God's Highlander by E. V. Thompson Page A

By the time Ewan reached the manse he was hotter than Wyatt, perspiration vying with dirt on his face, and so excited and breathless that his speech was unintelligible.
    Wyatt suggested that Ewan recover his breath before attempting to explain his excitement, but after a breath-holding half-minute the boy would have burst had he not spoken.
    â€˜Minister … there’s a man … down by the loch … caught … in one of the factor’s man-traps. He’s … lost a foot.’
    Wyatt looked at Ewan in appalled disbelief. ‘A man-trap ! Are you sure?’
    Ewan Munro nodded his head vigorously. ‘Factor Garrett sets them … along the edge of the loch. Everyone knows where they are … but this man’s a stranger. He … he swears well.’
    â€˜Show me where you saw him.’
    Wyatt propelled Ewan Munro from the garden with a hand on his shoulder, then set off after him at a trot. He was horrified to learn that Lord Kilmalie’s factor was setting man-traps. No amount of poaching justified such methods of prevention.
    It was hardly surprising that Ewan Munro had been out of breath by the time he reached the manse. The boy led Wyatt alongside the loch for more than a mile. Skirting Eskaig village, he plunged into the undergrowth that grew to the edge of the loch.
    There were many gorse-bushes, but by now Wyatt could hear a man’s voice raised in what sounded like extreme pain. Ignoring the needle-like leaves of the yellow-flowering gorse that drew blood from his bare arms, Wyatt forced his way towards the victim of John Garrett’s anti-poaching methods.
    The gorse parted in front of Wyatt, and he stumbled into a large clearing at the water’s edge. Here he found the man-trap ‘victim’.
    Squatting upon the ground, one of the man’s trouser-legs hung in tatters. He had certainly lost the lower part of one leg. Yet he seemed more concerned with removing pine-needles from his hand and was cursing in the manner of a man more angry than hurt.

    Wyatt looked again at the empty trouser-leg and observed there was not a speck of blood to be seen.
    The unknown stranger looked up and scowled as Wyatt approached. He was a hairy man, and it was difficult to see where the man’s red beard ended and his hair began. Even the man’s eyebrows seemed to entangle themselves in the hair about them. But the blue eyes beneath the hairy brow were bright blue, alert – and angry.
    â€˜Was it you who set that abominable machine?’ He pointed to where a huge rusting trap lay upon the ground, its ugly teeth of tempered steel clamped tightly together.
    Wyatt shook his head, still puzzled. ‘Ewan came to me with a story that there was a stranger here who’d lost a foot in a man-trap.’
    â€˜And so I have! Why else do you think I’d be crawling around like a baby, getting gorse-needles in my hands and knees?’
    As the man spoke he moved to a more comfortable sitting position, and a splintered wooden stump emerged from the torn trouser-leg.
    â€˜It’s a wooden leg!’ Wyatt’s frown cleared, and a slow grin filled with relief took its place.
    The stranger’s fleeting grin matched Wyatt’s own as he looked across the clearing to where Ewan Munro stood in wide-eyed puzzlement. ‘Did you believe it was my real leg I’d lost? No, laddie. I lost my leg under a Glasgow cart many years ago – and made enough fuss when it happened to be heard up here. Even so, without my peg-leg I’m as helpless as a landed tadpole.’
    â€˜Let me give you a hand to stand. Put an arm about my shoulders, and I’ll help you back to the manse. Thank God it wasn’t the leg He gave you that was caught in that contraption. I’ll have words with the factor about this.’
    â€˜You’re a minister ?’ Now it was the turn of the one-legged man to be surprised.
    â€˜That’s right.’ Aware of the manner in