Beautiful Just! (14 page)

At the sale field over a hundred cattle were mustered and as I gave Sucky his last potach, his last scratch between the now formidable horns, before he went into the ring I compared him with the other beasts. There was no doubt he was a splendid animal and I had to admit to myself that I was exceedingly proud of having reared him. The bidding was brisk and when the sale was over and I had collected the bundle of notes from the auctioneer's clerk I had the satisfaction of knowing that Sucky had made the highest price of all the beasts at the sale.

‘Aye, you had a good beast there right enough,' my Bruach friends told me, ‘an' you ought to be feelin' well pleased with what you got for him.'

I was feeling well pleased but I was also feeling bereft. I ought never to have come, I told myself. I ought to have stayed at home and let Erchy dispose of Sucky as he had offered to do. Not wishing to stay to watch the animals being driven away by their new owners I started to walk back to Bruach. The men were all going on to the bar to spend some of their cattle money and if they were sober enough would be catching the bus back to Bruach later in the evening, but the Nurse, when she had heard I was attending the sale, had told me that she would be coming back that way round about mid-day so that if I started to walk she would pick me up along the road. I. was sitting down eating my sandwiches when I saw her car.

‘Did you enjoy the sale?' she enquired.

‘I don't think “enjoy” is quite the right word,' I demurred.

‘Were you pleased with the price you got?' she pursued.

‘He made the best price at the sale,' I told her and I could not keep the pride out of my voice.

‘If you were a man now you would be off celebratin' your success with a good dram as I daresay they are doing now,' she said with a sour twist to her mouth. I acknowledged her remark with a wan smile, not bothering to tell her that I felt more dejected than elated by my success.

That evening when I went to get Bonny there was a snowy howl to the rising wind and menace in the thick clouds that cushioned the black shapes of the hills. We were in for snow and I found myself hoping that Sucky was in a sheltered place and that he was not feeling too deserted. I hoped too that the calf Bonny was now carrying would not be another bull. It was too harsh an experience to rear a calf with pride as I had done and then dispose of it as I had disposed of Sucky. As I settled down to my evening meal I came to the depressing conclusion that I was not cut out to be either a crofter or a farmer and that the only way I wanted to work with animals was to conserve them. And then common sense crept in reminding me that to conserve one frequently has to cull. I went to bed early, worn out by my long demanding day. I would feel better about things in the morning, I told myself. Sleep and the congratulations of my neighbours would surely do much to restore my pride in my achievement. I put out the lamp and the darkness brought tears pricking at the back of my eyes. I turned my face into the pillow knowing that I had betrayed Sucky.

The stalker leaned on the gate at the entrance to his cottage, his telescope trained on the straggling party of sportsmen, ghillies and ponies wending its way down from the hills and silently he cursed the broken leg which had prevented him not only from being a member of the party but from being its accepted leader. The stalker was a man of the hills, exulting in their immensity and their brooding silence; their secret corries and clefts; their soaring ridges and sheer precipes and being a good stalker he revelled in his job. He continued to watch as the party trailed through the hollows of the glen, lowering his telescope only when the laird and his companions gained the road which led past the cottage.

‘Well, MacDonald' the laird hailed him as he approached. ‘It's a great pity you couldn't have been with us. We had a damn good day. Two royals!' His face was red with exertion; his English accents sounded as if they were seeping through a port-soaked sponge.

‘Indeed I'm pleased to hear that, my lord,' returned the stalker with a spectral gesture in the region of his deerstalker. ‘And there is no one more sorry than myself that I was not able to be with you.' He tapped his plastered leg with his stick. ‘He will not be so long before he is right again so the doctor is after telling me the day just.'

‘Good, oh, very good!' responded the laird with awkward sympathy. ‘We'll expect to see you back on the hill again quite soon then?'

‘Not soon enough for me, my lord,' replied the stalker. The laird turned and nodded in the direction of a pony which, with a ghillie in charge, was plodding towards them, the carcass of a stag slung over its back. ‘One of those brutes we got today was a real Methuselah,' he said. ‘Should have been culled years ago I'd say. Hardly worth bringing home except for the antlers – and the hounds of course,' he added. The stalker was conscious of the hint of criticism in the laird's voice.

