Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [157]
“Aye, she’s mine.” Jamie nodded and lowered his dirk, but kept a hold on it, frowning at the Indian. “Mind your manners, eh?”
Uninterested in this byplay, one of the younger Indians said something, and gestured impatiently at the carcass on the ground. The older man, who had paid no attention to Jamie’s annoyance, replied, drawing his skinning knife from his belt as he turned.
“Here—that’s mine to do.”
The Indians turned in surprise as Jamie rose to his feet. He gestured with his dirk to the bear, and then pointed the tip firmly at his own chest.
Not waiting for any response, he knelt on the ground beside the carcass, crossed himself, and said something in Gaelic, knife raised above the still body. I didn’t know all the words, but I had seen him do it once before, when he had killed a deer on the road from Georgia.
It was the gralloch prayer he had been taught as a boy, learning to hunt in the Highlands of Scotland. It was old, he had told me; so old that some of the words were no longer in common use, so it sounded unfamiliar. But it must be said for any animal slain that was larger than a hare, before the throat was cut or the bellyskin split.
Without hesitation, he made a shallow slash across the chest—no need to bleed the carcass; the heart was long since still—and ripped the skin between the legs, so the pale swell of the intestines bulged up from the narrow, black-furred slit, gleaming in the light.
It took both strength and considerable skill to split and peel back the heavy skin without penetrating the mesenteric membrane that held the visceral sac enclosed. I, who had opened softer human bodies, recognized surgical competence when I saw it. So did the Indians, who were watching the proceedings with critical interest.
Jamie’s skill at skinning wasn’t what had fixed their attention, though—that was surely a common enough ability here. No, it was the gralloch prayer—I had seen the older man’s eyes widen, and his glance at his sons as Jamie knelt over the carcass. They might not know what he was saying, but it was plain from their expressions that they knew exactly what he was doing—and were both surprised, and favorably impressed.
A small trickle of sweat ran down behind Jamie’s ear, clear red in the firelight. Skinning a large animal is heavy work, and small spots of fresh blood were showing through the grimy cloth of his shirt.
Before I could offer to take the knife, though, he sat back on his heels and offered the dirk hilt-first to one of the younger Indians.
“Go ahead,” he said, gesturing at the bear’s half-butchered bulk in invitation. “Ye dinna think I’m going to eat it all myself, I hope.”
The man took the knife without hesitation, and kneeling, took over the skinning. The two others glanced at Jamie, and seeing his nod, joined in the work.
He let me sit him on the log once more and covertly clean and dress his shoulder, while he watched the Indians make quick work of the skinning and butchering.
“What was it he did with the whisky?” I asked quietly. “Do you know?”
He nodded, eyes fixed absently on the bloody work by the fire.
“It’s a charm. Ye scatter holy water to the four airs of the earth, to preserve yourself from evil. And I suppose whisky is a verra reasonable substitute for holy water, in the circumstances.”
I glanced at the Indians, stained to the elbows with the bear’s blood, talking casually among themselves. One of them was building a small platform near the fire, a crude layer of sticks laid across rocks set in a square. Another was cutting chunks of meat and stringing them on a peeled green stick for cooking.
“From evil? Do you mean they’re afraid of us?”
He smiled.
“I shouldna think we’re so fearsome, Sassenach; no, from spirits.”
Frightened as I had been by the Indians’ appearance, it would never have occurred to me that they might have been similarly unnerved by ours. But glancing up at Jamie now, I thought they might pardonably have been excused for nervousness.
Used to him as I was, I was seldom aware anymore of how he appeared