Katerfelto Part 21

"_Tatchipen si, Meero Dado!_ You speak truth, oh! my father," answered the other. "And you will lodge with us to-night on the moor. The fullest platter shall smoke, and the softest blanket be spread, for the gipsy's friend!"

Katerfelto shook his head. "If I came to your tent and claimed my own, Fin," he asked, "would your welcome be so hearty and free?"

The gipsy's face fell. "I love her," he said. "She was given to me long before you bought her from our people. You told me I should have her back at some future time, father, the morning you took her away. I reminded her of it only yesterday."

The other glanced sharply at him from under his bushy eyebrows. This was scarcely as he expected. Judging from all he knew, he calculated that Waif must have accompanied John Garnet into the West, and had vowed from the moment he discovered her flight, that he would be revenged on both, while he supposed they were in hiding together. He now saw that she must either have required the a.s.sistance of her tribe or found it impossible to elude their observation. He knew quite enough of the girl to be sure that even while with her own people she would find opportunities to meet her lover, and from that lover, lately his own emissary, he was still inclined to exact the penalty, that all paid, sooner or later, who ran counter to the designs of Katerfelto.

"Keep her in your tents, Fin," said he with a smile, "and fear no hindrance from me. But remember, though she is of a wandering nature, and comes of a wandering race, a Romany la.s.s may wander too free and too far."

Fin's dark face turned black as night. "I understand you, father," he muttered. "You mean, you mean, that she has a Gorgio lover!"

The veins in his handsome throat swelled while he spoke, and his voice came so thick it was hardly intelligible. "I mean," answered Katerfelto coolly, "that he whom the Gorgios call John Garnet is better out of the way, both for you and for me and for Waif. He knows too much, and he dares too much. Your eyes are as keen as a hawk's, Fin. Can you not see that as he cozened me out of my horse, he would cozen you out of your bride?"

The gipsy's low, smothered laugh seemed the very reverse of mirth.

"There is no better sheath for a Romany's blade," he answered, "than the bowels of a pampered Gorgio."

"My son," replied the other, "wisdom is the child of experience. Let King George take the trouble off your hands, and pay you besides a purse of gold for your forbearance. John Garnet's is a hanging matter, and a reward of one hundred guineas is offered for his apprehension. Set the bloodhounds on him at once, and the thing is done. Better by far keep that long knife of yours for cutting your bread and cheese!"

"I helped him," said Fin thoughtfully, "helped him, because Thyra bade me, as frankly as if he had really been poor Galloping Jack come down from Tyburn-tree. The bloodhounds might turn round and lay hold of the informer. Counsel me, father. I can right myself so easily with three inches of steel!"

The other shook his head. No man alive had fewer scruples of mercy or forbearance, but it was Katerfelto's nature to plot rather than execute.

While he would have felt no qualms in concocting or administering a subtle poison, he shrank from the very idea of personal contest and shedding of blood. "A hundred guineas of red gold," he answered; "think of that, Fin, and then talk about a hand's breadth of bare steel! You cannot compare them. Be advised by me, my son, and you will rid yourself of a rival, win a bride, and gain a wedding-portion all in one sentence.

That Exmoor Parson. I saw him here to-day. I would venture a wager he is drinking in one of the booths now. Watch for him riding home. He is a magistrate; never fear him for that. Lay your hand on his horse's mane and say to him in the king's name, 'I can show you the man you want--follow me!'"

"But would he not ask for the hundred guineas and get them himself?"

argued the gipsy, who, with all his strong pa.s.sions, had a keen eye to the main chance. "There is no justice nor fair dealing on either side between the Romany and the Gorgio."

For the first time during their interview Katerfelto laughed outright.

"My son," he said, "I think I can trust you to look after your own interests without a.s.sistance from me. When you have delivered John Garnet into the hands of Abner Gale you will have accomplished your object and mine. For my own part I will not return into the Fair. I need hardly ask, Fin, if you are here alone?"

"We are like the hooded crows, my father," answered Fin. "When you see one of us you may be sure there are others not far off. We must needs hang together, or the Romany would soon be swept from the face of the earth."

"Then let one of your people drive my cart to Exeter," continued Katerfelto. "He will know where to leave it with no questions asked. As for me, my son, I must make my way to your tents without losing an hour.

I have changed my disguise once to-day. I can change it a score of times, if necessary; yet I would not that roystering Parson had recognised me but now in the Fair."

"I shall be alone with him on the moor presently," said Fin Cooper, in a tone of meaning. "My father, do you desire that he should tell no tales?

Shall I silence him once for all?"

Katerfelto pondered. "Not at present, Fin," he answered, after a pause.

"It will be better to make use of him when we want him, and put him on the right scent. If a hound runs counter, the farther he goes the farther he is left behind!"

CHAPTER XXII.

A WARRANTABLE DEER.

