The Killing Man Read online

  Jim knew the spot as well, perhaps a furlong where an open dale became more of a gorge; he had never followed it to the bottom, being less curious about things than Sam.

  They reached the steep valley and Sam looked about and varied the first plan.

  “You stays to the bottom end, Jim, and shoots they two in the cart. If they got muskets, they can shoot straighter, for sitting down, like. The ones on the ponies ain’t going to be so dangerous to us. Simon, you stays with Jim, both of you out of sight, and chucks a stone so ‘ard as you can the while Jim’s loading again. I’ll be at the top, up in the rocks, and shootin’ the nearest sod off ‘is ‘oss. Then I’ll do what looks right after. You keep an eye out on they on the ‘osses. Maybe they runs away, but I reckons more like they’ll try to kill us so they can keep they cows. Don’t kill they ‘osses – they’s worth money at market.”

  They trotted off, keeping hidden over the crest, peering over at the cattle thieves every few minutes, making far better time than the Scottish men could with their wagon and slow-moving animals.

  They came to their chosen ambush point, the dale narrowing to no more than thirty yards, rock strewn so that the men on horseback would have to pick their way slowly if they were not to lame their mounts. The sides reared up as much as fifty feet, steep, difficult for a man to scramble up and impossible for a horse; the top was bare rock, boulders scattered randomly. The gorge was sheltered from the winds that swept the moorland and there were trees, some as tall as twenty feet, giants by local standards. In between the trees were stands of berry and blackthorn bushes, good cover but very slow for a man on foot to push through. The beck ran through the middle, shallow, not very wide but fast and bitterly cold; men would not want to wet their feet there.

  They heard the cattle before they saw anything, the beasts tired and unused to walking at any speed, taken from their winter pens and unwilling to travel. They had fallen into single file in the little gorge, led by one of the thieving soldiers on his horse.

  Sam could just see Jim and Simon, nearly a hundred yards distant, waiting for the cart to arrive. The leading man was already opposite, below him, probably out of direct sight of the rear of the column – he had no choice, could not let him go past. He waited a few seconds as the horse turned round a clump of rocks and came directly towards him, took his aim and squeezed at the sear triggering mechanism, felt the bow jerk in his hands and set immediately to hauling back the thick gut cable, the routine settling his stomach as he tried to ignore the wailing from below. He put his foot into the stirrup below the arch of the bow and gave a sharp, two-handed tug at the string and settled it into the sear, dropped a bolt into its slot and then held the bow by the neck so that the bolt could not fall out as he moved. Then he looked to see what he had done.

  The soldier was down and his horse was motionless, trained not to move when the reins were dropped, as was normal practice. The man was silent now, clutching at his upper belly where the feathering of the bolt showed. Firing downhill, Sam had hit lower than he had intended, but the man was going nowhere, except to his grave. There was a short musket in a bucket on the saddle, but Sam had never fired a gun of any sort, had sense enough not to try to teach himself now. He looked about for the others, shifting cautiously to see around the first bend in the gorge.

  Two muskets fired from downhill. He could see nothing but heard a ball ricochet off the rocks nearby. He ducked and scuttled towards the lower end of the gorge, hoping they would expect him to run away rather than towards them. He turned the first bend and halted as he saw the pair of soldiers, thirty yards downhill, dismounted from their horses and reloading. He took a shot at the nearest as he straightened and lifted his musket, scanning the side of the gorge. The man collapsed, silent, blood spurting, the bolt through his throat and into his shoulder.

  ‘Too bloody ‘igh’, Sam thought. It was good enough, though. He reloaded, watched the third man as he hid behind a tree and stared around, fearful that there was more than one attacker.

  The soldier waited, almost completely hidden from Sam, just a little of one leg and a shoulder exposed. The target was too small to risk a shot.

  Sam shifted a yard or two back to where he could see along the gorge again.

  The cattle had come to a halt, uneasily, were lowing, afraid to go forward, unable to find a way back, the cart stopped the better part of a furlong distant from Sam and blocking the open pathway. They would panic soon, Sam knew, and run through the rocks, breaking their legs, lost. One more musket shot, probably, would set them off. There was a flicker of movement from the cart, a man rolling off on the far side, wounded and trying to crawl away; Simon appeared and ran across to him, a heavy rock in his hand, swinging down and down at his head.

