90
DANGER IN THE GRASS
GRUNTING AND PUFFING, the men pushed into the dark-green zone of the conifers by noon. High on the upper ridges, clusters of balsam fir and hemlock huddled with spruce and pine, over the tumbled rock. Here they stood secure in seasonal immortality, needles murmuring lament for the bright fragility of the fallen leaves below.
Roger shivered in the cold shadow of the conifers, and was glad of the thick wool hunting shirt he wore over the linen one. There was no conversation; even when they paused briefly to draw breath, there was a stillness in the wood here that forbade unnecessary speech.
The wilderness around them felt calm—and empty. Perhaps they were too late, and the game had moved on; perhaps MacLeod had been wrong. Roger had not yet mastered the killing skills, but he had spent a good deal of time alone in sun and wind and silence; he had acquired some of the instincts of a hunter.
The men came out into full sun as they emerged on the far side of the ridge. The air was thin and cold, but Roger felt heat strike through his chilled body, and closed his eyes in momentary pleasure. The men paused together in unspoken appreciation, basking in a sheltered spot, momentarily safe from the wind.
Jamie stepped to the edge of a rocky shelf, sun glinting off his tailed copper hair. He turned to and fro, squinting downward through the trees. Roger saw his nostrils flare, and smiled to himself. Well, then, perhaps he did smell the game. He wouldn’t be surprised. Roger sniffed experimentally, but got nothing but the must of decaying leaves and a strong whiff of well-aged perspiration from the body of Kenny Lindsay.
Fraser shook his head, then turned to Fergus, and with a quiet word, climbed over the edge of the shelf and disappeared.
“We wait,” Fergus said laconically to the others, and sat down. He produced a pair of carved stone balls from his bag, and sat rolling them to and fro in his palm, concentrating intently, rolling a sphere out and back along the length of each dexterous finger.
A brilliant fall sun poked long fingers through the empty branches, administering the last rites of seasonal consolation, blessing the dying earth with a final touch of warmth. The men sat talking quietly, reeking in the sun. He hadn’t noticed in the colder wood, but here in the sun, the tang of fresh sweat was apparent, overlying the deeper layers of grime and body odors.
Roger reflected that perhaps it was not extraordinary olfactory acuteness on the part of animals, but merely the extreme smelliness of human beings that made it so difficult to get near game on foot. He had sometimes seen the Mohawk rub themselves with herbs, to disguise their natural odor when hunting, but even oil of peppermint wouldn’t make a dent in Kenny Lindsay’s stench.
He didn’t reek like that himself, did he? Curious, he bent his head toward the open neck of his shirt and breathed in. He felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of his neck, under his hair. He blotted it with his collar and resolved to bathe before going back to the cabin, no matter if the creek was crusted with ice.
Showers and deodorants were of more than aesthetic importance, he reflected. One got used to almost any habitual stink in short order, after all. What he’d not realized, secure in his relatively odorless modern environment, were the more intimate implications of smell. Sometimes he felt like a bloody baboon, his most primitive responses unleashed without warning, by some random assault of odor.
He remembered what had happened just the week before, and felt a hot blush creep over him at the memory.
He had walked into the dairy shed, looking for Claire. He’d found her—and Jamie, too. They were both fully clothed, standing well apart—and the air was so filled with the musk of desire and the sharp scent of male completion that Roger had felt the blood burn in his face, the hair on his body prickling erect.
His first instinct had been to turn and leave, but there was no excuse for that. He had given his message to Claire, conscious of Fraser’s eyes on him, bland and quizzical. Conscious, too, of the unspoken communication between the two of them, an unseen thrum in the air, as though they were two beads strung on a wire stretched tight.
Jamie had waited until Roger left, before leaving himself. From the corner of his eye, Roger had caught a slight movement, seen the light touch of the hand with which he left her, and even now, felt a queer clutch of his insides at the memory.