Meantime John Garnet, enjoying the golden hours at Porlock with the carelessness of his nature, thought no more of the toils that surrounded him than the wild deer of the forest thought of the many preparations made for its capture; of the good horses stabled, the staunch hounds fed, the distances travelled by lords and ladies, the laced coats tarnished, the bright spurs reddened, the jingling of bit and bridle, the gathering of hors.e.m.e.n and varlets, the energy expended in a chase that must be followed with so much pomp and circ.u.mstance for its especial downfall. Large and stately, gliding from field to field, it pa.s.sed through the twilight, like some majestic ghost, to crop the yet unharvested grain, or tear the juicy turnips from the earth, with appet.i.te unimpaired by misgivings of to-morrow, rejoicing in its pride of strength, trusting implicitly in those fleet, shapely limbs that bore it lightly over its native moor, as the wild-bird's pinions waft her through the air.

How many centuries have elapsed since the fatal morning that saw the Red King mount for his last ride through the stately stems of Bolderwood!

How many since that woful hunting in Chevy Chase which began in joyous notes of hound and horn, to end in the battle-cry of the Percy, the sword strokes of the Douglas, and the pouring out like water of the bravest, n.o.blest, gentlest blood two countries could afford! Yet has the pursuit of the wild animal by the instinct of the tame continued to be the favourite sport of Englishmen from those rude times to our own, while now, as then, many a bold, adventurous nature, panting for an outlet to its energies, finds engrossing occupation in the pleasures of the chase.

Taken in good sense and moderation, as each man's discretion teaches him to judge, the draught thus offered by a bountiful providence, which provides for our mental health the sweet no less freely than the bitter, is exhilarating in the extreme. It rouses our manly qualities of mind and body, excites our intellectual faculties and our muscular powers, braces the nervous system, stimulates to healthy effort the vital force of arm and heart and brain. Many of the most distinguished men in every time have been "fond of hunting." Few men "fond of hunting" but are frank of nature, kindly, generous, unselfish, and good fellows, to say the least!

If such a position be granted, it follows that all hunting, conducted in a spirit of humanity and fair play, is more or less to be esteemed. The stout s.e.xagenarian who halts his steady cob on a hill, and from that point of vantage watches in the valley below his ten couple of beagles unwinding and puzzling out the line of a hare that has just crossed under his pony's nose, without a.s.sisting them by so much as a whisper, is a sportsman to the back-bone. No music on this lower earth can ravish his ears like the tuneful cry of his little darlings, who are indeed nothing loth to hear their own voices, and refuse to hunt a yard without a.s.suring each other that it is all right. No triumph can afford him greater pleasure than his ride home to dinner with a hare dangling across his saddle, honestly killed by the patience and perseverance of that tedious pursuit which has fairly wearied her to death! and when he lays his head on his pillow, before his closing eyes pa.s.ses a vision of Challenger opening in the turnips, of Rock-wood and Reveller feathering with scarce a whimper up the stony lane.

Surely his enjoyment is undeniable as that of his converse, the scarlet-coated hero in vigorous manhood, who bestrides three hundred guineas' worth of blood and symmetry, while he watches a gorse covert shaking under the researches of twenty couple of high-bred fox hounds, wild with eagerness to push up their game and dash after him over the sea of gra.s.s that lies spread around, like falcons on the wing. A physiologist might study to advantage the countenance of the rider; an artist would long to portray on canvas the att.i.tude of the horse.

These two friends, loving each other dearly, are moved by a common sympathy. Simultaneously the eyes of each brighten, and their hearts beat fast. A crash of music from two score merry voices proclaims that a fox has been found, a hat held up against the sky-line, and, after a discreet interval, one long, ringing holloa announce that he is away!

That joyous excitement for which some men are content to live, and even in a few sad cases to die, has begun in good earnest now, and trifling, puerile as it may seem, I doubt whether any pursuit in life affords for the moment such intense gratification as "a quick thing over a gra.s.s country, strongly enclosed, in a good place, and only half-a-dozen men with the hounds!"

Rider and horse, I say, are moved by a common sympathy, science and conduct being furnished by the man, strength, speed, and courage by the brute. From field to field they speed rejoicing, facing and surmounting each obstacle as it presents itself, with a varied dexterity of hand and eye that amounts to artistic skill, and even should unforeseen difficulty or treacherous foothold entail a downfall, rising together, parted, but not at variance, each perfectly satisfied w ith the efforts of his friend. Then, when the rattling burst is over, and the hounds are baying round a good fox who has never turned his head from the distant covert that killing pace alone forbade him to reach, how fond the caress laid by stained glove on reeking neck, how proudly affectionate the muttered words of praise, a generous animal interprets by their tone. "You're the best horse in England. I never was so well carried in my life!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOONLIGHT.]

