* * *
“I have never seen such fishing, never,” Jamie repeated for the fourth time, a look of dreamy bliss on his face as he broke open a steaming trout fried in cornmeal. “They were swarming in the water, were they not, Ian?”
Ian nodded, a similar look of reverence on his own homely features.
“My Da would give his other leg to ha’ seen it,” he said. “They jumped on the hook, Auntie, truly!”
“The Indians don’t generally bother with hook and line,” Myers put in, neatly spearing his own share of fish with his knife. “They build snares and fish traps, or sometimes they’ll put some sticks and rubbish crost the creek to prevent the fish, then stand above with a sharp stick, just spearin’ them from the water.”
That was enough for Ian; any mention of Indians and their ways provoked a rash of eager questions. Having exhausted the methods of fish-catching, he asked again about the abandoned village we had seen earlier in our journey.
“Ye said it might have happened in the war,” Ian said, lifting the bones from a steaming trout, then shaking his fingers to cool them. He passed a section of the boneless flesh to Rollo, who swallowed it in a single gulp, temperature notwithstanding. “Will that ha’ been the war wi’ the French, then? I didna ken there was any fighting so far south.”
Myers shook his head, chewing and swallowing before he answered.
“Oh, no. It’ll be the Tuscarora War I was meanin’; that’s how they call it on the white side, at least.”
The Tuscarora War, he explained, had been a short-lived but brutal conflict some forty years before, brought on by an attack upon some backcountry settlers. The then governor of the colony had sent troops into the Tuscarora villages in retaliation, and the upshot was a series of pitched battles that the colonists, much better armed, had won handily—to the devastation of the Tuscarora nation.
Myers nodded toward the darkness.
“Ain’t no more than seven villages o’ the Tuscarora left, now—and not above fifty or a hundred souls in any but the biggest one.” So sadly diminished, the Tuscarora would quickly have fallen prey to surrounding tribes and disappeared altogether, had they not been formally adopted by the Mohawk, and thus become part of the powerful Iroquois League.
Jamie came back to the fire with a bottle from his saddlebag. It was Scotch whisky, a parting present from Jocasta. He poured out a small cupful, then offered the half-full bottle to Myers.
“Is the Mohawk country not a verra great distance to the north?” he asked. “How can they offer protection to their fellows here, and they with hostile tribes all round?”
Myers took a gulp of whisky and washed it pleasurably around his mouth before answering.
“Mmm. That’s fine stuff, friend James. Oh, the Mohawk are a good ways off, aye. But the Nations of the Iroquois are a name to reckon with—and of all the Six Nations, the Mohawk are the fiercest. Ain’t no one—red or white—goin’ to mess with the Mohawk ’thout good cause, nossir.”
I was fascinated by this. I was also pleased to hear that the Mohawk territory was a good long way away from us.
“Why did the Mohawk want to adopt the Tuscarora, then?” Jamie asked, lifting one brow. “It doesna seem they’d be needing allies, and they so fierce as ye say.”
Myers’s hazel eyes had gone to dreamy half-slits under the influence of good whisky.
“Oh, they’re fierce, all right—but they’re mortal,” he said, “Indians are men o’ blood, and none more than the Mohawk. They’re men of honor, mind”—he raised a thick finger in admonition—“but there’s a sight of things they’ll kill for, some reasonable, some not. They raid, d’ye see, amongst themselves, and they’ll kill for revenge—ain’t nothin’ will stop a Mohawk bent on revenge, save you kill him. And even then, his brother or his son or his nephew will come after you.”
He licked his lips in slow meditation, savoring the slick of whisky on his skin.
“Sometimes Indians don’t kill for any reason a man would say mattered; specially when liquor’s involved.”
“Sounds very much like the Scots,” I murmured to Jamie, who gave me a cold look in return.
Myers picked up the whisky bottle and rolled it slowly between his palms.
“Any man might take a drop too much and be the worse in his actions for it, but with the Indians, the first drop’s too much. I’ve heard of more than one massacre that might not have been, save for the men bein’ mad with drink.”
He shook his head, recalling himself to his subject.
