“I beg your pardon?” I had missed something MacDonald was saying. He bent politely closer to repeat it, then jerked suddenly, eyes bulging.
“Frigging cat!”
Adso, who had been doing a splendid imitation of a limp dishcloth, had sprung bolt upright in the Major’s lap, eyes glowing and tail like a bottlebrush, hissing like a teakettle as he flexed his claws hard into the Major’s legs. I hadn’t time to react before he had leapt over MacDonald’s shoulder and swarmed through the open surgery window behind him, ripping the Major’s ruffle and knocking his wig askew in the process.
MacDonald was cursing freely, but I hadn’t attention to spare for him. Rollo was coming up the path toward the house, wolflike and sinister in the gloaming, but acting so oddly that I was standing before conscious thought could bring me to my feet.
The dog would run a few steps toward the house, circle once or twice as though unable to decide what to do next, then run back into the wood, turn, and run again toward the house, all the while whining with agitation, tail low and wavering.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said. “Bloody Timmy’s in the well!” I flew down the steps and ran for the path, barely registering the Major’s startled oath behind me.
I found Ian a few hundred yards down the path, conscious, but groggy. He was sitting on the ground, eyes closed and both hands holding his head, as though to keep the bones of his skull from coming apart. He opened his eyes as I dropped to my knees beside him, and gave me an unfocused smile.
“Auntie,” he said hoarsely. He seemed to want to say something else, but couldn’t quite decide what; his mouth opened, but then simply hung that way, tongue moving thoughtfully to and fro.
“Look at me, Ian,” I said, as calmly as possible. He did—that was good. It was too dark to see whether his pupils were unnaturally dilated, but even in the evening shadow of the pines that edged the trail, I could see the pallor of his face, and the dark trail of bloodstains down his shirt.
Hurried steps were coming after me down the trail; Jamie, followed closely by MacDonald.
“How is it, lad?”
Jamie gripped him by one arm, and Ian swayed very gently toward him, then dropped his hands, closed his eyes, and relaxed into Jamie’s arms with a sigh.
“Is he bad?” Jamie spoke anxiously over Ian’s shoulder, holding him up as I frisked him for damage. The back of his shirt was saturated with dried blood—but it was dried. The tail of his hair was stiff with it, too, and I found the head wound quickly.
“I don’t think so. Something’s hit him hard on the head and taken out a chunk of his scalp, but—”
“A tomahawk, do you think?”
MacDonald leaned over us, intent.
“No,” said Ian drowsily, his face muffled in Jamie’s shirt. “A ball.”
“Go away, dog,” Jamie said briefly to Rollo, who had stuck his nose in Ian’s ear, eliciting a stifled squawk from the patient and an involuntary lifting of his shoulders.
“I’ll have a look in the light, but it may not be too bad,” I said, observing this. “He walked some way, after all. Let’s get him up to the house.”
The men made shift to get him up the trail, Ian’s arms over their shoulders, and within minutes, had him laid facedown on the table in my surgery. Here, he told us the story of his adventures, in a disjoint fashion punctuated by small yelps as I cleaned the injury, clipped bits of clotted hair away, and put five or six stitches into his scalp.
“I thought I was dead,” Ian said, and sucked air through his teeth as I drew the coarse thread through the edges of the ragged wound. “Christ, Auntie Claire! I woke in the morning, though, and I wasna dead after all—though I thought my head was split open, and my brains spilling down my neck.”
“Very nearly was,” I murmured, concentrating on my work. “I don’t think it was a bullet, though.”
That got everyone’s attention.
“I’m not shot?” Ian sounded mildly indignant. One big hand lifted, straying toward the back of his head, and I slapped it lightly away.
“Keep still. No, you aren’t shot, no credit to you. There was a deal of dirt in the wound, and shreds of wood and tree bark. If I had to guess, one of the shots knocked a dead branch loose from a tree, and it hit you in the head when it fell.”
“You’re quite sure as it wasn’t a tomahawk, are ye?” The Major seemed disappointed, too.
I tied the final knot and clipped the thread, shaking my head.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a tomahawk wound, but I don’t think so. See how jagged the edges are? And the scalp’s torn badly, but I don’t believe the bone is fractured.”
“It was pitch-dark, the lad said,” Jamie put in logically. “No sensible person would fling a tomahawk into a dark wood at something he couldna see.” He was holding the spirit lamp for me to work by; he moved it closer, so we could see not only the ragged line of stitches, but the spreading bruise around it, revealed by the hair I had clipped off.
“Aye, see?” Jamie’s finger spread the remaining bristles gently apart, tracing several deep scratches that scored the bruised area. “Your auntie’s right, Ian; ye’ve been attacked by a tree.”
Ian opened one eye a slit.
“Has anyone ever told ye what a comical fellow ye are, Uncle Jamie?”
“No.”
Ian closed the eye.
“That’s as well, because ye’re not.”
Jamie smiled, and squeezed Ian’s shoulder.
