Euan Mackinnon sat with Robbie in the public bar of the Argyll, fiddling with his whisky glass. “Alarm call, eh?” he commented upon hearing the ganger’s account of the outbreak.
“There’s surely going to be more of this. We got lucky today, it couldn’t go anywhere, there was nothing to burn for half a mile around. The area had been ploughed except that one bit of scrub. Anyway, are you going to take over Munro’s job?”
“I’m not the next cab off the rank,” Mackinnon said. “It looks like we’ll stay as we are meantime. Eventually they’ll send somebody up from the big city; somebody with a doctorate in business studies, a four handicap who plays golf with the Council…thirsty day, boys, eh?”
Robbie looked around to see the majority of his squad jostling in a noisy good humour towards the barman. Only Silas and Iain were not amongst them.
“I let them have the spare van,” the ganger said, “so they were able to get out of their bothies and go for a drink. They did okay today. We’ll need to adjust the planting target so they don’t lose out on bonus. I’ll say they all missed two hours planting if that’s fine with yourself.”
“Sure, I’ll see to that,” Mackinnon grunted. “Well now, they seem to be getting along a little better, eh? Just look at them.”
The squad had formed an unusually tight group in the sparsely populated bar, animated by the day’s events and their release from routine.
Mackinnon and the ganger both recognised that knots of experience were the binding agent for any squad. The men were individualistic, disparate; grouped or solitary by choice and inclination. For a short period, mutual exchanges raised laughter, but it would not be long before they devolved into the usual pods: George, Blue and Ruairidh; Roland and Guy; Alex and Noel. It did not surprise that neither Silas nor young Iain, the loner and the local respectively, had joined the others for a beer.
“Roland is drinking what looks like orange juice. Must be the driver.”
The ganger turned his attention back to Mackinnon and pulled from his pocket a thick piece of glass. He offered it across the table.
“Well, Euan, what do you make of this? I found it at the outbreak today.”
Mackinnon had an unconscious trick of raising one eyebrow.
“This is what caused the fire,” the ganger said. “Sunlight concentrated by this piece of curved glass.”
“I doubt it,” Mackinnon’s voice was flat. “It’s a fallacy that fires are started that way.”