“Be so as it may, it’s a hard life, and a bloody one. Some tribes are wiped out altogether, and none have men to spare. So they adopt folk into the tribe, to replace those as are killed or die of sickness. They take prisoners, sometimes—take ’em into a family, treat ’em as their own. That’s what they’ll do with Mrs. Polly, there.” He nodded at Pollyanne, who sat quietly by the fire, paying no attention to his speech.
“So happen back fifty years, the Mohawk took and adopted the whole tribe of the Tuscarora. Don’t many tribes speak exactly the same language,” Myers explained. “But some are closer than others. Tuscarora’s more like the Mohawk than ’tis like the Creek or the Cherokee.”
“Can ye speak Mohawk yourself, Mr. Myers?” Ian’s ears had been flapping all through the explanation. Fascinated by every rock, tree, and bird on our journey, Ian was still more fascinated by any mention of Indians.
“Oh, a good bit.” Myers shrugged modestly. “Any trader picks up a few words here and there. Shoo, dawg.” Rollo, who had inched his nose within sniffing distance of Myers’s last trout, twitched his ears at the admonition but didn’t withdraw the nose.
“Will it be the Tuscarora ye mean to take Mistress Polly to?” Jamie asked, crumbling a corn dodger into edible chunks.
Myers nodded, chewing carefully; with as few natural teeth as he had left, even fresh corn dodgers were a hazardous undertaking.
“Aye. Be four, five days ride still,” he explained. He turned to me and gave me a reassuring smile. “I’ll see her settled fine, Mrs. Claire, you’ll not be worried for her.”
“What will the Indians think of her, I wonder?” Ian asked. He glanced at Pollyanne, interested. “Will they have seen a black woman before?”
Myers laughed at that.
“Lad, there’s a many of the Tuscarora ain’t seen a white person before. Mrs. Polly won’t come as any more a shock than your auntie might.” Myers took a vast swig of water and swished it around his mouth, eyeing Pollyanne thoughtfully. She felt his eyes on her, and returned his stare, unblinking.
“I should say they’d find her handsome, though; they do like a woman as is sweetly plump.” It was moderately obvious that Myers shared this admiration; his eyes drifted over Pollyanne with an appreciation touched with innocent lasciviousness.
She saw it, and an extraordinary change came over her. She seemed scarcely to move, and yet all at once, her whole person was focused on Myers. No white showed around her eyes; they were black and fathomless, shining in the firelight. She was still short and heavy, but with only the slightest change of posture, depth of bosom and width of hip were emphasized, suddenly curved in a promise of lewd abundance.
Myers swallowed, audibly.
I glanced away from this little byplay to see Jamie watching, too, with an expression somewhere between amusement and concern. I poked him unobtrusively, and squinted hard, in an expression that said as explicitly as I could manage—“Do something!”
He narrowed one eye.
I widened both mine and gave him a good stare, which translated to, “I don’t know, but do something!”
“Mmphm.”
Jamie cleared his throat, leaned forward, and laid a hand on Myers’s arm, jarring the mountain man out of his momentary trance.
“I shouldna like to think the woman will be misused in any way,” he said, politely, but with an edge of Scottish innuendo on “misused” that implied the possibility of unlimited impropriety. He squeezed a little. “Will ye undertake to guarantee her safety, Mr. Myers?”
Myers shot him a look of incomprehension, which slowly cleared, cognizance coming into the bloodshot hazel eyes. The mountain man slowly pulled his arm free, then picked up his cup, gulped the last mouthful of whisky, coughed and wiped his mouth. He might have been blushing, but it was impossible to tell behind the beard.
“Oh, yes. That is, I mean to say, oh, no. No, indeed. The Mohawk and the Tuscarora both, their women choose who they bed with, even who they marry. No such thing as rape among ’em. Oh, no. No, sir; she won’t be misused, I can promise that.”
“Well, and I’m glad to hear it.” Jamie sat back, at ease, and gave me an I-trust-you’re-satisfied glare out of the corner of his eye. I smiled demurely.
Ian might be not quite sixteen, but he was far too observant to have missed all these exchanges. He coughed, in a meaningful Scottish manner.
