81

BEAR-KILLER

August, 1771

The horses neighing from the direction of the paddock announced company. Curious, I abandoned my latest experiment and went to peer out of the window. Neither horse nor man was in evidence in the dooryard, but the horses were still snorting and carrying on as they did when they saw someone new. The company must be afoot, then, and have gone round to the kitchen door—which most people did, this being mannerly.

This supposition was almost instantly borne out by a high-pitched shriek from the back of the house. I poked my head out into the hall just in time to see Mrs. Bug race out of the kitchen as though discharged from a cannon, screaming in panic.

Not noticing me, she shot past and out of the front door, which she left hanging open, thus enabling me to see her cross the dooryard and vanish into the woods, still in full cry. It came as something of an anticlimax, when I glanced the other way and saw an Indian standing in the kitchen doorway, looking surprised.

We eyed each other warily, but as I appeared indisposed to screaming and running, he relaxed slightly. As he appeared unarmed and lacking paint or any other evidence of malevolent intent, I relaxed slightly.

“Osiyo,” I said cautiously, having observed that he was a Cherokee, and dressed for visiting. He wore three calico shirts, one atop the other, homespun breeches, and the odd drooping cap, rather like a half-wound turban, that men favored for formal occasions, plus long silver earrings and a handsome brooch in the shape of the rising sun.

He smiled brilliantly in response to my greeting, and said something I didn’t understand at all. I shrugged helplessly, but smiled in return, and we stood there nodding at one another and smiling back and forth for several moments, until the gentleman, struck by inspiration, reached into the neck of his innermost shirt—a dressy number printed with small yellow diamonds on a blue background—and withdrew a leather thong, on which were strung the curved black claws of one or more bears.

He held these up, rattled them gently, and raised his eyebrows, glancing to and fro as though searching for someone under the table or on the cabinet.

“Oh,” I said, comprehending immediately. “You want my husband.” I mimed someone aiming a rifle. “The Bear-Killer?”

A flash of good teeth in a beaming smile rewarded my intelligence.

“I expect he’ll be along any minute,” I said, waving first at the window, indicating the path taken by the exiting Mrs. Bug—who had undoubtedly gone to inform Himself that there were red savages in the house, bent on murder, mayhem, and the desecration of her clean floor—and then in the direction of the kitchen. “Come back, won’t you, and have a drink of something?”

He followed me willingly, and we were seated at the table, companionably sipping tea and exchanging further nods and smiles, when Jamie came in, accompanied not only by Mrs. Bug, who stuck close to his coattails, casting suspicious looks at our guest, but by Peter Bewlie.

Our guest was promptly introduced as Tsatsa’wi, the brother of Peter’s Indian wife. He lived in a small town some thirty miles past the Treaty Line, but had come to visit his sister, and was staying with the Bewlies for a time.

“We were havin’ a wee pipe after our supper last night,” Peter explained, “and Tsatsa’wi was a-telling of my wife about a difficulty in their village—and she tellin’ it to me, ye see, him havin’ no English and me not speakin’ so verra much of their tongue, no but the names of things and the odd politeness here and there—but as I say, he was telling of a wicked bear, what’s been a-plaguing of them for months past.”

“I should think Tsatsa’wi well-equipped to deal wi’ such a creature, by the looks of it,” Jamie said, nodding at the Indian’s necklace of claws, and touching his own chest in indication. He smiled at Tsatsa’wi, who evidently gathered the meaning of the compliment and smiled broadly back. Both men bowed slightly to each other over the cups of tea, in token of mutual respect.

“Aye,” Peter agreed, licking droplets of liquid from the corners of his mouth, and smacking his lips in approval. “He’s a bonnie hunter, is Tsatsa’wi, and in the usual course o’ things, I expect he and his cousins might manage well enough. But it seems as how this particular bear is just that wee bit above the odds. So I says to him as perhaps we’ll come and tell Mac Dubh about it, and maybe as Himself would spare the time to go and sort the creature for them.”

Peter lifted his chin to his brother-in-law, and nodded toward Jamie, with a proprietorial air of pride. See, said the gesture. I told you. He can do it.

I suppressed a smile at this. Jamie caught my eye, coughed modestly and set down his cup.

“Aye, well. I canna come just yet awhile, but perhaps when the hay is in. D’ye ken what’s the nature of this problematical bear, Peter?”

“Oh, aye,” Peter said cheerfully. “It’s a ghost.”

I choked momentarily on my own tea. Jamie didn’t seem too shocked, but rubbed his chin dubiously.

“Mmphm. Well, what’s it done, then?”

