The Drunk Wolf novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: The Bucket Line

Struan was through the maltings door before I'd taken a step.

"Struan!"

The smoke closed behind him.

I went after him and the heat stopped me at the door.

I couldn't see anything inside but orange.

I couldn't hear him.

I could hear the kiln roaring underneath and the old floorboards cracking above it.

Ailsa grabbed the back of my coat and dragged me out of the doorway.

"You go in there," she said, "and I'll have to go in after you, and then we're all dead and Murdo gets the lot."

"He's in there."

"I know. So's his gran. So do something useful."

I turned round.

Half the village was still in the lane.

The crew was in the yard with their mouths open.

"Buckets," I shouted. "Every bucket on this burn. Every pail, every pot. Line up from the water to the door."

For a second nobody moved.

Then the youngest lass ran for the stillhouse and came back with two buckets and the big soup pot.

The farmer jumped off his tractor.

A woman in slippers ran home and came back with a mop bucket.

The line went down from the maltings door to the burn, thirty people, then forty.

Wolves from the village stood beside the wolfless crew they'd laughed at for years, and nobody said a word about it.

Buckets went up the line hand to hand, full and slopping, and came back empty down the other side.

I was at the front, nearest the heat, throwing water at the doorframe.

It did almost nothing.

I kept throwing it.

"The warehouse," Ailsa shouted. "If it goes along the wall, it'll take the warehouse."

The bonded warehouse shared the maltings' east wall.

Forty years of whisky was in there, and the King's cask behind the iron bar.

Whisky burns like petrol.

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