“Uncle, Mr. Myers has been kind enough to invite me to go with him and Mrs. Polly, to see the Indian village. I shall be sure to see that she finds good treatment there.”
“You—” Jamie started, then broke off. He gave his nephew a long, hard look across the fire. I could see the thoughts racing through his mind.
Ian hadn’t asked permission to go; he’d announced he was going. If Jamie forbade him, he must give grounds—and he could scarcely say that it was too dangerous, as this would mean admitting both that he was willing to send the slave woman into danger and that he didn’t trust Myers and his relations with the local Indians. Jamie was trapped, and very neatly too.
He breathed in strongly through his nose. Ian grinned.
I looked back across the fire. Pollyanne was still sitting as she had been, not moving. Her eyes were still fixed on Myers, but a slight smile curved her lips in invitation. One hand rose slowly, cupping a massive breast, almost absently.
Myers was staring back, dazed as a deer with a hunter’s light in its eyes.
And would I do differently? I thought later, listening to the discreet rustling noises and small groans from the direction of Myers’s blankets. If I knew that my life depended on a man? Would I not do anything I could to ensure he would protect me, in the face of unknown danger?
There was a snapping and crackling in the bushes, not far away. It was loud, and I stiffened. So did Jamie. He slid his hand out from under my shirt, reaching for his dirk, then relaxing, as the reassuring scent of skunk reached our nostrils.
He put his hand back under my shirt, squeezed my breast and fell back asleep, his breath warm on my neck.
No great difference at all, perhaps. Was my future any more certain than hers? And did I not depend for my life upon a man bound to me—at least in part—by desire of my body?
A faint wind breathed through the trees, and I hitched the blanket higher on my shoulder. The fire had burned to embers, and so high in the mountains, it was cool at night. The moon had set, but it was very clear; the stars blazed close, a net of light cast over the mountains’ peaks.
No, there were differences. However unknown my future, it would be shared, and the bond between my man and me went much deeper than the flesh. Beyond all this was the one great difference, though—I had chosen to be there.
15
NOBLE SAVAGES
We took our leave of the others in the morning, Jamie and Myers taking pains over the arrangement for a rendezvous in ten days time. Looking around me at the bewildering immensity of forest and mountain, I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be sure of finding a specific place again; I could only trust in Jamie’s sense of navigation.
They turned to the north, we to the southwest, making our way along the course of the stream we had camped by. It seemed very quiet at first, and strangely lonely, with only the two of us. Within a short time, though, I had grown accustomed to the solitude and began to relax, taking a keen interest in our surroundings. This might, after all, be our home.
The thought was a rather daunting one; it was a place of amazing beauty and richness, but so wild, it hardly seemed that people could live in it. I didn’t voice this thought, however; only followed Jamie’s horse as he led us deeper and deeper into the mountains, stopping finally in the late afternoon to make a small camp and catch fish for dinner.
The light faded slowly, retreating through the trees. The thick mossy trunks grew dense with shadow, edges still rimmed with a fugitive light that hid among the leaves, green shadows shifting with the sunset breeze.
A tiny glow lit suddenly in the grass a few feet away, cool and bright. I saw another, and another, and then the edge of the wood was full of them, lazily falling, then blinking out, cold sparks drifting in the growing dark.
“You know, I never saw fireflies until I came to live in Boston,” I said, filled with pleasure at sight of them, glowing emerald and topaz in the grass. “They don’t have fireflies in Scotland, do they?”
Jamie shook his head, reclining lazily on the grass, one arm hooked behind his head.
“Bonny wee things,” he observed, and sighed with content. “This is my favorite time of the day, I think. When I lived in the cave, after Culloden, I would come out near evening, and sit on a stone, waiting for the dark.”
His eyes were half closed, watching the fireflies. The shadows faded upward as night rose from the earth to the sky. A moment before, light through the oak leaves had mottled him like a fawn; now the brightness had faded, so he lay in a sort of dim green glow, the lines of his body at once solid and insubstantial.
“All the wee bugs come out just now—the moths and the midges; all the bittie things that hang about in clouds over the water. Ye see the swallows come for them, and then the bats, swooping down. And the salmon, rising to the evening hatch and making rings on the water.”
