Chapter XV Watern Tor
Desperate was the flight, deliberate the pursuit of Gregory Libby. He had started without more purpose than that of a hare at first death-knell from hounds, and now, too late, he realised that by heading directly for the open Moor, his enemy must get the opportunity he needed to make a capture. Mr. Libby indeed was lighter and fleeter than Henry Collins, and at a mile or two the bigger man had stood no chance, but now, with Dartmoor before them, the question was one of endurance, and in that matter Henry held the advantage. He would lumber along in pursuit until dark, if necessary, and it was impossible for the other to hide from him. But the probable result of capture lent Libby wings. He pushed forward, yet wasted precious breath by cursing himself for a fool as he ran. Across the wastes, where old-time miners streamed for tin, he went, and gained a little as he did so. Then it struck him that at climbing his slighter build would win great advantage, so he headed for the rocky foot-hills of Watern Tor. The extra labour told upon Gregory’s lungs, however; he had soon been running for half an hour—a performance without parallel in his career—and he found that hoped-for vantage of ground by no means crowned his supreme effort. Henry came along with a steady shamble. He was blowing like a roaring horse, but his huge chest proved equal to the strain, and he grinned to find himself steadily decreasing the gap between his stick and Sally’s enemy. Presently the fugitive caught his foot in a rabbit hole, fell, and hit his shins on stone. He groaned and swore, for the accident cost him fifty yards, and quite shook his scanty pluck. His breath began to come hard, and he felt his heart flogging against his ribs very painfully. A mist filled his eyes, and it was lurid and throbbed with a red pulse at every stride. Nervous twitchings overtook him, and his knees and elbows jerked spasmodically. He grew unsteady and giddy, fell again, and then got upon his feet once more. Turning to avoid a bog, and splashing through the fringe of it, he still kept running, but his pace was dwindling to a slow trot, and his force was spent. Now he could hear the other snort within a hundred yards of him.
Then Mr. Collins hazarded a request.
“Stop!” he bawled. “Best to draw up, for I be gwaine to give ‘e worst walloping ever you had, an’ ’tis awnly puttin’ off the hour.”
But Libby did not answer. Terror added a last impetus, and he reached the summit of the hill, under those low precipices of granite that surmount it. Here rises a huge mass of stratified rock, beside which a smaller fragment, the Thirlestone named, ascends like a pinnacle, and stands separated at the summit by a few feet only from the main mass. Moved by physical fear and a desire to get as far as possible from Collins and the blackthorn, did Gregory struggle hither, and over rough granite steps crawled and jumped on to the great crown of the tor. A last effort took him to the top of the Thirlestone, and there, stranded between earth and sky, at an elevation of some forty feet from the turf below, he assumed a very tragical attitude. Frightened sheep leapt away from the granite plateau, and bounded down, sure-footed, from the northern ledges, where they found cool shadows. Bleating, they regained the earth, and so scampered off as Henry, his man safe, stopped to blow and recover necessary energy. For the victim there was no escape; the path to the summit of Thirlestone was the sole way back again. Turning up his sleeves the pursuer advanced from ledge to ledge until only the dizzy aperture between the pinnacle and its parent tor separated him from Mr. Libby. To stride across would be the work of a moment; but Collins felt haste was unnecessary. He sat down, therefore, recovered his wind, and volunteered some advice.
“Best come down-along wi’ me quiet. I caan’t do what I be gwaine to do on this here gert rock. Us might fall awver an’ break our necks.”
“If you move a step towards me, God’s my witness I’ll jump off an’ slay myself; an’ ’twill be brought home against you as murder,” declared Libby. “S’elp me I will; an’ who are you to do violence against me, as never hurt you in word or deed?”
“Us won’t talk ’bout that. I’ve got to larrup ‘e to the point wheer ’twould be dangerous to give ‘e any worse; an’ I be gwaine to do it, because I knaw you desarve it—never no chap more. So come awver an’ us’ll get back to the grass.”
“What for do ’e want to bruise a man ’cause a rubbishy gal be vexed wi’ un? Females is allus wrong-headed an’ onreasonable. You ain’t heard the rights, I’ll swear.”
“An’ ban’t likely to from such a gert liar as you, I reckon. Come awver, will ’e, an’ shut your damn mouth!”
“I’ll jump—I’ll jump an’ kill myself!”
But the other knew his man too well. Even Henry’s customary caution did not interfere between him and instant action now.
“You ban’t built to do no such reckless deed,” he answered calmly. “You wouldn’t be in such a boilin’ fright of a thrashin’ else. I’m sick of the sight of your snivelling, yellow face an’ rabbit mouth—lyin’, foxin’ varmint that you be!”
He strode across the gap, and Mr. Libby, abandoning all thought of self-destruction, merely dropped where he stood and grovelled.
“I’ll give ’e money—anything I’ve got—a gawlden pound—two—five! Doan’t—doan’t for Christ’s love! ’Tis tu hurtful, an’ me a orphan, an’ weak from my youth. Oh—my God—it’ll kill me—you’ll do murder if you touch me—it’ll——”
At this point, and during a pause in the scuffling and screaming of the sufferer, circumstances very startling were forced upon the attention of both men. Collins had made the other rise and get back to the tor, at risk of falling to earth if he refused the jump. He had then gripped Gregory by the collar, and was cautiously dragging him down the granite ledges to earth, when a strange noise stayed his progress. It was the same sound that had arrested Stapledon upon his homeward way.
