UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
The Grey Goose
By RONALD F. GUNN (Edinburgh College of Agriculture)
IN winter there were no fish, but the burn did not lose its fascination. The pool below the bridge was like a flicker- ing fire, and if you stared long enough at the great foam bubbles drifting round and round the eddy under the over- hanging bank, and then peered down into the peaty depths of the pool, the rounded stones and the trailing weed took on strange forms, and the flash of sunlight on an old tin was pure silver. Lachie John hung motionless over the bridge staring down into the pool—half eagerly, half in fear—till the Cailleach began to take shape. Wispy grey hair straggled out beneath a dark shawl. Her face was vague and indistinct, except for the eyes which were hard and bright and burned up through the water like stars in a winter sky. Old Morag of the Hazel Wood. Lachie was not really afraid of her when he saw her below the bridge. It was in the darkness of his room when his father had blown out the candle and creaked his way slowly downstairs that he knew real fear. For then he would be out on the hill—watching the stags roaring on the crest of Sgorran Gaoith, or coming home from a fishing expedition to the Dubh Lochans—and suddenly it would be dusk and he would find himself standing by the ruins of the croft at the mouth of the Cailleach Burn. Then old Morag would be at his side, and she would lead him out into the moss, and a light would shine across the peat-hags, and the old woman would point to it, her bony hand outstretched against the sky. Then she would vanish into the dusk, and Lachie would set off towards the light at a stumbling run, but even as he blundered through the rushes he knew it was hopeless, for he sank deeper into the mire at every step, till he could go no farther and the bitter choking taste of it was in his mouth.
Och, it was horrible. Lachie pulled the gate shut, re-twined the rusty wire round the post, and followed the cows down the road to the crofts. He had been thinking a lot about the marsh this last week or two—ever since he had heard Donald the shepherd tell his father that the grey geese had come to the loch. .The coming of the geese always had an unsettling effect on Lachie. In autumn when he was working in the potato-field and the great skeins of grey lags came flying southward and he heard their strange wild music, he felt a terrible restlessness inside him that was both anguish and ecstasy. They were of another world, wild and free as the wind.
The snow-clad peak of Sgorran Gaoith looked remote and fairylike in the moonlight. Lachie tramped across the field at the-back of the croft with his father's rifle slung across his back. It was bitterly cold. His father and mother and his sister Jean had all gone to the ceilidh in the village, but he had got out of it at the last minute by pleading a sore head. The rusty wires screeched thfough the staples as he squeezed through the deer-fence. At first -the going was bad. He had to climb steeply up the hillside to skirt the gorge where the , burn came plunging down in a series of foaming waterfalls and deep brown pools. A mile upstream the gorge opened into a glen, and the burn flowed more softly between the gentle sweep of heather-clad hillsides. It was fine easy walking now. The grass was white and crunchy' with frost. Lachie was climbing out of the hollow beyond the sheep-fank when he saw the deer. In single file they splashed through the burn and climbed the opposite hillside. He counted thirty-seven as they crossed the skyline.
The moorland gathered itself into a long low hill before merging with the marsh. Lachie wriggled over the crest. The moon was almost directly behind him. That meant he would have to make a wide detour, for he would have to get the geese against the moon if his sights were going to be clearly defined. It was very still. He heard the sudden whistle of a duck's wings overhead, and the low murmur of the geese out on the moss was like the sound of distant waves breaking on a shingle beach. The two lochans lay about five-hundred yards away. His best chance would be to work down the trough of the burn. That would get him well out into the middle of the marsh, and he could surely find a way through the peat-hags. But it would not be easy. A blackface ewe was grazing farther along the hillside, and he would have to move carefully to avoid disturbing her.
It was sixty yards from the burn to the peat-hags. Lachie had worked half way across when the duck got up away to the left. He froze. A second later he heard the roar of wings as the geese rose from the lochans. He lay still while they circled and did oot rise till the sound of their calling had faded into silence. A thin coating of ice had formed close to the bank. Lachie was crouching on a slab of turf which had crumbled from the lip of one of the bog-holes and had come to rest precariously some three feet down the steep slope, and he was freezing to death. The bank in front of him was white with feathers and droppings.
Twice he had heard the geese approaching, but each time they had swung away long before they were anywhere near the lochans. He had lost all idea of time. "I'll count ten, and if nothing happens I'll away home." He had reached twenty-nine when he 'heard the geese. This time they kept straight on. He huddled up as small as he could under his coat. They circled the lochans twice. Then they came low right overhead. "0 God. 0 God. 0 God." He was willing them to land. "Please God . . . " and there was a sudden thrashing of powerful wings and the splash as the heavy birds hit the water. Inch by inch he raised his head and slid the rifle over the bank. He couldn't quite get the nearest bird in his sights. He hitched himself another inch up the slope, and at the movement the geese rose with a great roar.
Lachie lay for a long time with his face to the cold ground. When he looked up he saw three geese still swimming on the moonlit waters of the far lochan. The range was about seventy yards. He snicked the sights up. He was trembling with excitement and jerked the trigger wildly. Nothing happened. He twisted the safety catch. This time he took careful aim and a steady trigger pressure. The geese rose at the shot, but the left-hand bird fell back into the water with a great splashing. It was all over by the time that Lachie got there. The bird floated motionless on the water about five yards out from the bank. He waded recklessly in to retrieve it, shattering the ice, and was soaked to the waist.
Going home was bad that night. He heard the faint clack of a dislodged stone behind him, and the stealthy swish of footsteps following him through the rushes across a boggy flat. The rifle was no good, for it was unloaded—and what good would a rifle be anyway ? The footsteps were coming closer, and he didn't dare turn his head. He was across the burn when he felt the Cailleach just behind him. He dropped the goose and ran. The next day he was ashamed of himself and slipped off to the hill in the afternoon. He found the goose at the foot of a small cliff. The foxes had.,, been at it and it was no longer beautiful, but somehow Lachie didn't seem to care. He plucked one of the wing-feathers and pushed it inside his jersey and heaped a pile of stones on the mangled corpse. It was time for the evening milking. Lachie was leaning over the parapet of the bridge. A faint wind was moaning in the hills. Something white fluttered against the dark arch of the bridge. Three times the grey goose-feather was carried round in the eddy below the overhanging bank before it escaped into the main force of the current. Dusk was beginning to fall. Lachie walked slowly back along the road to fetch the cows up to the byre.
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