Stalky Co. | Page 6

you know."
Beetle was already far up the tunnel. They heard him gasp indescribably: there was the crash of a heavy body leaping through the furze.
"Aie! yeou little red rascal. I see yeou!" The keeper threw the gun to his shoulder, and fired both barrels in their direction. The pellets dusted the dry stems round them as a big fox plunged between Stalky's legs, and ran over the cliff-edge.
They said nothing till they reached the wood, torn, disheveled, hot, but unseen.
"Narrow squeak," said Stalky. "I'll swear some of the pellets went through my hair."
"Did you see him?" said Beetle. "I almost put my hand on him. Wasn't he a wopper! Didn't he stink! Hullo, Turkey, what's the matter? Are you hit?"
McTurk's lean face had turned pearly white; his mouth, generally half open, was tight shut, and his eyes blazed. They had never seen him like this save once in a sad time of civil war.
"Do you know that that was just as bad as murder?" he said, in a grating voice, as he brushed prickles from his head.
"Well, he didn't hit us," said Stalky. "I think it was rather a lark. Here, where are you going?"
"I'm going up to the house, if there is one," said McTurk, pushing through the hollies. "I am going to tell this Colonel Dabney."
"Are you crazy? He'll swear it served us jolly well right. He'll report us. It'll be a public lickin'. Oh, Turkey, don't be an ass! Think of us!"
"You fool!" said McTurk, turning savagely. "D'you suppose I'm thinkin' of us? It's the keeper."
"He's cracked," said Beetle, miserably, as they followed. Indeed, this was a new Turkey--a haughty, angular, nose-lifted Turkey--whom they accompanied through a shrubbery on to a lawn, where a white-whiskered old gentleman with a cleek was alternately putting and blaspheming vigorously.
"Are you Colonel Dabney?" McTurk began in this new creaking voice of his.
"I--I am, and--" his eyes traveled up and down the boy--"who--what the devil d'you want? Ye've been disturbing my pheasants. Don't attempt to deny it. Ye needn't laugh at it." (McTurk's not too lovely features had twisted them. selves into a horrible sneer at the word pheasant.) "You've been birds'-nesting. You needn't hide your hat. I can see that you belong to the College. Don't attempt to deny it. Ye do! Your name and number at once, sir. Ye want to speak to me--Eh? You saw my notice-boards? Must have. Don't attempt to deny it. Ye did! Damnable, oh damnable!"
He choked with emotion. McTurk's heel tapped the lawn and he stuttered a little--two sure signs that he was losing his temper. But why should he, the offender, be angry?
"Lo-look here, sir. Do--do you shoot foxes? Because, if you don't, your keeper does. We've seen him! I do-don't care what you call us--but it's an awful thing. It's the ruin of good feelin' among neighbors. A ma-man ought to say once and for all how he stands about preservin'. It's worse than murder, because there's no legal remedy." McTurk was quoting confusedly from his father, while the old gentleman made noises in his throat.
"Do you know who I am?" he gurgled at last; Stalky and Beetle quaking.
"No, sorr, nor do I care if ye belonged to the Castle itself. Answer me now, as one gentleman to another. Do ye shoot foxes or do ye not?"
And four years before Stalky and Beetle had carefully kicked McTurk out of his Irish dialect! Assuredly he had gone mad or taken a sunstroke, and as assuredly he would be slain--once by the old gentleman and once by the Head. A public licking for the throe was the least they could expect. Yet--if their eyes and ears were to be trusted--the old gentleman had collapsed. It might be a lull before the storm, but--
"I do not." He was still gurgling.
"Then you must sack your keeper. He's not fit to live in the same county with a God-fearin' fox. An' a vixen, too--at this time o' year!"
"Did ye come up on purpose to tell me this?"
"Of course I did, ye silly man," with a stamp of the foot. "Would you not have done as much for me if you'd seen that thing happen on my land, now?"
Forgotten--forgotten was the College and the decency due to elders! McTurk was treading again the barren purple mountains of the rainy West coast, where in his holidays he was viceroy of four thousand naked acres, only son of a three-hundred-year-old house, lord of a crazy fishing-boat, and the idol of his father's shiftless tenantry. It was the landed man speaking to his equal--deep calling to deep--and the old gentleman acknowledged the cry.
"I apologize," said he. "I apologize unreservedly--to you, and to the Old Country. Now, will you be good enough to tell me your story?"
"We were in your combe," McTurk began,