A Poacher leaned against a sycamore tree, staring at an empty snare. Kneeling on the cold ground icy from a winter night, he picked up the empty snare examining it closely. Strands of hair and fur stained with blood stuck to it. No doubt in his mind, young sharp eyes scanned the forest left then right. There was nothing to be seen only leafless trees and shadows. Nothing unusual or untoward disturbed the end of night and the new day, excepting the distant bark of a fox echoing throughout the forest. Perhaps this vocal carnivore was the thief?
Evidence held firmly in icy fingers informed our poacher of a rabbit once caught now gone! Foxes often raided snares snatching the helpless victim but the disturbance on the ground and the fact this snare had been undone to release its prisoner, told him the fox was innocent of this crime. Gently our poacher’s icy fingers examined the ground where the snare lay throughout the night. Blood specks in frozen suspension were splattered across the snares residual image indented on the earth and moss. Slightly off to his right two large imprints of boots were clearly frozen into the moss. Similar prints faded on the frozen earth off to the left. Our poacher mused and muttered under icy breath.
“If the thief was that fox it was on two legs and wearing huge boots?”
Bare trees offered no shelter from the freezing January winds. Pulling a woolly muffler around his neck, shivering he got to his feet. Putting the empty snare in a bag hanging from his shoulder, sharp eyes took a last look at the scene in front of him. This was the seventh snare found empty this morning. Four yesterday suffered the same fate and a few more over previous weeks. Our poacher was being poached!
Spitting on the ground he cursed under frozen breath and turned towards home with an empty bag. There would be no rabbit stew today. Heading for Penygraig Farm he trudged through the forest and down the mountainside. A thin layer of snow covered everything as far as the eye could see. The sun was starting to rise but the cold perished our poacher to the very core of his bones, adding to an increasing sense of anger and frustration invading every cell. He knew somebody must have been following him and springing the snares, but who was it? He was angry, very angry. As the morning mists began to lift from the trees our poacher, Dai Davies walked through the farm gate. Jenkins and Big John were eating breakfast when the door opened with an urgent creak on rusty hinges, heralding gusts of freezing cold morning air. Their little brother Dai Davies stood in the doorway.
“Shut the bloody door Dai!”
Jenkins spluttered crumbs across the breakfast table. Dai slammed the door shut but caught his hand on the handle creating searing pain in freezing fingers still numb from nocturnal poaching. Dai swore under his breath and kicked the door in return for this assault upon his person.
“Take it easy Dai Bach, too early for temper!”
Big John poured steaming water into a teapot, stirring tea leaves before replacing the lid and putting the kettle back on the fire.
“It’s happened again!” said Dai. “Seven empty this morning, seven!”
Dai roughly pulled off his overcoat and threw it onto a chair in the corner.
“Somebody’s bloody following you Bach. They know where your snares are before you get the chance to see if they are full. It’s the ghost of a poacher!”
Jenkins laughed loudly spitting crumbs and choking on his own joke. Big John looked at Jenkins with kind eyes and smiling said.
“Leave him alone you silly bugger!” He leaned forward across the table and helped himself to more bread from the half eaten loaf sitting on the table. “Ave to be a ghost to follow our Dai wouldn’t it Jenkins and a bloody clever one at that, blooming ghosties eh?”
Big John joined in with the good hearted banter adding much to Dai’s frustration. Dai did not and could not find anything funny about this, there was nothing to laugh about. His elder brothers often made a joke of him but they never meant any harm and were always helpful and protective.
“I know who it is see!”
Dai pulled a chair beneath his legs and sat down with his brothers.
“Ave some tea lad!” Big John passed a mug of strong steaming tea to his little brother. Dai picked up the mug warming his still icy hands.
“Only person it could be see!” he sipped at the hot tea. “It’s that bloody Morgan Lewis, that’s who it is. Great lump of a thieving double crossing bastard!” He sipped more tea.
“Don’t be daft Dai you have an agreement with him! Why would he do something like this?” Jenkins bit off a large piece of bread, gulping steaming tea from his mug.
Dai dribbled tea from the side of his mouth as he rushed to answer.
“Cos I tell you he’s a greedy bugger that’s why! He is a greedy fat bugger.”
Big John looked sternly at Dai putting his mug down on the table with a thump.
“Slow down now, you can’t go making accusations against him you daft badger.”
Big John nicknamed Dai, ‘Badger’ as a family pet name when they found him playing with a baby badger as a little boy. He had a way with animals did Dai whether it was raising or catching them. Dai coughed and added.
“He told me he wanted more money see and I told him to get lost in a coal mine!”
Dai drained his mug dry. “He said if I didn’t, I would live to regret I had ever been born!”
He put his mug down on the table with a thud. Big John poured them more tea and looked seriously at his brothers.
“You never said anything about that Bach. You are both bloody thieves in the eyes of the law but he should not be doing this. It’s not right is it Jenkins?”
“He’s got a big slab of blue stone on his shoulders he has!” Jenkins stood turning to face his younger brother. “You don’t want to be fighting with him Bach, he’s a beast of a man.
Why do you think his mightiness Gough employs him? To sort bloody poachers out that’s why I can tell you!”
“I’ll fight me own battles!” retaliated Dai “He don’t scare me. The bigger they stand the harder they fall.”
Coughing with a chesty roar Dai gathered phlegm from his throat to share on the open fire, hissing as flames from the burning coals evaporated it on contact. Jenkins leaned down toward his brother and in a playful but strong manner, gently lifted Dai from the chair by the lapels of his jacket.
