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Bogie, Birdie, Dormie, Death

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Chapter One

In the brilliant moonlight, a solitary horseman came up the narrow trail and passed by the bombed-out barracks. Pausing just before the stone bridge spanning the stream, the stocky rider glanced down for a moment at the rushing waters and pulled thoughtfully on his short red beard. Then he leaned forward in the saddle as if to get a better view of the trail ahead before spurring his mount into an easy canter. He clattered over the bridge. There was a sharp bend in the trail, and the stocky young man seemed suddenly aware of movement along the skyline ahead, for he leaned forward again and then nodded as if he recognized the silhouette of another rider coming in his direction. He reined his horse back to a walk.

The second rider approached at a trot, a strikingly handsome young woman even a casual onlooker would have noted—though for that matter the last tourist and guide had left the Gap of Dunloe hours previously. Siobhan Delaney was dressed in jeans with a dark shawl wrapped about her shoulders. Her long black hair hung free down the back of her plaid shirt, swinging from side to side with the motion of her mount.

"I recognize Cunla, but who is this dark stranger I see astride her?" the beautiful young woman inquired in a low husky voice.

"Good evenin' to ye, Siobhan," the stocky rider responded, peering into Siobhan Delaney's face—her dark, wide-set eyes unnaturally large and expressive beneath full eyebrows. "Your mum said you would be out here, alone with your thoughts," he continued. "That bein' the case, I knew ye wouldn't be ridin' down toward Kate Kearney's cottage."

"I wanted to be free of that lot in the bar, but glad I always am to see thee, Johnny. Welcome home. We've been expecting you."

"Glad it is I am to be home. And handy it is that I find you here, as you shall see. I have somethin' to tell you, somethin' which has waited too long. First I want to show you somethin', somethin' you'll find both beautiful and wondrous strange."

"Oh?" Siobhan replied with an apparent note of curiosity in her voice. "You never change, Johnny O'Neill. Always full of surprises, you are."

"It's not far. Just this way. Come along then."

He spurred his pony, eased by the young woman, and started off again at a trot. Siobhan turned her mount and followed. Crossing the ridge line, they headed down into the next little valley. The bearded young Irishman peered intently at the terrain along the left side of the trail, and shortly, with what must have been a grunt of recognition, he halted again and dismounted. Reaching back over his shoulder, he shifted his backpack slightly and removed a large flashlight. "It's just through here," he said, taking the reins of both Icelandic ponies and leading them off the trail and up the rocky incline toward a small copse of trees. The two little creatures gave their bridles a shake as if to question this unusual procedure but picked their way obediently up among the rocks and into the trees.

Siobhan leaned forward and patted her mount reassuringly on its neck. "It's all right Kate. It's all right, girl."

"The lads would come through here, you see," the young man explained, glancing quickly in both directions before parting the lower boughs of two holly trees, flicking on the light, and leading the reluctant ponies into an ominous shadow that proved to be the dark mouth of a cave. "For sixty years they've been replantin' these trees to provide cover for the entrance. The black and tans could barricade both ends of the gap, but the lads would just use this cave as a tunnel and pop in or out as neatly as you please."

"And that's how they got on to the grounds to kill Admiral Broadbent?" Siobhan Delaney asked, her words echoing in the tunnel as a counterpoint to the ringing of the ponies' hooves on the stony floor.

"Ironic, isn't it?" he replied, flashing the light about the walls and ceiling of the cave. "The lads used this same tunnel, first sneakin' into the Gap of Dunloe to attack the barracks and forty years later sneakin' out to get the admiral."

"Aye, and it was a terrible waste either way," Siobhan sighed.

"Perhaps," came the reply.

"The admiral always said he was a friend of the Irish people. He turned Broadbent Castle into a hotel and put a lot of people to work. He intended to bring some prosperity to this corner of Ireland," Siobhan argued.

O'Neill brought the ponies to a halt.

"You can't deny his intentions were good," Siobhan continued. But the stocky young Irishman's only response was to switch off the light.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions; you know that," he finally responded.

"I also know if we are to be judged only by the consequences of our actions and not by our intentions, then we are all surely damned. If you wish to cite authority, I've been into all the books upstairs at Killykerry House as well."

Johnny O'Neill paused a long moment in the darkness before replying. "There were reasons, complicated reasons."

"Ah, sure, and aren't there always reasons? Reasons and slogans and silly, brave songs. But the result never changes—bloodshed and senseless, senseless violence." One could hear the steely edge to her voice now.

"And I suppose the murders of the nun and the two school children in Belfast last year—stoned to death and all over some bloody drum—I suppose that makes sense to you!" he countered loudly.

Siobhan Delaney waited till the echo of his angry words had died away before answering in a calm but forceful tone. "Of course it doesn't. You know me better than that, John O'Neill. What happened last twelfth of July was obscene. But so was the senseless murder of Admiral Broadbent. The man was doing all he could personally to help our people."

