The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [184]
“Oh, aye? That’s good. I have,” he added unnecessarily, and sneezed three times in succession. He handed me his emptied bowl, in order to use both hands to blow his nose, which he did with a series of vicious honks. I winced slightly, seeing the reddened, raw look of his nostrils. I had a bit of camphorated bear grease in my saddlebag, but I was sure he wouldn’t let me anoint him in public.
“Are you sure we oughtn’t to push on?” I asked, watching him. “Geordie says the village isn’t far, and there is a road—of sorts.”
I knew the answer to that; he wasn’t one to alter strategy for the sake of personal comfort. Besides, camp was already made and a good fire going. Still, beyond my own longing for a warm, clean bed—well, any bed, I wasn’t fussy—I was worried for Jamie. Close to, the sigh in his breath had a deeper, wheezing note to it that troubled me.
He knew what I meant. He smiled, tucking away the sodden kerchief in his sleeve.
“I’ll do, Sassenach,” he said. “It’s no but a wee cold in the neb. I’ve been a deal worse than this, many times.”
Paul Mueller heaved another log onto the fire; a big ember broke and roared up with a flare that made us step away in order to avoid the spray of sparks. Well baked in the rear by this time, I turned to face the fire. Jamie, though, stayed facing outward, a slight frown on his face as he surveyed the shadows of the looming wood.
The frown relaxed, and I turned to see two men emerging from the woods, shaking needles and bits of bark from their clothes. Jack Parker, and a new man—I didn’t yet know his name, but he was plainly a recent immigrant from somewhere near Glasgow, judging from his speech.
“All quiet, sir,” said Parker, touching his hat in brief salute. “Cold as charity, though.”
“Aye, Ah hivny felt ma privates anytime since dinner,” the Glaswegian chimed in, grimacing and rubbing himself as he headed for the fire. “Might as well be gone aetegither!”
“I take your meaning, man,” Jamie said, grinning. “Went for a piss a moment ago, but I couldna find it.” He turned amid the laughter and went to check the horses, a half-finished second bowl of stew in one hand.
The other men were already making ready their bedrolls, debating the wisdom of sleeping with feet or head near the fire.
“It’ll scorch the soles o’ your boots, and ye get too close,” argued Evan Lindsay. “See? Charred the pegs right out, and now look!” He lifted one large foot, exhibiting a battered shoe with a wrapping of rough twine tied round it to hold it together. The leather soles and heels were sometimes stitched, but more often fastened with tiny whittled pegs of wood or leather, glued with pine gum or some other adhesive. The pine gum in particular was flammable; I’d seen occasional sparks burst from the feet of men who slept with their feet too near the fire, when a shoe peg suddenly ignited from the heat.
“Better than settin’ your hair on fire,” Ronnie Sinclair argued.
“I dinna think the Lindsays need worry about that owermuch.” Kenny grinned at his elder brother, and tugged down the knit cap he wore—like his two brothers—over a balding head.
“Aye, headfirst every time,” Murdo agreed. “Ye dinna want to chill your scalp; it’ll go right to your liver, and then you’re a dead man.” Murdo was tenderly solicitous of his exposed scalp, being seldom seen without either his knitted nightcap or a peculiar hat made from the hairy skin of a possum, lined and rakishly trimmed with skunk fur. He glanced enviously at Roger, who was tying back his own thick black hair with a bit of leather string.
“MacKenzie needna worry; he’s furred like a bear!”
Roger grinned in response. Like the others, he had stopped shaving when we left the Ridge; now, eight days later, a thick scurf of dark stubble did give him a fiercely ursine look. It occurred to me that beyond convenience, a heavy beard undoubtedly kept the face warm on nights like this; I tucked my own bare and vulnerable chin down into the sheltering folds of my shawl.
Returning