Sheep Rustling in the Debatable Land - The Aftermath

I expect there’s a huge body of wargamers and LAF members who are thinking “I wonder what happened to our jolly trio and Reba” ……..well maybe not but I’m going to tell you anyway. I felt the story was unfinished, did they get home, did Mad Wullie Snapcase, Dashing Dougie Douglas and the other one get away with it or are their corpses feeding the crows on some lonely moorland.

Smalldale

The Snapcase hamlet is quiet….too damn quiet.

A young girl, a bent back woman and maybe that’s One eyed Tam, but there should be more.

The place is deserted, have the Armstrong’s already been through here and killed everyone?

No……or the hay would be burning as would the buildings. Not the Armstrong’s then.

Mad Wullie, Dashing Dougie and Vagabond enter the hamlet. There’s Reba with them but only 1 sheep and why is Wullie looking so humourless, it’s not like him.

One Eyed Tam runs forward and embraces Vagabond, “Where the hell have you been. The whole vale is out looking for you” “Get off me you daft old bat” was the immediate response followed by “We’ll tell you later, just bring us a jug of ale and put this sheep in the pen before the blasted dog drives it off too”

“She’s a good dog” Dougie says. “Good” explodes Mad Wullie “We reived 29 sheep and we’ve come home with one, that’s not good Dougie” “You’re going to have to improve your training methods or we will be eating uncontrollable dog for supper, and I’m getting hungry” he finished.

It was late when most of our men and women returned from searching for us. There was some relief that we were home until Dikeray said “The sheep that’s in the pen, isn’t that the Armstrong colour on its rump” It all went quiet until we came clean and explained about the fog, then the snow and getting lost and raiding a farmstead and then finding out that it might have been an Armstrong farmstead, by this time everyone was looking worried. Then finally we described the fight at the ford, that cheered everyone up. No living Armstrong’s to tell the tale, that was alright then. Well it was alright until we mentioned Ill Will Armstrong coming over the hill before we had gotten out of sight.

We’ll leave for the hills now some one shouted, leave everything, they’ll kill us all, were the sort of comments being bandied around as panic set in.

“Calm down it’s OK” said Mad Wullie “they couldn’t follow us, it started to rain and then it turned to sleet, sleet so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face”. “Not that you’d have tried to put your hand in front of your face or it would have gotten frostbite and dropped off. Anyway it’s only one sheep, they won’t care about one sheep”.

Two days later, the Armstrong’s arrived, it appeared they did care.

Ill Will Armstrong strode up to Snapcase and said “We’re looking for our sheep”

I just knew Wullie was going to ask “Why, have you lost them and isn’t that a bit careless” I furtively loosened my sword in its scabbard. Fortunately Wullie had his game face on, the one that you learn means “don’t play dice with this man.” He replied noncommittally that we hadn’t had sheep in the valley, not since some skunner from south of the border had driven them off six months ago.

Ill Will looked at Mad Wullie very carefully before telling him that they would search the hamlet and they’d do it thoroughly. As an aside he also informed us that they’d burned out 3 homesteads yesterday, for practice he said and also because they found Armstrong property there…..but mainly for the practice.

His men fanned out, even checking the dwellings, I know we have a bad reputation, but why they’d look for sheep in the houses I couldn’t understand.

Unless of course that the stories of One Eyed Tam and his night of debauchery in the sheep pen had got out of the valley and they were just making sure.

The remainder of the Armstrong’s watched us, ready for action but looked distinctly uneasy, I guess that was our bad reputation as well, hopefully as fighters rather than with the sheep, but you never know.

I looked apprehensively at the 2 fire pits, one was still glowing a little, then I looked away.

Checking the pen they were only able to find two small pigs, yes that out of focus blob is a pig.

The search continued until every where was declared clean, well it’s not LAPD and things were pretty grubby but you know what I mean.

With some reluctance on their part, Ill Will and his men left to continue their search for the lost Armstrong sheep.

Dougie looked at the fire pits and started to smile.

When the last Armstrong was out of earshot we started to laugh, and couldn’t stop. Nervousness and a close call with the Armstrong family can’t be ruled out.

If they’d arrived yesterday it wouldn’t have been a laughing matter, tears would have fallen and blood would have been spilled, our blood in all probability.

We had invited our closest neighbours and had a feast. There’d been music, dancing, Dougie demonstrating how Reba could round up hens and we’d had a gay old time.

Well what else can you do with 1 sheep, it had been spit roast over an open fire and cooked to perfection, eaten with gusto and best of all there was no evidence for anyone to find…..unless Ill Will had cut us open to inspect out entrails.

The blurry pigs had disposed of the bones and other bits and pieces and so, if no one outside the Vale heard of our feast we would be safe. None of us was likely to brag about our sheep raid….were they.

And how many sheep did you reive, 29 we reply. That’s a very nice sized flock they say, did you loose any on the way home……28 we reply. No - no one would brag about this raid…..maybe next time!

Cheers