He blew out his breath to ease the tightness in his chest, then stretched out in the leaves, letting the sun beat down on his closed eyelids. He heard a muffled groan from Fergus, then the rustle of footsteps as the Frenchman made another hasty withdrawal. Fergus had eaten half-cured sauerkraut the night before—a fact made clear to anyone who sat near him for long.
His thoughts drifted back to that awkward moment in the dairy shed.
It was not prurience, nor even simple curiosity, and yet he often found himself watching them. He saw them from the cabin window, walking together in the evening, Jamie’s head bent toward her, hands clasped behind his back. Claire’s hands moved when she talked, rising long and white in the air, as though she would catch the future between them and give it shape, would hand Jamie her thoughts as she spoke them, smooth and polished objects, bits of sculptured air.
Once aware of what he was doing, Roger watched them purposefully, and brushed aside any feelings of shame at such intrusion, minor as it was. He had a compelling reason for his curiosity; there was something he needed to know, badly enough to excuse any lack of manners.
How was it done, this business of marriage?
He had been brought up in a bachelor’s house. Given all he needed as a boy in terms of affection by his great-uncle and the Reverend’s elderly housekeeper, he found himself lacking something as an adult, ignorant of the threads of touch and word that bound a married couple. Instinct would do, for a start.
But if love like that could be learned . . .
A touch on his elbow startled him and he jerked round, flinging out an arm in quick defense. Jamie ducked neatly, eluding the blow, and grinned at him.
Fraser jerked his head toward the edge of the shelf.
“I’ve found them,” he said.
JAMIE RAISED A HAND, and Fergus went at once to his side. The Frenchman came barely to the big Scot’s shoulder, but didn’t look ridiculous. He shaded his eyes with his one hand, peering down where Fraser pointed.
Roger came up behind them, looking down the slope. A flicker shot through a clearing below, marked by the swooping dip and rise of its flight. Its mate called deep in the wood, a sound like a high-pitched laugh. He could see nothing else remarkable below; it was the same dense tangle of mountain laurel, hickory, and oak that existed on the side of the ridge from which they had come; far below, a thick line of tall leafless trees marked the course of a stream.
Fraser saw him, and gestured downward with a twist of the head, pointing with his chin.
“By the stream; d’ye see?” he said.
At first, Roger saw nothing. The stream itself wasn’t visible, but he could chart its course by the growth of bare-limbed sycamore and willows. Then he saw it; a bush far down the slope moved, in a way that wasn’t like the wind-blown tossings of the branches near it. A sudden jerk that shook the bush as something pulled at it, feeding.
“Jesus, what’s that?”
His glimpse of a sudden dark bulk had been enough only to tell him that the thing was big—very big.
“I dinna ken. Bigger than a deer. Wapiti, maybe.” Fraser’s eyes were intent, narrowed against the wind. He stood easy, musket in one hand, but Roger could see his excitement.
“A moose, perhaps?” Fergus frowned under his shading hand. “I have not seen one, but they are very large, no?”
“No.” Roger shook his head. “I mean yes, but that’s not what it is. I’ve hunted moose—with the Mohawk. They don’t move like that at all.” Too late, he saw Fraser’s mouth tighten briefly, then relax; by unspoken consent, they avoided mention of Roger’s captivity among the Mohawk. Fraser said nothing, though, only nodded at the tangle of woodland below.
“Aye, it’s not deer or moose, either—but there’s more than one. D’ye see?”
Roger squinted harder, then saw what Fraser was doing, and did likewise—swaying from foot to foot, deliberately letting his eyes drift casually across the landscape.
With no attempt to focus on a single spot in the panorama below, he could instead see the whole slope as a blurred patchwork of color and motion—like a Van Gogh painting, he thought, and smiled at the thought. Then he saw what Jamie had seen, and stiffened, all thought of modern art forgotten.
Here and there among the faded grays and browns and the patches of evergreen was a disjunction, a knot in the pattern of nature’s weft—strange movements, not caused by the rushing wind. Each beast was invisible itself, but made its presence known, nonetheless, by the twitchings of the bushes nearby. God, how big must they be? There . . . and there . . . he let his eyes drift to and fro, and felt a tightening of excitement through chest and belly. Christ, there were half a dozen, at least!
