CHAPTER XVII

THE DEATH OF THE RED FOX

The next day Mr. Henderland found for me a man who had a boat of his own
and was to cross the Linnhe Loch that afternoon into Appin, fishing. Him
he prevailed on to take me, for he was one of his flock; and in this way
I saved a long day’s travel and the price of the two public ferries I
must otherwise have passed.

It was near noon before we set out; a dark day with clouds, and the sun
shining upon little patches. The sea was here very deep and still,
and had scarce a wave upon it; so that I must put the water to my lips
before I could believe it to be truly salt. The mountains on either side
were high, rough and barren, very black and gloomy in the shadow of
the clouds, but all silver-laced with little watercourses where the sun
shone upon them. It seemed a hard country, this of Appin, for people to
care as much about as Alan did.

There was but one thing to mention. A little after we had started,
the sun shone upon a little moving clump of scarlet close in along the
water-side to the north. It was much of the same red as soldiers’ coats;
every now and then, too, there came little sparks and lightnings, as
though the sun had struck upon bright steel.

I asked my boatman what it should be, and he answered he supposed it was
some of the red soldiers coming from Fort William into Appin, against
the poor tenantry of the country. Well, it was a sad sight to me;
and whether it was because of my thoughts of Alan, or from something
prophetic in my bosom, although this was but the second time I had seen
King George’s troops, I had no good will to them.

At last we came so near the point of land at the entering in of Loch
Leven that I begged to be set on shore. My boatman (who was an honest
fellow and mindful of his promise to the catechist) would fain have
carried me on to Balachulish; but as this was to take me farther from my
secret destination, I insisted, and was set on shore at last under the
wood of Lettermore (or Lettervore, for I have heard it both ways) in
Alan’s country of Appin.

This was a wood of birches, growing on a steep, craggy side of a
mountain that overhung the loch. It had many openings and ferny howes;
and a road or bridle track ran north and south through the midst of
it, by the edge of which, where was a spring, I sat down to eat some
oat-bread of Mr. Henderland’s and think upon my situation.

Here I was not only troubled by a cloud of stinging midges, but far more
by the doubts of my mind. What I ought to do, why I was going to join
myself with an outlaw and a would-be murderer like Alan, whether I
should not be acting more like a man of sense to tramp back to the south
country direct, by my own guidance and at my own charges, and what Mr.
Campbell or even Mr. Henderland would think of me if they should ever
learn my folly and presumption: these were the doubts that now began to
come in on me stronger than ever.

As I was so sitting and thinking, a sound of men and horses came to me
through the wood; and presently after, at a turning of the road, I saw
four travellers come into view. The way was in this part so rough and
narrow that they came single and led their horses by the reins. The
first was a great, red-headed gentleman, of an imperious and flushed
face, who carried his hat in his hand and fanned himself, for he was in
a breathing heat. The second, by his decent black garb and white wig,
I correctly took to be a lawyer. The third was a servant, and wore some
part of his clothes in tartan, which showed that his master was of a
Highland family, and either an outlaw or else in singular good odour
with the Government, since the wearing of tartan was against the Act. If
I had been better versed in these things, I would have known the tartan
to be of the Argyle (or Campbell) colours. This servant had a good-sized
portmanteau strapped on his horse, and a net of lemons (to brew punch
with) hanging at the saddle-bow; as was often enough the custom with
luxurious travellers in that part of the country.

As for the fourth, who brought up the tail, I had seen his like before,
and knew him at once to be a sheriff’s officer.

I had no sooner seen these people coming than I made up my mind (for no
reason that I can tell) to go through with my adventure; and when the
first came alongside of me, I rose up from the bracken and asked him the
way to Aucharn.

He stopped and looked at me, as I thought, a little oddly; and then,
turning to the lawyer, “Mungo,” said he, “there’s many a man would think
this more of a warning than two pyats. Here am I on my road to Duror on
the job ye ken; and here is a young lad starts up out of the bracken,
and speers if I am on the way to Aucharn.”

“Glenure,” said the other, “this is an ill subject for jesting.”

These two had now drawn close up and were gazing at me, while the two
followers had halted about a stone-cast in the rear.

“And what seek ye in Aucharn?” said Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, him
they called the Red Fox; for he it was that I had stopped.

“The man that lives there,” said I.

“James of the Glens,” says Glenure, musingly; and then to the lawyer:
“Is he gathering his people, think ye?”

“Anyway,” says the lawyer, “we shall do better to bide where we are, and
let the soldiers rally us.”

“If you are concerned for me,” said I, “I am neither of his people nor
yours, but an honest subject of King George, owing no man and fearing no
man.”

