Chapter 19

Then--he collapsed, falling as if the slab on which he stood had slidden from under him, and remained--flattened tense, wide-eyed, and dangerous.

The Chieftain's wife had jerked her head and sneezed. At least, she had yanked her cranium quick as quick, and made a noise. It seemed like a sneeze. For the rest, she remained as motionless and expressionless as bronze Buddha, her wonderful orbs scowling at the wild cat.

Then that cat got off that slab of rock. I say got off, but it would be more correct to say that he slid off sideways on his tummy--flat. One had difficulty in seeing that he moved. His inscrutable, wide, sinister, yellow-green eyes were fixed upon the Chieftain's wife. The whole of his attention was fastened, focused, concentrated upon the Chieftain's wife. And there he made his mistake. He forgot about the Chieftain himself, but the Chieftain had not forgotten about him. In fact, the Chieftain was there, on the spot, or over it, rather, exactly above the wild cat's head, five hundred feet above, and very slowly revolving upon wide, outstretched pinions, as if hung by invisible, slowly swung wire from heaven.

If the cat had looked up! But, then, the cat would not have been a wild four-footed animal if he had. In all the aeons four-footed wild-folk never seem to have learnt to look up, and, for the omission, die some painful deaths that might otherwise be avoided. I do not say that none of them _ever_ look up--they do, but it is seldom.

Indeed, finally this wild cat did look up; he could not well help it. There was a sound like the swift descent of a smiting sword above him. But he was seconds too late.

Seconds before, the Chieftain had vanished again. Nay, he had changed. His wings had shut, and--he had turned into a line, a dark streak drawn, almost as lightning draws itself, from heaven to earth, thus--wh-r-r-r-ssss-sh!

It was then that the cat looked up--just in time to receive the Chieftain's black tiger-talons, upon brilliant yellow claws, clashing against his own ivory fangs, and--well, in his eyes.

The Chieftain's wife flung from her strange self her immobility, flung out a scream, flung open her pinions, and--shifted. She could not have arrived upon the scene more than three seconds after her lord--but not by any means master. She was certainly not half that time getting to work.

I am not going to describe the struggle that followed, in deference to certain good, kind, and well-meaning people who are unable to face the stern realities of life, or--to save their country. Such things, however, must be; and they would not happen if it were not for a hard, though very sound, purpose, among beasts as among men. Nature is far-seeing and very wise. Moreover, she hates hypocrisy, and--well, we may not all be butchers, but most of us eat meat.

It was certainly a very great confloption, for, of course, that wild cat fought like a--like a wild cat, which is like a Welshman, and I cannot say more than that. And in the end the whole inferno, being upon a very sharp slope, began to slide, and slid, dragging a welter of dust and raw earth and feathers and fur after it, in an avalanche of its own, till it fetched up in a tangle of mountain-ash roots and furze two hundred feet below, where it furiously and fearfully, in one wild, awful, whirling flurry, ended.

After that the Chieftain dragged what was left of that wild cat out of the bushes, where he had tried to jamb and crawl and burrow himself, out into the open--well into the open--so that the eagles could look all round, which they like to do, being birds of high degree--also vermin, or counted as such by gamekeepers of low degree.

The pair--Heaven and the laird alone know how long they had been good and faithful partners in life--thereupon set to hooking at one another with their horny, dragon-like beaks, gripping with black-taloned yellow claws that even a Hercules would shake hands with just once, beating with monster wings that would knock you or me silly, snapping horny, resounding snaps, and generally "not 'arf a-carryin' on" in the approved and correct modern matrimonial manner. So it appeared, at least; but among eagles--within the royal circle, that is to say--such things might be their way of paying compliments, for you cannot expect feathered couples of the royal blood to behave like a pair of mere love-birds.

Then came the bullet.

It was a neat, long, nickel-jacketed, lead-nosed bullet of some .300-caliber, and its own report was chasing it. It sang a high-pitched, plaintive little song all alone to itself as it traveled along through the fine, champagne-like mountain air, at about thirteen hundred feet per second, and it was aimed to hit the Chieftain exactly in the full of the chest. That was why, I suppose, it hit the wild cat smack in the backbone, and killed that poor beast all over again. But you can never tell with bullets.

