Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle Read online

  ALFRED OLLIVANT’S

  Bob, Son of Battle

  The Last Gray Dog of Kenmuir

  A NEW VERSION BY

  Lydia Davis

  Illustrated by Marguerite Kirmse

  THE NEW YORK REVIEW CHILDREN’S COLLECTION

  NEW YORK

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Lydia Davis

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Davis, Lydia, 1947–

  Bob, Son of Battle: The Last Gray Dog of Kenmuir / by Alfred Ollivant ; a new version by Lydia Davis.

  pages cm. — (New York Review children’s collection)

  Summary: On the border of Scotland and England beginning in the early 1880s, two sheep farmers and their sheepdogs engage in a years-long battle to prove their superiority in handling sheep—a battle which must end in death.

  ISBN 978-1-59017-729-7 (hardback)

  [1. Farm life—Great Britain—Fiction. 2. Sheep dogs—Fiction. 3. Dogs—Fiction. 4. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901—Fiction.] I. Ollivant, Alfred, 1874–1927. Bob, son of Battle. II. Title. III. Title: Bob, son of Battle.

  PZ7.D29478Alf 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013050865

  Cover design by Louise Fili Ltd.

  Cover illustration by Lauren Nassef

  ISBN 978-1-59017-746-4

  v1.0

  For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright and More Information

  PART ONE: THE COMING OF THE TAILLESS TYKE

  Chapter 1 The Gray Dog

  Chapter 2 A Son of Hagar

  Chapter 3 Red Wull

  Chapter 4 First Blood

  PART TWO: THE LITTLE MAN

  Chapter 5 A Man’s Son

  Chapter 6 A Licking or a Lie

  Chapter 7 The White Winter

  Chapter 8 McAdam and His Coat

  PART THREE: THE SHEPHERDS’ TROPHY

  Chapter 9 Rivals

  Chapter 10 Red Wull Wins

  Chapter 11 Our Bob

  Chapter 12 How Red Wull Held the Bridge

  Chapter 13 The Face in the Frame

  PART FOUR: THE BLACK KILLER

  Chapter 14 A Mad Man

  Chapter 15 Death on the Marches

  Chapter 16 The Black Killer

  Chapter 17 A Mad Dog

  Chapter 18 How the Killer Was Nearly Caught

  Chapter 19 Lad and Lass

  Chapter 20 The Snapping of the String

  Chapter 21 Horror of Darkness

  PART FIVE: OWD BOB OF KENMUIR

  Chapter 22 A Man and a Girl

  Chapter 23 The Owd One

  Chapter 24 A Shot in the Night

  Chapter 25 The Shepherds’ Trophy

  PART SIX: THE BLACK KILLER

  Chapter 26 Red-Handed

  Chapter 27 For the Defense

  Chapter 28 The Devil’s Bowl

  Chapter 29 The Devil’s Bowl

  Chapter 30 The Tailless Tyke at Bay

  Postscript

  Afterword

  Part One

  The Coming of the Tailless Tyke

  CHAPTER 1

  The Gray Dog

  THE SUN stared boldly down on a gray farmhouse lying long and low in the shadow of the sharp summit of Muir Pike; it shone on the ruins of a fortified tower and a rampart, left from the time of the Scottish raids; on rows of whitewashed outbuildings; on a crowd of dark-thatched haystacks.

  In the yard where the stacks were kept, behind the long row of stables, two men were covering them with thatch to protect them from rain. One lay sprawled over the top of a haystack, the other stood perched on a ladder down below.

  The man on the ladder, small, old, and with a clever nut-brown face, was Tammas Thornton, who had worked for the Moores of Kenmuir for more than half a century. The other, on top of the stack, seemed wrapped in his own unhappy thoughts. This was Sammel Todd, a sturdy Dalesman, with huge hands and hairy arms; around his face an odd-looking halo of stiff, red hair; and on his face, a sad look.

  “Ay, the Gray Dogs, bless them!” the old man was saying. “You can’t beat ’em. I’ve known ’em sixty years now, and never knew a bad one yet. Not that I’m saying, mind you, that any of them is the equal of Rex, son of Rally. Ah, he was a one, was Rex! We never won the Cup again after his day.”

