maids of Scotland;but when I took it to me, I knew as certainly as though I had seen itthere, that it had bound about the hair of Maisie Lennox. Though whenWat asked of me (who, being a lover might have known better) how I knewit for hers, I could not find words to tell him. But it is true that allthe same, know it I did.
So we followed down the trail, finding now a shred of cleading and againthe broken bits of a tobacco pipe such as soldiers use, small and black,till in our search we had rounded the hill that looks into the valley ofthe Cooran. Here at the crossing of the burn, where it was smallest, wefound Anton Lennox's broad blue bonnet.
It was enough. Soon we were scouring the hilltops as fast as our legscould move under us. We travelled southward, keeping ever a keen watch,and twice during the day we caught sight of troops of dragoons, movingslowly over the heather and picking their way among the hags, quarteringthe land for the sport of man-catching as they went. Once they raised,as it had been a poor maukin, a young lad that ran from them. And wecould see the soldiers running their horses and firing off white pluffsof powder. It was a long time ere the musket-cracks came to us, whichmust have sounded so near and terrible to the poor fugitive. But theyhit him not, and for that time at least he wan off scot free. Sopresently we saw them come back, jeered at by their comrades, like dogsthat have missed the quarry and slink home with their tails betweentheir legs.
But neither one of our poor captives was among them. So we held fast andsnell to the eastward, passing along the skirts of the Millyea, andkeeping to the heights above the track which runs from the Glenkens tothe Water of Cree. It was near to the infall of the road from Loch Deethat we first gat sight of those we sought. It was not a large companywhich had them in charge, and they marched not at all orderly. So thatwe judged it to be either one of the Annandale levies of the Johnstone,or Lag's Dumfries troop of renegades.
But as we came nearer, we marked quite clearly that they had twoprisoners, tall men, one with some white thing about his head, and inthe rear they had six or seven other men, mostly on foot. Coming nearerwe could also see a figure as of a young maid upon a horse. Then I knewthat the dear lass I had watched and warded so long, was surely at themercy of the rudest of the enemy.
We were thus scouring along the moor, keeping a wary eye upon the troopand their poor prisoners, when Wat's foot took the edge of a moss-hagwhere the ground was soft. As it pressed the soil downward, we heard asudden cry, a wild, black-a-vised man sprang up with a drawn sword inhis hand, and pulling out a pistol ran at us. We were so taken aback atthe assault that we could scarcely put ourselves upon the defence. Butere the man came near, he saw that we were dressed like men of thehills. He stopped and looked at us, his weapons being still pointed ourway.
"Ye are of the people!" he said sternly.
"Ay," said we, for I think Clavers himself had owned as much, beingtaken unawares and unable to get at his weapons.
"I thought I saw ye at the General Meeting," he said.
"We were there," we replied; "we are two of the Glenkens Gordons."
"And I am that unworthy outcast James MacMichael."
Then we knew that this was he who, for the murder of the curate ofCarsphairn (a mightily foolish and ill-set man), was expelled andexcommunicated by the United Societies.
"I will come with you for company," he said, taking his bonnet out ofthe moss-bank into which Wat's foot had pressed it.
Now we wanted not his company. But because we knew not (save in thematter of Peter Pearson) what the manner of the man was, the time wentpast in which we could have told him that his room was more to us thanhis company. So, most ungraciously, we permitted him to come. Soon,however, we saw that he knew far more of heather-craft than we. Ourskill in the hill-lore was to his but as the bairn's to that of theregent of a college.
"The band that we see yonder is but the off-scourings of half a dozentroops," said he, "and chance riders that Cannon of Mardrochat hasgathered. The ill loon himself is not with them. He will be lyingwatching about some dyke bank. Ah, would that I could get my musket onhim."
So we hasted along the way, keeping to the hills in order to reach theClachan of St. John's town before the soldiers. We went cautiously,Black MacMichael leading, often running with his head as low as a dog,and showing us the advantage of every cover as he went.
Nor had we gone far when we had proof, if we wanted such, of thedesperate character of the man in whose company by inadvertence we foundourselves. We were passing through a little cleuch on the Holm of Kenand making down to the water-side. Already we could see the streamglancing like silver for clearness beneath us. All of an instant, we sawBlack MacMichael fall prostrate among the rocks at the side of thecleuch. He lay motionless for a moment or two. Then, without warning, helet his piece off with a bang that waked all the birds in that silentplace, and went to our hearts also with a stound like pain. For thoughWat and I had both done men to death, it had been in battle, or face toface, when blade crosses blade and eye meets eye, and our foes had atleast an equal chance with us. We had not been used to clapping at adyke back and taking sighting shots at our foes.