It might be mentioned here that just as turtle-soup is to their worships, so is wild cat to golden eagles--a _bonne bouche par excellence_, so to say. They do not get it every day, or every month, for the matter of that--at least, not in these islands of enlightenment, for the wild cat shares with them the honor of being a martyr of Fate, and it is on the _index expurgatorius_ of the gamekeeper also.

But, I give you my word, those two mighty birds left that wild cat uneaten. I say "left" him advisedly, for it was rather a matter that they had left him than that they did leave him. Anyway, they were not near him, not anywhere near him, and I suppose they went. There had arisen a noise as if all Regent Street had at that moment rustled its combined "silk foundations," and--there were our eagles far, far away, and in opposite directions, melting quicker than real sugar-knobs in hot grog into the haze of the distant sky.

And after that the Chieftain and his wife glided up into the setting sun till it swallowed them in a red glory, and when the sun had burnt itself out, swam--swam stupendously and wonderfully--through ether down to bed. Bed with them that night consisted in sitting, regally enthroned among clouds, upon a black, rock bastion exactly above a clean drop of not much more than six hundred feet, and rocked by "the wracked wind-eddies" of the mountain-tops. The good God who made all things--even the animal that had fired at them--alone knows what they dreamt about, that superb, intolerant, fierce, haughty, implacable couple.

* * * * * *

Now, the man, the--er--lord of creation, who had fired that shot--in fact, all those shots that day--was Pig Head, the back-to-the-lander from the South. Pig Head argued that deer forests are farms lying idle. And the laird had offered to rent him a farm at one-and-nothing-three the acre to disprove it. Pig Head had taken the offer. He disapproved of lairds as unrevolutionaries. He hated red deer because they were too smart for him to kill wholesale, and he loathed golden eagles because they were the pride of the "hills." But he kept his opinions to himself, because he valued his neck. The People of the Hills would have stretched it very much longer than his own long tongue if he hadn't. In his heart he also hated the "oppressed" People of the Hills for that they loved their laird, regarded deer-stalking as a religious rite, and--wore kilts!

As a matter of fact, Pig Head's farm never grew anything more than some clinging heather, a little cross-leaved heath, patches of furze, a clump of storm-bent Scotch firs or so, and rock--mostly rock.

Pig Head had only been able to get what he thought was his own back upon that day by firing at the eagles, because the laird and the stalkers, the gillies, the keepers, and the People of the Hills, were away, all away, at a sheep-dog trial, or a clan meeting, or something. After that he had to work in silence, and he did.

There are always people who will buy a golden eagle "British caught," and those who don't want live ones will take 'em dead, and have them stuffed. They like to be able to set 'em up in the hall among other stuffed birds, and boast that they shot 'em. Other people of it like decayed mind come and look at them, and offer money for them at sales out of jealousy. That's collecting.

Now, somewhere, somehow, sometime during his checkered career, Pig Head had heard, or read, of a way of catching golden eagles. He proceeded.

Upon an unholy and cold shaly slope well up among the clouds, the mist, and the ptarmigan, Pig Head had hollowed him out a hollow, roomy enough for himself to crouch in. He was the sort of man that crouched--and "grouched." Over the top he put a nice big slab; the walls were of piled stones, and at one end was an aperture eight inches or so long by about one foot. Being made of its surroundings, the hiding-place did not look at all suspicious--from a bird's point of view.

Finally, upon the morning after the unsuccessful shooting, and before it was light--this was necessary, for there is no knowing how far the eyes of eagles can see--Pig Head ensconced himself in this hiding-place. It was perishing cold, and Pig Head, who did not smoke, and never drank whisky--only gin--was blue of nose and numb of hand. A good plaid would have helped him, but he abhorred plaids.

* * * * * *

The dawn came up over the mountains, the mists sank down to the vales, and the dawn wind, lean and searching, went whispering over the hills.