  Sam saw the blood and watched the soldier fall still, close to throwing up again. He stared back at his own target, hidden low, unable to see as far as the cart.

  “Sam, we got our two!”

  A low, urgent call from downhill, Jim up in the rocks with a better view but probably eighty yards distant from the soldier, too far for a clean shot.

  “Ready, Sam.”

  Sam lifted his bow to the shoulder, waited as Jim fired, his bolt clipping the soldier’s boot, causing him to jump away and into full view. Sam shot, watched the man drop, clean in the centre of the chest this time.

  They stood, all five dealt with.

  Sam scrambled down into the gorge, checked each of his three; two obviously dead, the third, the man he had shot first, still breathing, but not for long, he was sure, blood still flowing from his belly. He ought to kill him, to put him out of his misery, as he would have with any rabbit he had shot badly, but he found himself unable to finish him. He turned to the horse, took the reins and led him to the side, tied him to a branch. He heard a solid thump, saw Jim standing, throwing away a bloody rock, the man’s skull caved in.

  “You didn’t ought to ‘ave left ‘im, Sam. Not even one of they buggers deserves that, Sam.”

  Sam was relieved - Jim thought him cruel, not too weak to do what was proper. Better to be thought too hard than too soft, he supposed.

  They ran their hands over the three, recovering all they had of any value. A few pennies and four silver shillings between them. Powder and ball and a musket apiece, and a long sort of knife that would clip onto the musket barrel to make it into a spear sort of thing. Two belt knives and a tinder box. A knapsack apiece with a little of food – oats and dried meat of some kind, which they would eat themselves. They took their boots, expensive and hard to get hold of, and their leather belts, which were useful. Their blood-boltered clothes, they left. They led the three horses down to the cart, found Simon with the loot from the other two, much the same but including a dragoon pistol, long-barrelled and heavy.

  “What’s in the cart, Simon?”

  “Not much. Five blankets. A few tools they pinched from a farm, I reckon – an axe and a digging prong and a saw and a knife or two. What you reckon? Ain’t hardly worth dragging the cart no further.”

  They talked, having no plan at all in mind for the event that they actually achieved anything.

  “If we goes back down the dale, the folks at the bottom is goin’ to say thank’ee kindly for bringing their cattle back, and we ain’t no better off, except for the four horses.”

  Jim and Simon were much struck by Sam’s wisdom; the horses would sell at the next market, but there would be little to buy there, they expected. They needed the animals to replace their own losses.

  “Rest the cattle ‘ere overnight, Sam. Come the morning, drive ‘em up over the top and back down to Squire’s, then over the moor to us places. What we got?”

  They counted twenty-three head of cattle, of varying age and value.

  “Thass eight and eight and seven, ain’t it?”

  How to make a fair distribution was a question that required deep thought.

  Simon came up with an answer they could accept.

  “Sam shot three of they wic
ked buggers. Jim shot two, and set the third up for Sam. I bashed two ‘eads in, one in the cart and one on the ground, and Jim finished a third. What I reckons is, if we splits up the cows into three lots of six beasts – as even as we can, young and strong each. That leaves…”

  They counted and marked off the number and agreed that left five of the oldest and least thrifty animals.

  “I ‘as one of they, and you ‘as two apiece, what you reckon?”

  “Ain’t fair, Simon,” Sam objected. “We was all in it together-like.”

  “Can’t split cows three ways, Sam, not if we wants they to walk afterwards!”

  They laughed and agreed.

  “Tell thee what, Sam. We got muskets and a pistol and the axe and that, we can split they up even. For the rest, I gets choice of the ‘osses, two to your one apiece, how’s that?”

