The Black Colonel Page 3

  _III.--Over the Hills of Home_

  How shall I tell, with proper restraint and yet efficiency, whatfollowed the going of the Black Colonel on his black horse?

  The Pass, wherein we had met so sharply, lies almost due east and duewest. You would have a good idea of its appearance, if you were tosuppose a hill twice as long from east to west as it is broad fromnorth to south. Then imagine its length sliced in two, and each half,by force of dead weight, falling away from the other. Heather andwhins had seeded on the sliced faces, and after them the hardy silverbirch and the hardier green fir had sprung up. Nature makes coveringsfor the sores suffered by Mother Earth, as a dog licks a bruise untilthe hair grows again.

  The strong Highland winds and the heavy Highland rains and snows hadwrinkled the riven hill in a hundred ways. Its twin faces were wartedwith rocks, from which most of the soil had been washed away, leavingthem as though suspended in mid-air. Waters, draining from the higherhills, had run down those faces, making ribboned scores to the bottom.There had been constant falls of earth from above, and here and there alarge tree had been thrown over the abyss, and, in that position,holding on by its roots, had taken a new lease of life.

  Thanks then to Nature, working for long years, the twin, or rather thedivorced hill-cheeks which, at their separation, were raw earth, nowhad a covering of undergrowth and overgrowth. It would be dead in thewinter when the sap is down, budding in the spring when the sap rises,green in the summer when it has run into leafage, brown in the autumnwhen the storage roots begin to call their own back again.

  A sort of rough road, worn by usage, as a short-cut for the folk of theregion, ran on the level between the halves of the Pass. Big rocksfallen from above lay around, and I confusedly sat down beside one ofthese. It broke the snellish wind which had begun to blow with thefirst dawn, as it often does in those parts, a blast to the partingnight and the coming day.

  Presently a shot was fired from one end of the Pass and I could make nomistake as to the weapon used. It was the military flintlock, a clumsygun, better suited to scare crows than shoot straight, but it was thebest we had.

  A warning, a signal for some purpose, I judged, because it was followedby what I can only describe as a waiting silence. You had the echoesof the shot scattering up the heights of the Pass, and then a tensefeeling in the atmosphere, as if a hundred men expected an answer. Itcame, in another straggling shot, from the other end of the Pass.

  Next there was solid evidence that what I heard had been a pre-arrangedsignal, to which a plan of campaign attached. At each end of the PassI saw the red-coats multiply until they formed faint bunches of colour.Who, I wonder, first clothed the soldier man in scarlet, for an easiertarget he could not offer, even to an ill-shooting flint-lock. Scarletand the pageantry of courts, scarlet and the capturing of women'shearts, but for the soldier himself, when he gets down to his trade, itis scarlet and death.

  As I waited intently and looked, I could almost count, up on the browsof the Pass, how many red-coats the sentinels of our first alarm hadgrown into. They made dots, moving against the skyline, and, as I nextmade out, they were in concert with other knots of scarlet, active atthe end of the Pass below. I did not need to be a soldier of someinstinct, which I hope I always have been, to grasp the order andpurpose of those doings.

  Clearly the plan was to search the bottom of the Pass and its northerntop with men who would meet midway, two parties below, and two above.The Black Colonel could not, therefore, get away by the western end,which led to his habitual fastness up the valley of the Dee, for thedoor of escape was sealed. No hope could lie south, or east, becausethat would be to come out into open country where numbers would captureany fugitive. There was nothing but the northern side, no possibilityof escape except up its stern face, and it was a forlorn possibility,alike on account of the terrible climb and because the red-coats werealready there, shaping to cut off even an attempt in this direction.

  What would the Black Colonel do? What was he doing? I wondered, andtwo thoughts came to me, one that as an animal pursued ever makes forhome, if only to reach it and die, so a hunted man will do likewise,should there be the smallest prospect of success; the other thatpossibly it is the sounder doctrine to face great perils in gettingclear, when you are sure of an open road and a place of refuge, ratherthan seek deliverance by an easier door and then land in unknownplights.

  True strategy in any tight place, military or civil, is based on aknowledge of human nature, what the enemy will do. That entails thegift of imagination, and there was a touch of it in the dispositiongoing on before my eyes. The knots of red on the bottom pathway drewtogether, and the red strings on the northern height were alsoapproaching each other. They progressed warily, but I could see anoccasional gleam of bare bayonets against the skyline, silhouetted bythe trees.

