Part 11 (1/2)
”I wonder if we shall know you the next time we see you, if we ever do,” said Jean.
”Ho!” said Alan, trying to smile gayly, ”of course you will! I'll have a sprig of the evergreen pine and give the pewit call, and then you'll be sure.”
”What good will your coming back next summer do us?” said Jock.
”We shan't be here to see you! Our leases run out in October, and n.o.body knows where we'll go after that! We've got to move out, so the Auld Laird can have more s.p.a.ce to raise game for Angus Niel to kill,” he finished bitterly.
There seemed no way of brightening this sad prospect, and the Clan sat for a few moments in mournful silence. Alan tried hard to think of something comforting to say.
”I'll tell you what,” he exclaimed at length. ”We can still be a Clan, whether we see each other or not. We'll remember we're all blood brothers just the same.”
”And that you are our Chief,” added Jean, trying to look cheerful.
”Can't we go back to the cave just once more?” said Sandy.
”I've got to be at the bridge at one o'clock,” said Alan. ”I've said good-bye to Eppie, and she is packing my things, and putting up a lunch, so I don't have to do anything but step into the carriage when I get there. What time is it now?”
Jean flew up the slope to the house and called back from the door, ”It's ten o'clock.”
”Come on, then, my merry men!” cried Alan, and the four started off at a brisk trot, looking anything but merry as they went.
”We shan't want to come here any more,” said Jock, when they reached the cave. ”So we may as well take everything away.”
”Oh,” said Alan, ”something might happen to keep you in the Glen Easig. You never can tell. You'd better take back the pots and pans, but leave the wood, and then if we are here next summer, it will be all ready for cooking a jolly old mess of trout.”
”Whatever shall we do with the boat?” asked Jean. This was a conundrum, but the Chief, as usual, was equal to the occasion.
”There's only one thing we can do,” he said. ”It will just dry up and fall to pieces up here; we'll let it down over the rock by the ropes and leave it in the pool. Then when Angus finds it, he'll be perfectly sure he was bewitched and be more afraid of the falls than ever!”
They worked hurriedly, for the time was short, and in another hour the boat was floating in the fis.h.i.+ng-pool, securely tied to a pine tree on the bank. They packed pots and pans in the basket and lowered it over the rock by the rope, and when everything was done, Alan took the blue chalk and drew a sprig of pine on the wall of the cave with the initials R. R. C. beside it. The four children then scrambled down the secret stairway, feeling as if they had said good-bye forever to a dear friend. When they reached the little gray house, they left the basket in the kitchen, and the entire Clan walked with Alan back to the bridge, where they found the carriage waiting.
Alan made short work of his good-byes. He shook hands all round and sprang quickly into the carriage, and as it rattled away with him down the road, he stood up, waving his bonnet with the spray of evergreen pine in it and whistling the pewit call.
”Dagon't,” said Sandy, when the carriage pa.s.sed out of sight around a bend in the road. ”Dagon't, we'll never find another like the Chief.” If Jean and Jock had felt able to say anything, they would have echoed the statement. As it was, Sandy drew his kilmarnock bonnet over his eyes, thrust his hands into his pockets, and started dejectedly toward his own house, leaving Jean and Jock, equally miserable, to return alone to the wee bit hoosie on the brae.
XII. NEWS
The rest of the week seemed at least a month long to the lonely twins. Sandy came to see them, to be sure, but with the pa.s.sing of the Chief, the flavor seemed gone from the play, and the Clan made no further expeditions after Angus Niel.
”He can just kill all the game he wants to,” said Jean. ”It's the worse for the Auld Laird, I doubt, but who cares for that, so long as he leaves Tam alone and keeps away from here? It's nothing to me.”
Their father had been so taken up with his work and with turning over in his mind plans for the future, when they should be ”walking the world,” that he paid little attention to their punishment of Angus Niel, about which he knew little and cared less. He was absorbed in planning the best market for his sheep and in getting as much from his garden as he could, hoping to sell what he was unable to use himself, when the time came to leave. His usually cheerful face had grown more and more troubled as the summer wore on, and it was seldom now that his bagpipes woke the mountain echoes, and whenever he did while away a rainy evening with music, the melodies were as wild and mournful as his own sad thoughts.
Angus Niel's barometer now rose again. Finding himself no longer pursued by his unseen foes, his waning self-confidence returned, and it was only a week or two after Alan's departure that wonderful stories began to go about the village concerning his prowess in ridding the woods of thieves and marauders single-handed.
”I've even found my boat,” he announced one evening to a group of men lounging about the village store, ”and it was no human hands that put it where I found it either! It was below the falls, if you'll believe me, safe and sound and tight as ever. Any man that is easily scared would better not be walking the woods in that direction, I'm telling you, or likely he'd be whisked away by the little people and shut up in some cave in the hills. I felt the drawing myself once, but I knew how to manage. I was just gey firm with them, and they knew I wasna fearful and let me go. It's none so easy being a gamekeeper. It takes a bold man, and a canny one, and well the poacher gang knew that. They're gone and good riddance. It's taken me all summer to bring it about.”
”Oh,” murmured Jock to Jean, when this was repeated to them by Sandy the following Sabbath, ”wouldn't Alan like to hear that?”
It was on that very Sabbath, too, that they learned the Dominie had recovered and that school was to reopen on the following day.