The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [24]
“That’s him,” said Robbie, sharing his wife’s talent for stating the obvious.
“I see.” Jamie’s fingers twitched slightly against the side of his kilt. “Ah . . . perhaps we could have him out, then?”
Robbie motioned to the girls, who all stood up together and stepped aside, revealing a small man who lay against the base of the dead log, bound hand and foot with an assortment of what looked like women’s stockings, and gagged with someone’s kerchief. He was wet, muddy, and slightly battered round the edges.
Myers bent and hoisted the man to his feet, holding him by the collar.
“Well, he ain’t much to look at,” the mountain man said critically, squinting at the man as though evaluating a substandard beaver skin. “I guess thief-takin’ don’t pay so well as ye might think.”
The man was in fact skinny and rather ragged, as well as disheveled, furious—and frightened. Ute sniffed contemptuously.
“Saukerl!” she said, and spat neatly on the thief-taker’s boots. Then she turned to Jamie, full of charm.
“So, mein Herr. How we are to kill him best?”
The thief-taker’s eyes bulged, and he writhed in Myers’s grip. He bucked and twisted, making frantic gargling noises behind the gag. Jamie looked him over, rubbing a knuckle across his mouth, then glanced at Robbie, who gave a slight shrug, with an apologetic glance at his wife.
Jamie cleared his throat.
“Mmphm. Ye had something in mind, perhaps, ma’am?”
Ute beamed at this evidence of sympathy with her intentions, and drew a long dagger from her belt.
“I thought maybe to butcher, wie ein Schwein, ja? But see . . .” She poked the thief-taker gingerly between the ribs; he yelped behind the gag, and a small spot of blood bloomed on his ragged shirt.
“Too much Blut,” she explained, with a moue of disappointment. She waved at the screen of trees, behind which the stone-lifting seemed to be proceeding well. “Die Leute will schmell.”
“Schmell?” I glanced at Jamie, thinking this some unfamiliar German expression. He coughed, and brushed a hand under his nose. “Oh, smell!” I said, enlightened. “Er, yes, I think they might.”
“I dinna suppose we’d better shoot him, then,” Jamie said thoughtfully. “If ye’re wanting to avoid attention, I mean.”
“I say we break his neck,” Robbie McGillivray said, squinting judiciously at the trussed thief-taker. “That’s easy enough.”
“You think?” Fergus squinted in concentration. “I say a knife. If you stab in the right spot, the blood is not so much. The kidney, just beneath the ribs in back . . . eh?”
The captive appeared to take exception to these suggestions, judging from the urgent sounds proceeding from behind the gag, and Jamie rubbed his chin dubiously.
“Well, that’s no verra difficult,” he agreed. “Or strangle him. But he will lose his bowels. If it were to be a question of the smell, even crushing his skull . . . but tell me, Robbie, how does the man come to be here?”
“Eh?” Robbie looked blank.
“You’re no camped nearby?” Jamie waved a hand briefly at the tiny clearing, making his meaning clear. There was no trace of hearthfire; in fact, no one had camped on this side of the creek. And yet all the McGillivrays were here.
“Oh, no,” Robbie said, comprehension blossoming on his spare features. “Nay, we’re camped some distance up. Only, we came to have a wee keek at the heavies”—he jerked his head toward the competition field—“and the friggin’ vulture spied our Freddie and took hold of him, so as to drag him off.” He cast an unfriendly look at the thief-taker, and I saw that a coil of rope dangled snakelike from the man’s belt. A pair of iron manacles lay on the ground nearby, the dark metal already laced with orange rust from the damp.
“We saw him grab aholt of Brother,” Hilda put in at this point. “So we grabbed aholt of him and pushed him through here, where nobody could see. When he said he meant to take Brother away to the sheriff, me and my sisters knocked him down and sat on him, and Mama kicked him a few times.”
Ute patted her daughter fondly on one sturdy shoulder.
“They are gut, strong Mädchen, meine lasses,