Free The Cone Gatherers by Robin Jenkins Page B

would have permission to laugh as heartily as anybody else. Calum was always unhappy in the pub; but that could not be helped.
    In the tree here was Calum’s happiness. Here were his friends the finches, safe from the hawk scouting above. The ground of snares and stumbles was far below. In the loch the seals were playing, with audible splashes. In a nearby Douglas fir cushat doves were crooning. Above all, his brother beside him was singing. So much present joy was there for him he did not have to look forward. He did not wonder, as Neil sometimes did, whether the cones he was gathering would be fertile; nor did he see the great trees born from this seed in his hands being toppled down in fifty years’ time to make ammunition boxes for that generation’s war. He was as improvident as the finches to whom he had fed more than half of his morning slice of bread.
    Yet it was he who first saw the gamekeeper approaching through the sunshine and shadow of the wood, with his three glossy dogs running silently in front. In agitation he stretched over to touch Neil, and point.
    Neil paused in his singing and picking to watch Duror. The latter, he thought, must be on a patrol of the wood, looking for deer or foxes or weasels to shoot. Even if he saw their ladder against the tree, and from it learned where they were, he would still pass by. While they were gathering cones, they were none of his business: his own mistress had given them permission.
    â€˜It’s all right,’ he murmured to Calum. ‘He’s got nothing to do with us. He’ll pass by.’
    Indeed, as he watched the gamekeeper now in and now out of sight on the dappled ground among the trees, he felt the sympathy he could never withhold when he saw any human being alone in a vast place, on a hillsidesay, or here in a wood. Unlike his brother, he saw nature as essentially hostile; and its resources to take away a man’s confidence were immense. He felt sure, for instance, that the gamekeeper treading on the withered leaves must be thinking of his sick wife.
    In a clearing Duror halted, laid down his gun, took his binoculars out of their case, and trained them on the top of the larch.
    Neil knew that they must be clearly visible; it seemed to him typical of nature that the foliage was gone which would have hidden them. It took an effort to go on picking cones. He told Calum to keep on picking too. He objected to this spying on them, but would not show it even by stopping work.
    Calum could not concentrate on the cones. He became like an animal in danger with no way of escape. He began to whimper, and tilting over in a panicky attempt to hide from that distant scrutiny he let some cones dribble out of his bag.
    â€˜What’s the matter with you?’ asked Neil. ‘Aye, I ken he’s looking at us. But where’s the harm in that? He’s just doing his work, like you and me. Maybe he’s not looking at us at all. Maybe it’s that hawk we saw that he’s looking at. Didn’t I tell you, that if we keep out of his way, he can’t harm us? Well, we’re out of his way up here.’
    Calum was not reassured; he still whimpered and cowered, like a dog in the presence of someone who has been cruel to it.
    Neil’s own fear suddenly increased. He became angry.
    â€˜What are you moaning for?’ he demanded. ‘I ken he doesn’t like us, but we don’t like him either. This wood doesn’t belong to him; it belongs to the lady and she’s given us permission to climb the trees and pick the cones. You heard Mr Tulloch say it. As long as we don’t saw branches off and injure the trees, nobody would interfere with us, he said. Have we ever sawn any branches off?’
    He repeated that last question in a passion of resentment, for on most trees the best harvest of cones was on the tips of branches too far out from the trunk to bereached. If sawing was permitted, then those branches, so small as