The stocky young man took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. Then he spoke in a quiet voice as well. "But that's just the point—personally. Personally he could do about next to nothin' to benefit all the Irish people. But what he represented, now—"

"Two hundred Irish people at work," Siobhan interrupted. "Why, Mum and I, we can still thank him for a couple thousand punts a year from the pony rides, you know that."

"If you'll just let me finish. It's what the admiral represented. What he did personally was next to nothin' when—"

"Nothing, ye say?"

"Nothin' when you consider the entire Irish nation. What he represented—aye, now that could do almost everythin' to hurt us. What's two hundred jobs compared to an entire nation's economy? What's a few pony rides against a United Ireland?"

"How can ye be saying that?" Siobhan Delaney demanded.

"Don't you see? The admiral led us away from the path we must follow—our own path. Aye, he creates two hundred jobs at the hotel and those two hundred—and their families—well, now that's eight hundred Irish folk. I'll grant ya that, maybe even a thousand, but a thousand are now content to tolerate an English presence in Ireland. He closes his stable and encourages local people—sure and it's your mum and yourself I'm talkin' about, and me as well, I won't deny that either. He lets us all provide the pony rides in the gap and there's a couple of hundred more who are after forgettin' it's our God-given right to make a decent livin' in the first place. Who's Admiral Broadbent to grant us permission to exist?"

Siobhan sighed. "I know what's coming now. It's like an old song."

"Right you are." Now there was a touch of steel in his voice as well. "Ireland will never be a united nation as long as it depends on the whims of the English for its very existence. Admiral Broadbent was a far more dangerous enemy to Ireland than all those homicidal maniacs in the north. He took away our self-reliance. He made us forget our cause."

"So, it must always be with blood and never with understanding or cooperation." There was a bitter note of resignation in Siobhan's voice now.

"It's not that simple. Do you hear?" the young man shouted, his impassioned words again echoing loudly in the tunnel.

There was silence as the echo of Johnny's words died away. Then, sadly, Siobhan whispered, "Oh, Johnny, what are we doing? We haven't seen each other for months, and here we are shouting at each other in the darkness—arguing about something that happened when we were both wee babes."

There was a long silence again as he considered her words. "Aye, you're right. I don't know what came over me."

"Sure, but isn't it just like the old days? The two of us screaming at each other and having a row over something neither of us understands."

O'Neill switched the flashlight on again and beamed it down at the stone floor. Then, tugging lightly on the bridles, he started to lead the ponies toward a faint light ahead. Abruptly, just as they reached the end of the passage, he stopped, again holding his hand up in warning. "Wait a minute now," he said in a low voice. "Listen!"

Siobhan heard nothing—then the distant call of a night bird and a slow dripping sound nearby. "Ah, and it's nothin' but my nerves," he admitted.

Johnny O'Neill led the ponies out what turned out to be a second mouth to the cave. "Mind your head now. There's this big boulder as you come through," he warned, but Siobhan was already leaning to one side in the saddle to avoid the rock spur guarding the entrance to the tunnel. O'Neill led the ponies to the right of the boulder through another group of thick holly trees and on to a ledge overlooking the Lake Golf Course at the Dunloe Gap Hotel.

O'Neill looked slowly around the brightly moonlit valley, sighed loudly, and produced a handkerchief with which he wiped his eyes and then blew his nose loudly. "Ah, and isn't it grand? I can't ever be seein' it without the tears wellin' up in my eyes."

Siobhan Delaney, who had been staring intently at the bearded young Irishman during this display of emotion, now followed his gaze. The valley formed a vast amphitheater residing between two ranges of hills: one steep, rocky wall enclosing the Gap of Dunloe, a narrow section of which they had just passed through, and the even-higher wooded hillside soaring up darkly behind the glittering lights of the hotel on a ledge above the golf course some three miles away. In the lustrous moonlight, they could see the vast stands of tall trees guarding some of the holes on the far side of a small arm of Killarney's Upper Lake, which wandered through the middle of the course. Here and there small oases formed by greens and tees and narrow stretches of fairway were also visible scattered among the vast areas of sand and extensive patches of gorse and wild rambling brambles.

"For all those fellas may say—bright enough fellas or they wouldn't be writin' in all the papers and magazines, now would they? Peter Dobreiner, Herbert Warren Wind, and now this Carlton Claridge fella who's goin' to play here next week—for all their condemnation and abuse, it's still grand and I love it, that I do."

Siobhan turned to him again and smiled. "I know. You always have."

"And so do most of the fellas who moan and curse their way around out there, goin' through the tortures of the damned. They always came back, and they remember to their dyin' day every birdie they earn, or far more likely, every par they almost make." He gave a rueful little laugh, and the beautiful, dark-haired young woman chuckled as well.