  “Nor ever shall again, you may count on that,” said the other gloomily.

  Tammas clucked his tongue irritably.

  “Come, come, Sammel Todd!” he cried. “You’re never happy unless you’re making yourself miserable. I’ve never seen such a chap. Never win again? Why, our young Bob will be a fine example, I tell you, and I should know. Not that he’ll be anything like as great as Rex, son of Rally, mind you! I remember how—”

  The big man interrupted him hastily.

  “I’ve heard it before, Tammas, I really have,” he said.

  Tammas paused and looked up angrily.

  “You’ve heard it before, have you, Sammel Todd?” he asked sharply. “And what have you heard before?”

  “Your stories, old lad—your stories about Rex, son of Rally.”

  “Which of ’em?”

  “All of ’em, Tammas, all of ’em—many a time. I’m quite sick of ’em, Tammas, I really am,” he pleaded.

  The old man gasped. He brought down his mallet with a vicious smack.

  “I’ll never tell you a tale again, Sammel Todd, not if you was to go down on your bended knee for it. Nay; it’s no use talking. Never again, says I.”

  “I never asked you,” declared honest Sammel.

  “And it wouldn’t have been any use if you had,” said the other viciously. “I’ll never tell you a tale again if I was to live to be a hundred.”

  “You’ll not live to be a hundred, Tammas Thornton—nowhere near it,” said Sammel brutally.

  “I’ll live as long as some, I guarantee you,” the old man replied with spirit. “I’ll live to see the Cup back at Kenmuir, as I’ve said before.”

  “If you do,” the other declared, “Sammel Todd never spoke a true word. Nay, nay, lad; you’re old, you’re wobbly, your time’s nearly run out or I’m quite mistaken.”

  “For mercy’s sake, hold your tongue, Sammel Todd! It’s clack-clack all day—” The old man broke off suddenly, and bent over his work with suspicious energy. “Get back to your work, lad,” he whispered. “Here’s Master and our Bob.”

  As he spoke, a tall man with a strong, thin, serious, weather-beaten face and the blue-gray eyes of the hill country came striding into the yard, his lower legs wrapped in leather. And trotting quietly at his heels, with the gravest, saddest eyes you ever saw, was a sheepdog puppy.

  The puppy was a rare dark gray, his long coat splashed here and there with lighter touches, like a stormy sea under the moonlight. On his chest was a patch of the purest white, and the top of his head was sprinkled with white, as though with a shower of snow. Perfectly solid, utterly limber, and supremely graceful with his smooth motions, every inch the gentleman; you could not help but stare at him—Owd Bob of Kenmuir.

  At the foot of the ladder the two stopped. And the young dog, placing his forepaws on a lower rung, looked up, slowly waving his silvery brush of a tail.

  “A proper Gray Dog!” murmured Tammas, gazing down into the dark face beneath him. “
Small, yet big; light-footed when he’s moving behind his sheep, yet not too light. With a coat rough on top to keep out the Daleland weather, soft as sealskin beneath. And with them sorrowful eyes that you never see except on a good one. He almost reminds me of Rex, son of Rally.”

  “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” groaned Sammel. But the old man did not hear him.

  “Did Henry Farewether tell you what he did this morning, Master?” he asked, speaking to the man at the foot of the ladder.

  “Nay,” said the other, his stern eyes lighting up.

  “Why, it was this way, it seems,” Tammas continued. “The young bull gets loose somehow and marches out into the yard, overturns the milk pail, and pokes the old pigs in the ribs. And as he stands looking about him, thinking what he’ll be up to next, our Bob sees him. ‘And what are you doin’ here, Mr. Bull?’ he seems to say, cocking his ears and trotting up gaily. With that, Mr. Bull swells up fit to burst himself, lashes his tail, waggles his head, and gets ready to charge. But Bob leaps out of the way, quick as lightning yet cool as butter, and when he’s done with his fooling drives him back again.”

