Micah Clarke, Arthur Conan Doyle [different ereaders txt] 📗

birding-piece on yonder hooks, which, with a brace of slugs in it and a bold man behind it, might bring down one of these fine birds for all their gay feathers.’

‘Her’s been a true mate to me for more’n thirty year,’ said the old man, the tears coursing down his wrinkled cheeks. ‘Thirty zeed-toimes and thirty harvests we’ve worked together. But this is a zeed-toime which shall have a harvest o’ blood if my right hand can compass it.’

‘If you go to t’ wars, Gaffer Swain, we’ll look to your homestead,’ said the farmer who had spoken before. ‘As to t’ greenstuffs as this gentleman asks for he shall have not one wainload but three, if he will but gi’ us half-an-hour to fill them up. If he does not tak them t’ others will, so we had raither that they go to the good cause. Here, Miles, do you wak the labourers, and zee that they throw the potato store wi’ the spinach and the dried meats into the waggons wi’ all speed.’

‘Then we had best set about our part of the contract,’ said Hector Marot. With the aid of our troopers he carried out the four dragoons and our dead sergeant, and laid them on the ground some way down the lane, leading the horses all round and between their bodies, so as to trample the earth, and bear out the idea of a cavalry skirmish. While this was doing, some of the labourers had washed down the brick floor of the kitchen and removed all traces of the tragedy. The murdered woman had been carried up to her own chamber, so that nothing was left to recall what had occurred, save the unhappy farmer, who sat moodily in the same place, with his chin resting upon his stringy work-worn hands, staring out in front of him with a stony, empty gaze, unconscious apparently of all that was going on around him.

The loading of the waggons had been quickly accomplished, and the little drove of oxen gathered from a neighbouring field. We were just starting upon our return journey when a young countryman rode up, with the news that a troop of the Royal Horse were between the camp and ourselves. This was grave tidings, for we were but seven all told, and our pace was necessarily slow whilst we were hampered with the supplies.

‘How about Hooker?’ I suggested. ‘Should we not send after him and give him warning?’

‘I’ll goo at once,’ said the countryman. ‘I’m bound to zee him if he be on the Athelney road.’ So saying he set spurs to his horse and galloped off through the darkness.

‘While we have such volunteer scouts as this,’ I remarked, ‘it is easy to see which side the country folk have in their hearts. Hooker hath still the better part of two troops with him, so surely he can hold his own. But how are we to make our way back?’

‘Zounds, Clarke! let us extemporise a fortress,’ suggested Sir Gervas. ‘We could hold this farmhouse against all comers until Hooker returns, and then join our forces to his. Now would our redoubtable Colonel be in his glory, to have a chance of devising crossfires, and flanking-fires, with all the other refinements of a well-conducted leaguer.’

‘Nay,’ I answered, ‘after leaving Major Hooker in a somewhat cavalier fashion, it would be a bitter thing to have to ask his help now that there is danger.’

‘Ho, ho!’ cried the Baronet. ‘It does not take a very deep lead-line to come to the bottom of your stoical philosophy, friend Micah. For all your cold-blooded stolidity you are keen enough where pride or honour is concerned. Shall we then ride onwards, and chance it? I’ll lay an even crown that we never as much as see a red coat.’

‘If you will take my advice, gentlemen,’ said the highwayman, trotting up upon a beautiful bay mare, ‘I should say that your best course is to allow me to act as guide to you as far as the camp. It will be strange if I cannot find roads which shall baffle these blundering soldiers.’

‘A very wise and seasonable proposition,’ cried Sir Gervas. ‘Master Marot, a pinch from my snuff-box, which is ever a covenant of friendship with its owner. Adslidikins, man! though our acquaintance at present is limited to my having nearly hanged you on one occasion, yet I have a kindly feeling towards you, though I wish you had some more savoury trade.’

‘So do many who ride o’ night,’ Marot answered, with a chuckle. ‘But we had best start, for the east is whitening, and it will be daylight ere we come to Bridgewater.’

Leaving the ill-omened farmhouse behind us we set off with all military precautions, Marot riding with me some distance in front, while two of the troopers covered the rear. It was still very dark, though a thin grey line on the horizon showed that the dawn was not far off. In spite of the gloom, however, our new acquaintance guided us without a moment’s halt or hesitation through a network of lanes and bypaths, across fields and over bogs, where the waggons were sometimes up to their axles in bog, and sometimes were groaning and straining over rocks and stones. So frequent were our turnings, and so often did we change the direction of our advance, that I feared more than once that our guide was at fault; yet, when at last the first rays of the sun brightened the landscape we saw the steeple of Bridgewater parish church shooting up right in front of us.

