SIR EDWARD LEITHEN'S MYSTERIES - Complete Series. Buchan JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.

      XIV.

       HARIPOL—WOUNDED AND MISSING

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      Lamancha watched Palliser-Yeates disappear along the hill- side, and then returned to the hollow top of the Beallach, which was completely cut off from view on either side. All that was now left of the mist was a fleeting vapour twining in scarves on the highest peaks, and the cliffs of Sgurr Dearg and Sgurr Mor towered above him in gleaming stairways. The drenched cloudberries sparkled in the sunlight, and the thousand little rivulets, which in the gloom had been hoarse with menace, made now a pleasant music. Lamancha’s spirits rose as the world brightened. He proposed to wait for a quarter of an hour till Wattie with the stag was well down the ravine and Palliser-Yeates had secured the earnest attention of the navvies. Then he would join Wattie and help him with the beast, and within a couple of hours he might be wallowing in a bath at Crask, having bidden John Macnab a long farewell.

      Meantime he was thirsty, and laid himself on the ground for a long drink at an icy spring, leaving his rifle on a bank of heather.

      When he rose with his eyes dim with water he had an unpleasing surprise. A man stood before him, having in his hands his rifle, which he pointed threateningly at the rifle’s owner.

      “‘Ands up,” the man shouted. He was a tall fellow in navvy’s clothes, with a shock head of black hair, and a week’s beard—an uncouth figure with a truculent eye.

      “Put that down,” said Lamancha. “You fool, it’s not loaded. Hand it over. Quick!”

      For answer the man swung it like a cudgel.

      “‘Ands up,” he repeated. “‘Ands up, you—, or I’ll do you in.”

      By this time Lamancha had realised that his opponent was the peripatetic navvy, whom Palliser-Yeates had reported. An ugly customer he looked, and resolute to earn Claybody’s promised reward.

      “What do you want?” he asked. “You’re behaving like a lunatic.”

      “I want you to ‘ands up and come along o’ me.”

      “Who on earth do you take me for?”

      “You’re the poacher—Macnab. I seen you, and I seen the old fellow and the stag. You’re Macnab, I reckon, and you’re the—I’m after. Up with your ‘ands and look sharp.”

      Mendacity was obviously out of the question, so Lamancha tried conciliation.

      “Supposing I am Macnab—let’s talk a little sense. You’re being paid for this job, and the man who catches me is to have something substantial. Well, whatever Lord Claybody has promised you I’ll double it if you let me go.”

      The man stared for a second without answering, and then his face crimsoned. But it was not with avarice but with wrath.

      “No, you don’t,” he cried. “By—, you don’t come over me that way. I’m not the kind as sells his boss. I’m a white man, I am, and I’ll— well let you see it. ‘Ands up, you—, and march. I’ve a—good mind to smash your ‘ead for tryin’ to buy me.”

      Lamancha looked at the fellow, his shambling figure contorted by hard toil out of its natural balance, his thin face, his hot, honest eyes, and suddenly felt ashamed. “I beg your pardon,” he grunted. “I oughtn’t to have said that. I had no right to insult you. But of course I refuse to surrender. You’ve got to catch me.”

      He followed his words by a dive to his right, hoping to get between the man and the Sgurr Mor cliffs. But the navvy was too quick for him, and he had to retreat baffled. Lamancha was beginning to realise that the situation was really awkward. This fellow was both active and resolved; even if he gave him the slip he would be pursued down to the Doran, and the destination of the stag would be revealed…But he was by no means sure that he could give him the slip. He was already tired and cramped, and he had never been noted for his speed, like Leithen and Palliser-Yeates…He thought of another way, for in his time he had been a fair amateur middle-weight.

      “You’re an Englishman. What about settling the business with our fists? Put the rifle down, and we’ll stand up together.”

      The man spat sarcastically. “Ain’t it likely?” he sneered. “Thank you kindly, but I’m takin’ no risks this trip. You’ve to ‘ands up and let me tie ‘em so as you’re safe and then come along peaceable. If you don’t I’ll ‘it you as ‘ard as Gawd ‘ll let me.”

      There seemed to be nothing for it but a scrap, and Lamancha, with a wary eye on the clubbed rifle, waited for his chance. He must settle this fellow so that he should be incapable of pursuit—a nice task for a respectable Cabinet Minister getting on in life. There was a pool beside his left foot, which was the source of one of the burns that ran down into the Sanctuary. Getting this between him and his adversary, he darted towards one end, checked, turned, and made to go round the other. The navvy struck at him with the rifle, and narrowly missed his head. Then he dropped the weapon, made a wild clutch, gripped Lamancha by the coat, and with a sound of rending tweed dragged him to his arms. The next moment the two men were locked in a very desperate and unscientific wrestling bout.

      It was a game Lamancha had never played in his life before. He was a useful boxer in his way, but of wrestling he was utterly ignorant, and so, happily, was the navvy. So it became a mere contest of brute strength, waged on difficult ground with boulders, wells, and bog-holes adjacent. Lamancha had an athletic, well-trained body, the navvy was powerful but ill-trained; Lamancha was tired with eight or nine hours’ scrambling, his opponent had also had a wearing morning; but Lamancha had led a regular and comfortable life, while the navvy had often gone supperless and had drunk many gallons of bad whisky. Consequently the latter, though the heavier and more powerful man, was likely to fail first in a match of endurance.

      At the start, indeed, he nearly won straight away by the vigour of his attack. Lamancha cried out with pain as he felt his arm bent almost to breaking-point and a savage knee in his groin. The first three minutes it was anyone’s fight; the second three Lamancha began to feel a dawning assurance. The other’s breath laboured, and his sudden spasms of furious effort grew shorter and easier to baffle. He strove to get his opponent on to the rougher ground, while that opponent manoeuvred to keep the fight on the patch of grass, for it was obvious to him that his right course was to wear the navvy down. There were no rules in this game, and it would be of little use to throw him; only by reducing him to the last physical fatigue could he have him at his mercy, and be able to make his own terms.

      Presently the early fury of the man was exchanged for a sullen defence. Lamancha was getting very distressed himself, for the navvy’s great boots had damaged his shins and torn away strips of stocking and skin, while his breath was growing deplorably short. The two staggered around the patch of grass, never changing grips, but locked in a dull clinch into which they seemed to have frozen. Lamancha would fain have broken free and tried other methods, but the navvy’s great hands held him like a vice, and it seemed as if their power, in spite of the man’s gasping, would never weaken.

      In this preposterous stalemate they continued for the better part of ten minutes. Then the navvy, as soldiers say, resumed the initiative. He must have felt his strength ebbing, and in a moment of violent disquiet have