The Old Silent

Ruby beamed-if the expression could be called that on her pudding face-and let out a martyred sigh and announced as how she needed a sit-down.

She made herself a mug of tea from the low-boiling kettle on the hob and took a rocking chair by the fire where she sipped and was silent.

'Well, I certainly admire you, Ruby. You,' (a slight emphasis here) 'don't crumble in a crisis.' No response but a self-satisfied little smile and a few more sighs. Martyrdom sat well on the maid. 'A horrible thing to happen,' Melrose went on. 'Horrible. And on the moor. One wouldn't expect something like that out there.'

She shrugged. 'Moor's as good a place as any. Better. No one about to see him do it.'

Him? He had set down the half-dried skillet and was now half-drying the pot. 'You think it was a man?'

With a slightly incredulous stare, she said, 'Well, it warn't no woman to do a thing like that.'

'You mean a woman wouldn't? But Mrs. Healey…' He tossed down the tea towel, ignoring the cutlery.

'Well, I didn't mean that.' She shook her head. 'Mrs. Healey doing that…' She shook her head in wonder. 'That was a surprise. I don't know her, mind you, not to talk to. She is a cool one. Though she did like Abby. Always bringing her things, she was.'

Melrose came over to stand by the fireplace. 'You say that was surprising as if you weren't especially surprised by Miss Denholme's murder. And you said you didn't mean 'that'- that a woman mightn't have done it. What did you mean?'

Resolutely, Ruby clamped her lips like a penurious old lady snapping her purse shut.

He oughtn't to have been so direct. Now her eyes were beginning to close. 'You know, it's rather odd Miss Denholme never married. She certainly was an attractive woman.' Ruby's eyes opened, studying him carefully. 'As a matter of fact,'-he laughed artificially-'she had a bit of the, ah… well, no speaking ill of the dead and that sort of thing.' His smile glittered, he hoped, like his green eyes. They had at least been said to glitter by those who didn't compare them with scarab beetles.

'Meaning her ways with men?' Ruby's smile was thin and a little mean. 'Well, there was plenty of them to dance attendance.'

At last his efforts were paying off. 'Around here?' He laughed again. 'It's a bit of a wasteland for romance, isn't it?'

'I never said romance. I do the rooms, you know.'

With that elliptical statement and a crimped, probably jealous little smile, she was off for her own lie- down.

Ruby Cuff had a prurient mind, thank God. Ann Denholme had not apparently drawn the line at her own guests.

And who else? Melrose was wondering now, as he looked fretfully out of the front room window and yet again checked his watch. Nearly nine o'clock and no Ellen. No Abby, either. He'd just been down to the barn three times after his talk with Ruby and no sign of her.

He settled down with a large brandy to think, trying to console himself with the notion that Abby was totally unpredictable and was out with Stranger digging out sheep, or something.

Except no more snow had fallen.

Indeed, it had been melting. But it must be sheep.

3

A blind cast.

Abby lowered her head on her folded arms and wished she'd paid more attention to Mr. Nelligan. A blind cast had to be the hardest thing to do and she didn't even know where Stranger was.

Tim nosed at her hair and whimpered. Abby raised her head and looked squarely into the eyes of this dog she'd always thought of as a lazy layabout, although she knew it was Ethel's fault. Ethel never tried to train him, no wonder. The only commands he'd ever heard he'd got came from Abby-

So it might be possible, even a blind cast. Right now, looking into Tim's sparkling eyes, she was willing enough to swallow all the tales of Babylon, Summertime, and impeccable breeding. Abby curled her fingers in Tim's coat and tried to bore, mentally, into his mind. Sheer concentration was the trick. She'd been at a lot of sheepdog trials and she'd seen what those dogs could do. She had seen the best of them head off a mob of sheep without getting a single command.

If Tim had all that royal blood in him, even if he hadn't been a working dog since Ethel got her little white uncallused hands on him, still, blood was blood and you didn't forget how to do what you'd been born to do. The Queen of England would never forget how to be a queen; it was like bicycle riding.

The night had grown colder, the moon surrounded by mist, the stone walls insurmountable. Her mouth was frozen more with fear than cold, her waterproof crusty with rime, her hair straggly-wet with mist.

But she was not going to be like Jane Eyre's friend Helen and go round and round in a ring in sopping rain and soppy obedience to her torturers, a saint among devils.

Stranger. Well, she was going to believe he was out there waiting for a signal. Way off, the sheep were dotted about the hillside. It was more difficult now, the moon having gone misty, to see them, how distant, how far-flung. Mr. Nelligan, despite his habits, never seemed to lose one and he had over a hundred and fifty… It seemed an impossible task; her heart hammered.

Then she heard-this time a little closer-the sort of rock-chinking noise someone might make scaling a wall. She turned slowly in her hideout and raised her eyes to see, over the shooting butt, a black mass slowly rising above the dry-stone.

Abby dropped her eyes, turned back to stare at Tim, the energy that had stoked her rage now massed like a fiery ball into sheer concentration. She would move Tim out to the right where he'd have at least the protection of a white backdrop, what was left of the bank of snow against the long hedgerow.

Very slowly and softly she said to Tim, 'Away to me.'

Tim jerked up, turned, and streaked toward the snowy rise where he turned right again and ran like a white projectile to the far moorland.

Abby huddled down. She didn't think the Gun would waste a cartridge (and also give away his or her own position) by shooting at a fleeing dog.

Thus the crack of the rifle shot totally disoriented her for a second; her mind whirled with the explosion of it; a terrifying noise that could have blown up every living thing on the moor, could have blown up the moors themselves. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Yet one part of her mind was still and told her to take advantage of the second's aftermath of that shot. With her eyes still shut, she stuck her fingers in the corners of her mouth and whistled. It was so piercing that she knew it would carry as far as the rim of the hill, way off.

Then it was quiet. Abby opened her eyes to see that Tim was still streaking toward the far fields.

The Gun had missed.

The Gun was a fool and Abby, in her excitement, was almost getting up to shout it out, to tell whoever it was: You missed, you missed, screw you, you bloody, stupid sleazeball. Sleazeball was one of Ellen's best words.

Everything was quiet now.

Tim was alive; she was alive; the moors remained.

4