“Why, very well said,” replies the Factor. “But if I may make so bold as
ask, what does this honest man so far from his country? and why does
he come seeking the brother of Ardshiel? I have power here, I must tell
you. I am King’s Factor upon several of these estates, and have twelve
files of soldiers at my back.”

“I have heard a waif word in the country,” said I, a little nettled,
“that you were a hard man to drive.”

He still kept looking at me, as if in doubt.

“Well,” said he, at last, “your tongue is bold; but I am no unfriend to
plainness. If ye had asked me the way to the door of James Stewart on
any other day but this, I would have set ye right and bidden ye God
speed. But to-day--eh, Mungo?” And he turned again to look at the
lawyer.

But just as he turned there came the shot of a firelock from higher up
the hill; and with the very sound of it Glenure fell upon the road.

“O, I am dead!” he cried, several times over.

The lawyer had caught him up and held him in his arms, the servant
standing over and clasping his hands. And now the wounded man looked
from one to another with scared eyes, and there was a change in his
voice, that went to the heart.

“Take care of yourselves,” says he. “I am dead.”

He tried to open his clothes as if to look for the wound, but his
fingers slipped on the buttons. With that he gave a great sigh, his head
rolled on his shoulder, and he passed away.

The lawyer said never a word, but his face was as sharp as a pen and
as white as the dead man’s; the servant broke out into a great noise of
crying and weeping, like a child; and I, on my side, stood staring at
them in a kind of horror. The sheriff’s officer had run back at the
first sound of the shot, to hasten the coming of the soldiers.

At last the lawyer laid down the dead man in his blood upon the road,
and got to his own feet with a kind of stagger.

I believe it was his movement that brought me to my senses; for he had
no sooner done so than I began to scramble up the hill, crying out, “The
murderer! the murderer!”

So little a time had elapsed, that when I got to the top of the first
steepness, and could see some part of the open mountain, the murderer
was still moving away at no great distance. He was a big man, in a black
coat, with metal buttons, and carried a long fowling-piece.

“Here!” I cried. “I see him!”

At that the murderer gave a little, quick look over his shoulder, and
began to run. The next moment he was lost in a fringe of birches; then
he came out again on the upper side, where I could see him climbing like
a jackanapes, for that part was again very steep; and then he dipped
behind a shoulder, and I saw him no more.

All this time I had been running on my side, and had got a good way up,
when a voice cried upon me to stand.

I was at the edge of the upper wood, and so now, when I halted and
looked back, I saw all the open part of the hill below me.

The lawyer and the sheriff’s officer were standing just above the road,
crying and waving on me to come back; and on their left, the red-coats,
musket in hand, were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower wood.

“Why should I come back?” I cried. “Come you on!”

“Ten pounds if ye take that lad!” cried the lawyer. “He’s an accomplice.
He was posted here to hold us in talk.”

At that word (which I could hear quite plainly, though it was to the
soldiers and not to me that he was crying it) my heart came in my mouth
with quite a new kind of terror. Indeed, it is one thing to stand the
danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of both life and
character. The thing, besides, had come so suddenly, like thunder out of
a clear sky, that I was all amazed and helpless.

The soldiers began to spread, some of them to run, and others to put up
their pieces and cover me; and still I stood.

“Jouk[18] in here among the trees,” said a voice close by.

[18] Duck.

Indeed, I scarce knew what I was doing, but I obeyed; and as I did so, I
heard the firelocks bang and the balls whistle in the birches.

Just inside the shelter of the trees I found Alan Breck standing, with
a fishing-rod. He gave me no salutation; indeed it was no time for
civilities; only “Come!” says he, and set off running along the side of
the mountain towards Balachulish; and I, like a sheep, to follow him.

Now we ran among the birches; now stooping behind low humps upon the
mountain-side; now crawling on all fours among the heather. The pace was
deadly: my heart seemed bursting against my ribs; and I had neither time
to think nor breath to speak with. Only I remember seeing with wonder,
that Alan every now and then would straighten himself to his full height
and look back; and every time he did so, there came a great far-away
cheering and crying of the soldiers.

Quarter of an hour later, Alan stopped, clapped down flat in the
heather, and turned to me.

“Now,” said he, “it’s earnest. Do as I do, for your life.”

And at the same speed, but now with infinitely more precaution, we
traced back again across the mountain-side by the same way that we had
come, only perhaps higher; till at last Alan threw himself down in the
upper wood of Lettermore, where I had found him at the first, and lay,
with his face in the bracken, panting like a dog.

My own sides so ached, my head so swam, my tongue so hung out of my
mouth with heat and dryness, that I lay beside him like one dead.