A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [91]
“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,