“I was right! I was right, was I no, Mac Dubh?” MacLeod exulted. His round face beamed from one to another, flushed with triumph. “I did say as I’d seen beasts, aye?”
“Jesus, there’s a whole herd of them,” Evan Lindsay breathed, echoing his thought. The Highlander’s face was bright, fierce with anticipation. He glanced at Jamie.
“How will it be, Mac Dubh?”
Jamie lifted one shoulder slightly, still peering into the valley. “Hard to say; they’re in the open. We canna corner them anywhere.” He licked a finger and held it to the breeze, then pointed.
“The wind’s from the west; let us come down the runnel there to the foot of the slope. Then wee Roger and I will pass to the side, near that great outcrop; ye see the one?”
Lindsay nodded slowly, a crooked front tooth worrying the thin flesh of his lip.
“They’re near the stream. Do you circle about—keep well clear until ye’re near to the big cedar tree; ye see it? Aye, then spread yourselves, two to each bank of the stream. Evan’s the best marksman; have him stand ready. Roger Mac and I will come behind the herd, to drive them toward ye.”
Fergus nodded, surveying the land below.
“I see. And if they shall see us, they will turn into that small defile, and so be trapped. Very good. Allonsy!”
He gestured imperiously to the others, his hook gleaming in the sun. Then he grimaced slightly, hand to his belly, as a long, rumbling fart despoiled the silence of the wood. Jamie gave him a thoughtful look.
“Keep downwind, aye?” he said.
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to walk silently through the drifts of dry leaves, but Roger stepped as lightly as possible. Seeing Jamie load and prime his own gun, Roger had done likewise, feeling mingled excitement and misgiving at the acrid scent of powder. From his impressions of the size of the beasts they followed, even he might have a chance at hitting one.
Putting aside his doubts, he paused for a moment, turning his head from side to side to listen. Nothing but the faint rush of wind through the bare branches overhead, and the far-off murmur of water. A small crack sounded in the underbrush ahead, and he caught a glimpse of red hair. He cupped the gunstock in his hand, the wood warm and solid in his palm, barrel aimed upward over his shoulder, and followed.
Stealing carefully round a sumac bush, Roger felt something give suddenly under his foot, and jerked back to keep his balance. He looked at what he’d stepped on, and in spite of his instant disappointment, felt a strong urge to laugh.
“Jamie!” he called, not bothering any longer about stealth or silence.
Fraser’s bright hair appeared through a screen of laurel, followed by the man himself. He didn’t speak, but lifted one thick brow in inquiry.
“I’m no great tracker,” Roger said, nodding downward, “but I’ve stepped in enough of these to know one when I see one.” He scraped the side of his shoe on a fallen log, and pointed with his toe. “What d’ye think we’ve been creeping up on, all this time?”
Jamie stopped short, squinting, then walked forward and squatted next to the corrugated brown splotch. He prodded it with a forefinger, then looked up at Roger with an expression of mingled amusement and dismay.
“I will be damned,” he said. Still squatting, he turned his head, frowning as he surveyed the wilderness around them. “But what are they doing here?” he murmured.
He stood up, shading his eyes as he looked toward the creek, where the lowering sun dazzled through the branches.
“It doesna make a bit of sense,” he said, squinting into the shadows. “There are only three kine on the Ridge, and I saw two of them bein’ milked this morning. The third belongs to Bobby MacLeod, and I should think he’d ken if it was his own cow he’d seen. Besides . . .” He turned slowly on his heel, looking up the steep slope they’d just descended.
He didn’t have to speak; no cow not equipped with a parachute could have come down that way.
“There’s more than one—a lot more,” Roger said. “You saw.”
“Aye, there are. But where did they come from?” Jamie glanced at him, frowning in puzzlement. “The Indians dinna keep kine, especially not at this season—they’d slaughter any beasts they had, and smoke the meat. And there’s no farm in thirty miles where they might have come from.”