  “Who saw all this?” Sammel broke in, as though he didn’t quite believe it.

  “Henry Farewether from up in the loft. So there, Fat-head!” Tammas replied, and went on with his tale. “So they continues; bull charging and Bob driving him back over and over, hopping in and out again, quiet as a cucumber, but determined. At last Mr. Bull sees it’s no good that way, so he turns around, rears up, and tries to jump the wall. No use. Our young dog jumps in at ’im and nips ’im by the tail. With that, our bull tumbles down in a hurry, turns with a kind of a groan, and marches back into the stall, Bob after him. And then, dang me!”—the old man beat the ladder as he offered this last tidbit—“if he doesn’t sit himself down in the doorway like a sentry guard till Henry Farewether come up. How’s that for a little tyke not yet one year old?”

  Even Sammel Todd was moved by the tale.

  “Well done, our Bob!” he cried.

  “Good lad!” said the Master, laying a hand on the dark head at this knee.

  “You may well say that,” cried Tammas with delight. “A proper Gray Dog, I tell you. As clever as any person, and as gentle as the spring sunshine. Ah, you can’t beat ’em, the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir!”

  The patter of cheerful feet rang out on the bridge below, a simple one made of thick boards that lay across a little stream. Tammas glanced around.

  “Here’s David,” he said. “He’s late this morning.”

  A fair-haired boy came hurrying up the slope, his face glowing from his effort. Immediately, the young dog dashed off to meet him with a fiery speed nothing like his earlier sober behavior. The two raced back together into the yard.

  “Poor lad!” said Sammel gloomily, gazing at the boy.

  “Poor heart!” muttered Tammas, while the Master’s face softened. Yet there seemed to be little to pity in this jolly, rollicking boy with his tousled fair hair and fresh, rosy face.

  “Good morning, Mister Moore! Morning, Tammas! Morning, Sammel!” he panted as he passed; and he ran on through the hay-carpeted yard, around the corner of the stable, and into the house.

  The kitchen was a long room with a floor of red tiles and windows covered in patterns of crisscrossing ironwork. In it, a woman in a white apron with a delicate face was bustling about her morning work. A strong little bare-legged boy was holding tight to her skirts; while at the oak table in the center of the room, a girl with brown eyes and straggling hair sat in front of a bowl of bread and milk.

  “So you’ve come at last, David!” the woman cried, as the boy entered; and, bending, greeted him with a tender, motherly kiss, which he returned as warmly. “I really thought you’d forgot us this morning. Now you sit down beside our Maggie.” And soon he was bending over his own bowl of bread and milk.

  The two children munched away in silence, while the little bare-legged boy watched them carefully. At last, bothered by his long staring, David turned on him.

  “Well, little Andrew,” he said, speaking in the fatherly way which one small boy likes to use towards another. “Well, my little lad, aren’t you coming along just fine.” He leaned back in his chair, the better to study the smaller boy. But Andrew, who was slow to speak, like all the Moores, did not react, but went on quietly sucking his chubby thumb and watching the older boy as though he did not quite trust him.

  David did not like the look on the boy’s face, and half rose to his feet.

  “You change that expression, Andrew Moore,” he cried threateningly, “or I’ll change it for you.”

  Maggie, however, stopped him just in time.

  “Did your father beat you last night?” she asked in a low voice; and there was a shade of worry in the soft brown eyes.

  “Nay,” the boy answered; “he was going to, but he never did. Drunk,” he added in explanation.

  “What was he going to beat you for, David?” asked Mrs. Moore.

  “What for? Why, for the fun of it—to see me wiggle and squirm,” the boy answered, and laughed bitterly.

  “You shouldn’t speak that way about your dad, David,” the woman scolded, though not very severely, as it was not in her nature to be severe.

  “Dad! A fine dad he is! I’d dad him if I had the chance,” the boy muttered under his breath. Then, to change the conversation:

  “We should be starting, Maggie,” he said, and, going to the door, “Bob!” he called, “Owd Bob, lad! Are you coming with us?”

  The gray dog came springing up like an antelope, and the three started off for school together.