Then a speck grew out of the heights, out of the west and the dark, and growing and growing momentarily, became a rustling, sinister, untidy, heavy shape, which anon settled upon a rock, and croaked, "Glock! glock!" twice, almost like a bark, in a deep and sepulchral voice. To it was added another sable form, coming down from the lonely stony heights, and the two sat together, remarking, as they looked--but their wonderful eyes must have seen it very far away--at the bait. It was the wild cat turned inside-out, and other things, on a slab outside the aperture before mentioned, that was at one end of Pig Head's hiding-place. And the black specters were ravens.

"Ou!" they said; then "Aw!" then again "Ou!" One remarked "Augh!" and the other agreed--or, it may have been, disagreed--with an "Au!"

Evidently the wild cat, in a disguise in which he would not have known even his own self, looked very enticing, and he and the situation generally were being discussed from all points of view.

I say from all points of view advisedly, because, although the ravens discoursed much over their council of war, they would not come within a hundred yards, and it was a voice from the semi-dark, or western, side which finally stayed them in the very act of unfolding their big, rounded wings to fly away.

"Krar-krar-krar!" rasped the voice; and the ravens folded their wings again to wait and see!

It was a gray crow, and the ravens knew that never was gray crow an innocent lost in the wilderness.

If the gray, or hoodie, crow--always remembering that crows, gray or black, are servants of the Devil, just as ravens are, and very cunning--if the crow, I say, thought that here was food without some horrible form of hidden death lurking behind it, then the chances were the gray crow was right. They knew "hoodie," you see. Anyway, if they let him go first, and he was wrong, then it would be _his_ funeral, not theirs.

Wherefore the gray crow went first to the bait, and Pig Head, half-dead with cold and peering out of a tiny peep-hole, called down blessings of a weak and watery nature upon his black head. And well he might, for if the gray crow had shied at the bait, then everybody else would have taken his tip.

They took his tip now, for in a few minutes there was a "hurrr-hrrr-hrrr" of wings, and, one after the other, down came the ravens.

Anon the ravens were joined by a third, volplaning from some cloud-covered peak, where he must have been watching all the time; and the crow was joined by four accomplices, who just drifted up from nowhere special, as gray crows have a habit of doing when there is carrion afoot.

But Pig Head had not come there to entertain ravens, nor was he at that moment laying up a store of lumbago for the purpose of gratuitously feeding disreputable gray crows. He had other quarry in view. The gray crows, however, were his best asset. They quarreled, and were loquacious, and, in fact, they made a most infernal noise; and he had stated that the noise was necessary to his success. This would seem as if eagles hunt by sound as well as by sight. Pig Head was the first person I ever heard that suggested so. But, be that as it may, the racket increased as the sun, robed in purple, gold, and crimson splendor, rose over the mountain-tops; and with the sun came the only bird, so the ancients tell us, who can look the sun full in the face without blinking--_Aquila_, the eagle.

But--make no mistake about this point--he who came then, grandly, proudly sweeping over the blue, dim ridges, was not the Chieftain himself, for this was not the Chieftain's territory, but the Chieftain's son; he who lived, as you will remember, upon the other, or south, side of Loch Royal.

Haughtily, statelily, as a king might go to his throne, so did the Chieftain's son let himself down, in stupendous hundred-foot spirals, to a pinnacle of rock, jagged, saw-edged, and perpendicular, about two hundred yards away; and the ravens and the gray crows, who saw him coming, made great and sudden hostile outcry at first, and then, as he folded, foot by foot, his immense pinions about him, and sat there erect, with his piercing, scowling gaze bent upon _them_, they were dumb.

And Pig Head, aching with cramp and cold in his hiding-place, knew that _the_ quarry was at hand. But if you think, because the eagle was at hand, that the time was at hand too, you don't know eagles. They may be, upon occasion, as quick as the spring of death, but they can also be as slow as the wrath of Heaven. And that bird there, the great, grand, haughty, unbending _Aquila chrysoetus_, that golden eagle, sat. I say, he sat. And there, so far as he was concerned, appeared to be an end of it. He might have been a carven copestone of the very granite fang he sat upon, for all the appearance of life he gave, except that occasionally--say at fifteen-minute intervals--he winked a yellow-lidded wink. And the wink was almost as unlifelike and uncanny as the bird.

