The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [513]
It was Clarence, I was sure of it. I was by no means expert enough to recognize any quadruped by its distinctive gait, but Clarence had suffered some form of mange or other skin disease in his youth, and the hair had grown in white over the healed patches, leaving him peculiarly piebald over the rump.
He was lolloping over the stubbled corn fields, ears pointed forward and obviously happy to be rejoining society. He was also saddled and riderless, and I said a very bad word under my breath when I saw it.
“He’s broken his hobbles and run.” Jamie had appeared at my shoulder, peering down at the small figure of the mule. He pointed. “See?” I hadn’t noticed, in my alarm, but there was a small rag of cloth tied round one of his forelegs, flapping as he ran.
“I suppose that’s better,” I said. My hands had gone sweaty, and I wiped my palms on the elbows of my sleeves, unable to look away. “I mean—if he was hobbled, then Roger wasn’t on him. Roger wasn’t thrown, or knocked off and hurt.”
“Ah, no.” Jamie seemed concerned, but not alarmed. “He’ll have a long walk back, is all.” Still, I saw his gaze shift out, over the narrow river valley, now nearly filled with smoke. He shook his head slightly, and said something under his breath—no doubt a cousin to my own bad word.
“I wonder if this is how the Lord feels,” he said aloud, and gave me a wry glance. “Able to see what foolishness men are up to, but canna do a bloody thing about it.”
Before I could answer him, lightning flashed, and the thunder cracked on its heels with a clap so loud and sudden that I jumped, nearly losing my grip. Jamie seized my arm to stop me falling, and pulled me back from the edge. The horses were throwing fits again, at the far end of the ledge, and he turned toward them, but stopped suddenly, his hand still on my arm.
“What?” I looked where he was looking, and saw nothing but the wall of the cliff, some ten feet away, festooned with small rock plants.
He let go my arm, and without answering, walked toward the cliff. And, I saw, toward an old fire-blasted snag that stood near it. Very delicately, he reached out and tweaked something from the dead tree’s bark. I reached his side and peered into the palm of his hand, where he cradled several long, coarse hairs. White hairs.
Rain began to fall again, settling down in a businesslike way to the job of soaking everything in sight. A piercing pair of whinnies came from the horses, who didn’t like being abandoned one bit.
I looked at the trunk of the tree; there were white hairs all over it, caught in the cracks of the ragged bark. A bear has special scratching trees, I could hear Josiah saying. He’ll come back to one, again and again. I swallowed, hard.
“Perhaps,” Jamie said very thoughtfully, “it’s no just the thunder that troubles the horses.”
Perhaps not, but it wasn’t helping. Lightning flashed into the trees far down the slope and the thunder sounded with it. Another flash-bang following on its heels, and another, as though an ack-ack gun were going off beneath our feet. The horses were having hysterics, and I felt rather like joining them.
I had put on my hooded cloak when I left the village, but both hood and hair were matted to my skull, the rain pounding down on my head like a shower of nails. Jamie’s hair was plastered to his head as well, and he grimaced through the rain.
He made a “stay here” gesture, but I shook my head and followed him. The horses were in a complete state, saturated manes dangling over rolling eyes. Judas had succeeded in half-uprooting the small tree I had tied him to, and Gideon had his ears laid flat, flexing his lip repeatedly over his big yellow teeth, looking for someone or something to bite.
Seeing this, Jamie’s lips tightened. He glanced back toward the place where we had found the scratching-tree, invisible from our present position. The lightning flashed, the thunder shuddered through the rock, and the horses