“Feeling a bit better then, are ye?”
“No.”
“Aye, well, the thing is,” Major MacDonald interrupted, “that the lad did meet with some sort of banditti, no? Had ye reason to think they might be Indians?”
“No,” said Ian again, but this time he opened the eye all the way. It was bloodshot. “They weren’t.”
MacDonald didn’t appear pleased with this answer.
“How could ye be sure, lad?” he asked, rather sharply. “If it was dark, as ye say.”
I saw Jamie glance quizzically at the Major, but he didn’t interrupt. Ian moaned a little, then heaved a sigh and answered.
“I smelt them,” he said, adding almost immediately, “I think I’m going to puke.”
He raised himself on one elbow and promptly did so. This effectively put an end to any further questions, and Jamie took Major MacDonald off to the kitchen, leaving me to clean Ian up and settle him as comfortably as I could.
“Can you open both eyes?” I asked, having got him tidied and resting on his side, with a pillow under his head.
He did, blinking a little at the light. The small blue flame of the spirit lamp was reflected twice over in the darkness of his eyes, but the pupils shrank at once—and together.
“That’s good,” I said, and put down the lamp on the table. “Leave it, dog,” I said to Rollo, who was nosing at the strange smell of the lamp—it was burning a mix of low-grade brandy and turpentine. “Take hold of my fingers, Ian.”
I held out my index fingers and he slowly wrapped a large, bony hand round each of them. I put him through the drill for neurological damage, having him squeeze, pull, push, and then concluded by listening to his heart, which was thumping along reassuringly.
“Slight concussion,” I announced, straightening up and smiling at him.
“Oh, aye?” he asked, squinting up at me.
“It means your head aches and you feel sick. You’ll feel better in a few days.”
“I could ha’ told ye that,” he muttered, settling back.
“So you could,” I agreed. “But ‘concussion’ sounds so much more important than ‘cracked heid,’ doesn’t it?”
He didn’t laugh, but smiled faintly in response. “Will ye feed Rollo, Auntie? He wouldna leave me on the way; he’ll be hungry.”
Rollo pricked his ears at the sound of his name, and shoved his muzzle into Ian’s groping hand, whining softly.
“He’s fine,” I said to the dog. “Don’t worry. And yes,” I added to Ian, “I’ll bring something. Do you think you could manage a bit of bread and milk, yourself?”
“No,” he said definitely. “A dram o’ whisky, maybe?”
“No,” I said, just as definitely, and blew out the spirit lamp.
“Auntie,” he said, as I turned to the door.
“Yes?” I’d left a single candlestick to light him, and he looked very young and pale in the wavering yellow glow.
“Why d’ye suppose Major MacDonald wants it to be Indians I met in the wood?”
“I don’t know. But I imagine Jamie does. Or will, by now.”
4
SERPENT IN EDEN
BRIANNA PUSHED OPEN the door to her cabin, listening warily for the scamper of rodent feet or the dry whisper of scales across the floor. She’d once walked in in the dark and stepped within inches of a small rattlesnake; while the snake had been nearly as startled as she was, and slithered madly away between the hearthstones, she’d learned her lesson.
There was no scuttle of fleeing mice or voles this time, but something larger had been and gone, pushing its way through the oiled skin tacked over the window. The sun was just setting, and there was enough daylight left to show her the woven-grass basket in which she kept roasted peanuts, knocked from its shelf onto the floor and the contents cracked and eaten, a litter of shells scattered over the floor.
A loud rustling noise froze her momentarily, listening. It came again, followed by a loud clang as something fell to the ground, on the other side of the back wall.
“You little bastard!” she said. “You’re in my pantry!”
Fired with righteous indignation, she seized the broom and charged into the lean-to with a banshee yell. An enormous raccoon, tranquilly munching a smoked trout, dropped its prey at sight of her, dashed between her legs, and made off like a fat banker in flight from creditors, making loud birring noises of alarm.
Nerves pulsing with adrenaline, she put aside the broom and bent to salvage what she could of the mess, cursing under her breath. Raccoons were less destructive than squirrels, who would chew and shred with hapless abandon—but they had bigger appetites.
God knew how long he’d been in here, she thought. Long enough to lick all the butter out of its mold, pull down a cluster of smoked fish from the rafters—and how something so fat had managed the acrobatic feat required for that . . . Luckily, the honeycomb had been stored in three separate jars, and only one had been despoiled. But the root vegetables had been dumped on the floor, a fresh cheese mostly devoured, and the precious jug of maple syrup had been overturned, draining into a sticky puddle in the dirt. The sight of this loss enraged her afresh, and she squeezed the potato she had just picked up so hard that her nails sank through its skin.
“Bloody, bloody, beastly, horrible, bloody beast!”
“Who?” said a voice behind her. Startled, she whirled and fired the potato at the intruder, who proved to be Roger. It struck him squarely in the forehead and he staggered, clutching the door frame.