“Maybe a wild herd?” Roger suggested. “Escaped a long time ago, and wandering?” Speculation sprang up in Jamie’s eyes, echoing the hopeful gurgle of Roger’s stomach.
“If so, they’ll be easy hunting,” Jamie said. Skepticism tempered his voice, even as he smiled. He stooped and broke off a small piece of the cow-pat, crushed it with a thumb, then tossed it away.
“Verra fresh,” he said. “They’re close; let’s go.”
Within a half-hour’s walking, they emerged onto the bank of the stream they had glimpsed from above. It was wide and shallow here, with willows trailing leafless branches in the water. Nothing moved save a sparkle of sun on the riffles, but it was plain that the cows had been there; the mud of the bank was cut and churned with drying hoofprints, and in one place, the dying plants had been pawed away in a long, messy trough where something large had wallowed.
“Why did I not think to bring rope?” Jamie muttered, pushing through the willow saplings on the bank as they skirted the wallow. “Meat’s one thing, but milk and cheese would be—” The muttering died away, as he turned from the stream, following a trail of broken foliage back into the wood.
Without speaking, the two men spread out, walking softly. Roger listened with all his might to the quiet of the forest. They had to be nearby; even such an inexperienced eye as Roger’s had picked up the freshness of the signs. And yet the wood was autumn-still, the silence broken only by a raven, calling in the distance. The sun was hanging low in the sky, filling the air in the wood with a golden haze. It was getting noticeably colder; Roger passed through a patch of shadow, and shivered, in spite of his coat. They’d have to find the others and make camp soon; twilight was short. A fire would be good. Better, of course, if there were something to cook over it.
They were going down, now, into a small hollow where wisps of autumn mist rose from the cooling earth. Jamie was some distance ahead, walking with as much purpose as the broken ground allowed; evidently the trail was still plain to him, in spite of the thick vegetation.
A herd of cows couldn’t just vanish, he thought, even in mist as heavy as this . . . not unless they were faery kine. And that, he wasn’t quite prepared to believe, in spite of the unearthly quiet of the woods just here.
“Roger.” Jamie spoke very quietly, but Roger had been listening so intently that he located his father-in-law at once, some distance to his right. Jamie jerked his head at something nearby. “Look.”
He held aside a large, brambly bush, exposing the trunk of a substantial sycamore tree. Part of the bark had been rubbed away, leaving an oozing whitish patch on the gray bark.
“Do cows rub themselves like that?” Roger peered dubiously at the patch, then picked out a swatch of woolly dark hair, snagged by the roughened bark.
“Aye, sometimes,” Jamie replied. He leaned close, shaking his head as he peered at the dark-brown tangle in Roger’s hand. “But damned if I’ve ever seen a cow wi’ a coat like that. Why ye’d think it was . . .”
Something moved at Roger’s elbow and he turned, to find a monstrous dark head peering over his shoulder. A tiny, blood-dark eye met his own, and he let out a yell and jerked backward. There was a loud bang as his gun went off, and then a rush and a thud, and he was lying wrapped round a tree trunk, the breath knocked out of him, left with no more than a fleeting notion of a hairy dark bulk and a power that had sent him flying like a leaf.
He sat up, fighting for breath, and found Jamie on his knees in the leaves, scrabbling frantically for Roger’s gun.
“Up!” he said. “Up, wee Roger! My God, it’s buffalo!”
Then he was up, following Jamie. Still half-winded, but running, his gun in his hand with no clear memory of how it got there, powder-horn bumping against his hip.
Jamie was bounding like a deer through bushes, bundled cloak bouncing against his back. The wood wasn’t silent any longer; ahead there were crashings and splinterings, and low snorting bellows.
He caught up Jamie on the upward slope; they labored up it, feet sliding on damp leaves, lungs burning from the effort, then topped a rise and came out onto a long downward slope, scattered with spindly pine and hickory saplings.
There they were; eight or nine of the huge, shaggy beasts, clustering together as they thundered down the hill, splitting to go around thickets and trees. Jamie dropped to one knee, sighted, and fired, to no apparent effect.
