“Bad,” I explained, pointing at her cheek. “Uyoi.”
“Bad,” she agreed. There followed a voluble exposition—interrupted only by my inserting my fingers into her mouth periodically—which I took to be an explanation of what had happened to her.
Blunt trauma, by the look of it. One tooth, a lower canine, had been knocked completely out, and the neighboring bicuspid was so badly broken I would have to extract it. The next to that could be saved, I thought. The inside of her mouth was badly lacerated by the sharp edges, but the gum was not infected. That was heartening.
Bobby Higgins came down from the stable, drawn by the chatter, and was promptly sent back to bring me a file. Miss Mousie grinned lopsidedly at him when he brought it, and he bowed extravagantly to her, making all of them laugh.
“These folk are Cherokee, are they, mum?” He smiled at Red Clay, and made a hand sign, which seemed to amuse the Indians, though they returned it. “I’ve not met any Cherokee before. It’s mostly other tribes near his Lordship’s place in Virginia.”
I was pleased to see that he was familiar with Indians, and easy in his manner toward them. Hiram Crombie, who appeared at this point, was not.
He stopped dead at the edge of the clearing, seeing the assemblage. I waved cheerily at him, and—with evident reluctance—he advanced.
Roger had told me Duncan’s description of Hiram as “that wee sour-drap.” It was apt. He was small and stringy, with thin grizzled hair that he wore strained back in a plait so tight that I thought he must find it difficult to blink. His face deeply lined by the rigors of a fisherman’s life, he looked about sixty, but was likely much younger—and his mouth was habitually downturned, in the expression of one who has sucked not merely a lemon, but a rotten lemon.
“I was looking for Mr. Fraser,” he said, with a wary eye on the Indians. “I had heard he was back.” He had a hatchet in his belt, and kept a tight grip on it with one hand.
“He’ll be back directly. You’ve met Mr. Higgins, haven’t you?” Evidently he had, and had been unfavorably impressed by the experience. His eyes fixed on Bobby’s brand, he made the smallest possible nod of acknowledgment. Nothing daunted, I waved a hand round at the Indians, who were all examining Hiram with much more interest than he showed in them. “May I introduce Miss Wilson, her brother Mr. Wilson, and . . . er . . . their friends?”
Hiram stiffened further, if such a thing was possible.
“Wilson?” he said, in an unfriendly voice.
“Wilson,” agreed Miss Mouse cheerily.
“That is my wife’s family name,” he said, in a tone that made it clear he considered the use of it by Indians to be grossly outrageous.
“Oh,” I said. “How nice. Do you think they might be your wife’s relatives, perhaps?”
His eyes bulged slightly at that, and I heard a strangled gurgle from Bobby.
“Well, they plainly got the name from a Scottish father or grandfather,” I pointed out. “Perhaps . . .”
Hiram’s face was working like a nutcracker, emotions from fury to dismay passing in swift succession over it. His right hand curled up, forefinger and little finger protruding in the horns, the sign against evil.
“Great-Uncle Ephraim,” he whispered. “Jesus save us.” And without further word, he turned on his heel and tottered off.
“Goodbye!” called Miss Mousie in English, waving. He cast a single, haunted glance over his shoulder at her, then fled as though pursued by demons.
THE WHISKY FINALLY arrived, and, a fair amount of it passed out to patient and spectators alike, the operation at last commenced.
The file was normally used on horses’ teeth, and thus a little larger than I would have liked, but worked reasonably well. Miss Mouse was inclined to be loud about the discomfort involved, but her complaints grew less with her increasing intake of whisky. By the time I had to draw her broken tooth, I thought, she wouldn’t feel a thing.
Bobby, meanwhile, was entertaining Jamie and Ian with imitations of Hiram Crombie’s response to the discovery that he might possibly share some family connection with the Wilsons. Ian, between bursts of laughter, translated the matter for the Indians, who all rolled on the grass in paroxysms of mirth.
“Do they have an Ephraim Wilson in their family tree?” I asked, taking a firm grip of Miss Mousie’s chin.
“Well, they’re not sure of the ‘Ephraim,’ but aye, they do.” Jamie grinned broadly. “Their grandsire was a Scottish wanderer. Stayed long enough to get their grandmother wi’ child, then fell off a cliff and was buried by a rockslide. She marrit again, of course, but liked the name.”
“I wonder what it was made Great-Uncle Ephraim leave Scotland?” Ian sat up, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
“The proximity of people like Hiram, I expect,” I said, squinting to see what I was doing. “Do you think—” I realized suddenly that everyone had quit talking and laughing, their attention focused on something across the clearing.
This something was the arrival of another Indian, carrying something in a bundle over his shoulder.
THE INDIAN WAS A gentleman named Sequoyah, somewhat older than the young Wilsons and their friends. He nodded soberly to Jamie, and swinging the bundle off his shoulder, laid it on the ground at Jamie’s feet, saying something in Cherokee.
