The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [499]
Knowing what I did about the bear’s assistance from Josiah Beardsley and the “wee black devil,” I could well understand this. I didn’t want to implicate Josiah, but I mentioned that I had heard stories—carefully not saying where I had heard them—of a black man in the forest, who did evil things. Had they heard of this?
Oh, yes, they assured me—but I should not be troubled. There was a small group of the black men, who lived “over there”—nodding toward the far side of the village, and the invisible canebrake and bottomlands beyond the river. It was possible that these persons were demons, particularly since they came from the west.
It was possible that they were not. Some of the village hunters had found them, and followed them carefully for several days, watching to see what they did. The hunters reported that the black men lived wretchedly, having barely scraps of clothing and without decent houses. This seemed not how self-respecting demons should live.
However, they were too few and too poor to be worth raiding—and the hunters said there were only three women, and those very ugly—and they might be demons, after all. So the villagers were content to leave them alone for now. The black men never came near the village, one lady added, wrinkling her nose; the dogs would smell them. Conversation lapsed then, as we spread out through the orchard, gathering ripe fruit from the trees, while the younger girls gathered the windfalls from the ground.
We went home in mid-afternoon, tired, sunburnt, and smelling of apples, to find that the hunters had come back.
“Four possums, eighteen rabbits, and nine squirrels,” Jamie reported, sponging his face and hands with a damp cloth. “We found a great many birds, too, but what wi’ the pigeons, we didna bother, save for a nice hawk that George Gist wanted for the feathers.” He was windblown, the bridge of his nose burned red, but very cheerful. “And Brianna, bless her, killed a fine elk, just the other side of the river. A chest shot, but she brought it down—and cut the throat herself, though that’s a dicey thing to do, and the beast’s still thrashing.”
“Oh, good,” I said, rather faintly, envisioning a flurry of sharp hooves and lethal antlers in the close vicinity of my daughter.
“Dinna fash yourself, Sassenach,” he said, seeing my expression. “I taught her the proper way of it. She came from behind.”
“Oh, good,” I said, a little more tartly. “I imagine the hunters were impressed?”
“Verra much,” he said cheerfully. “Did ye ken, Sassenach, that the Cherokee let their women make war, as well as hunt? Not that they do it so often,” he added, “but now and again, one will take it into her head, and go out as what they call a War Woman. The men will follow her, in fact.”
“Very interesting,” I said, trying to ignore the vision this summoned up, of Brianna being invited to head up a Cherokee raiding party. “Blood will out, I suppose.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Did you happen to see any bears, or were you too busy exchanging interesting tidbits of anthropological lore?”
He narrowed one eye at me over the towel with which he was wiping his face, but answered equably enough.
“We found a deal of bear-sign. Josiah’s an eye for it. Not only the droppings; he spotted a scratching-tree—one wi’ bits of hair caught in the bark. He says that a bear has a favorite tree or two, and will come back to the same one again and again, so if ye’re set to kill a particular bear, ye could do worse than camp nearby and wait.”
“I gather that strategy didn’t answer at present?”
“I daresay it would,” he answered, grinning, “save it was the wrong bear. The hair on the tree was dark brown, not white.”
The expedition had not, however, been a failure. The hunters had completed a great semi-circle round the village, casting far out into the wood, then ranging down as far as the river. And in the soft earth of the bottomland near the canebrake, they had found footprints.
“Josiah said they were different than the prints of the bear whose hair we found