The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [237]
Mrs. Piggy snorted out a great gout of steam, and suddenly picked up her pace. She knew civilization when she smelled it—and other horses. She threw up her head and whinnied piercingly. Gideon joined her, and when the racket stopped, I could hear the encouraging replies of a number of horses in the distance.
“They’re here!” I exhaled in a steamy burst of relief. “The militia—they made it!”
“Well, I should hope so, Sassenach,” Jamie replied, taking a firm grip to prevent Gideon’s bolting. “If wee Roger couldna find a village at the end of a straight trail, I’d have my doubts of his wits as well as his eyesight.” But he was smiling, too.
As we came round a curve in the trail, I could see that Brownsville really was a village. Chimney smoke drifted up in soft gray plumes from a dozen cabins, scattered over the hillside that rose to our right, and a cluster of buildings stood together by the road, clearly placed for custom, judging from the rubble of discarded kegs, bottles, and other rubbish strewn in the dead weeds of the roadside.
Across the road from this pothouse, the men had erected a crude shelter for the horses, roofed with pine boughs and walled on one side with more branches to break the wind. The militiamen’s horses were gathered under this in a cozy knot, hobbled and snorting, wreathed in clouds of their mingled breath.
Spotting this refuge, our own horses were moving at a good clip; I had to pull heavily on the reins one-handed in order to keep Mrs. Piggy from breaking into a trot, which would have seriously jostled my passenger. As I hauled her back to a reluctant walk, a slight figure detached itself from the shelter of a pine tree and stepped into the road before us, waving.
“Milord,” Fergus greeted Jamie, as Gideon slewed to a reluctant halt. He peered up at Jamie from beneath the band of an indigo-dyed knitted cap, which he wore pulled down over his brows. It made his head look rather like the top of a torpedo, dark and dangerous. “You are well? I thought perhaps you had encountered some difficulty.”
“Och.” Jamie waved vaguely at me, indicating the bulge beneath my cloak. “No really a difficulty; it’s only—”
Fergus was staring over Gideon’s shoulder at the bulge with some bemusement.
“Quelle virilité, monsieur,” he said to Jamie, in tones of deep respect. “My congratulations.”
Jamie gave him a scathing look and a Scottish noise that sounded like boulders rolling underwater. The baby began to cry again.
“First things first,” I said. “Are there any women here with babies? This child needs milk, and she needs it now.”
Fergus nodded, eyes wide with curiosity.
“Oui, milady. Two, at least, that I have seen.”
“Good. Lead me to them.”
He nodded again, and taking hold of Piggy’s halter, turned toward the settlement.
“What’s amiss, then?” Jamie inquired, and cleared his throat. In my anxiety for the baby, I hadn’t paused to consider what Fergus’s presence meant. Jamie was right, though; simple concern for our well-being wouldn’t have brought him out on the road in this weather.
“Ah. We appear to have a small difficulty, milord.” He described the events of the previous afternoon, concluding with a Gallic shrug and a huff of breath. “. . . and so Monsieur Morton has taken refuge with the horses”—he nodded ahead, toward the makeshift shelter—“while the rest of us enjoy the hospitalité of Brownsville.”
Jamie looked a trifle grim at this; no doubt from a contemplation of what the hospitalité for forty-odd men might cost.
“Mmphm. I take it that the Browns dinna ken Morton is there?”
Fergus shook his head.
“Why is Morton there?” I asked, having temporarily stifled the baby by putting it to my own breast. “I should have thought he’d be off away, back to Granite Falls, and pleased to be alive.”
“He will not go, milady. He says he cannot forgo the bounty.” Word had come just before our departure from the Ridge; the Governor was offering forty shillings per man as an inducement to serve in the militia; a substantial sum, particularly to a new homesteader such as Morton, facing a bleak winter.