Chapter 9: My Kingdom For A Horse

      "Twas Bauldy Beattie and me white Beattisons down to Langholm," begins the wobbly linkster when I tell him where I'm heading. 

"Then that's where I need to be before the end of the day," I enthuse, pulling out my cellphone and hitting the on button.

"Yer people over to Score be long gone, hung or worse by Scottish Jimmy," he continues, filling my water bottle from a stone culvert spouting a steady stream from a crack in the basalt outcropping beside his low stone house.

"Still no cell service for me to get a Lyft," I complain into the now darkening mid-morning sky after checking my phone and finding no signal. "How far is this place?"

"Tis a fur piece round to the Black Esk, but nary a short run thar a' mhonaidh for me nag."

     So it was either continue on my perilous footpath to Langholm or trust the goodwill of a cantankerous distant cousin from the wrong side of the family. If being outed by a monk, chased by a bull, and assaulted by a golf club were the signs, I'd better change my course before the next threat came along. 

     Cell service is sketchy to begin with in the Southern Uplands, but particularly so in the quiet zone of the Eskdalemuir Observatory, a governmental magnetic and seismic research station. I couldn't count on Google maps to get me back to the airport in Glasgow. I did, however, have a visual memory of crossing the Black Esk on the drive over to Samye Ling that first night in Scotland. I'd have to rely on that image and the kindness of a stray driver on the B703 to be able to make it to my tribal homelands before the next morning's flight back to the states.

     "Here, take my umbrella," I offer in trade as Rolland hobbles over with a sad-eyed elderly horse.

"She be descended from Lord Maxwell's white stallion," he bargains, standing up a little straighter and thrusting out his bony chin.

"This Barbour will keep you dry," I concede, handing over the expensive waxed rain jacket even as dark cumulonimbus clouds are bunching low over the ridge to the west.

"She knows the way over O'er and back again," he concludes, passing the reins and pointing a craggy finger to those hills.