The Revenge Game by Gerald Hammond

Author:Gerald Hammond [Hammond, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2018-04-18T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

A calm, leaden dawn was creeping in, the light growing as slowly as a tree, when Janet pulled the Land Rover onto a stubble-field half a mile above the town. Ronnie climbed down stiffly. Keith followed him out, folded the small gun and slid it under his coat, and dropped a handful of cartridges into his pocket.

Janet dug Wallace with her elbow. ‘You’d better go with them,’ she said. ‘Try and keep them out of trouble. They’re as daft as a couple of loons when they’ve got this mood on them.’

‘Must I?’ Wallace asked. He had been hoping for a nap, curled up with Janet.

‘If you don’t, I’ll have to.’

Always the gentleman, Wallace got out of the warm cab and shivered.

As they crossed the first stubble, a covey of tame, early season partridges sprang almost from underfoot. They looked purple in the dull light. Keith let them go – the town’s windows were still too near. They tramped on, ankles rocking, in shoes where boots were needed. Beyond the second stubble-field the hill rose steeper, and Keith led them into the bottom of a gulley that twisted upward between dry-stone walls.

‘There’s kale planted that side, if I mind right,’ Ronnie said, pointing.

Keith shook his head. ‘He put it in late. It’ll not be up enough to hold anything yet. I’m hoping for something in the turnips higher up. But without dogs you two are going to have to work. You’ll get your legs wet.’

They moved quietly up the gulley, Wallace along the dry burn at the bottom, Keith and Ronnie each holding close to a wall and scanning the fields for a group of small, bobbing heads.

They had climbed for half a mile and were nearing the head of the gulley where it lost itself in a forestry plantation, when Keith arrived at a wooden gate separating the gulley from the bottom corner of a well-grown turnip field. Keith peered cautiously through the lower bars, studying the field inch by inch. After several minutes he slid back from the gate, snapped his fingers to catch the others’ attention, and beckoned urgently for them to join him. They put their heads close together.

‘God, the fumes!’ Keith whispered. ‘Listen, there’s a cock pheasant just inside the neips. And further up the field I saw the tops moving. It could be a cat or a badger, but I think there’s a fox. Would you take a left-and-right, pheasant and fox?’

Ronnie grinned. ‘Sure as hell! But it’s too early in the winter for a good pelt. Leave him be and we’ll set a snare for him next month when he’s good enough for Molly’s coat.’ For several winters they had been putting by their best fox-skins for a coat for Molly. The lesser skins were sold to finance the making of it.

Keith made a negative gesture. ‘He’ll’ve eaten too many game-birds by then. And the hunt never comes this far over. We’ll try for him now. But I don’t want the pheasant moving away up the edge if he gets a whiff of the fox.

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