Len Wright was standing waiting in the road outside his cottage, his breath showing clearly in the freezing atmosphere.
‘I got through to the police,’ Len said as he clambered into the passenger seat. ‘They'll get somebody out here as soon as they can.’
Frank Hall nodded and made a mental calculation. Fifteen miles, and allowing for communication and organization, the law was unlikely to show up for at least another half-hour. He turned off the hard road and took the steep unsurfaced forestry track which led towards Devil's Peak, the topmost crag in this range of hills. Even now he could see its outline in the moonlight, an escarpment scintillating above the forest, silhouetted against a black cloudless sky. There was no sign of the headlights which his assistant had reported seeing. Probably the poachers were on the small plateau behind the Peak, cruising slowly around, rifles at the ready in search of unsuspecting deer.
Ten minutes later, the ground levelled out and the Forester brought the vehicle to a standstill.
‘Let's listen for a few minutes,’ he found himself whispering. ‘Maybe we'll get some idea of just where they are.’
The silence was almost overpowering.
Both men sensed its uncanniness, the absence of the nocturnal noises as though the whole of these hills had suddenly become a lifeless wilderness. Neither mentioned it to the other. Both found themselves wishing that they could seize upon some excuse for returning to the safety of their home.
Suddenly a barrage of shots rang out from up above them somewhere behind Devil's Peak. Rifles being fired as fast as fingers could squeeze the triggers. An engine was roaring as though being revved mercilessly in a low gear. And then the listening men heard the howling, a frenzied deep throated baying that drowned everything else like a thousand stag-hounds in full cry.
‘My God!’ Len Wright muttered. ‘What is it?’
But Frank Hall did not reply. His face deathly white, he was staring up towards the Peak, throat dry, vocal cords refusing to function again. He knew the legend. Until now he had scoffed at the tale, but this time there was no logical explanation. And not for a thousand pounds would he have driven any further up that track.
The two watching men saw the Land Rover come into view, its twin headlights piercing the darker shadow of Devil's Peak, elevating as the vehicle scaled a sharp incline, then dipping and levelling as it found flat ground again. It was surely out control. Vivid flashes denoted more rifle fire but the reports were lost in the baying which drowned everything else.
The watching foresters had an unrestricted view of the careering Land Rover, it's crazy course back and forth on the plateau of shale and heather, never slowing, seemingly trying to turn but always reverting to its original direction which led directly to the precipice below the Peak.
More firing. Yet there was no sign of any other form of life. Sheer madness, a gang of hardened poachers driving towards certain death whilst raking the area at their rear with a constant hail of bullets. The Land Rover checked momentarily as though the driver had braked sharply and then jerked forward, picking up speed rapidly, this time heading straight for the edge of the cliff.
‘They're going over!’ Len Wright screamed.
Frank Hall's nails bit deeply into the palms of his hands as he saw the vehicle shoot out into space and seem to hover like some earth-orbiting craft, then plunge downwards to the forested ravine below. The canine baying reached its peak and then died away. Silence, the atmosphere heavy with an aura of evil, the cold more intense than ever. A reddish glow spread up into the night sky and the two forestry men could hear the crackling of flames. The fire from the smashed and blazing Land Rover was spreading through the thickets as though trying to erase the memories of this very night; pillars of smoke rising up into the sky in the beginnings of a forest fire that no living man could check, an inferno that seemed to have come from Hades itself.
The following day was well advanced before Frank Hall drove up on the plateau that adjoined Devil's Peak. Below him the blaze raged relentlessly, driving back the team of fire-fighters under the control of Len Wright.
The Head Forester left his Land Rover and walked across the open space of level ground. Flakes of burning debris floated down around him like black snowflakes but he ignored them, his keen grey eyes scanning the ground in front of him.
After some searching he managed to find the tyre tracks which he sought, imprinted on the barren surface, twisting crazily this way and that. Then his expression hardened and his lips tightened into a thin bloodless line. Deer spoor he was familiar with, the churning hoof marks of a passing herd, but these huge paw-prints had not been made by any passing herd of fallow or sika. They were barely discernible on the rocky ground, a scuffing of the soil here and there, more distinct around the odd boggy patch. But there was no mistaking the footprint of a dog, a hound of immense proportions, creatures that had been invisible to the watching mortals yet seen in terrifying clarity by those whom the pack pursued.
Frank Hall nodded to himself and began to retrace his steps. It was no concern of his. The hounds had come from hell and now they had returned there in accordance with the legend. Those who had violated the laws of nature had paid the ultimate penalty. When Black Dogs were heard,