Jamie’s face changed, the lingering traces of amusement vanishing, replaced by interest—and wariness. He knelt, and carefully turning back the ragged canvas, revealed a jumble of weathered bones, a hollow-eyed skull staring up from the midst of them.
“Who in bloody hell is that?” I had stopped work, and with everyone else, including Miss Mouse, stood staring down at this latest arrival.
“He says it’s the auld man who owned the homestead MacDonald told of—the one that burned inside the Treaty Line.” Jamie reached down and picked up the skull, turning it gently in his hands.
He heard my small intake of breath, for he glanced at me, then turned the skull over, holding it for me to see. Most of the teeth were missing, and had been missing long enough that the jawbone had closed over the empty sockets. But the two molars remaining showed nothing but cracks and stains—no gleam of silver filling, no empty space where such fillings might have been.
I let my breath out slowly, not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.
“What happened to him? And why is he here?”
Jamie knelt and laid the skull gently back in the canvas, then turned some of the bones over, examining them. He looked up, and with a small motion of the head, invited me to join him.
The bones showed no sign of having been burned, but several of them did show signs of having been gnawed by animals. One or two of the long bones had been cracked and split, no doubt to get at the marrow, and many of the smaller bones of hands and feet were missing. All of them had the gray, fragile look of bones that had lain outside for some time.
Ian had relayed my question to Sequoyah, who squatted down next to Jamie, explaining as he jabbed a finger here and there amongst the bones.
“He says,” Ian translated, frowning, “that he knew the man a long time. They werena friends, exactly, but now and again, when he was near the man’s cabin, he would stop, and the man would share his food. So he would bring things, too, when he came—a hare for the pot, a bit o’ salt.”
One day, a few months back, he had found the old man’s body in the wood, lying under a tree, some distance from his house.
“No one kilt him, he says,” Ian said, frowning in concentration at the rapid stream of words. “He just . . . died. He thinks the man was hunting—he had a knife on him, and his gun beside him—when the spirit left him, and he just fell down.” He echoed Sequoyah’s shrug.
Seeing no reason to do anything with the body, Sequoyah had left it there, and left the knife with it, in case the spirit should require it, wherever it had gone; he did not know where the spirits of white men went, or whether they hunted there. He pointed—there was an old knife, the blade almost rusted away, under the bones.
He had taken the gun, which seemed too good to leave, and as it was on his way, had stopped at the cabin. The old man had owned very little, and what he had was mostly worthless. Sequoyah had taken an iron pot, a kettle, and a jar of cornmeal, which he had carried back to his village.
“He’s no from Anidonau Nuya, is he?” Jamie asked, then repeated the question in Cherokee. Sequoyah shook his head, the small ornaments braided into his hair making a tiny chiming sound.
He was from a village some miles west of Anidonau Nuya—Standing Stone. Bird-who-sings had sent word to the nearby towns, in the wake of Jamie’s visit, asking if there was anyone who knew of the old man and his fate. Hearing Sequoyah’s account, Bird had sent him to collect what was left of the old man, and to bring the remains to Jamie, in proof that no one had killed him.
Ian asked a question, in which I caught the Cherokee word for “fire.” Sequoyah shook his head again, and replied with a stream of words.
He had not burned the cabin—why should he do such a thing? He thought no one had done so. After collecting the old man’s bones—his face showed his distaste for the procedure—he had gone to look at the cabin again. True, it was burned—but it was clear to him that a tree nearby had been struck by lightning, and had set fire to a good bit of the forest near it. The cabin was only half-burned.
He rose to his feet with an air of finality.
“Will he stay for supper?” I asked, seeing that he seemed about to depart.
Jamie conveyed the invitation, but Sequoyah shook his head. He had done what was required of him; now he had other business. He nodded to the other Indians, then turned to go.
Something struck him, though, and he stopped, turning back.
“Tsisqua says,” he said, in the careful way of one who has memorized a speech in an unfamiliar tongue, “you re-mem-ber de guns.” He nodded then decisively, and went.
THE GRAVE WAS MARKED with a small cairn of stones and a small wooden cross made of pine twigs. Sequoyah hadn’t known his acquaintance’s name, and we had no idea of his age, nor yet the dates of birth and death. We hadn’t known if he was Christian, either, but the cross seemed a good idea.
It was a very small burial service, consisting of myself, Jamie, Ian, Bree and Roger, Lizzie and her father, the Bugs, and Bobby Higgins—who I was fairly sure was in attendance only because Lizzie was. Her father seemed to think so, too, judging from the occasional suspicious glances he cast at Bobby.
Roger read a brief psalm over the grave, then paused. He cleared his throat and said simply, “Lord, we commend to Thy care the soul of this our brother . . .”
“Ephraim,” murmured Brianna, eyes cast modestly down.
A subterranean sense of laughter moved through the crowd, though no one actually laughed. Roger gave Bree a dirty look, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitching, as well.
“. . . of our brother, whose name Thou knowest,” Roger concluded with dignity, and closed the Book of Psalms he had borrowed from Hiram Crombie—who had declined an invitation to attend the funeral.