There was no time to stop and reload; they must keep the herd in sight. A bend of the stream glinted between the trees, below and to the right. Roger charged down the slope in a rush of excitement, canteen and bullet-box flying, heart thundering like the hooves of the buffalo herd. He could hear Jamie bellowing behind him, shouting Gaelic exhortations.
An exclamation in a different tone made Roger glance back. Jamie had stopped, his face frozen in shock. Before Roger could call to him, shock shifted to a look of fury. Teeth bared, he seized his gun by the barrel, and brought down the stock with a vicious tchunk! Barely pausing, he lifted the gun and clubbed it down again—and again, shoulders rolling with the effort.
Reluctantly abandoning the chase, Roger turned and bounded up the slope toward him.
“What the hell—?” Then he saw, and felt the hair on his body rise in a surge of revulsion. Brown coils squirmed between the tussocks, thick and scaly. One end of the snake had been battered to pulp, and its blood stained the butt of Fraser’s musket, but the body writhed on, wormlike and headless.
“Stop! It’s dead. D’ye hear me? Stop, I say!” He grasped Fraser’s arm, but his father-in-law jerked free of his hold and brought the gun-butt down once more. Then he did stop, and stood shuddering violently, half-leaning on his gun.
“Christ! What happened? Did it get you?”
“Aye, in the leg. I stepped on it.” Jamie’s face was white to the lips. He looked at the still-writhing corpse and a deep shudder ran through him again.
Roger repressed his own shudder and grabbed Fraser’s arm.
“Come away. Sit down, we’ll have a look.”
Jamie came, half-stumbling, and collapsed onto a fallen log. He fumbled at his stocking top, fingers shaking. Roger pushed Jamie’s hand away and stripped buskin and stocking off the right foot. The fang marks were clear, a double dark-red puncture in the flesh of Fraser’s calf. The flesh around the small holes had a bluish tinge, visible even in the late gold light.
“It’s poisonous. I’ve got to cut it.” Roger felt dry-mouthed, but oddly calm, with no sense of panic. He pulled the knife from his belt, thought briefly of sterilization, and dismissed the notion. It would take precious minutes to light a fire, and there was no time at all to waste.
“Wait.” Fraser was still white, but had stopped shaking. He took the small flask from his belt and trickled whisky over the blade, then poured a few drops on his fingers and rubbed the liquid over the wound. He gave Roger a brief twitch of the mouth, meant as a smile.
“Claire does that, when she sets herself to cut someone.” He leaned back, hands braced on the mossy trunk, and nodded. “Go on, then.”
Biting his lip in concentration, Roger pressed the tip of the knife into the skin just above one of the puncture marks. The skin was surprisingly tough and springy; the knife dented it, but didn’t penetrate. Fraser reached down and clasped his hand around Roger’s; he shoved, with a deep, vicious grunt, and the knife sank suddenly in, an inch or more. Blood welled up around the blade; the gripping hand fell away.
“Again. Hard—and quick, man, for God’s sake.” Jamie’s voice was steady, but Roger felt clear droplets of sweat fall onto his hand from Fraser’s face, warm and then cold on his skin.
He braced himself to the necessary force, stabbed hard and cut quick—two X marks over the punctures, just as the first-aid guides said. The wounds were bleeding a lot, blood pouring down in thick streams. That was good, though, he thought. He had to go deep; deep enough to get beyond the poison. He dropped the knife and bent, mouth to the wounds.
There was no panic, but his sense of urgency was rising. How fast did venom spread? He had no more than minutes, maybe less. Roger sucked as hard as he could, blood filling his mouth with the taste of hot metal. He sucked and spat in quiet frenzy, blood spattering on the yellow leaves, Fraser’s leg hairs scratchy against his lips. With the peculiar diffusion of mind that attends emergency, he thought of a dozen fleeting things at once, even as he bent his whole concentration to the task at hand.
Was the bloody snake really dead?
