A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [684]
For an instant, I thought she was going to charge me; I saw her head swing toward me and caught the loud snuff as she took my scent—but she scented the food as well, and swerved away. An instant later, the ungodly sounds of a pig in ecstasy floated through the hush of the snow, and Jamie and Ian hurried out of the trees to begin their work.
It took more than two weeks to move the gold; they worked only at night, and only when fresh snow was either falling or about to fall, to cover their tracks. Meantime, they took it in turn to guard the remains of the Big House, keeping an eye peeled for any sign of Arch Bug.
“Do you think he still cares about the gold?” I’d asked Jamie in the midst of this endeavor, chafing his hands to get enough heat into them for him to hold his spoon. He’d come in for breakfast, frozen and exhausted after a long night spent walking round and round the burnt house to keep his blood flowing.
“He’s no much else left to care about, has he?” He spoke softly, to avoid waking the Higgins family. “Other than Ian.”
I shivered, as much from thought of old Arch, living wraithlike in the forest, surviving on the heat of his hatred, as from the cold that had come in with Jamie. He’d let his beard grow for warmth—all the men did in winter, on the mountain—and ice glimmered in his whiskers and frosted his brows.
“You look like Old Man Winter himself,” I whispered, bringing him a bowl of hot porridge.
“I feel like it,” he replied hoarsely. He passed the bowl under his nose, inhaling the steam and closing his eyes beatifically. “Pass the whisky, aye?”
“You’re proposing to pour it on your porridge? It’s got butter and salt on, already.” Nonetheless, I passed him the bottle from its shelf over the hearth.
“Nay, I’m going to thaw my wame enough to eat it. I’m solid ice from the neck down.”
No one had seen hide nor hair of Arch Bug—not even an errant track in the snow—since his appearance at the funeral. He might be denned up for the winter, snug in some refuge. He might have gone away to the Indian villages. He might be dead, and I rather hoped he was, uncharitable as the thought might be.
I mentioned this, and Jamie shook his head. The ice in his hair had melted now, and the firelight glimmered like diamonds on the water droplets in his beard.
“If he’s dead, and we never learn of it, Ian willna have a moment’s peace—ever. D’ye want him to be looking over his shoulder at his wedding, afraid of a bullet through his wife’s heart as she speaks her vows? Or wed with a family, fearing each day to leave his house and his bairns, for fear of what he might come back to?”
“I’m impressed at the scope and morbidity of your imagination—but you’re right. All right, I don’t hope he’s dead—not unless we find his body.”
But no one did find his body, and the gold was moved, bit by bit, to its new hiding place.
That had taken a bit of thought and considerable private discussion between Jamie and Ian. Not the whisky cave. Very few people knew about that—but some did. Joseph Wemyss, his daughter, Lizzie, and her two husbands—I marveled, rather, that I’d got to the point where I could think about Lizzie and the Beardsleys without boggling—all knew, of necessity, and Bobby and Amy Higgins would need to be shown its location before we left, as they would be making whisky themselves in our absence. Arch Bug had not been told of the cave’s location—but very likely knew it.
Jamie was adamant that no one should know even of the gold’s existence on the Ridge, let alone its location.
“Let even a rumor of it get out, and everyone here is in danger,” he’d said. “Ye ken what happened when yon Donner told folk we had jewels here.”
I kent, all right. I still woke up in the midst of nightmares, hearing the muffled whumph! of exploding ether fumes, hearing the crash of glass and smashing wood as the raiders wrecked the house.
In some of these dreams, I ran fruitlessly to and fro, trying to rescue someone—who?—but met always by locked doors, blank walls, or rooms engulfed in flame. In others, I stood rooted,