  They agreed, provided Simon was happy, that it was fair enough; riding or driving horses were far less important than cattle, but they could be sold off. They drove the cattle uphill and camped out at the head of the gorge, out of sight of the bodies but unfortunately in hearing range of the squabbling crows and ravens who had found them. They ate the remainder of the soldiers’ food, boiling up porridge in a cooking pot from the cart, and talked over all they had done, and decided they could feel pleased with themselves and that it had all served those thieving sods right. They told each other that the killings had not upset them at all. Then they tried to sleep under the extra blankets.

  They walked the cattle slowly and reached their farms late next afternoon, displaying their booty to relieved parents.

  “Four ‘osses, Mr Thwaites, and twenty-three head of horned cattle, as ever is.”

  Jim was expansive, proud of himself. Sam’s father caught his mood, told him he had done well and had saved the expense of a hanging for the horrible, wicked thieves.

  “Nine beasts apiece, Mr Thwaites. Simon gets two of the ‘osses and seven of the cattle, so we agreed. Sam and me gets eight and one. Well, what we means is, they goes to our dads, to the farms.”

  Mr Thwaites was happy to agree – four of Sam’s six cattle were in milk, though their yields would be low for the disturbance they had had, and they were young enough to have a few years left in them. The other two might go to market, could be sold and pigs bought in their place, if they went a bit south, down towards Nottinghamshire where the Scottish soldiers had not reached. The horses could be kept or sold as made sense.

  Squire’s barns had not all burned down and they had been able to salvage an amount of hay and roots and a few sacks of oats and an amount of un-threshed wheat still in stooks which they could work over the winter. There would be food for the family and for the extra beasts, even if it was a long hard season.

  “Could ‘ave bin a damn sight worse. Would ‘ave bin, worn’t it for you three boys – young men, I got to say.”

  Bob’s father joined the three families, shamefaced that he had not allowed his son to go with the three, and that he had no part in their spoils. His family still faced destitution, probable starvation, because of his timidity. He could not beg of the other three, for that would reduce them too close to the edge.

  “Do ‘ee reckon there might still be some cattle wanderin’ up on the tops, young Sam?”

  “Might be, Mr Usborne. Could be you and Bob could go lookin’.”

  Sam’s father intervened, suggested he could take Bob out and take another look himself. Mr Usborne was past the age, he said, of wandering the fells.

  The others agreed, their sons should go out again, young Sam had shown he could look after them.

  The four set out at dawn, following the road from the ruins of Squire’s big house and then turning up onto the moors about three miles to the north, immediately past the dale they had brought their cattle down.

  “Do ‘ee reckon they’s goin’ to be any more up ‘ere, Sam?”

  “So long as we gets a move on, might be, Jim. I reckon as ‘ow we can walk a good two miles an hour, up ‘ill and down dale. I don’t reckon they old cattle will do one mile. Get them ten mile in a day, you doin’ bloody good. I reckons we can push it for the daylight hours, Jim, and tomorrow, or day after more like, we might see summat.”

  It seemed possible, especially as the Scottish men were strangers to the High Peak, and would avoid the best roads for not wanting to risk going through the little towns which might already have been reached by horse soldiers coming up from the lowlands on the Yorkshire side.

  “Go up good and ‘igh before we settles in tonight, Jim. Simon and Bob can light a fire down a bit lower, in shelter, ‘idden on the south side, and cook us up a bite to eat. We goes up and takes a look around to the north. Might be we sees somethin’.”

  “Then we goes after they, if we do, Sam?”

  “Depends, don’t it. Suppose we sees one little fire, big enough for just a few blokes to sit round, then it makes sense to go there. What do you reckon if we spots five or six fires?”

  “Keep our bloody noses out, Sam!”

  “Thass what I reckons too, Jim. We knows we can knock down five or six, given the right place to do it. But we ain’t goin’ up against a dozen or two, not wi’ just two old bows.”

  Simon spoke up.

  “I brought that dragoon pistol, Sam. Da showed I ‘ow to load it, and to point it at a bloke close to.”

  Bob looked envious. He had no weapon of his own, and he had not been with them on the previous days. He was the outsider now, he thought – they were men and he was still a boy.

  “Didn’t they none of ‘em have swords, Sam? I thought soldiers always ‘as they.”

  “Nope. Not these Scottish sorts. Too bloody poor to pay for a sword, so I reckons.”

