The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [147]
She carried the gun; instruction was over for the day, and while they weren’t hunting, if the opportunity of game offered, she would take it. The squirrel she had killed earlier was already cleaned and tucked in her sack, but that was barely flavoring for a vegetable stew. A few more would be nice. Or a possum, she thought dreamily.
She wasn’t sure of the habits of possum, though; perhaps they hibernated over winter, and if so, they might already be gone. The bears were still active; she’d seen half-dried scat on the trail, and scratches on the bark of a pine, still oozing yellow sap. A bear was good game, but she didn’t mean either to look for one, or to risk shooting at one unless it attacked them—and that wasn’t likely. Leave bears alone, and they’ll generally leave you alone; both her fathers had told her that, and she thought it excellent advice.
A covey of bobwhite blasted out of a nearby bush like exploding shrapnel, and she jerked, heart in her mouth.
“Those are good to eat, aren’t they?” Roger nodded at the last of the disappearing gray-white blobs. He had been startled, too, but less than she had, she noticed with annoyance.
“Yeah,” she said, disgruntled at being taken unawares. “But you don’t shoot them with a musket, unless all you want is feathers for a pillow. You use a fowling piece, with bird shot. It’s like a shotgun.”
“I know,” he said, shortly.
She felt disinclined to talk, jarred out of their peaceful mood. Her breasts were beginning to swell again; it was time to go home, to find Jemmy.
Her step quickened a little at the thought, even as her mind reluctantly surrendered the memory of the pungent smell of crushed dry fern, the glow of sunlight on Roger’s bare brown shoulders above her, the hiss of her milk, gilding his chest in a spray of fine droplets, slick and warm and cool by turns between their writhing bodies.
She sighed deeply, and heard him laugh, low in his throat.
“Mmm?” She turned her head, and he motioned to the ground before them. They had begun to move together as they walked, neither noticing the unconscious pull of the gravitational force that bound them. Now their shadows had merged at the top, so an odd, four-legged beast paced spiderlike before them, its two heads tilted toward each other.
He put an arm around her waist, and one shadow-head dipped, joining the other in a single bulbous shape.
“It’s been a good day, aye?” he said softly.
“Aye, it has,” she said, and smiled. She might have spoken further, but a sound came to her above the rattle of tree branches, and she pulled suddenly away.
“What—” he began, but she put a finger to her lips to shush him, beckoning as she crept toward a growth of red oak.
It was a flock of turkeys, scratching companionably in the earth beneath a large oak tree, turning up winter grubs from the mat of fallen leaves and acorns. The late sun shone low, lighting the iridescence in their breast feathers, so the birds’ drab black glimmered with tiny rainbows as they moved.
She had the gun already loaded, but not primed. She groped for the powder flask at her belt and filled the pan, scarcely looking away from the birds. Roger crouched beside her, intent as a hound dog on the scent. She nudged him, and held the gun toward him in invitation, one eyebrow up. The turkeys were no more than twenty yards away, and even the smaller ones were the size of footballs.
He hesitated, but she could see the desire to try it in his eyes. She thrust the gun firmly into his hands and nodded toward a gap in the brush.
He shifted carefully, trying for a clear line of sight. She hadn’t taught him to fire from a crouch as yet, and he wisely didn’t try, instead standing, though it meant firing downward. He hesitated, the long barrel wavering as he shifted his aim from one bird to another, trying to choose the best shot. Her fingers curled and clenched, aching to correct his aim, to pull the trigger.
She felt him draw breath and hold it. Then three things happened, so quickly as to