  Mrs. Moore stood in the doorway, holding Andrew by the hand, and watched them as they went away.

  “They make a pretty pair, Master, surely,” she said softly to her husband, who came up to her just then.

  “Ay, he’ll be a fine lad if his father will let him,” the tall man answered.

  “It’s a shame Mr. McAdam does not give him a better life,” the woman went on, troubled at the unfairness of it. She laid a hand on her husband’s arm, and looked up at him persuasively.

  “Couldn’t you say something to him, Master, don’t you think? Maybe he’d listen to you,” she asked. For Mrs. Moore thought that there could not be anyone who would not be glad to listen to whatever James Moore, Master of Kenmuir, might say. “He’s not a bad man at heart, I do believe,” she went on. “He was never like this before his dear wife died. Oh, he was so fond of her.”

  Her husband shook his head.

  “Nay, mother,” he said. “It would only make things worse for the lad. McAdam listens to no one, and certainly not me.” And indeed he was right; for McAdam, who lived not far away, across the stream on a farm called the Grange, made no secret of how much he disliked his neighbor, the honest, plain-speaking Mr. Moore.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Our Bob, in the meantime, had gone with the children as far as the woods at the edge of the lane that leads to the village. Now he crept quietly back to the yard, and settled down behind the water barrel.

  We do not need to know just how he played and how he laughed; how he teased old Whitecap, the gray goose, till the bird nearly died of helpless surprise; how he made the brown bull-calf run, and roused the bitter fury of a fat sow, the mother of many piglets.

  At last, in the midst of his merry mischief, a stern voice stopped him.

  “Bob, lad, I see that it’s time we started your own schooling.”

  And so the serious business of life began, for that dog whom the simple farming people of the Daleland still love to talk about—Bob, son of Battle, the last of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.

  CHAPTER 2

  A Son of Hagar

  THE COUNTRYSIDE around the village of Wastrel-dale is a lonely one.

  The minister, Parson Leggy Hornbut, will tell you that his church is the smallest, and his parish the biggest, north of the Derwent River, and that his parish has more square miles in it than it has people. It includes moors and ravine
s, swift streams and lakes; with a little village standing far away in one spot and a sheep-farm alone up on a hilltop in another. It is a countryside in which sheep are the most important thing; and every other Dalesman works at sheep-herding, a job as old as Abel in the Bible. And what the men here talk about is sheep, and again sheep—wethers and gimmers and tup-hoggs and ewe tegs in wool, and other things that are only strange words to you and me; and always they talk about the good deeds and the wrong-doings, the intelligence and the stupidity, of their helpers, the sheepdogs.

  Of all the Daleland, the country from the Black Water to Grammoch Pike is the wildest. Above the tiny, stone-built village of Wastrel-dale, the Muir Pike lifts its massive head. To the west, the desolate Mere Marches—which give their name to the great estate of the Sylvester family—stretch away in mile upon mile of sheep-filled, wind-swept moorland. On the far side of the Marches is that twin valley where the gentle stream called the Silver Lea flows. And it is there, in the fenced plots of grassy land behind the inn called the Dalesman’s Daughter, that, in the late summer months, the famous sheepdog Trials of the North are held. It is there that the battle for the Dale Cup, the world-renowned Shepherds’ Trophy, is fought.

  Past the little inn, the main road leads into the central market-town of the area—Grammoch-town. At the bottom of the fenced enclosures, in back of the inn, winds the stream called the Silver Lea. Just there, a wooden plank-bridge crosses the water, and, beyond, the Murk Muir Pass crawls up the steep side of the bare rock face known as the Scaur and on to the Mere Marches.

  At the head of the Pass, before it opens out into those lonely sheep-walks which divide the two valleys, is that hollow place, shuddering with dark possibilities, that is rightly called the Devil’s Bowl. In its center, the Lone Tarn, a pool of water that suggests strange and fanciful ideas, lifts its motionless face to the sky. It was beside that black, frozen water, across whose cold surface a storm was swirling in ghostly white shapes, that, many, many years ago (not in this century), old Andrew Moore came upon the mother of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.