“Gude Lard!” exclaimed Collins, dropping the other as he spoke; “theer’s somebody groanin’ horrid near by. God send it ban’t maister!”
They listened, and the mournful cry of suffering was repeated.
It seemed to rise from the heart of the great cliff on which they stood, and while in measure human, yet vibrated with the mechanical resonance of a beast’s voice. Collins returned to the summit, crept towards its edge, and peered over where the tor terminated in abrupt western-facing cliffs. Then the mystery was explained, and he saw a dying creature beneath him. Midway between his standpoint and the turf below there stretched a narrow ledge or shelf, weathered out through the centuries, and upon this excrescence lay a mortally injured sheep. The poor brute—probably scared by flash of lightning or roar of thunder overnight—had made a perilous leap and broken both forelegs in its tremendous descent. Now, helpless, in agony and awful thirst, it lay uttering mournful cries, that grew fainter as the sun scorched life out of it.
But Collins, attracted by a barking, gazed beyond, and his eyes filled with active concern at sight of a thing, motionless and distorted as a scarecrow, upon the rocks and turf below. Beside it a red setter sat and barked. Then the creature rose and ran round and round, still barking. Collins knew the broad shape below, and the brown, upturned face. He nearly fell forward, then turned, leapt to safety, and, forgetting the other man, hastened down to earth.
And there he found Myles Stapledon, unconscious if not a corpse. Upon his open eyes was peace, and the Death that must have looked into them had lacked power to leave there any stamp of terror or impress of fear. He had fallen backwards and so remained, supine. No visible violence marked his pose, yet a general undefined distortion pervaded it.
“God’s holy will!” murmured the living man to himself. “An’ he heard the same cry as us did, an’ quick to end the sorrow of the beast, tried to get to un. Cruel plain; but ’twas no job for a gert, heavy piece like him. An’ he slipped, an’ failed backward on the bones of his neck ’fore he could say the words.”
Libby shivered at the other’s elbow.
“Be you sure he’m truly dead?” he asked
“The gen’leman’s warm, but the faace of un tells death, I be feared; an’ his niddick’s scatted in somethin’ awful. But the dog do think he’s alive by the looks of un; an’ such things is awften hid from us an’ shawed to beastes.”
“Please God he’ve enough heat in un to bring back life.”
“It may be so. Anyway, ’tis for us to be doin’. I’ll bide along wi’ un, an’ you slip it back quicker’n you comed. Run for your life, or his’n, to the farm, an’ tell what’s failed, an’ send folks here an’ a man ’pon a hoss for a doctor, an’ bid ’em bring brandy.”
Collins spoke with extraordinary passivity. He received this tremendous impression with grief indeed, but no shock. Fear before any plain, daylight event, however horrible, his nature was incapable of suffering; only the night unnerved him.
“Go!” he said. “Doan’t stand starin’, an’ keep out of Missis Stapledon’s way, but see the men. An’ tell Pinsent, or the bwoy, to bring a gun along wi’ ’em. ’Twas his dyin’ deed to try an’ put thicky sheep out of sufferin’; an’ I’ll see ’tis done my awn self, for respect of the man.”
Gregory answered nothing, but departed. In the excitement of this event he forgot his own pending discomfiture and escape. But he remembered these things half-way back to Little Silver. Then he had time for personal satisfaction.
“’Tis a ill wind as blaws gude to none,” he thought.
And the other ordered the body of his master in seemly pose, and placed a pillow of fern under the battered skull, and sat down and waited. Not all the mellow sunset light could bring warmth to the face of Myles Stapledon. An evening wind blew over the Moor; the mist, generating and growing visible at close of day, stole here and there, and spread silver curtains, and wound about her familiar playthings of granite. She hid the heath, and transformed the stone, brushed by the living, and glazed the placid eyes of the dead.
With profound respect, but no active emotion of sorrow, Henry Collins sat and watched; yet bitter mourning did not lack, for the great red dog still ran up and down, nosed his master, then lifted up his voice and howled as the cold truth struck into him. His wonderful eyes imaged a world of misery and his face showed agonies far more acute than the moonlike countenance of the man.
But Collins had come correctly to the truth, and, in his speech, accurately described an incident that here, upon thresholds of renewed hope and peace, had ended the days of Myles Stapledon.
At sudden cry from a brute in pain above him, Myles climbed Watern, realised the sheep’s sad plight, and immediately essayed to throw it down, that its miseries might be ended. But at unguessed personal disadvantages, from a protracted fast and recent physical exertions, the man over-estimated his strength, nor took account of the serious difficulties attending such a climb. Half-way to the ledge, he grew suddenly giddy, and, for the first time, realised that though he might descend, return must be for him impossible. A desperate effort to get back proved futile; he slipped, struggled, slipped again, and found his hands and arms powerless to serve or save. And then he heard the unexpected Message and knew that his hours were told.
Now he slept where he had fallen, below the unchanging granite. His life was done with; its tribulations and sunrise of new hope alike quenched. Yet no pang of mental sorrow marked his dead face, and physical suffering was likewise absent from it. The man lay calm of feature, contented of aspect. His eyebrows were arched and normal, his hands were unflexed. One had guessed that he made no effort to question the mandate, but rather, in a phrase of Aurelius, had yielded up life with serenity complete as His who issued the discharge.