The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [522]
Jamie wiggled the fingers experimentally, and gave Roger a faint smile.
“No but a wee twinge,” he said. “Nay rain before nightfall.” He stretched, easing his back in anticipation, and sighed. “Let’s get to it, aye?”
Roger glanced back; the house and cabin had disappeared. He frowned at Jamie’s retreating back, debating. It was nearly half a mile to the new field; ample time for conversation. Not the right time, though, not yet. It was a matter to be addressed face-to-face, and at leisure—later, then, when they paused to eat.
The woods were hushed, the air still and heavy. Even the birds were quiet, only the occasional machine-gun burst of a woodpecker startling the silence. They threaded their way through the forest, silent as Indians on the layer of rotted leaves, and emerged from the scrub-oak thicket with a suddenness that sent a flock of crows shrieking out of the torn earth of the new-cleared field like demons escaping from the netherworld.
“Jesus!” Jamie murmured, and crossed himself involuntarily. Roger’s throat closed tight, and his stomach clenched. The crows had been feeding on something lying in the hollow left by an uprooted tree; all he could see above the ragged clods of earth was a pale curve that looked unsettlingly like the round of a naked shoulder.
It was a naked shoulder—of a pig. Jamie squatted by the boar’s carcass, frowning at the livid weals that marred the thick, pale skin. He touched the deep gouges on the flank with distaste; Roger could see the busy movement of flies inside the black-red cavities.
“Bear?” he asked, squatting beside Jamie. His father-in-law shook his head.
“Cat.” He brushed aside the stiff, sparse hairs behind the ear and pointed to the bluish puncture wounds in the folded lard. “Broke the neck wi’ one bite. And see the claw marks?” Roger had, but lacked the knowledge to differentiate the marks of a bear’s claws from those of a panther’s. He looked closely, committing the pattern to memory.
Jamie stood, and wiped a sleeve across his face.
“A bear would ha’ taken more of the carcass. This is barely touched. Cats will do that, though—make a kill and leave it, then come back to nibble at it, day after day.”
Muggy as it was, the hair pricked with chill on Roger’s neck. It was much too easy to imagine yellow eyes in the shadow of the thicket behind him, fixed with cool appraisal on the spot where skull met fragile spine.
“Think it’s still close by?” He glanced about, trying to seem casual. The forest was just as it had been, but now the silence seemed unnatural and sinister.
Jamie waved away a couple of questing flies, frowning.
“Aye, maybe. This is a fresh kill; no maggots yet.” He nodded at the gaping wound in the pig’s flank, then stooped to grasp the stiff trotters. “Come, let’s hang it. It’s too much meat to waste.”
They dragged the carcass to a tree with a low, sturdy limb. Jamie reached into his sleeve and pulled out a grubby kerchief, to tie round his head to keep the sweat from burning into his eyes. Roger groped for his own kerchief—carefully washed, neatly ironed—and did likewise. Mindful of the laundering, they stripped their clean shirts and hung them over an alder bush.
There was rope in the field, left from the stump-pulling of earlier days’ work; Jamie whipped a length several times around the pig’s forelimbs, then flung the free end over the branch above. It was a full-grown sow, some two-hundredweight of solid flesh. Jamie set his feet and hauled back on the rope, grunting with the sudden effort.
Roger held his breath as he bent to help hoist the stiffened corpse, but Jamie had been right; it was fresh. There was the usual fleshy pig-scent, gone faint with death, and the sharper tang of blood—nothing worse.
Rough hair scraped the skin of his belly as