The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [217]
“Here!” I called, a little louder.
More crashing, close at hand. Jamie stumbled through the darkness, crouched, and felt under the log until his hand encountered my arm, which he seized.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”
“I hadn’t thought to notice, but I think so,” I replied. I slid cautiously out from under my log, taking stock. Bruises here and there, abraded elbows, and a stinging sensation where the branch had slapped my cheek. Basically all right, then.
“Good. Come quick, he’s hurt.” He hauled me to my feet and started propelling me through the dark with a hand in the small of my back.
“Who?”
“The goat, of course.”
My eyes were well-adapted to the dark by now, and I made out the large shapes of Gideon and the mare, standing under a leafless poplar, manes and tails swishing with agitation. A smaller shape that I took to be Mrs. Beardsley was crouched nearby, over something on the ground.
I could smell blood, and a powerful reek of goat. I squatted and reached out, touching rough, warm hair. The goat jerked at my touch, with a loud “MEHeheh!” that reassured me somewhat. He might be hurt, but he wasn’t dying—at least not yet; the body under my hands was solid and vital, muscles tense.
“Where’s the cat?” I asked, locating the ridged hardness of the horns and feeling my way hastily backward along the spine, then down the ribs and flanks. The goat had objections, and heaved wildly under my hands.
“Gone,” Jamie said. He crouched down, too, and put a hand on the goat’s head. “There, now, a bhalaich. It’s all right, then. Seas, mo charaid.”
I could feel no open wound on the goat’s body, but I could certainly smell blood; a hot, metallic scent that disturbed the clean night air of the wood. The horses did, too; they whickered and moved uneasily in the dark.
“Are we fairly sure it’s gone?” I asked, trying to ignore the sensation of eyes fastened on the back of my neck. “I smell blood.”
“Aye. The cat took one of the nannies,” Jamie informed me. He knelt next to me, laying a big hand on the goat’s neck.
“Mrs. Beardsley loosed this brave laddie, and he went for the cat, bald-heided. I couldna see it all, but I think the creature maybe slapped at him; I heard it screech and spit, and the billy gave a skelloch just then, too. I think his leg is maybe broken.”
It was. With that guidance, I found the break easily, low on the humerus of the right front leg. The skin wasn’t broken, but the bone was cracked through; I could feel the slight displacement of the raw ends. The goat heaved and thrust his horns at my arm when I touched the leg. His eyes were wild and rolling, the odd square pupils visible but colorless in the faint moonlight.
“Can ye mend him, Sassenach?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t know.” The goat was still struggling, but the flurries of movement were growing perceptibly weaker, as shock set in. I bit my lip, groping for a pulse in the fold between leg and body. The injury itself was likely repairable, but shock was a great danger; I had seen plenty of animals—and a few people, for that matter—die quickly following a traumatic incident, of injuries that were not fatal in themselves.
“I don’t know,” I said again. My fingers had found a pulse at last; it was trip-hammer fast, and thready. I was trying to envision the possibilities for treatment, all of them crude. “He may well die, Jamie, even if I can set the leg. Do you think perhaps we ought to slaughter him? He’d be a lot easier to carry, as meat.”
Jamie stroked the goat’s neck, gently.
“It would be a great shame, and him such a gallant creature.”
Mrs. Beardsley laughed at that, a nervous small giggle, like a girl’s, coming out of the dark beyond Jamie’s bulk.
“Hith name ith Hiram,” she said. “He’th a good boy.”
“Hiram,” Jamie repeated, still stroking. “Well, then, Hiram. Courage, mon brave. You’ll do. You’ve balls as big as melons.”
“Well, persimmons, maybe,” I said, having