And the gray crows and the ravens gulped and quarreled, with one eye upon the eagle and one upon their job; and Pig Head--Pig Head sat and cursed that eagle, from his horny beak to his barred tail, through chattering--and aching--teeth. But the eagle never moved a feather.

* * * * * *

We are told that Alexander sighed for other worlds to conquer. So it was with the Chieftain, who was not Alexander.

After his wife had gone a-hunting eastward--a wonderful and gigantic silhouette floating and dwindling into the furnace of the rising sun--the Chieftain sat upon his ledge of rock, staring across the gleaming, painted, glassy expanse of Loch Royal, southward, to the dominions of his son.

He had seen his son, a speck in the dawnlight, invisible to our eyes, sailing from peak to upflung peak. He had seen him suddenly check and circle downwards. And then--he had not seen him.

He had waited two hours, with that patience which birds and reptiles have, and still he had not seen him. Yet, if during that time he had risen, the Chieftain must have seen him. And the Chieftain knew that. He knew also that a golden eagle very rarely makes a "kill" so big that he has to remain with it two hours. The alternative, therefore, would seem to be death or carrion; and the way in which he had circled down would seem to suggest carrion. And it is written among the laws of the king of birds that when carrion is about, the strict rules and regulations as to the inviolability of the frontiers may be, in some degree, broken.

Therefore the king unfurled his overshadowing vans, and launched himself down the lake with mighty, slow, powerful strokes, like the steady thrust of marine engines. He would go and see.

Five minutes later the Chieftain was as motionless as his son, perched, like him, too, upon a rock, watching the highwaymen and footpads of the moors squabbling over the bait--they had no eyes to see what they were doing, for they had to keep one eye upon each eagle--and about two hundred yards away on the other side.

This may have hurried matters somewhat, for within only about another half-hour the Chieftain's son rose, and, with heavy wing-flaps, flew down to the bait, sending the ravens and the crows up in a cloud, like blown bits of burnt paper, as he came to anchor. And it was curious that, in stooping to meanness, the royal bird's aspect was no longer grand. He flew heavily and clumsily to the spot. He settled without grace, and almost overbalanced on to his Grecian nose. He clutched, and tore, and gulped, and gorged like a vulture. Thus Nature always dresses her actors for their parts. You may have noticed it.

But Pig Head--Pig Head was chuckling. He had silently and softly removed the clod of peat that blocked the aperture before mentioned. Running through this aperture he had a cord whose other end was fastened to the bait, and every time the great eagle wrenched and tore at the flesh, he very, very gently pulled the bait towards him. He did not move when the mighty bird had his head up, gulping, you will note; for even Pig Head knew that an eagle nearly standing on his head and tugging, and not feeling the difference between his own tugs and the tugs on a cord, is not the same as an eagle with his head up and eyes stabbing everywhere at once.

At last the victim had been drawn, upon the bait, within reach, and Pig Head, slipping his hand through the opening, grabbed the thick, powerful legs of the bird, and pulled. There was one mighty upheaval of vast vans, and--no eagle! What happened down inside the hiding-place was more or less private. There were sounds as if a young earthquake were getting ready to be born in that place; but in the end the Chieftain's son had his legs tied, and suffered the indignity of being ignominiously thrust into a filthy sack. He said nothing during that argument, but his looks were enough to kill anything with a thinner hide than Pig Head.

Immediately Pig Head got ready for the Chieftain. What's that? Yes, the Chieftain is right. That great, haughty bird had not moved. You see, eagles are not educated up to seeing their full-grown sons disappear into the bowels of the earth without explanation or warning given. There is nothing in their experience to meet the phenomenon. Consequently they don't tumble, as a rule, and--well, listen for yourself.

In a short time--a short time for an eagle; not less than half-an-hour, really--the Chieftain flapped heavily to the bait, and fed--beastily, if the truth must be told.