The bear had first made its presence known nearly a year before, though no one had seen it for some time. There had been the usual incidents of depredation—the carrying away of racks of drying fish or strings of corn hung outside houses, the stealing of meat from lean-tos—but at first the townspeople had regarded this merely as the work of a bear slightly more clever than the usual—the usual bear being completely unconcerned as to whether he was observed in the act.

“It would only come at night, ye see,” Peter explained. “And it didna make a great deal o’ noise. Folk would just come out in the morning and find their stores broken into, and not a sound made to rouse them.”

Brianna, who had seen Mrs. Bug’s unceremonious exit and come up to investigate the cause, began humming softly under her breath—a song to which memory promptly supplied the words, “Oh, he’ll sleep ’til noon, but before it’s dark … he’ll have every picnic basket that’s in Jellystone Park …” I pressed a napkin to my mouth, ostensibly to blot the remains of the tea.

“They kent it was a bear from the first, aye?” Peter explained. “Footprints.”

Tsatsa’wi knew that word; he spread his two hands out on the table, thumb to thumb, demonstrating the span of the footprint, then touched the longest of the claws hung round his neck, nodding significantly.

The townspeople, thoroughly accustomed to bears, had taken the usual precautions, moving supplies into more protected areas, and putting out their dogs in the evening. The result of this was that a number of dogs had disappeared—again without sound.

Evidently the dogs had grown warier, or the bear hungrier. The first victim was a man, killed in the forest. Then, six months ago, a child had been taken. Brianna stopped humming abruptly.

The victim was a baby, snatched cradle-board and all from the bank of the river where its mother was washing clothes toward sunset. There had been no sound, and no clue left save a large clawed footprint in the mud.

Four more of the townspeople had been killed in the months since. Two children, picking wild strawberries by themselves in late afternoon. One body had been found, the neck broken, but otherwise untouched. The other had disappeared; marks showed where it had been dragged into the woods. A woman had been killed in her own cornfield, again toward sunset, and partially eaten where she fell. The last victim, a man, had in fact been hunting the bear.

“They didna find anything of him, save his bow and a few bits o’ bloodied clothes,” Peter said. I heard a small thump behind me, as Mrs. Bug sat down abruptly on the settle.

“So they have hunted it themselves?” I asked. “Or tried to, I should say?”

Peter took his eyes off Jamie and looked at me, nodding seriously.

“Oh, aye, Mrs. Claire. That’s how they kent what it was, finally.”

A small party of hunters had gone out loaded—literally—for bear, armed with bows, spears, and the two muskets the village boasted. They had circled the village in a widening gyre, convinced that since the bear’s attentions focused on the town, it would not wander far away. They had searched for four days, now and then finding old spoor, but no trace of the bear itself.

“Tsatsa’wi was wi’ them,” Peter said, lifting a finger toward his brother-in-law. “He and one of his friends were sittin’ up at night, keepin’ watch whilst the others slept. ’Twas just past moonrise, he said, when he got up to make water. He turned back to the fire—just in time to see his friend bein’ dragged off, stone-dead, wi’ his neck crushed in the jaws of the thing itself!”

Tsatsa’wi had been following the tale intently. At this juncture, he nodded, and made a gesture that appeared to be the Cherokee equivalent of the Sign of the Cross—some quick and formal gesture to repel evil. He began to talk himself, then, hands flying as he pantomimed the subsequent events.

He had of course shouted, rousing his remaining comrades, and had rushed at the bear, hoping to frighten it into dropping his friend—though he could see that the man was already dead. He tilted his head sharply to indicate a broken neck, letting his tongue loll in an expression that would have been quite funny under different circumstances.

The hunters were accompanied by two dogs, which had also flown at the bear, barking. The bear had in fact dropped its prey, but instead of fleeing, had charged toward him. He had thrown himself to one side, and the bear had paused long enough to swipe one of the dogs off its feet, and then disappeared into the darkness of the wood, pursued by the other dog, a hail of arrows, and a couple of musket balls—none of which had touched it.

They had chased the bear into the wood with torches, but been unable to discover it. The second dog had returned, looking ashamed of itself—Brianna made a small fizzing noise at Tsatsa’wi’s pantomime of the dog—and the hunters, thoroughly unnerved, had gone back to their fire, and spent the rest of the night awake, before returning to their village in the morning. From whence, Tsatsa’wi indicated with a graceful gesture, he had now come to solicit the assistance of the Bear-Killer.

“But why do they think it’s a ghost?” Brianna leaned forward, interest displacing her initial horror at the tale.

Peter glanced at her, one eyebrow raised.

“Oh, aye, he didna say—or rather I expect he did, but not so as ye’d understand it. The thing was much bigger than the usual bear, he says—and pure white. He says when it turned to look at him, the beast’s eyes glowed red as flame. They kent at once it must be a ghost, and so they werena really surprised that their arrows didna touch it.”