  “Is they all Scottish men, Sam?”

  “Dunno, Bob. The redcoat soldier thought they was, didn’t ‘e?”

  “Da said they was some joined up in Manchester, wherever that is. Said they was English what ‘ad bin soldiers there and they went over to this new king. Da said one of the soldiers told ‘im that.”

  They could not judge the truth of that – Manchester was a town, Sam knew, and somewhere up north of Derbyshire, so it could be right.

  “They’s still bloody foreigners, Bob. They ain’t our sorts. If so be your Da was right, and ‘e ain’t a stupid sort of man, not by a long way, then maybe they be heading off back ‘ome. Maybe we turns a bit towards the north side of the moors, to find they.”

  Sam and Jim climbed the moors in the last light, reaching one of the tops and settling down in bare rocks, out of the bitter wind and staring out to the north.

  “Bloody cold up ‘ere, Sam. Snow from the smell of it.”

  Sam agreed – it was a harsh blow, threatening.

  “If it sets in, we got to get down below it, and not slow, neither, Jim.”

  “Bloody right, Sam. Men gets dead up ‘ere in the snow.”

  Both had heard the stories and their fathers had told them repeatedly that if they were ever caught out in a big snow their only hope was to go low, down the slopes – and even then their chances would not be good. Wise men, they had been told, ran from the chance of snow.

  “Smoke, Sam, see it?”

  A faint line of blue, possibly no more than two miles off. As the sun fell they spotted a flicker of light beneath it.

  “Wood fire, Sam.”

  “If they’s in a little dale, maybe there’s dead gorse bushes, might be a tree or two.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Any sort of moon tonight?”

  “Not much, Sam. Cloud looks bloody thick, too.”

  “Can’t walk the moors in the dark. Break our bloody necks that way, Jim.”

  “Move at first light, Sam. Maybe they waits about a while, getting’ a bite to eat afore they moves.”

  They ate porridge and bread that night and started out in the first light of the morning, immediately they could see where to place their feet. They risked trotting, needing to come as close as possi
ble before the men started off again.

  Twenty minutes, more or less, they had no timepieces, brought them close to the fire, picking up the smell of new smoke rather than old banked ashes from overnight. One at least of the men was moving, most likely all of them.

  The fire was down low in a circle of high rocks. There were occasional pits across the moorland, where surface outcroppings of lead and zinc, rarely copper or silver, had been mined in past centuries. This one was nearly fifteen feet deep at its southern end, oval in shape, nearly two hundred feet across, the surrounding bank far lower on the downhill side. There was a flock of sheep on the southern side, nearly a hundred at a guess, and a fire at the far end, six men sat around it, a pot on the boil. They had muskets beside them and wore red coats, were not local farmers or shepherds.

  “Six of they…”

  “We can kill they buggers, Sam.”

  Bob was fierce in his urging – his father needed his share of those sheep - they could keep the family alive.

  “You and Simon go round the top, over that side.”

  Sam pointed to the right, the eastern bank.

  “When they start dropping, you takes a shot Simon, and then throw rocks down.”

  A three or four pound rock from a height of ten feet would put a man down, breaking bones in all probability.

  Sam and Jim bent down low and shuffled off to the left, skipping quickly from one set of rocks to the next. This western side was lower, no more than five feet above the fire. They stopped at thirty feet, took aim at the nearest two soldiers.

  “Now, Jim.”

  The two fell forward bolts sticking out of their backs. The remaining four froze for a few seconds, taken by surprise and reacting slowly; they had been in garrison, had never fought a battle.

  Simon’s pistol fired, a great roar in the silence of the dawn. He missed his target, but the ball smashed hard into the rock his man was sitting on, scattered stone splinters at waist height and below, bringing howls from three of the remaining four, sending them diving away from the fire. A boulder, half a hundredweight at least, rolled down into them, Bob having decided to improve on his orders; it hit one, breaking his leg, snapping it like a carrot, setting him to screaming, adding to the panic. Simon and Bob threw smaller rocks hard and fast into the confusion. Jim fired again, dropping another of them.