He was bigger than his son, and heavier, and knew more about the world, and Pig Head was longer in seeing a fair chance to make a grab at the royal legs. At last, however, the chance came, and Pig Head grabbed. The Chieftain naturally lost his balance, and before he knew what had happened he was inside Pig Head's "booby-hutch."

The Chieftain, however, was not an ordinary bird, not even an ordinary eagle. Moreover, he must have been a great age, older even than Pig Head. Be that as it may, the Chieftain believed mightily in the wild maxim which says, "They should take who have the power, and they should keep who can."

And upon that he acted.

It all happened in a flash. Like lightning his right wing came round with a terrific flail-stroke, and hit Pig Head in the face at the precise instant that the surgical instrument he carried as his beak sank deep into one of Pig Head's calves. The Chieftain was upside-down at the moment, and his legs were tied together, but that made no difference to the savagery of the blow.

Pig Head uttered one howl of agony, and tumbled backwards, and his devil saw to it that he should tumble backwards upon the very sack wherein lay the Chieftain's son, squirming with rage. The Chieftain's son was a son of his father, and hearing the young hurricane of his father's wings, and feeling the intolerable weight of Pig Head sitting involuntarily down upon him, struck for the cause like a good un--struck, with his cruel, hooked bill, through sack, through trousers, through pants, and home through flesh, and Pig Head rebounded into the air considerably quicker than he had gone down, hitting his head against the roof, a resounding whack, and yelling fit to awake all the devils in cinders. And he did not go alone. Upon one calf, and upon--another portion of him, the Chieftain and the Chieftain's son went with him.

Very few men have ever left a powder-magazine on fire in quicker time than did Pig Head leave his hiding-place, and none could have made more noise in the process. The Chieftain stuck to him lovingly, and the Chieftain's son, sack and all, seemed determined never to leave him; and Pig Head was nearly demented with pain as he leapt out, caracoling wildly, into the light of day, and into the arms of--only the laird, the head stalker, four gillies, and two collies.

They had come to find him, these stern-faced, long, lean men, on account of "information received." And they had found him. But they did not speak. They were Scotch. Nor did they screw out a smile among them. They were Jocks! They acted--being Highlanders.

Four hands like iron claws seized Pig Head, and tipped him on end, even as he had tipped the eagles. Two knives went "snick" as they opened, then "wheep-wheep" as they cut. Several pieces of cord and bits of sacking flew into the air. There was one colossal upheaval of wings, a feathered whirlwind hurling everybody every way--and the Chieftain and his son, released and scandalized, offended and enraged beyond the rage of kings, rose swiftly into the air with mighty, threshing strokes that simply hurled them aloft like powerful projectiles--into the heavens, as it were terrible avenging spirits of the tempest. A chaos, a rush, a mighty blast of air, and--they were gone!

Then the laird turned to Pig Head, and, "Mon, ye dinna ken th' laird. If ye did--w-e-e-l, Ah'm thinkin' ye'd understand."

XVII

RATEL, V.C.

Between the clumps of the stunted acacias the sun beat down with the pitilessness of a battleship's furnace, and it was not much better in the acacias themselves. Save for a lizard here and there, motionless as a bronze fibula, or a snake asleep with eyes wide open, or the flash of a "pinging" fly, all Nature seemed to have fled from that intolerable white-hot glare and gone to sleep.

But the hour of emancipation was at hand, and the dim caverns of shade--what there was of it--stirred strangely. A hundred yards away a blotch of shadow beneath a group of stunted trees swayed and broke up into several zebra moving off to water. Fifty yards distant the inky shade that carpeted the earth under a bare outcrop of rock gave up a single gnu antelope bull and a Grant's gazelle whose lyrate horns were as wonderful as his consummate grace.

Thereafter came sound. Till then there had been only heat, the first hints at movement, and the terrifying silence of the wilderness. Even the birds had been dumb. Now came "a feathered denizen of the grove" with a peculiarly arresting, grating chatter, a noise no one could overlook, and few could help investigating. And finally, brazenly, impudently, excitedly flitting from branch to branch, the chatterer evolved slowly out of the ragged bush-choked landscape, a dusky little bird, seemingly a bird of no importance, scarce larger than a lark.