His eyes were open now, fixed on the waving sea of grass on the hillside, but I knew he saw instead the surface of the tiny loch near Lallybroch, alive with fleeting ripples.
“It’s only a moment, but ye feel as though it will last forever. Strange, is it no?” he said thoughtfully. “Ye can almost see the light go as ye watch—and yet there’s no time ye can look and say ‘Now! Now it’s night.’ ” He gestured at the opening between the oak trees, and the valley below, its hollows filling with dark.
“No.” I lay back in the grass beside him, feeling the warm damp of the grass mold the buckskin to my body. The air was thick and cool under the trees, like the air in a church, dim and fragrant with remembered incense.
“Do you remember Father Anselm at the abbey?” I looked up; the color was going from the oak leaves overhead, leaving the soft silver undersides gray as mouse fur. “He said there was always an hour in the day when time seems to stop—but that it was different for everyone. He thought it might be the hour when one was born.”
I turned my head to look at him.
“Do you know when you were born?” I asked. “The time of day, I mean?”
He glanced at me and smiled, rolling over to face me.
“Aye, I do. Perhaps he was right, then, for I was born at suppertime—just at twilight on the first of May.” He brushed away a floating firefly and grinned at me.
“Have I never told ye that story? How my mother had put on a pot of brose to cook, and then her pains came on so fast she’d no time to think of it, and no one else remembered either until they smelled the burning, and it ruined the supper and the pot as well? There was nothing else in the house to eat save a great gooseberry pie. So they all ate that, but there was a new kitchenmaid and the gooseberries were green, and all of them—except my mother and me, of course—spent the night writhing wi’ the indigestion.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “My father said it was months before he could look at me without feeling his bowels cramp.”
I laughed, and he reached to pick a last-year’s leaf from my hair.
“And what hour were you born, Sassenach?”
“I don’t know,” I said, with the usual pang of faint regret for my vanished family. “It wasn’t on my birth certificate, and if Uncle Lamb knew, he never told me. I know when Brianna was born, though,” I added, more cheerfully. “She was born at three minutes past three in the morning. There was a huge clock on the wall of the delivery room, and I saw it.”
Dim as the light was, I could see his look of surprise clearly.
“You were awake? I thought ye told me women are drugged then, so as not to feel the pain.”
“They mostly were, then. I wouldn’t let them give me anything, though.” I stared upward. The shadows were thick around us now, but the sky was still clear and light above, a soft, brilliant blue.
“Why the hell not?” he demanded, incredulous. “I’ve never seen a woman give birth, but I’ve heard it more than once, I’ll tell ye. And damned if I can see why a woman in her right mind would do it, and there was any choice about it.”
“Well…” I paused, not wanting to seem melodramatic. It was the truth, though. “Well,” I said, rather defiantly, “I thought I was going to die, and I didn’t want to die in my sleep.”
He wasn’t shocked. He only raised one brow, and snorted faintly with amusement.
“Would ye no?”
“No, would you?” I twisted my head to look at him. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, still amused at the question.
“Aye, well, perhaps. I’ve come close to death by hanging, and I didna like the waiting a bit. I’ve nearly been killed in battle a few times; I canna say I was much concerned about the dying then, though, bein’ too busy to think of it. And then I’ve nearly died of wounds and fever, and that was misery enough that I was looking forward verra keenly to being dead. But on the whole, given my choice about it, I think perhaps I wouldna mind dying in my sleep, no.”
He leaned over and kissed me lightly. “Preferably in bed, next to you. At a verra advanced age, mind.” He touched his tongue delicately to my lips, then rose to his feet, brushing dried oak leaves from his breeks.
“Best make a fire while there’s light enough to strike a flint,” he said. “Ye’ll fetch the wee fish?”
I left him to deal with flints and kindling while I went down the little hill to the stream, where we had left the fresh-caught trout dangling from stringers in the icy current. As I came back up the hill it had grown dark enough that I could see him only in outline, crouched over a tiny pile of smoldering kindling. A wisp of smoke rose up like incense, pale between his hands.