  Presently a rumble of displaced stones reached my ear from the otherside of the Pass. My eye searched for the spot, halfway up, where thetrees grew sparser and the hard, sharp rocks gained the dominance. Outfrom this streak of trees and rocks rode the Black Colonel on blackMack, and I gasped at his dare-devilry.

  I understood instinctively that, by cautious pilotage, probablydismounting and leading his horse at places, he had managed,undiscovered, to get thus far up that northern cliff, for it was almostsheer. But he must next make the upper, still steeper half, withlittle shelter from the on-coming flint-locks, and the worst kind offooting for Mack. Could any horse foaled of a mare climb that crag andbear his rider to safety, for this was the double, doubtful issue?

  When, a moment later, the soldiers caught sight of the Black Colonelthey halted in mute surprise, then shouted, as a dog barks on sight ofa quarry, the killing instinct in man and beast finding tongue. It wasinstantly a gamble of the pursued and the pursuers, to escape or tocapture, the keenest yet least noble game which can be played, thatwith a human life for the prize. The Black Colonel, a man with abar-sinister, but a remarkable man, was the hunted, and two companiesof King George's soldiers, decent fellows enough each man of them, werethe hunters. The outcome depended chiefly on a horse, but such ahorse, Mack!

  The King's word had gone round the countryside that our rebel andcanteran was to be taken alive or dead. That is a mandate which losesits dividing line when the guns begin to shoot. Therefore, while thesoldiers shouted, on getting sight of the Black Colonel, they alsobegan to fire wildly at him. The immediate range was too far for harmto hit him, but it would shorten swiftly enough. Realizing this, hestretched himself along his horse's neck, thus showing a smallertarget, and, as I felt sure, whispering words of encouragement into thegreat creature's ear.

  The tradition is that the Black Colonel used his dirk for spur on thatride, but I, who was a witness, know better. He did not need to useit, and would not have done so in any event, loving Mack as he did.His soft Gaelic whisper of bidding was his only spur, and up, up,slowly, yet surely, went the gallant animal. Ah! you should have seenit all. It was fine.

  Mack's shapely, muscular body was stretched like whip-cord against thedull grey of the broken precipice. You could fancy you heard the verycracking of his sinews as he rose foot by foot. The reins lay on hisneck, and I saw the Black Colonel slip oft the bridle, with its heavyiron bit, to give him the uttermost chance. The rivulet of stoneswhich his hoofs had set going grew into a stream, telling me that,while ever he lost a little on the treacherous ground, he more thanmade it good with the next stride.

  The sight so moved me that I nearly shouted in admiration and quiteforgot the pursuers. The soldiers in the hollow of the Pass had metand were loading and shooting with a certain discipline. The BlackColonel's real danger, however, was not from this fusilade but from theintercepting soldiers at the top of the Pass. Theirs had been a longerand rougher way to travel; would they, by the time he reached thesummit, if reach it he did, be near enough to capture or shoot him?

  Up, up, still panted the noble Mack, almost exhausted, until, with afinal effor
t, he gained the last ridge and, oh, what a relief! Hisflanks heaved, his beautiful head dropped to the heather, and I couldsee that his forequarters had turned from black to a lather of whitefoam, testimony to the great strain of the climb. The Black Colonelsprang from the saddle, walked to the edge of the crag, took his dirkfrom his garter and put it to his lips. He was vowing the oath of a"broken" Highlander, to be revenged, or thanking Providence for hisescape, perhaps both.

  He did all this, as I could follow, in the grey morning light, coolly,nay disdainfully, seeming to regard the bullets from the convergingsharp-shooters as just so many bees buzzing harmlessly about him.Next, he tightened the girth, which Mack's panting had loosened,bridled the horse again, vaulted lightly into the saddle, touched hisbonnet in mock salutation, and rode over the hills for home.

  There were those who saw a white horse go up the strath that morningwith, as they swore, the Black Colonel for rider, though all knew theactual colour of Mack to be black. There were others who said it wasDeath on his White Horse, and because a man died in the same smallhours those mongers of destiny were believed.