‘Zounds, man! you must have something of the cat in you to pick your way so in the dark,’ cried Sir Gervas, riding up to us. ‘I am right glad to see the town, for my poor waggons have been creaking and straining until my ears are weary with listening for the snap of the axle-bar. Master Marot, we owe you something for this.’

‘Is this your own particular district?’ I asked, ‘or have you a like knowledge of every part of the south?’

‘My range,’ said he, lighting his short, black pipe, ‘is from Kent to Cornwall, though never north of the Thames or Bristol Channel. Through that district there is no road which is not familiar to me, nor as much as a break in the hedge which I could not find in blackest midnight. It is my calling. But the trade is not what it was. If I had a son I should not bring him up to it. It hath been spoiled by the armed guards to the mail-coaches, and by the accursed goldsmiths, who have opened their banks and so taken the hard money into their strong boxes, giving out instead slips of paper, which are as useless to us as an old newsletter. I give ye my word that only a week gone last Friday I stopped a grazier coming from Blandford fair, and I took seven hundred guineas off him in these paper cheques, as they call them—enough, had it been in gold, to have lasted me for a three month rouse. Truly the country is coming to a pretty pass when such trash as that is allowed to take the place of the King’s coinage.’

‘Why should you persevere in such a trade ?’ said I. ‘Your own knowledge must tell you that it can only lead to ruin and the gallows. Have you ever known one who has thriven at it?’

‘That have I,’ he answered readily. ‘There was Kingston Jones, who worked Hounslow for many a year. He took ten thousand yellow boys on one job, and, like a wise man, he vowed never to risk his neck again. He went into Cheshire, with some tale of having newly arrived from the Indies, bought an estate, and is now a flourishing country gentleman of good repute, and a Justice of the Peace into the bargain. Zounds, man! to see him on the bench, condemning some poor devil for stealing a dozen eggs, is as good as a comedy in the playhouse.’

‘Nay! but,’ I persisted, ‘you are a man, judging from what we have seen of your courage and skill in the use of your weapons, who would gain speedy preferment in any army. Surely it were better to use your gifts to the gaining of honour and credit, than to make them a stepping-stone to disgrace and the gallows?’

‘For the gallows I care not a clipped shilling,’ the highwayman answered, sending up thick blue curls of smoke into the morning air. ‘We have all to pay nature’s debt, and whether I do it in my boots or on a feather bed, in one year or in ten, matters as little to me as to any soldier among you. As to disgrace, it is a matter of opinion. I see no shame myself in taking a toll upon the wealth of the rich, since I freely expose my own skin in the doing of it.’

‘There is a right and there is a wrong,’ I answered, ‘which no words can do away with, and it is a dangerous and unprofitable trick to juggle with them.’

‘Besides, even if what you have said were true as to property,’ Sir Gervas remarked, ‘it would not hold you excused for that recklessness of human life which your trade begets.’

‘Nay! it is but hunting, save that your quarry may at any time turn round upon you, and become in turn the hunter. It is, as you say, a dangerous game, but two can play at it, and each has an equal chance. There is no loading of the dice, or throwing of fulhams. Now it was but a few days back that, riding down the high-road, I perceived three jolly farmers at full gallop across the fields with a leash of dogs yelping in front of them, and all in pursuit of one little harmless bunny. It was a bare and unpeopled countryside on the border of Exmoor, so I bethought me that I could not employ my leisure better than by chasing the chasers. Odd’s wouns! it was a proper hunt. Away went my gentlemen, whooping like madmen, with their coat skirts flapping in the breeze, chivying on the dogs, and having a rare morning’s sport. They never marked the quiet horseman who rode behind them, and who without a “yoick!” or “hark-a-way !” was relishing his chase with the loudest of them. It needed but a posse of peace officers at my heels to make up a brave string of us, catch-who-catch-can, like the game the lads play on the village green.’

‘And what came of it?’ I asked, for our new acquaintance was laughing silently to himself.

‘Well, my three friends ran down their hare, and pulled out their flasks, as men who had done a good stroke of work. They were still hobnobbing and laughing over the slaughtered bunny, and one had dismounted to cut off its ears as the prize of their chase, when I came up at a hand-gallop. “Good-morrow, gentlemen,” said I, “we have had rare sport.” They looked at me blankly enough, I promise you, and one of them asked me what the devil I did there, and how I dared to join in a private sport. “Nay, I was not chasing your hare, gentlemen,” said I. “What then, fellow?” asked one of them. “Why, marry, I was chasing you,” I answered, “and a better run I have not had for years.” With that I lugged out my persuaders, and made the thing clear in a few words, and I’ll warrant you would have laughed could you have seen their faces as they slowly dragged the fat leather purses from their fobs. Seventy-one pounds was my prize that morning, which was better worth riding for