I set the gutted fish down in the long grass and sat back on my heels beside him, watching as he laid fresh sticks on the fire, building it patiently, a barricade against the coming night.
“What do you think it will be like?” I asked suddenly. “To die.”
He stared into the fire, thinking. A burning twig snapped with heat, spurting sparks into the air, which drifted down, blinking out before they touched the ground.
“ ‘Man is like the grass that withers and is thrown into the fire; he is like the sparks that fly upward…and his place will know him no more,’ ” I quoted softly. “Is there nothing after, do you think?”
He shook his head, looking into the fire. I saw his eyes shift beyond it, to where the cool bright sparks of the fireflies blinked in and out among the dark stems.
“I canna say,” he said at last, softly. His shoulder touched mine and I leaned my head toward him. “There’s what the Church says, but—” His eyes were still fixed on the fireflies, winking through the grass stems, their light unquenchable. “No, I canna say. But I think it will maybe be all right.”
He tilted his head, pressing his cheek against my hair for a moment, then stood up, reaching for his dirk.
“The fire’s well started now.”
The heavy air of the afternoon had lifted with the coming of twilight, and a soft evening breeze blew the damp tendrils of hair off my face. I sat with my face lifted, eyes closed, enjoying the coolness after the sweaty heat of the day.
I could hear Jamie rustling around the fire, and the quick, soft whisht of his knife as he skinned green oak twigs for broiling the fish.
I think it will maybe be all right. I thought so, too. There was no telling what lay on the other side of life, but I had sat many times through an hour where time stops, empty of thought, soothed of soul, looking into…what? Into something that had neither name nor face, but which seemed good to me, and full of peace. If death lay there…
Jamie’s hand touched my shoulder lightly in passing, and I smiled, not opening my eyes.
“Ouch!” he muttered, on the other side of the fire. “Nicked myself, clumsy clot.”
I opened my eyes. He was a good eight feet away, head bent as he sucked a small cut on the knuckle of his thumb. A ripple of gooseflesh rose straight up my back.
“Jamie,” I said. My voice sounded peculiar, even to me. I felt a small round cold spot, centered like a target on the back of my neck.
“Aye?”
“Is there—” I swallowed, feeling the hair rise on my forearms. “Jamie, is there…someone…behind me?”
His eyes shifted to the shadows over my shoulder, and sprang wide. I didn’t wait to look round, but flung myself flat on the ground, an action that likely saved my life.
There was a loud whuff! and a sudden strong smell of ammonia and fish. Something struck me in the back with an impact that knocked the breath out of me, and then stepped heavily on my head, driving my face into the ground.
I jerked up, gasping for breath, shaking leaf mold out of my eyes. A large black bear, squalling like a cat, was lurching round the clearing, its feet scattering burning sticks.
For a moment, half blinded by dirt, I couldn’t see Jamie at all. Then I spotted him. He was under the bear, one arm locked around its neck, his head tucked into the joint of the shoulder just under the drooling jaws.
One foot shot out from under the bear, kicking frantically, stabbing at the ground for traction. He had taken his boots and stockings off when we made camp; I gasped as one bare foot slewed through the remnants of the fire, raising showers of sparks.
His forearm was ridged with effort, half buried in thick fur. His free arm thrust and jabbed; he had kept hold of his dirk, at least. At the same time, he hauled with all his strength on the bear’s neck, pulling it down.
The bear was lunging, batting with one paw, trying to shake off the clinging weight around its neck. It seemed to lose its balance, and fell heavily forward, with a loud squall of rage. I heard a muffled whoof! that didn’t seem to come from the bear, and looked frantically around for something to use as a weapon.
The bear struggled back to its feet, shaking itself violently.
I caught a brief glimpse of Jamie’s face, contorted with effort. One bulging eye widened at sight of me, and he shook his mouth clear of the bristling fur.
“Run!” he shouted. Then the bear fell on him again, and he disappeared under three hundred pounds of hair and muscle.
With vague thoughts of Mowgli and the Red Flower, I scrabbled madly over the damp earth in the clearing, finding nothing but small pieces of charred stick and glowing embers that blistered my fingers but were too small to grip.