As soon as Black MacMichael had fired, he lifted up his hand, cried"Victory," and ran forward eagerly, as one that fires at a mark at awappenschaw may run to see if he has hit the target. Yet Wat and I wentnot down nor took part with him, but we held our way with sore heartsfor the wickedness of this man.
Presently he came out and set after us. He cried "Hoy" many times for usto wait for him, but we tarried not. So he took to running and, being apowerful man and clever with his feet, he soon overtook us.
"What is the push?" he cried, panting. "I hit the skulker that watchedfor us from behind a rock. I keeled him over like a dog-fox on thehillside. See what he had upon him!" And he took from off his shoulder avery remarkable piece of ordnance which I shall presently describe.
"We want neither art nor part in your bloody deeds, James MacMichael," Ianswered him. "Take yourself away, till the Lord Himself shall judgeyou!"
He stood still as one astonished.
"Gosh," he said, "siccan a fash aboot killing an informer. I wad killthem a' like toads, for my son John that they hanged upon the dule treeof Lag. I would slay them root and branch--all the Griers of the wickedname. O that it had been Mardrochat himself. Then indeed it had been afortunate shot. But he shall not escape the Black MacMichael!"
The murderer, for indeed I could not hold him less, clapped his handupon his breast and looked up to heaven in a way that made me think himcrazed.
"See here what I hae gotten aff him?" he cried again, like a childpleased with a toy.
It was the instrument known as the Galloway flail. It had a five-foothandle of stout ash, worn smooth like an axe haft with handling. Thenthe "soople," or part of the flail that strikes the corn on thethreshing floor, was made of three lengths of iron, jointed togetherwith links of iron chain, so that in striking all this metal part wouldcurl round an enemy and crush his bones like those of a chicken.
"Stand off," I said, as he came nearer with the Galloway flail in hishand; "we want not to company with you, neither to share in youriniquity."
"I daresay no," he said, frowning on us; "but ye will hae enough o' yourain. But I'll e'en follow on for a' that. Ye may be braw an' glad o' theMacMichael yet, considering the errand ye are on."
Nor had we gone far when his words proved true enough.
We went down the cleuch, and were just coming out upon the wider strath,when a party of Lag's men, for whom n
o doubt the dead spy had beengathering information, beset us. There were only half a dozen of them,but had MacMichael not been at hand with his terrible weapon, it hadcertainly gone hard with us, if indeed we had not been slain orcaptured. With a shout they set themselves at us with sword and pistol;but since only one of them was mounted, the odds were not so great as atfirst they seemed. Wat was ready with his blade as ever, and he had notmade three passes before he had his sword through his man's shoulder.But it was otherwise with me. A hulking fellow sprang on me with a roarlike a wild beast, and I gave myself up for lost. Yet I engaged him as Ibest could, giving ground a little, yet ever keeping the upper hand ofhim. But as we fought, what was our astonishment to see MacMichael,whose company we had rejected, whirl his iron flail above his head andattack the mounted man, whose sword cracked as though it had been madeof pottery, and flew into a hundred fragments, jingling to the groundlike broken glass. The next stroke fell ere the man on horseback coulddraw a pistol. And we could hear in the midst of our warding andstriking the bones crack as the iron links of the flail settled abouthis body. The next moment the man on horseback pitched heavily forwardand fell to the ground. MacMichael turned with a yell of victory, andrushed upon the others. One stroke only he got as he passed at the dark,savage-like man who was pressing me--a stroke which snapped his swordarm like a pipe staple, so that he fell writhing.
"Stripe your sword through him! I'll run and do another!" cried theBlack MacMichael.
But the others did not stand to be done (small blame to them), and soonall three were running what they could over the level holms of the Ken.One caught the riderless horse, running alongside till he could get achance to spring upon the back of it, and so galloped back to thegarrison at the Clachan of St. John.
MacMichael sat down, panting as with honest endeavour. He wiped his browwith calm deliberation.
"An' troth," he said, "I think ye warna the waur o' Black MacMichael an'Rob Grier's Gallowa' flail."
Yet there was not even thankfulness in our hearts, for we foundourselves mixed yet more deeply in the fray. Not that this broil sat onus like that other business of the dead spy behind the heather bush. Forthese men fell in fair fighting, which is the hap of any man. But we sawclearly that we should also be blamed as art and part in the killing ofthe spy, and the thought was bitter gall to our hearts.