Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [200]
“When you’re hunting, ye want the wind toward ye,” Jamie had explained. “So the stag or the hare wilna scent ye.”
I wondered uncomfortably what might be out in the dark, scenting me on the snowborne air. I wasn’t armed, save for my torch. The light glittered red on the crust of packed snow, and shattered from the ice that coated every twig. If I got within a quarter-mile of him, he’d see me.
The first snare was set in a small dell no more than two hundred yards uphill from the cabin, amid a grove of spruce and hemlock. I had been with him when he set it, but that had been in daylight; even with the torch, everything looked strange and unfamiliar by night.
I cast to and fro, bending close to bring my light near the ground. It took several journeys back and forth across the little dell before I finally spotted what I was looking for—the dark indentation of a foot in a patch of snow between two spruce trees. A little more looking and I found the snare, still set. Either it had caught nothing, or he had removed the catch and reset it.
The footprints led out of the clearing and upward again, then disappeared in a bare patch of matted dead leaves. A moment’s panic as I crisscrossed the patch, looking for a scuffled place that might be a footprint. Nothing showed; the leaves must be a foot thick here, spongy and resilient. But there! Yes, there was a log overturned; I could see the dark, wet furrow where it had lain, and the scuffed moss on its side. Ian had told me that squirrels and chipmunks sometimes hibernated in the cavities under logs.
Very slowly, constantly losing the trail and having to circle and backtrack to find it again, I followed him from one snare to another. The snow was falling thicker and faster, and I felt some uneasiness. If it covered his tracks before I found him, how would I find my way back to the cabin?
I looked back, but could see nothing behind me but a long, treacherous slope of unbroken snow that fell to the dark line of an unfamiliar brook below, its rocks poking up like teeth. No sign of the cheerful plume of smoke and sparks from our chimney. I turned slowly round in a circle, but I could no longer see the falls, either.
“Fine,” I muttered to myself. “You’re lost. Now what?” I sternly quelled an incipient attack of panic, and stood still to think. I wasn’t totally lost. I didn’t know where I was, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. I still had Jamie’s trail to guide me—or would have, until the snow covered it. And if I could find him, he presumably could find the cabin.
My torch was burning dangerously low; I could feel the heat of it, blistering on my hand. I extracted another of the dry faggots from under my cloak, and lit it from the stub of the first, dropping the ember just before it burned my fingers.
Was I going farther from the cabin, I wondered, or walking parallel to it? I knew that the trapline described a rough circle, but had no idea precisely how many snares there were. I had found three so far, all empty and waiting.
The fourth one wasn’t empty. My torch caught the glitter of ice crystals, fringing the fur of a large hare, stretched out under a frozen bush. I touched it, picked it up and disentangled the noose from its neck. It was stiff, whether from cold or rigor mortis. Been dead a while, then—and what did that tell me about Jamie’s whereabouts?
I tried to think logically, ignoring the increasing cold seeping through my boots and the growing numbness of face and fingers. The hare lay in snow; I could see the indentations of its pawprints, and the flurry of its death struggle. I couldn’t see any of Jamie’s footprints, though. All right; he hadn’t visited this snare, then.
I stood still, my breath forming small white clouds around my head. I could feel ice forming inside my nostrils; it was getting colder. Somewhere between the last