Chapter XVI. THE BLACK KILLER

THAT, as James Moore had predicted, was the first only of a long succession of such solitary crimes.

Those who have not lived in a desolate country like that about the Muir Pike, where sheep are paramount and every other man engaged in the profession pastoral, can barely imagine the sensation aroused. In market place, tavern, or cottage, the subject of conversation was always the latest sheep-murder and the yet-undetected criminal.

Sometimes there would be a lull, and the shepherds would begin to breathe more freely. Then there would come a stormy night, when the heavens were veiled in the cloak of crime, and the wind moaned fitfully over meres and marches, and another victim would be added to the lengthening list.

It was always such black nights, nights of wind and weather, when no man would be abroad, that the murderer chose for his b.l.o.o.d.y work; and that was how he became known from the Red Screes to the Muir Pike as the Black Killer. In the Daleland they still call a wild, wet night "A Black Killer's night:" for they say: "His ghaist'll be oot the night."

There was hardly a farm in the countryside but was marked with the seal of blood. Kenmuir escaped, and the Grange; Rob Saunderson at the Holt, and Tupper at Swinsthwaite; and they were about the only lucky ones.

As for Kenmuir, Tammas declared with a certain grim pride: "He knows better'n to coom wheer Th' Owd Un be." Whereat M'Adam was taken with a fit of internal spasms, rubbing his knees and cackling insanely for a half-hour afterward. And as for the luck of the Grange--well, there was a reason for that too, so the Dalesmen said.

Though the area of crime stretched from the Black Water to Grammoch-town, twenty-odd miles, there was never a sign of the perpetrator. The Killer did his b.l.o.o.d.y work with a thoroughness and a devilish cunning that defied detection.

It was plain that each murder might be set down to the same agency. Each was stamped with the same unmistakable sign-manual: one sheep killed, its throat torn into red ribands, and the others untouched.

It was at the instigation of Parson Leggy that the squire imported a bloodhound to track the Killer to his doom. Set on at a fresh killed carcase at the One Tree Knowe, he carried the line a distance in the direction of the Muir Pike; then was thrown out by a little bustling beck, and never acknowledged the scent again. Afterward he became unmanageable, and could be no further utilized. Then there was talk of inducing Tommy Dobson and his pack to come over from Eskdale, but that came to nothing. The Master of the Border Hunt lent a couple of foxhounds, who effected nothing; and there were a hundred other attempts and as many failures. Jim Mason set a cunning trap or two and caught his own bob-tailed tortoise-sh.e.l.l and a terrible wigging from his missus; Ned Hoppin sat up with a gun two nights over a new slain victim and Londesley of the Home Farm poisoned a carcase. But the Killer never returned to the kill, and went about in the midst of the all, carrying on his infamous traffic and laughing up his sleeve.

In the meanwhile the Dalesmen raged and swore vengeance; their impotence, their unsuccess, and their losses heating their wrath to madness. And the bitterest sting of it all lay in this; that though they could not detect him, they were nigh to positive as to the culprit.

Many a time was the Black Killer named in low-voiced conclave; many a time did Long Kirby, as he stood in the Border Ram and watched M'Adam and the Terror walking down the High, nudge Jim Mason and whisper:

"Theer's the Killer--oneasy be his grave!" To which practical Jim always made the same retort:

"Ay, theer's the Killer; but wheer's the proof?"

And therein lay the crux. There was scarcely a man in the countryside who doubted the guilt of the Tailless Tyke; but, as Jim said, where was the proof? They could but point to his well-won nickname; his evil notoriety; say that, magnificent sheep-dog as he was, he was known even in his work as a rough handler of stock; and lastly remark significantly that the grange was one of the few farms that had so far escaped unscathed. For with the belief that the Black Killer was a sheep-dog they held it as an article of faith that he would in honour spare his master's flock.

There may, indeed, have been prejudice in their judgement. For each has his private grudge against the Terror; and nigh every man bore on his own person, or his clothes, or on the body of his dog, the mark of that huge savage.

Proof?

"Why, he near killed ma La.s.sie!" cries Londesley.

"And he did kill the Wexer!"

"And Wan Tromp!"

"And see pore old Wenus!" says John Swan, and pulls out that fair Amazon, battered almost past recognition, but a warrioress still.

"That's Red Wull--b.l.o.o.d.y be his end!"

"And he laid ma Rasper by for nigh three weeks!" continues Tupper, pointing to the yet-unhealed scars on the neck of the big bobtail. "See thisey--his work."