Tsatsa’wi broke in again, pointing first at Jamie, then tapping his bear-claw necklace, and then—to my surprise—pointing at me.

“Me?” I said. “What have I got to do with it?”

The Cherokee heard my tone of surprise, for he leaned across the table, took my hand in his own, and stroked it—not in any affectionate manner, but merely as an indication of my skin. Jamie made a small sound of amusement.

“You’re verra white, Sassenach. Perhaps the bear will think ye’re a kindred spirit.” He grinned at me, but Tsatsa’wi evidently gathered the sense of this, for he nodded seriously. He dropped my hand, and made a brief cawing noise—a raven’s call.

“Oh,” I said, distinctly uneasy. I didn’t know the words in Cherokee, but evidently the people of Tsatsa’wi’s town had heard of White Raven as well as the Bear-Killer. Any white animal was regarded as being significant—and often sinister. I didn’t know whether the implication here was that I might exert some power over the ghost-bear—or merely serve as bait—but evidently I was indeed included in the invitation.

And so it was that a week later, the hay safely in and four sides of venison peacefully hanging in the smokehouse, we set off toward the Treaty Line, bent on exorcism.

 

Besides Jamie and myself, the party consisted of Brianna and Jemmy, the two Beardsley twins, and Peter Bewlie, who was to guide us to the village, his wife having gone ahead with Tsatsa’wi. Brianna had not wanted to come, more for fear of taking Jemmy into the wilderness than from disinclination to join the hunt, I thought. Jamie had insisted that she come, though, claiming that her marksmanship would be invaluable. Unwilling to wean Jemmy yet, she had been obliged to bring him—though he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the trip, hunched bright-eyed on the saddle in front of his mother, alternately gabbling happily to himself about everything he saw, or sucking his thumb in dreamy content.

As for the Beardsleys, it was Josiah that Jamie wanted.

“The lad’s killed two bears, at least,” he told me. “I saw the skins, at the Gathering. And if his brother likes to come along, I canna see the harm in it.”

“Neither do I,” I agreed. “But why are you making Bree come? Can’t you and Josiah handle the bear between you?”

“Perhaps,” he said, running an oily rag over the barrel of his gun. “But if two heids are better than one, then a third should be better still, no? Especially if it shoots like yon lass can.”

“Yes?” I said skeptically. “And what else?”

He glanced up at me and grinned.

“What, ye dinna think I have ulterior motives, do ye, Sassenach?”

“No, I don’t think so—I know so.”

He laughed and bent his head over his gun. After a few moments’ swabbing and cleaning, though, he said, not looking up, “Aye, well. I thought it no bad idea for the lass to have friends among the Cherokee. In case she should need a place to go, sometime.”

The casual tone of voice didn’t fool me.

“Sometime. When the Revolution comes, you mean?”

“Aye. Or … when we die. Whenever that might be,” he added precisely, picking the gun up and squinting down the barrel to check the sight.

It was bright Indian summer still, but I felt shards of ice crackle down my back. Most days, I managed to forget that newspaper clipping—the one that reported the death by fire of one James Fraser and his wife, on Fraser’s Ridge. Other days, I remembered it, but shoved the possibility to the back of my mind, refusing to dwell on it. But every now and then, I would wake up at night, with bright flames leaping in the corners of my mind, shivering and terrified.

“The clipping said, ‘no living children,’ ” I said, determined to face down the fear. “Do you suppose that means that Bree and Roger will have gone … somewhere … before then?” To the Cherokee, perhaps. Or to the stones.

“It might.” His face was sober, eyes on his work. Neither one of us was willing to admit the other possibility—no need, in any case.

Reluctant though she had been to come, Brianna too seemed to be enjoying the trip. Without Roger, and relieved of the chores of cabin housekeeping, she seemed much more relaxed, laughing and joking with the Beardsley twins, teasing Jamie, and nursing Jemmy by the fire at night, before curling herself around him and falling peacefully asleep.

The Beardsleys were having a good time, too. The removal of his infected adenoids and tonsils had not cured Keziah’s deafness, but had improved it markedly. He could understand fairly loud speech now, particularly if you faced him and spoke clearly, though he seemed to make out anything his twin said with ease, no matter how softly voiced. Seeing him look round wide-eyed as we rode through the thick, insect-buzzing forest, fording streams and finding faint deer paths through the thickets, I realized that he had never been anywhere in his life, save the area near the Beardsley farm, and Fraser’s Ridge.

I wondered what he would make of the Cherokee—and they of him and his brother. Peter had told Jamie that the Cherokee regarded twins as particularly blessed and lucky; the news that the Beardsleys would be joining the hunt had delighted Tsatsa’wi.