I had always thought that bears roared when annoyed. This one was making a lot of noise, but it sounded more like a very large pig, with piercing squeals and blatting noises interspersed with hair-raising growls. Jamie was making a lot of noise, too, which was reassuring under the circumstances.
My hand fell on something cold and clammy; the fish, tossed aside at the edge of the fire clearing.
“To hell with the Red Flower,” I muttered. I seized one of the trout by the tail, ran forward, and belted the bear across the nose with it as hard as I could.
The bear shut its mouth and looked surprised. Then its head slewed toward me and it lunged, moving faster than I would have thought possible. I fell backward, landing on my bottom, and essayed a final, valiant blow with my fish before the bear charged me, Jamie still clinging to its neck like grim death.
It was like being caught in a meat grinder; a brief moment of total chaos, punctuated by random hard blows to the body and the sensation of being suffocated in a large, reeking hairy blanket. Then it was gone, leaving me lying bruised in the grass on my back, smelling strongly of bear piss and blinking up at the evening star, which was shining serenely overhead.
Things were a good deal less serene on the ground. I rolled onto all fours, shouting “Jamie!” at the trees, where a large, amorphous mass rolled to and fro, smashing down the oak saplings and emitting a cacophony of growls and Gaelic screeches.
It was full dark on the ground by now, but there was enough light from the sky for me to make things out. The bear had fallen over again, but instead of rising and lunging, this time was rolling on its back, hind feet churning in an effort to gain a ripping purchase. One front paw landed in a heavy, rending slap and there was an explosive grunt that didn’t sound like the bear’s. The smell of blood was heavy on the air.
“Jamie!” I shrieked.
There was no answer, but the writhing pile rolled and tilted slowly sideways into the deeper black shadows under the trees. The mingled noises subsided to heavy grunts and gasps, punctuated by small whimpering moans.
“JAMIE!”
The thrashing and branch-cracking died away into softer rustlings. Something was moving under the branches, swaying heavily from side to side, on all fours.
Very slowly, breathing in gasps with a catch and a groan, Jamie crawled out into the clearing.
Disregarding my own bruises, I ran to him, and dropped to my knees beside him.
“God, Jamie! Are you all right?”
“No,” he said shortly, and collapsed on the ground, wheezing gently.
His face was no more than a pale blotch in the starlight; the rest of his body was so dark as to be nearly invisible. I found out why as I ran my hands swiftly over him. His clothes were so soaked with blood that they stuck to his body, his hunting shirt coming away from his chest with a nasty little sucking sound as I pulled at it.
“You smell like a slaughterhouse,” I said, feeling under his chin for a pulse. It was fast—no great surprise—but strong, and a wave of relief washed over me. “Is that your blood, or the bear’s?”
“If it was mine, Sassenach, I’d be dead,” he said testily, opening his eyes. “No credit to you that I’m not, mind.” He rolled painfully onto his side and slowly got to his hands and knees, groaning. “What possessed ye, woman, to hit me in the heid wi’ a fish whilst I was fighting for my life?”
“Hold still, for heaven’s sake!” He couldn’t be too badly hurt if he was trying to get away. I clutched him by the hips to stop him, and kneeling behind him, felt my way gingerly up his sides. “Broken ribs?” I said.
“No. But if ye tickle me, Sassenach, I willna like it a bit,” he said, gasping between words.
“I won’t,” I assured him. I ran my hands gently over the arch of his ribs, pressing lightly. No splintered ends protruding through the skin, no sinister depressions or soft spots; cracked maybe, but he was right, nothing broken. He yelped and twitched under my hand. “Bad spot there?”
“It is,” he said between his teeth. He was beginning to shiver, and I hurried to fetch his plaid, which I wrapped about his shoulders.
“I’m fine, Sassenach,” he said, waving away my attempts to help him to a seat. “Go see to the horses; they’ll be upset.” They were. We had hobbled the horses a little way from the clearing; they had made it a good deal farther under the impetus of terror, judging from the muffled stamping and whinnying I could hear in the distance.
