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Jamie and Ian exchanged glances, and I felt a slight stirring of the hair at the back of my neck.
“No,” Ian answered. “The Cherokee near here all ken her weel, and wouldna touch her with a ten-foot pole. They think she’s a demon, aye?”
“And traveling Indians from the north would have arrows or tomahawks,” Jamie finished.
“Ye’re sure it wasna a panther?” Amy asked, dubious. “They hunt in the winter, no?”
“They do,” Jamie assured her. “I saw pug-marks up by the Green Spring yesterday. D’ye hear me there?” he said, bending to speak to the boys under the table. “Go ca
“But no,” he added, straightening up. “Ian kens the difference between claw marks and a knife slash, I think.” He gave Ian a grin. Ian politely refrained from rolling his eyes, and merely nodded, eyes fixed dubiously on the toast basket.
No one suggested that any resident of the Ridge or from Brownsville might have been hunting the white sow. The local Presbyterians would not have seen eye-to-eye with the Cherokee on any other spiritual matter you might name, but they were in decided agreement on the sow’s demonic character.
Personally, I wasn’t sure they weren’t right. The thing had survived even the burning of the Big House unscathed, emerging from her den beneath its foundations amid a shower of burnt wood, followed by her latest litter of half-grown piglets.
“Moby Dick!” I now said aloud, inspired.
Rollo raised his head with a startled “Wuff?,” gave me a yellow-eyed look and laid it down again, sighing.
“Dick who?” said Jamie, drowsy. He sat up, stretching and groaning, then rubbed a hand over his face and blinked at me.
“I just thought what it is that sow reminds me of,” I explained. “Long story. About a whale. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“If I live that long,” he said, with a yawn that nearly dislocated his jaw. “Where’s the whisky—or d’ye need it for yon poor woman?” He nodded at Gra
“Not yet. Here.” I bent and rummaged in the basket beneath my chair, coming up with a corked bottle.
He pulled the cork and drank, the color gradually coming back to his face. Between spending his days hunting or chopping wood and half the nights lurking in a freezing forest, even Jamie’s great vitality was showing signs of flagging.
“How long will you keep this up?” I asked, low-voiced so as not to rouse the Higginses—Bobby, Amy, the two little boys, and Amy’s two sisters-in-law from her first marriage, who had come for the wedding held a few days before, accompanied by a total of five children under the age of ten—all asleep in the small bedroom. The departure of the MacLeod boys had eased the congestion in the cabin slightly, but with Jamie, me, Ian, Ian’s dog, Rollo, and the old woman sleeping on the floor of the main room, and such possessions as we had managed to salvage from the fire stacked round the walls, I sometimes felt a distinct surge of claustrophobia. Little wonder if Jamie and Ian were patrolling the woods, as much to get a breath of air as from a conviction that there was something out there.
“No much longer,” he assured me, shuddering slightly as a large swallow of whisky went down. “If we di
I hadn’t heard anything, but saw the latch move, and an instant later, a freezing gust of air rolled into the room, poking frigid fingers under my skirts and stirring up a shower of sparks from the fire.
I hastily seized a rag and beat these out before they could set Gra
“Best ye stay, a cù,” Ian told him, rubbing his ears with cold fingers. “Sheas.”
Rollo made a disgruntled noise in his throat and tried to push past Ian, but was deftly blocked by a leg. Jamie turned, shrugging on his coat, bent, and kissed me hastily.
“Bolt the door, a nighean,” he whispered. “Di
“What—” I began, but they were gone.
THE NIGHT WAS COLD and pure. Jamie breathed deep and shivered, letting the cold enter him, strip away the warmth of wife, the smoke and smell of his hearth. Ice crystals shimmered in his lungs, sharp in his blood. He turned his head to and fro like a wolf scenting, breathing the night. There was little wind, but the air moved from the east, bringing the bitter smell of ashes from the ruins of the Big House … and a faint tang he thought was blood.
He looked to his nephew, question in the cock of his head, and saw Ian nod, dark against the lavender glow of the sky.
“There’s a dead pig, just beyond Auntie’s garden,” the lad said, low-voiced.
“Oh, aye? Not the white sow, ye don’t mean?” His heart misgave him for an instant at the thought, and he wondered whether he’d mourn the thing or dance on its bones. But no. Ian shook his head, the movement felt rather than seen.
“Nay, not that wily beast. A young one, maybe last year’s farrowing. Someone’s butchered it, but taken nay more than a collop or two from the haunch. And a good bit of what they did take, they scattered in chunks down the trail.”
Jamie glanced round, surprised.
“What?”
Ian shrugged.
“Aye. One more thing, Uncle. ’Twas killed and butchered with an ax.”
The ice crystals in his blood solidified with a sudde
“Jesus,” he said, but it was not so much shock as it was unwilling admission of something he had known for a long time. “It’s him, then.”
“Aye.” Both of them had known it, though neither one had been willing to speak of it. Without consultation, they moved away from the cabin, into the trees.
“Aye, well.” Jamie took a long, deep breath and sighed, the mist of it white in the darkness. He’d hoped the man had taken his gold and his wife and left the Ridge—but it had never been more than a hope. Arch Bug was a Grant by blood, and clan Grant were a vengeful lot.
The Frasers of Glenhelm had caught Arch Bug on their lands some fifty years before, and given him the choice: lose an eye or the first two fingers of his right hand. The man had come to terms with his crippled hand, turning from the bow he could no longer draw to the use of an ax, which he wielded and threw with a skill equal to any Mohawk’s, despite his age.
What he had not come to terms with was the loss of the Stuart cause and the loss of the Jacobite gold, sent too late from France, rescued—or stolen, depending on your view of things—by Hector Cameron, who had brought one third of it to North Carolina, this share then stolen—or retrieved—from Cameron’s widow in turn by Arch Bug.
Nor had Arch Bug come to terms with Jamie Fraser.
“Is it threat, d’ye think?” Ian asked. They had moved away from the cabin, but kept to the trees, circling the large clearing where the Big House had been. The chimney and half a wall still stood, charred and bleak against the dirty snow.
“I ca
“Perhaps he left,” Ian suggested. “To see his wife settled, and he’s only now come back.”
It was a reasonable thought—if there was one thing in the world Arch Bug loved, it was his wife, Murdina, his helpmate of more than fifty years.
“Perhaps,” Jamie said. And yet … And yet he’d felt eyes on his back more than once in the weeks since the Bugs had left. Felt silence in the forest that was not the silence of the trees and rocks.