Part 39

Near them was only the lonely slope, bare now, it seemed, of all life. But they thought otherwise. Their unspeakably fierce gaze was focused upon what looked like a grained slab, like any other grained slab, if it had not all at once begun to twitch, and so--even then one could only make out the faint outline of a body--turn gradually into a wild cat asleep on his side. The twitching was not the result of a fit, but of dreams. Probably he had not meant to go to sleep at all--in a land of golden eagles! He had merely meant to bask in the sun, within instant spring of a handy hole between the stones if anything in the enemy line turned up. That very sun, however, had conspired with drowsiness to betray him, and--something in the enemy line had turned up.

Even so, I doubt if the golden eagles, with all their wonderful prismatic binocular vision, made out the cat, as man could. Birds have not that power, as man has. The twitching they were instant to see. The cause of it they must have, equally instantly, suspected. Certainly, however, was a long time coming to them. Precisely when it did, no man knoweth. They remained like carvings or very fine figures cast in bronze, and as immovable as the same, for the best part of an hour, if you please; and during that time all the sign of life that either of them gave was to wink a yellow eyelid, as quickly as an instantaneous shutter winks, several times.

At the end of that period a rain-squall came racing and howling round the summit. It passed in a few seconds, and left mist--cloud, if you like--damp, dank, and chilly, and a dead calm, in its wake, and--the Chieftain had vanished (I told you he knew the value of a hidden descent). But goodness and his own arrogant self alone knew when or where; in the squall, most likely. But he had certainly vanished.

The Chieftain's mate sat on, as stolid, and as solid, and as statuesque as ever. She had not moved when he evaporated, or given any sign whatever.

With the coming of the mist, the cat woke up. The cold probably awoke him. He was not pleased. He had come to get warm, not cold. He arose and stretched himself, baring all his claws and fangs with lazy insolence, for any whom it might concern to see.

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.