But of all forest creatures hunted by our forefathers and ourselves, the stag has been considered from time immemorial the n.o.blest beast of chase. His nature has been the study of princes, his pursuit the sport of kings. The education of royalty itself would once have been thought incomplete without a thorough knowledge of his haunts and habits, while books were written, and authorities quoted, on the formalities with which his courteous persecutors deemed it becoming that he should be hunted to death. To this day the royal and gallant sport flourishes in West Somerset and North Devon with its former vigour. When George the Third was king, that wild, romantic western county was already famous for staunch hounds, untiring horses, and daring riders, no less than for the strength, size, and lasting qualities of its red deer.

An animal that can fly twenty miles on end for life, and die with its back to a rock, undaunted in defeat, a true gentleman to the last, is surely no unworthy object of pursuit.

But what are these shadows that cross the Barle by moonlight, with the water dripping like molten silver off their sides as they emerge one by one from the glistening stream to disappear again in the black night of its overhanging woods? And is not that their king who lags behind, with beam and branches of those wide-spread horns flas.h.i.+ng in points of white as he stoops his crowned head to drink, and pa.s.ses on? No shadow this, but a stately beast in all the strength and beauty of its prime. A stag of size and substance, with goodly fat on his ribs and many tines on his antlers. Thickening, too, somewhat in the neck, for already the clear air of an autumn night tells of early frosts, and soon the peaceful majesty of his repose will change to turmoil of love and war. In the meantime he feeds lazily on, turning without apparent object in a different direction from the herd.

Thus he wanders over a broad surface of country--now cropping the rank gra.s.ses that border the Exe, ere he dashes through its swift and shallow stream as though disdaining a bath that only reaches to his knees. Anon dallying with the standing oats, that pine thin and scanty on a bare hill farm, by the verge of the forest; then crossing the swampy skirts of Exmoor at his long jerking trot, to rouse the bittern and the curlew from their rest, he makes his way by many a broken path and devious sheep-track to the impervious coppices and steep wooded declivities of Cloutsham Ball. It is an hour or two before dawn when he reaches this well-known haunt, and the lordly beast, penetrating to its inmost thicket, lays himself down with the intention of sleeping undisturbed till late in the day.

With an indolent hoist of his haunches, that hardly seemed an effort, he has cleared the hazel-grown bank round his resting-place in a spring that covered some five or six yards, but left imbedded in the yielding clay a distinct impression of his cloven feet. Therefore Red Rube, stooping over the slot at daybreak, chuckles inwardly, and observes to his flask, "a warrantable deer!" kneeling down to examine the footprint more closely, and measure its width by the fingers of his own brown hand. Then he takes a wide circuit, embracing several favourite pa.s.ses for deer, and satisfies himself that, save one light hart or "brocket,"

as he calls it, not another animal of the species is this morning harboured in Cloutsham Ball.

The stag-hounds are to meet some two miles off to the eastward. It must be travelling that distance with the sun in his eyes that causes Red Rube to blink and grin and occasionally hiccough all the way to their accustomed trysting-place.

He is there betimes with his broken-kneed pony, yet two riders have arrived before him. Rube chuckles and sidles up to them.

"Your servant, Mistress Carew--your servant, your honour," says he, in a deferential tone. "The spurs had need be sharp to-day, master. I'll warrant there'll be wicked riding, with the likeliest la.s.s in Devon looking on!"

Nelly Carew deserved the epithet. The close-fitting blue habit so well set off her trim figure, the saucy little hat was so becoming to her fresh delicate face, that it seemed no wonder John Garnet's eyes should be fixed on his beautiful companion rather than on the opposite ridge of moor, over which hounds and hors.e.m.e.n were expected every moment to appear.

And Nelly, too, was more than proud of her cavalier. How handsome she thought him, and how princely, with his dark eyes, his ruddy cheeks, his pleasant, careless smile, and cl.u.s.tering hair. Never another rider in the West, thought Nelly, could sit his horse so fairly, and where in the bounds of England was the steed to compare with Katerfelto? "I used to think Cowslip the most beautiful creature in the world," said she, patting her favourite's neck; "but your horse has quite put me out of conceit with mine."

"I know _who_ is the most beautiful creature in the world," answered John Garnet, not unconscious that he had arrived at the idiotic stage of his malady. "I have never seen her equal, and never shall; but we'll argue that point going home," he added, while his bright eye grew brighter. "There's no time to wrangle now, sweet Mistress Nelly, for here come the hounds!"

Cowslip and Katerfelto raised their heads at the same moment, with pointed ears and eager, solemn eyes; the grey indulging in a snort of approval and delight.

The cavalcade, consisting of huntsman, hounds, a whipper-in, and half a score of sportsmen, were to be seen filing across the moor in slanting line down the opposite hill.

John Garnet tightened his girths. "It won't be long before the fun begins," observed this impatient young man.