"A caddy is earnin' his wage out there for sure. A careless caddy can get killed on this course—but it's havin' its rewards as well. A fella can play well and have some luck; he might be tippin' twenty pounds after a round in the way of a celebration. And those that come to grief might give you twice as much out of gratitude for all the hazardous ordeals they put you through.

"But there's what I wanted you to see," he went on, and he gestured at the high, rocky bluff dominating the center of the valley as it stretched away over a half mile toward a steeply arched stone bridge spanning the Upper Lake on their left. "Kerry's answer to Ayers Rock."

The huge mountain of boulders was crowned in the middle by three rock chimneys, the tallest of which reached its peak a hundred feet above the valley floor, considerably higher than the ledge on which they had paused. "It's a good thing these little creatures are so sure footed," O'Neill remarked, and remounting Cunla, he led the way gingerly down the rock-strewn slope to the valley floor below.

Siobhan followed. The two riders crossed a broad meadow skirting the edge of a particularly thick copse of trees and eventually reaching a cart path almost at the base of the sheer rock face. They turned to the right on the path, away from a tee box aligned with a deep defile among the rocks.

"Cave of the Winds," O'Neill called out as he pointed down the narrow, rocky corridor leading into the darkness at the heart of the mesa. Instead he led the way a quarter mile farther along the base of the cliff before drawing to a halt a bare twenty feet from the rocky escarpment looming high above them. "Golgotha," he announced.

"Golgotha—what an exceedingly strange name to find on a golf course."

"It means place of the skull," he explained.

"The place our dear Lord was crucified," Siobhan continued, glancing up at the rocky hillside beneath which they had stopped. The full moon was now playing games with the myriad of small clouds racing across the night sky. The total absence of trees in the immediate vicinity created an appearance of unearthly desolation. Siobhan shivered slightly.

"A lot of good golfers have been crucified here as well."

"No, I meant the real Golgotha, you silly young man. The one in the Holy Land," she chided.

"Right you are, and the name Golgotha, you'll be knowin', goes back even further than the crucifixion," he informed her. "It had sinister connotations even in pagan times. Aye, and speak of the sinister, now wait just a minute." He glanced at the rocky hillside and then at the sky and waited as two small clouds scudded toward the moon. "Look now! Just now!" He pointed once again.

"In the blessed name of God, Johnny, what have you done?" Siobhan involuntarily took in the reins, and her mount stumbled backward a few yards as she stared at the undulating shadows on the boulders.

O'Neill laughed. "Can you see it? Sure, and they say that St. Patrick rid Ireland of all the serpents." The moving shadows on the rocky surface did indeed give the momentary impression of the slithering back of some gross snake, and Siobhan shuddered as she stared in fascination. Then the clouds were gone.

"Only a handful of people have ever seen that." O'Neill informed her. "No one comes out here at night. This way now." He urged Cunla forward and following the cart path, led the way along the base of the monolith. Siobhan and Kate followed again in silence.

After a hundred yards, he stopped, and without looking back, he signaled Siobhan to halt as well. Siobhan did as directed and followed his glance. A golf cart was sitting unattended in the park at the base of a series of high wooden stairways leading up the rocky wall.

"Hello. Someone's gone off and left his golf cart."

Siobhan craned her neck to see the top of the stairways. "Maybe we better not be going up there. I don't like it, Johnny."

"He can't still be up there. Sure and he would have figured out where the pin will be in the time we've been here. Cart must have broken down and someone abandoned it."

O'Neill and Siobhan dismounted. The stocky Irishman tied the ponies' bridles to the ball washer in the cart park, removed his backpack, and taking Siobhan's arm, started toward the stairs that led up from the cart park to the edge of the ninth green. "Watch your step now, it's quite steep."

"Golgotha they call it? It does look sinister. Why do we have to go up there?" Siobhan shivered slightly and wrapped her shawl tighter about her shoulders with her free arm, making no attempt to mount the stairs.

"Aye that's the word, sinister. Half the golfers in the world will tell you this is the most sinister hole in all golf, but it's also got one of the best moonlight views in the whole southwest—maybe all of Ireland. It's like nothin' you've ever seen before. Come along with ye now," he ordered, giving her arm an encouraging little squeeze.

Siobhan continued to look uncertain, a hint of fear in her eyes. "Don't tell me Siobhan Delaney is afraid to walk up a hill and look at the end of the earth?" he teased, and he gave his version of a Mephistophelean laugh.

"I'm not moving another step till I know just why you have brought me to this godforsaken place." She removed her arm from Johnny's grasp and cocked her head slightly to one side as if to read the stocky, bearded young man's real intentions in his facial expression.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Bogie, Birdie, Dormie, Death by David E. Scherer Copyright © 2012 by David E. Scherer. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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