How poisonous was it?
Had the bison got away?
Christ, was he doing this right?
Brianna would kill him if he let her father die. So would Claire.
He had the devil of a cramp in his right thigh.
Where in hell were the others? Fraser should call for them—no, he was calling, was bellowing somewhere outside Roger’s ken. The flesh of the leg Roger held had gone rock-hard, muscles rigid under his pressing fingers.
Something grasped the hair on the back of his head and twisted, forcing him to stop. He glanced up, breathing hard.
“That’s enough, aye?” Jamie said mildly. “You’ll drain me dry.” He gingerly wiggled his bared foot, grimacing at his leg. The slashmarks were vivid, still oozing blood, and the flesh around them was swollen from the sucking, blotched and bruised.
Roger sat back on his heels, gulping air.
“I’ve made more—of a mess—than the snake did.”
His mouth filled with saliva; he coughed and spat. Fraser silently offered him the whisky flask; he swirled a mouthful round and spat once more, then drank deep.
“All right?” He wiped his chin with the back of a hand, still tasting iron, and nodded at the lacerated leg.
“I’ll do.” Jamie was still pale, but one corner of his mouth turned up. “Go and see are the others in sight.”
They weren’t; the view from the top of the outcrop showed nothing but a sea of bare branches, tossing to and fro. The wind had come up. If the bison still moved along the river, there was no trace visible, either of them or of their hunters.
Hoarse from hallooing into the wind, Roger made his way back down the slope. Jamie had moved a little, finding a sheltered spot among rocks at the foot of a big balsam fir. He was sitting, back against a rock and legs outstretched, a handkerchief bound round his wounded leg.
“No sign of anyone. Can ye walk?” Roger bent over his father-in-law, and was alarmed to see him flushed and sweating heavily, despite the gathering chill of the air.
Jamie shook his head and gestured toward his leg.
“I can—but not for long.” The leg was noticeably swollen near the bite, and the blue tinge had spread; it showed like a faint fresh bruise on either side of the encircling handkerchief.
Roger felt the first stab of uneasiness. He had done everything he knew to do; first-aid guides always had as the next step in the treatment of snakebite, “Immobilize limb and get patient to hospital as soon as possible.” The cutting and sucking were meant to pull poison from the wound—but clearly there was plenty still left, spreading slowly through Jamie Fraser’s body. He hadn’t been in time to get it all—if he’d gotten any. And the nearest thing to a hospital—Claire and her herbs—a day’s walk away.
Roger sank slowly down onto his haunches, wondering what the hell to do next. Immobilize the limb—well, that was effectively taken care of, for what good it might do.
“Hurt much?” he asked awkwardly.
“Yes.”
With this unhelpful response, Jamie leaned back against the rock and closed his eyes. Roger eased himself down onto a sheaf of dry needles, trying to think.
It was getting dark fast; the brief warmth of the day had faded, and the shadows under the trees had taken on the deep blue look of evening, though it couldn’t be more than four or so. Plainly they weren’t going anywhere tonight; navigation in the mountains was nearly impossible in the dark, even if Fraser could walk. If the others were here, they could make a shift to carry him—but would that be any better than leaving him where he was? While he urgently wished Claire were here, sense told him there was little even she could do—except, perhaps, comfort Jamie if he were to die . . .
The thought knotted his belly. Shoving it firmly aside, he reached into his pouch, checking supplies. He had a small quantity of johnny-cake still in his bag; water was never a difficulty in these mountains—through the sound of the trees, he could hear the gurgle of a stream somewhere below, not far off. He’d better be gathering wood while it was still light, though.
“We’d best make a fire.” Jamie spoke suddenly, startling Roger with this echo of his thought. Jamie opened his eyes and looked down at one hand, turning it over and back as though he’d never seen it before.
“I’ve pins and needles in my fingers,” he remarked with interest. He touched his face with one hand. “Here, too. My lips have gone numb. Is that usual, d’ye ken?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it is, if you’ve been drinking the whisky.” It was a feeble joke, but he was relieved to have it greeted with a faint laugh.
