Murdo's War Read Free

Murdo a mischievous wink and picked up the lantern.
    The intruder’s tracks led down the beach from the direction of the graveyard. They traced them back until they were lost among the coarse grass of the dunes; they followed them down, passing the place where the man had lingered, until they vanished in the rim of the flooding tide. Forty yards on, however, the tracks reappeared, only to be lost for good where the man had climbed from the sands on to the barnacled rocks of the headland.
    ‘Maybe it was somebody out for a walk,’ said Lachlan, who had so often seen his own line of footprints across the same sands.
    ‘In the fog – on a night like this? No,’ said Hector. ‘If anyone was mad enough to go out walking tonight, he’d have stayed on the beach. But why was he hanging about and then running? See how far apart the footprints are, the way the sand’s tumbled.’
    Lachlan stretched his legs in giant steps, but could not nearly compass the length of the intruder’s strides.
    ‘No, there was no-one down here by accident tonight. Whoever it was, he was nosing around.’ Hector scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully, then flexed his shoulders and looked quizzically at the anxious faces beside him. The lantern picked out a glint of laughter, or recklessness, in his shadowy eyes. ‘Ah well! It’s no good hanging around here, anyway. We’d best get on up to the village with some of that whisky. From what you tell me, Donald, there’s a lot of desperate men up there.’
    Donald opened his mouth as if he would speak, then closed it again and shrugged helplessly.
    Back at the cave, Murdo and the two men each shouldered one of the rattling crates. Lachlan, not yet strong enough to carry one the distance, pushed bottles into his pockets and thrust more beneath his jersey. Hector flashed his torch around the chamber to see that everything was safely out of sight, and led the way out to the moonlit beach.
    A few last wreaths of mist shrouded the river, half a mile away across the puddled sands. Little fields on the headland were pale with frost. A line of waves glimmered white along the edge of the sea. Soon the flooding tide would cover the churned-up sand in the cave mouth. By morning it would be as smooth as a carpet once more, flawless, as though no man had trodden the beach for half a year.
    Slowly they made their way along the foot of the cliffs and up into the wilderness of dunes. The men held their cases firm, but Murdo’s case cut painfully into his shoulder, so that he was con- tinually shifting it to find a more comfortable position. With an effort he kept up, and soon they were wending their way around the wall of the lonely graveyard.
    Their two cars were parked in a grassy turning space by the black iron gates where the track ended. Donald, who lived in the little village of Clerkhill ten miles further west, pulled open the rear door of his well-polished Vanguard. Carefully he spread a newspaper over the green upholstery and laid the crate on top. Then he took a couple of bottles from Lachlan and pushed them into a pocket beneath the shining dashboard.
    After a brief struggle, Murdo threw up the icy boot of Hector’s old Ford. It was half full of odds and ends and there was not room for the two cases of whisky. He pulled out an old pair of waders and a tin of sheep drench and pushed the rest to one side. He was just sliding the first case inside, when beyond the far corner of the graveyard a car engine whirred, then whirred again and burst into life. Startled, he looked up. A big dark car slowly backed out of the grassy siding, then drew away up the rough track towards the main road. He looked at Hector, who stared after it for a moment in silence. Then he bent and handed Murdo the second case of whisky.

Visit by Moonlight
    MURDO DROVE THE RATTLING old Ford. Often Hector let him take the wheel, especially at night. For a boy of his age he drove well. Disapproving, but keeping his opinion to