There were still small wheezing groans coming from the deep shadows under the trees; the sound was so human that the hair prickled on the back of my neck. Carefully skirting the sounds, I went and found the horses, cowering in a birch grove a few hundred yards away. They whickered when they scented me, delighted to see me, bear piss and all.
By the time I had soothed the horses and coaxed them back in the direction of the clearing, the pitiful noises from the shadows had ceased. There was a small glow in the clearing; Jamie had managed to get the fire started again.
He was crouched next to the tiny blaze, still shivering under his plaid. I fed in enough sticks to make sure it wouldn’t go out, then turned my attention to him once more.
“You’re really not badly damaged?” I asked, still worried.
He gave me a lopsided smile.
“I’ll do. It caught me a good one across the back, but I dinna think it’s verra bad. Have a look?” He straightened up, wincing, and felt his side gingerly as I crossed behind him.
“What made it do that, I wonder?” he said, twisting his head toward where the bear’s carcass lay. “Myers said the black bears dinna often attack ye, without ye provoke them some way.”
“Maybe somebody else provoked it,” I suggested. “And then had the sense to get out of the way.” I lifted the plaid, and whistled under my breath.
The back of his shirt hung in shreds, smeared with dirt and ash, splotched with blood. His blood this time, not the bear’s, but luckily not much. I gently pulled the tattered pieces of the shirt apart, exposing the long bow of his back. Four long claw-marks ran from shoulder blade to armpit; deep, wicked gouges that tapered to superficial red welts.
“Ooh!” I said, in sympathy.
“Well, it’s no as though my back was much to look at, anyway,” he joked feebly. “Really, is it bad?” He twisted around, trying to see, then stopped, grunting as the movement strained his bruised ribs.
“No. Dirty, though; I’ll need to wash it out.” The blood had already begun to clot; the wounds would need to be cleansed at once. I put the plaid back and set on a pan of water to boil, thinking what else I might use.
“I saw some arrowhead plant down near the stream,” I said. “I think I can find it again from memory.” I handed him the bottle of ale I’d brought from the saddlebags, and took his dirk.
“Will you be all right?” I paused and looked at him; he was very pale, and still shivering. The fire glimmered red on his brows, throwing the lines of his face into strong relief.
“Aye, I will.” He mustered a faint grin. “Dinna worry, Sassenach; the thought of dyin’ asleep in my bed seems even better to me now than it did an hour ago.”
A sickle-moon was rising, bright over the trees, and I had little trouble finding the place I remembered. The stream ran cold and silver in the moonlight, chilling my hands and feet as I stood calf-deep in the water, groping for tubers of the arrowhead plant.
Small frogs sang all around me, and the stiff leaves of cattails rustled softly in the evening breeze. It was very, very peaceful, and all of a sudden I found myself shaking so hard that I had to sit down on the stream bank.
Anytime. It could happen anytime, and just this fast. I wasn’t sure which seemed most unreal; the bear’s attack, or this, the soft summer night, alive with promise.
I rested my head on my knees, letting the sickness, the residue of shock, drain away. It didn’t matter, I told myself. Not only anytime, but anywhere. Disease, car wreck, random bullet. There was no true refuge for anyone, but like most people, I managed not to think of that most of the time.
I shuddered, thinking of the claw marks on Jamie’s back. Had he been slower to react, not as strong…had the wounds been slightly deeper…for that matter, infection was still a major threat. But at least against that danger, I could fight.
The thought brought me back to myself, the squashed leaves and roots cool and wet in my hand. I splashed cold water over my face, and started up the hill toward the campfire, feeling somewhat better.
I could see Jamie through the thin scrim of saplings, sitting upright, outlined against the fire. Sitting bolt upright, in a way that must surely have been painful, considering his wounds.
I stopped, suddenly wary, just as he spoke.
“Claire?” He didn’t turn around, and his voice was calm. He didn’t wait for me to answer, but went on, voice cool and steady.
“Walk up behind me, Sassenach, and put your knife into my left hand. Then stay behind me.”
Heart hammering, I took the three steps that brought me high enough to see over his shoulder. On the far side of the clearing, just within the light of the fire, stood three Indians, heavily armed. Evidently the bear had been provoked.