“Nay.” Jamie touched the flask beside him. “I thought I might need it more, later.”
Roger took a deep breath and stood up.
“Right. Stay there; you shouldn’t move. I’ll fetch along some wood. The others will likely see the light of the fire.” The other men would be of no particular help, at least not until morning—but it would be a comfort not to be alone.
“Fetch the snake, too,” Jamie called after him. “Fair’s fair; we’ll hae a bite of him for our supper!”
Grinning in spite of present worry, Roger gave a reassuring wave and turned down the slope.
What were the chances? he asked himself, stooping to wrest a thick pine knot from the soft wood of a rotted log. Fraser was a big man, and in robust health. Surely he would survive.
Yet folk did die of snakebite, and not infrequently; he’d heard only last week of a German woman near High Point; bent to pick up a stick of wood from her woodpile, struck full in the throat by a snake lying hidden there, dead in minutes. Reaching under a bush for a dry branch just as this recollection came to him, he hastily withdrew his bare hand, gooseflesh running up his arm. Berating himself for stupidity, he got a stick and thoroughly stirred the drift of dry leaves before reaching once more cautiously into it.
He couldn’t help glancing up the slope every few minutes, feeling a small stab of alarm whenever Fraser was out of sight. What if he should collapse before Roger returned?
Then he relaxed a little as he remembered. No, it was all right. Jamie wasn’t going to die tonight, either of snakebite or cold. He couldn’t; he was meant to die some years hence, by fire. For once, future doom meant present reassurance. He took a deep breath and let it out in relief, then steeled himself to approach the snake.
It was motionless now, quite obviously dead. Still, it took some effort of will to pick the thing up. It was as thick around as his wrist and nearly four feet long. It had begun to stiffen; in the end, he was obliged to lay it across the armload of firewood, like a scaly branch. Seeing it so, he had no trouble imagining how the snake that had bitten the German woman had escaped notice; the subtle browns and grays of its patterns made it nearly invisible against its background.
Jamie skinned the thing while Roger built the fire. Watching from the corner of his eye, he could see that his father-in-law was making an unusually clumsy job of it; the numbness in his hands must be getting worse. Still, he went on doggedly, hacking at the corpse, stringing chunks of pale raw flesh onto a half-peeled twig with trembling fingers.
The job complete, Jamie extended the stick toward the budding fire and nearly dropped it. Roger grabbed for it, and felt through the stick the tremor that shook Jamie’s hand and arm.
“You all right?” he said, and reached automatically to feel Jamie’s forehead. Fraser jerked back, surprised and mildly affronted.
“Aye,” he said, but then paused. “Aye, well . . . I do feel a bit queer,” he admitted.
It was hard to tell in the uncertain light, but Roger thought he looked a good bit more than queer.
“Lie down for a bit, why don’t you?” he suggested, trying to sound casual. “Sleep if ye can; I’ll wake ye when the food’s ready.”
Jamie didn’t argue, which alarmed Roger more than anything else so far. He curled himself into a drift of leaves, moving his wounded leg with a care that told Roger just how painful it was.
The snakemeat dripped and sizzled, and in spite of a slight distaste at the notion of eating snake, Roger felt his stomach rumble in anticipation; damned if it didn’t smell like roasting chicken! Not for the first time, he reflected on the thin line that separated appetite from starvation; give the most finicky gourmand a day or two without food, and he’d be eating slugs and lizards without the least hesitation; Roger had, on the journey back from his surveying trip.
He kept an eye on Jamie; he didn’t move, but Roger could see him shiver now and then, in spite of the now-leaping flames. His eyes were closed. His face looked red, but that might be only firelight—no telling his real color.
By the time the meat had cooked through, it was full dark. Roger fetched water, then heaped armloads of dried grass and wood on the fire, making the flames dance and crackle, higher than his head; if the other men were anywhere within a mile, they should see it.