‘Indeed then you must have got the wise old one that was away and over the hill to your neighbour's land whenever I've gone out after him,' he explained. ‘Ach, he's the wily one, that one.'

The laird permitted himself a quick caw of laughter. ‘Well, wily or not he's dead now,' he said. ‘Very dead,' he repeated. He called some instruction to the ghillie then followed his companions in the direction of the shooting lodge.

The stalker waited until the pony drew level with the cottage. ‘I hear you got good sport the day,' he greeted the ghillie. The ghillie halted the pony.

‘No bad,' he replied. ‘As much as will give the Englishmen a good appetite for their dinner tonight.' The stalker hobbled forward on his stick and inspected the dead stag. ‘There's a good age on this beast,' observed the ghillie and his voice too was faintly critical.

‘Aye, aye,' agreed the stalker. ‘He has a good age on him right enough.'

It was ten years since he had stood as close as he was standing now to this particular stag. It had been an October day of sparkling sunshine that was bleaching the snowy peaks of the hills to a blue tinged whiteness and lighting the autumn sedge to a tawny gold. The wind was subtle and peat-scented; the boggy pools lay unruffled, screened by their palisades of rusty reeds, and when the stalker who had been trudging the hills since dawn had sat down at mid-day to eat his potach and to fortify himself from his hip flask he had reflected on his good fortune in having a job that needed only the qualifications which he liked to think he was well endowed: health and strength; endurance; agility; a keenly observant eye and good marksmanship with a rifle.

When he had eaten and drunk he rested his back against a sun-warmed crag and stared up at the sky following the antics of a buzzard which was planing and circling over the corrie. At that time he had been courting Jeannie and as a consequence of her enthusiasm for dancing until the early hours of the morning the stalker had had three successive nights with only a snatched hour or two of sleep. He allowed himself to doze in the sunshine. When he woke it was to see that the sun was already spreading a golden fan over the horizon and he jumped up quickly remembering with dismay that he had promised Jeannie faithfully he would take her to a cinema that evening. It was to be the last showing of a film she particularly wanted to see and since the cinema was in the town and their only transport was by train the stalker knew his one chance of reaching his cottage in time to change and cycle the three miles to the station was not by tramping all the way round the loch and then climbing the hill but by taking a short cut along a narrow path that curved round the shoulder of the hill. Slinging his telescope round his neck and his rifle over his shoulder he strode forward urgently. It would not do to disappoint Jeannie; she was already peeved by the long hours he sometimes worked and there were too many other men who would quickly step into his place if it were vacant. He knew in his heart that she was not cut out to be the wife of a stalker; of a man so dedicated to the hills. He was aware that the town or its vicinity was the focus of Jeannie's ambition and yet, despite his knowledge he had to admit that he had allowed himself to fall deeply in love with her.

