Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle by Alfred Ollivant

Author:Alfred Ollivant
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590177464
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2014-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

A Mad Dog

DAVID and Maggie, meanwhile, were drifting farther and farther apart. He now thought the girl took too much responsibility for the household; that she went too far in playing the part of woman and mother. Once, on a Sunday, he caught her drilling Andrew in his Bible verses. He watched the two of them through a crack in the door, and listened, laughing to himself, to her simple teaching. At last his laughter grew so loud that she looked up, saw him, rose immediately to her feet, crossed the room, and shut the door, rebuking him with such sweet dignity that he crept away feeling decently ashamed, for once. And the incident only added to his anger.

And so he was rarely at Kenmuir, and more often at home, quarreling with his father.

Since the day, two years before, when the boy had helped to take the Cup away from him, father and son had been as though charged with electricity, contact between them might result at any moment in a shock and a flash. This was the result not of a single moment but of years.

Lately the contest had become distinctly fiercer; for McAdam noticed that his son was at home more often, and commented on the fact in his usual spirit of playful mockery.

“What’s come over ye, David?” he asked one day. “Yer old dad’s in danger of feeling flattered at your graciousness. Is it that James Moore won’t have you at Kenmuir anymore, afraid ye’ll steal the Cup from him, as ye stole it from me? Or what is it?”

“I thought I could maybe keep an eye on the Killer if I stayed here,” David answered, gazing at Red Wull.

“Ye’d do better at Kenmuir—eh, Wullie!” the little man replied.

“Nay,” the other answered, “he’ll not go to Kenmuir. There’s the Owd One to see to him there at night.”

The little man whipped around.

“Are ye so sure he is there at night, my lad?” he asked with slow meaningfulness.

“He was there when someone—I didn’t say who, though I have my thoughts—tried to poison him,” sneered the boy, mimicking his father’s manner.

McAdam shook his head.

“If he was poisoned, and now I think maybe he was, he didn’t pick it up at Kenmuir, I tell ye that,” he said, and marched out of the room.

In the meantime, the Black Killer went on with his bloody business unrestrained. The public, always greedy for a new sensation, took up the subject. In several of the larger daily newspapers, articles on the “Agrarian Outrages” appeared, followed by numerous letters from readers. There were sharp differences of opinion; each correspondent had his own theory and his own solution of the problem; and each grew indignant as his were rejected in favor of another’s.

The Terror had already lasted two months when lambing time came and matters became still more serious.

It was bad enough to lose one sheep, often the finest in the pack; but in order to kill one, the Killer hunted the whole flock, and scared the woolly mothers-about-to-be almost out of their fleeces.

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