"And look here!" cries Saunderson, exposing a ragged wound in Shep's throat; "thot's the Terror--black be his fa'!"

"Ay," says Long Kirby with an oath; "the tykes love him nigh as much as we do."

"Yes," says Tammas. "Yo' jest watch!"

The old man slips out of the tap-room; and in another moment from the road without comes a heavy, regular pat-pat-pat, as of some big creature approaching, and, blending with the sound, little shuffling footsteps.

In an instant every dog in the room has risen to his feet and stands staring at the door with sullen, glowing eyes; lips wrinkling, bristles rising, throats rumbling.

An unsteady hand fumbles at the door; a reedy voice calls, "Wullie, come here!" and the dogs move away, surly to either side of the fireplace, tails down, ears back, grumbling still; the picture of cowed pa.s.sion.

Then the door opens; Tammas enters, grinning; and each, after a moment's scrutiny, resumes his former position before the fire.

Meanwhile over M'Adam, seemingly all unsuspicious of these suspicions, a change had come. Whether it was that for the time he heard less of the best sheep-dog in the North, or for some more occult reason, certain it is that he became his old self. His tongue wagged as gayly and bitterly as ever, and hardly a night pa.s.sed but he infuriated Tammas almost to blows with his innuendoes and insidious sarcasms.

Old Jonas Maddox, one evening at the Sylvester Arms, inquired of him what his notion was as to the ident.i.ty of the Killer.

"I hae ma suspicions, Mr. Maddox; I hae ma suspicions," the little man replied, cunningly wagging his head and giggling. But more than that they could not elicit from him. A week later, however, to the question:

"And what are yo' thinkin' o' this black Killer, Mr. M'adam?"

"Why _black?_" the little man asked earnestly; "why _black_ mair than white--or _gray_ we'll say?" Luckily for him, however, the Dalesmen are slow of wit as of speech.

David, too, marked the difference in his father, who nagged at him now and then with all the old spirit. At first he rejoiced in then change, preferring his outward and open warfare to that aforetime stealthy enmity. But soon he almost wished the other back; for the older he grew the more difficult did he find it to endure calmly these everlasting bickerings.

For one reason he was truly glad of the altered condition of affairs; he believed that, for the nonce, at least his father had abandoned any ill designs he might have cherished against James Moore; those sneaking visits to Kenmuir were, he hoped, discontinued.

Yet Maggie Moore, had she been on speaking terms with him, could have undeceived him. For, one night, when alone in the kitchen, on suddenly looking up, she had seen to her horror a dim, moonlike face glued against the windowpane. In the first mad panic of the moment she almost screamed, and dropped her work; then--a true Moore--controlled herself and sat feigning to work, yet watching all the while.

It was M'Adam, she recognized that: the face pale in its framework of black; the hair lying dank and dark on his forehead; and the white eyelids blinking, slow, regular, horrible. She thought of the stories she had heard of his sworn vengeance on her father, and her heart stood still, though she never moved. At length with a gasp of relief she discerned that the eyes were not directed on her. Stealthily following their gaze, she saw they rested on the Shepherds' Trophy; and on the Cup they remained fixed, immovable, while she sat motionless and watched.

An hour, it seemed to her, elapsed before they shifted their direction, and wandered round the room. For a second they dwelt upon her; then the face withdrew into the night.

Maggie told no one what she had seen. Knowing well how terrible her father was in his anger, she deemed it wiser to keep silence. While as for David M'Adam, she would never speak to him again!

And not for a moment did that young man surmise whence his father came when, on the night in question, M'Adam returned to the Grange, chuckling to himself. David was growing of late accustomed to these fits of silent, unprovoked merriment; and when his father began giggling and muttering to Red Wull, at first he paid no heed.

"He! he! Wullie. Aiblins we'll beat him yet. There's many a slip twixt Cup and lip--eh, Wullie, he! he!" And he made allusion to the flourishing of the wicked and their fall; ending always with the same refrain: "He! he! Wullie. Aiblins we'll beat him yet."

In this strain he continued until David, his patience exhausted, asked roughly:

"What is't yo' mumblin' aboot? Wha is it yo'll beat, you and yer Wullie?"

The lad's tone was as contemptuous as his words. Long ago he had cast aside any semblance of respect for his father.

M'Adam only rubbed his knees and giggled.

"Hark to the dear lad, Wullie! Listen hoo pleasantly he addresses his auld dad!" Then turning on his son, and leering at him: "What is it, ye ask? Wha should it be but the Black Killer? Wha else is there I'd be wushin' to hurt?"