In half an hour he had reached the shoulder of the hill and pushing his forked stick into the ground to be collected another day he prudently unloaded his rifle. The path that lay before him was a dangerous one since for about fifty feet of its length it was no more than a ledge of rock, the width of three handspans, jutting out from the slab sides of the hill like the tip of a tongue caught between the teeth and with a sheer drop of some hundred feet to a chaos of rocks below. But the stalker was sure footed and since he had used the path once or twice before it was with heightened alertness rather than apprehension that he began cautiously on the traverse. Turning his back to the drop and hugging the face of the cliff with his body he sidled along concentrating on ensuring that his thick-soled boots were firm on the ledge. He had got about half way and was approaching the section of the path which looped round a projection of rock when he was startled to catch the rank scent of deer. Turning his head he found himself confronted by the stag. Instantly the stalker froze, realizing his peril. There is no animal more aggressive than a rutting stag; nothing it hates and fears more than the scent of a human and as he saw the bristling mane, the lowered head and the ugly menace in its eyes the stalker knew that neither he nor the animal stood a chance of surviving the encounter. They were both trapped: the stalker because if he attempted to retreat the stag would immediately charge and inevitably they would both plunge over the precipice to their deaths on the rocks below: the stag was trapped because it could neither back nor turn in the narrow sinuousness of the path. He stared unblinkingly at the stagy, subconsciously noting the unusual pattern of the grey mottling on the animal's left foreleg while he let himself realize that if the stag charged it stood a faint chance of escaping with its life: for himself there was no chance. His thoughts raced through his mind like film through a speeded-up projector. Why was the stag here at all? he asked himself. In all his years on the hill he had never known this particular route to be used by deer. Why then had the stag chosen to use it today of all days? For that matter why was he here himself? The irony of the explanation smote him. They were here because they were both victims of their own desire: he was in a hurry to go to Jeannie; the stag was in a hurry to go to a particular hind. It was as basic as that! The stalker remained completely rigid. He had no desire in him now except to live and as he held the animal with his gaze he considered the possibility of using his rifle. But it was slung over his left shoulder and he had unloaded it before commencing the traverse. In his mind he rehearsed the separate actions of inching the gun over to his right; of extracting a cartridge from his pocket; of loading the rifle. But he discarded the idea as being too dangerously provocative to attempt. Even if he could get hold of the rifle without movement that was perceptible to the stag the click of opening and loading it would assuredly send the beast crazy enough to spring to the attack. As the man and the animal continued to assess each other

the stalker wondered if the stag was too blinded by anger and ruttishness to be aware of its own danger and as he glimpsed the setting sun reflected in the animal's eyes, making them look even more malevolent, he wondered how long it would wait before making up its mind to take the risk and charge. He almost hoped it would be soon for though the stag could doubtless remain in its position throughout the night he knew that he could not. Even if he could the situation would still be the same in the morning and since he had always been a law unto himself so far as hours were concerned he doubted if he would be missed for a day or two so there was no likelihood of a search party coming to his rescue. How long they stood facing each other the stalker did not know but suddenly he was aware that his knees, reacting at too long a spell of tautness, had begun to tremble. In that moment he made his decision. Slowly, so as not to excite the stag, he let his knees bend and then sag; let his arms droop fraction by fraction until they were on the ground behind him steadying him in a half crouching half reclining position. Instinct told him he must lie down and yet instinct also warned him that he must make no forward movement that might be interpreted by the stag as the beginning of a challenge. Gradually as his nerves and sinews would permit he eased himself backwards still holding the stag with his eyes. He saw the animal paw the path, the preliminary to combat; he felt the hard firm rock under his shoulders; he relaxed the muscles of his neck and pressing his side close against the face of the cliff he stretched himself out, flat on his back, submissive as a vanquished animal, one hand hanging over the precipice holding the empty rifle, his other hand across his crutch. The stalker closed his eyes and waited. There was a faint chance that this way the stag would accept his submission and being thus prevented from going forward would try to turn and in turning it would certainly fall, leaving the path clear for himself. But his heart began to pound and his body went rigid with panic as the smell of the stag grew stronger in his nostrils. The beast was coming on! He peered through half-closed eyelids and saw the stag's antlers silhouetted against the light; heard its hooves on the path. He closed his eyes again as he wondered how swift his death would be either by disembowelling or by being smashed on the rocks below. He felt a hesitant hoof on his thigh and the next moment the stalker grunted with pain as the weighted hoof coming down between his legs caught a fold of flesh on the inside of his leg, pinning it to the ground. He had time to brace every muscle in his body before the second hoof was planted firmly on his chest, squeezing the breath out of him with its weight. For one brief second he felt the stag's breath drift over his face and opening his eyes glimpsed the sky through the tracery of its antlers directly above him. The weight lifted from his chest to be immediately replaced by the weight of a hind hoof and almost before he could appreciate what was happening the stalker saw and smelled the semen-sticky underbelly of the stag as it shut out the sky for the fleeting seconds it took for the animal to pass over him. As he lay gasping he heard the sound of retreating hooves.