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By Root 2457 0

red-headed Scott with the small, snapping merry-eyed wife; and he knew that after a year with Francis Crawford, Buccleuch’s heir could more than look after himself, and would set a high value on his independence. Yet he knew too that once Will reached them, the Turnbulls were likely to suffer swift justice, and that if the Kerrs and Scotts met unsupervised, one wrong word was enough to provoke a massacre. The Wardens’ law must be preserved. Adam rode beside the taciturn Will, and wondered how near Gabriel was. It might almost be better for the Scotts to reach the stolen herd first, retrieve their beasts and start back for home, leaving dead Turnbulls in every ditch, than that the Kerrs and the Scotts should meet. He and Randy alone could hardly prevent the Scotts from doing just as they pleased.

It was in Gabriel’s hands. If he thought it politic to delay, no doubt he would. Then for the first time in several hours, Adam Blacklock thought of Gabriel’s young sister, as he had last seen her, white-faced, half-stripped, in the room next to Lymond’s at Dumbarton, and recalled Lymond’s bland voice: ‘I am going to bed.’

Lymond hadn’t come in an hour. Fully aware that two of the most explosive tribes on the Borders were ranging the land looking for trouble, Francis Crawford had stayed at Dumbarton while Gabriel took the sword in his place. Stayed, rather drunk, with Gabriel’s sister Joleta.

Then at that point in his thoughts, the big doctor said, ‘Adam? What’s amiss?’ and he tried to shake off the headache which had dogged him all day and smile. The moon was up, and very bright, and over the next ridge lay Turnbull land.

There were two Turnbull boys on outpost duty, but these were found and felled almost at once. Then as lights sprang and wavered in the mud-daubed sheds and turf-roofed cabins, the Scotts roared down like the fall of a beech.

The thieves hadn’t expected it. Leaving behind the women and the old and the babies, they took to their horses in the brilliant moonlight and made for the hills.

They had no chance at all. Deaf to the shouts of Blacklock and Bell, Will Scott led his men after them, and where they could not capture, they killed. Adam saw old man Turnbull himself, built like a tree, back up his horse in the end shouting desperately to himself and the doctor, the only men among the attackers who were not Scotts. Randy Bell, nearer to him, did manage to fight to his side, but when Blacklock got there, the old man too was dead, and Randy Bell sitting on the young heather cursing Scotts; all Scotts and any Scotts of the name.

Then with the few prisoners they did take, the whole tribe cantered back to the settlement. The bulk of their own sheep and cattle they found where they had already noted them, in a big fold on the side of the hill. Furrowed tracks here and there showed where an opportunist granddad had made off with a heifer or two: a detachment of Scotts scouring the darkness soon rounded up all these.

The living remnants of the clan Turnbull, far from mourning their dead, seemed as ever practically inclined. There were calves in the woodpile and tupps under the bed, lambs in the chimneys and a milch-cow lashed to somebody’s roof and thatched over. It was tricky work, but at length the Scott property, from Kincurd and Branxholm and all the long vale of Yarrow, marked with the Scott mark, was rounded up, and the owners were ready to go. It was then that Will Scott, flushed and exhilarated, ill-temper long since gone, clapped a big hand to his brow and yelled, ‘Christ! Philippa Somerville!’

He had been intended to meet her, it appeared, at Liddel Keep, not five miles away, and he should have been there this morning. ‘I’ll go,’ offered Randy Bell. ‘Take her to Midculter in the morning?’

Certainly, the sooner the Scotts left the district the better. Gabriel and the Kerrs had not yet arrived, but they might do so at any time. All the same, Adam Blacklock’s gaze met Will Scott’s, and Will said hastily, ‘Thank you, but no. Kate would flay me alive if I didn’t see to Philippa myself. She knows me, you see.