“He’ll bloody kill you, how many more times?”
He spat in the fire too but residue dribbled on his unshaven chin and hung limply from dark whiskers.
“Get off me you daft bugger!”
Dai struggled to get free from the mighty grip of his brothers monstrous hands, gnarled and worn by nearly forty years in the pit, man and boy. Jenkins firmly put his little struggling brother back on the chair with the same ease with which he lifted him. In two great strides Jenkins stood by the closed door and forced his muscular frame into a coat at least two sizes too small for him. His long arms stuck through the sleeves and two hairy wrists dangled hands of a hardworking man, now wrapping a big muffler around his neck.
“Well you think on, he’s a nasty piece of work, everybody knows it to be true. Why do you think he’s always drinking alone in the Miners Arms? No bugger trusts him!” Jenkins moved towards the door. “I’m off to work. Now you be bloody careful do you hear? Tell him John?”
John smiled at his brother with a look of reassurance. Jenkins grunted, the door opened and he was standing in the doorway as cold air glanced through the kitchen sending shivers through their bones.
“Shut the bloody door Jenkins”
Big John roared at his brother then burst out laughing as Jenkins hanging muffler trapped itself in the closed door with him on the other side. As the door opened a half choked Jenkins pulled at his muffler, grunted again and slammed the door behind him.
“Now listen to me Dai?” Big John leaned across the table taking Dai’s hand in his. “We have got to talk about this, that big bugger Lewis can get you into a wagon load of trouble.”
Dai shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. He was very short compared to his brothers who both towered above him dwarfing the five foot seven inches of this Welsh terrier. Dai worked in the Iron works since the age of nine and was very strong for one so small. But all the cold and damp left him with a very weak chest and in real terms, he was quite frail compared with Jenkins and Big John. Over the last couple of years Dai developed an annoying cough that irritated him. Often the coughing would hurt his chest and on a couple of occasions he spat blood from his lungs.
“You are not as strong as he is now are you Dai and look at the bloody size of him compared to you?” Big John smiled.
“I don’t care I’m not going to be pushed around by him. He’s broken his word and bond he has. He has lied to me and expects me just to lay down like a sheep and let him trample me into the earth. Well I won’t see, I bloody won’t!” Dai wiped a tear from his eye.
“All is not right Dai! Calm down now will you?” Big John placed a calming hand on his brother’s arm.
Dai started to cough again and fought to get his breath. His big brothers always protected him and although on many occasions this had been a welcome intercession, there were times such as this one, when he resented their interference. At twenty three he was a man and it was he who was popular in the village, it was he who had many friends. His skills as a poacher and an integrity rarely found, earned him much respect in the village and beyond. Morgan Lewis was well known for his foul temper and quick fists as far away as Brecon. Pushing the chair beneath him it scraped noisily on the floor as Dai stood up and leaned across the table staring intently into Big John’s eyes. He moved from one leg to the other moving his weight and pumping himself up, he said.
“I will have him John!” He coughed again and spluttered. “I know it’s him and I’ll bloody do for him see, I will!”
“You have got to calm down boy?” Big John gripped his younger brother’s arm firmly. “Now you still don’t know for sure yet, you don’t. You have to be sure Dai, you have to be!”
Trying to calm his brother down Big John gripped harder. “Dai!”
The tone of his voice spoke volumes of unspoken warnings that Dai did not want to hear. His voice calmed a little and under garbled breath he muttered.
“I do know, I do!”
Big John stood up from the table relaxing his grip. Beginning to gather up the dirty breakfast plates a mug slipped from his huge hand and crashed to the floor shattering into pieces.
“Bugger!”
He clumsily clattered the dishes into a porcelain sink.
“I’ll have to get that later or we will be late for work. Come on Dai we had better shift our boots.”
Dai stood up quickly accidentally knocking the chair over and swore under his breath.
“Look at us both Dai all fingers and thumbs. I think us both better calm ourselves.”
Dai picked up their mufflers throwing Big John’s towards him saying.
“I’ll sort this later!”
He garbled something else under his breath but it evaporated into the cold air as he opened the door.
“For the sake of peace Dai will you let it drop?”
Big John was well known to be a good natured man who would take an age to reach anger. But when he did, a volcano erupted. Little brother Dai certainly continued to push his brother, there was no doubt about that. Big John was flustered but he was a man of great self-control and he loved his little brother. He also understood the gravity of this mess and he held great fears about Morgan Lewis. As an Under-gamekeeper for the Gough Estates he wielded a lot of power. If Morgan had a mind, he could make life very difficult for Dai and the family. Penygraig Farm was part of Gough’s estate and in essence their landlord. But he knew the big man was more likely to thrash Dai soundly rather than bring any kind of legal action against him for poaching. After all they were in cahoots with each other, they were both breaking the law. Morgan Lewis would not want to be found out because losing his job and home would be the least of his troubles. He could be transported to Australia or worse still, hang!
Big John closed the door behind him and within a couple of huge strides, was walking down the mountain with Dai towards the Iron Works. The ironworks is a hell where they slaved for twelve hours in searing heat six days a week for most of the year. This was the only time when the Iron works offered advantages to its employees, shelter from the icy winter of 1850.
“Twelve hours it is then Bach, still warmer there in that hell than at home eh?” He slapped Dai playfully on his back. “It will be bloody scalding.”
Dai was still incensed by his obsession with Morgan Lewis. Big John took his arm from around Dai’s shoulder and cuffed him playfully on the back of his head.
Lazarus Carpenter - Author 