The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (599 page)

“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.