Fraser roused himself with difficulty to eat. It was clear that he had no appetite, but he forced himself to chew and swallow, each bite a dogged effort. What was it? Roger wondered. Simple stubbornness? A notion of vengeance against the snake? Or perhaps some Highland superstition, the idea that consuming the reptile’s flesh might be a cure for its bite?
“Did the Indians ken aught to do for snakebite?” Jamie asked abruptly, lending some credence to the last guess.
“Yes,” Roger answered cautiously. “They had roots and herbs that they mixed with dung or hot cornmeal, to make a poultice.”
“Did it work?” Fraser held a bit of meat in his hand, wrist drooping as though too tired to raise it to his mouth.
“I only saw it done twice. Once, it seemed to work perfectly—no swelling, no pain; the little girl was quite all right by evening of the same day. The other time—it didn’t work.” He had only seen the hide-wrapped body taken from the longhouse, not witnessed the grisly details of the death. Evidently he was going to get another chance to see the effects of snakebite up close, though.
Fraser grunted.
“And what would they do in your time?”
“Give you an injection of something called antivenin.”
“An injection, aye?” Jamie looked unenthusiastic. “Claire did that to me, once. I didna like it a bit.”
“Did it work?”
Jamie merely grunted in reply, and tore off another small morsel of meat between his teeth.
In spite of his worry, Roger wolfed his share of the meat, and the uneaten part of Jamie’s meal as well. The sky spread black and starry overhead, and a cold wind moved through the trees, chilling hands and face.
He buried the remnants of the snake—all they needed now was for some large carnivore to show up, drawn by the smell of blood—and tended the fire, all the time listening for a shout from the darkness. No sound came but the moaning of wind and cracking of branches; they were alone.
Fraser had pulled off his hunting shirt in spite of the chill, and was sitting with his eyes closed, swaying slightly. Roger squatted next to him and touched his arm. Jesus! The man was blazing hot to the touch.
He opened his eyes, though, and smiled faintly. Roger held up a cup of water; Jamie nodded and took the cup, fumbling. The leg was grotesquely swollen below the knee, nearly twice its normal size. The skin showed irregular dark red blotches, as though some succubus had come to place its hungry mouth upon the flesh, then left unsatisfied.
Roger wondered uneasily whether he might, perhaps, be wrong. He’d been convinced that the past couldn’t be changed; ergo, the time and manner of Fraser’s death was set—some four years in the future. If it weren’t for that certainty, though, he thought, he’d be bloody worried by the look of the man. Just how certain was he, after all?
“Ye could be wrong.” Jamie had put down the cup and was regarding him with a steady blue gaze.
“About what?” he asked, startled to hear his thought spoken aloud. Had he been muttering to himself, not realizing it?
“About the changing. Ye thought it wasna possible to change history, ye said. But what if ye’re wrong?”
Roger bent to poke the fire.
“I’m not wrong,” he said firmly, as much to himself as to Fraser. “Think, man. You and Claire—you tried to stop Charles Stuart—change what he did—and ye couldn’t. It can’t be done.”
“That’s no quite right,” Fraser objected. He leaned back, eyes half-hooded against the fire’s brightness.
“What’s not right?”
“It’s true we failed to keep him from the Rising—but that didna depend only on us and on him; there were a good many other folk had to do wi’ that. The chiefs who followed him, the damn Irishmen who flattered him—even Louis; him and his gold.”
He waved a hand, dismissing it. “But that’s neither here nor there. Ye said Claire and I couldna stop him—and it’s true, we couldna stop the beginning. But we might have stopped the end.”
“Culloden, you mean?” Roger stared into the fire, remembering dimly that long-ago day when Claire had first told him and Brianna the story of the stones—and Jamie Fraser. Yes, she had spoken of a last opportunity—the chance to prevent that final slaughter of the clans . . .
He glanced up at Fraser.
“By killing Charles Stuart?”
“Aye. If we had done so—but neither she nor I could bring ourselves to it.” His eyes were nearly closed, but he turned his head restlessly, clearly uncomfortable. “I have wondered many times since, if that was decency—or cowardice.”