Josiah seemed to be having fun, too—insofar as I could tell, he being a very contained sort of person. As we drew closer to the village, though, I thought that he was becoming slightly nervous.

I could see that Jamie was a trifle uneasy, too, though in his case, I suspected the reason for it. He didn’t mind at all going to help with a hunt, and was pleased to have the opportunity to visit the Cherokee. But I rather thought that having his reputation as the Bear-Killer trumpeted before him, so to speak, was making him uncomfortable.

This supposition was borne out when we camped on the third night of our journey. We were no more than ten miles from the village, and would easily make it by mid-day next day.

I could see him making up his mind to something as we rode, and as we all sat down to supper round a roaring fire, I saw him suddenly set his shoulders and stand up. He walked up to Peter Bewlie, who sat staring dreamily into the fire, and faced him with decision.

“There’s a wee thing I have to be sayin’, Peter. About this ghost-bear we’re off to find.”

Peter looked up, startled out of his trance. He smiled, though, and slid over to make room for Jamie to sit down.

“Oh, aye, Mac Dubh?”

Jamie did so, and cleared his throat.

“Well, ye see—the fact is that I dinna actually ken a great deal about bears, as there havena been any in Scotland for quite some years now.”

Peter’s eyebrows went up.

“But they say ye killed a great bear wi’ naught but a dirk!”

Jamie rubbed his nose with something approaching annoyance.

“Aye, well … so I did, then. But I didna hunt the creature down. It came after me, so I hadna got a choice about it, after all. I’m none so sure that I shall be of any great help in discovering this ghost-bear. It must be a particularly clever bear, no? To have been walking in and out of their village for months, I mean, and no one with more than a single glimpse of it?”

“Smarter than the average bear,” Brianna agreed, her mouth twitching slightly. Jamie gave her a narrow look, which he switched to me as I choked on a swallow of beer.

“What?” he demanded testily.

“Nothing,” I gasped. “Nothing at all.”

Turning his back on us in disgust, Jamie suddenly caught sight of Josiah Beardsley, who, while not guffawing, was doing a little mouth-twitching of his own.

“What?” Jamie barked at him. “They’re no but loons”—he jerked a thumb over his finger at Brianna and me—“but what’s to do wi’ you, eh?”

Josiah immediately erased the grin from his face and tried to look grave, but the corner of his mouth kept on twitching, and a hot flush was rising in his narrow cheeks, visible even by firelight. Jamie narrowed his eyes and a stifled noise that might have been a giggle escaped Josiah. He clapped a hand across his mouth, staring up at Jamie.

“What, then?” Jamie inquired politely.

Keziah, obviously gathering that something was up, hunched closer to his twin, squaring up beside him in support. Josiah made a brief, unconscious movement toward Kezzie, but didn’t look away from Jamie. His face was still red, but he seemed to have got himself under control.

“Well, I suppose I best say, sir.”

“I suppose ye had.” Jamie gave him a quizzical look.

Josiah drew a deep breath, resigning himself.

“ ’Twasn’t a bear, always. Sometimes it was me.”

Jamie stared at him for a moment. Then the corners of his mouth began to twitch.

“Oh, aye?”

“Not all the time,” Josiah explained. But when his wanderings through the wilderness brought him within reach of one of the Indian villages—“Only if I was hungry, though, sir”—he hastened to add—he would lurk cautiously in the forest nearby, stealing into the place after dark and absconding with any easily-reached edibles. He would remain in the area for a few days, eating from the village stores until his strength and his pack were replenished, then move on to hunt, eventually returning with his hides to the cave where he had made a cache.

Kezzie’s expression throughout this recital hadn’t changed; I wasn’t sure how much of it he had heard, but he didn’t appear surprised. His hand rested on his twin’s arm for a moment, then slid off, reaching for a skewer of meat.

Brianna’s laughter had subsided, and she had been listening to Josiah’s confession with a furrowed brow.

“But you didn’t—I mean, I’m sure you didn’t take the baby in its cradleboard. And you didn’t kill the woman who was partly eaten … did you?”

Josiah blinked, though he seemed more baffled than shocked by the question.

“Oh, no. Why’d I do that? You don’t think I ate ’em, do ye?” He smiled at that, an incongruous dimple appearing in one cheek. “Mind, I been hungry enough now and then as I might consider it, if I happened on somebody dead—providin’ it was fairly recent,” he added judiciously. “But not hungry enough as I’d kill someone a-purpose.”

Brianna cleared her throat, with something startlingly like one of Jamie’s Scottish noises.

“No, I didn’t think you ate them,” she said dryly. “I just thought that if someone happened to have killed them—for some other reason—the bear could have come along and gnawed on the bodies.”

Peter nodded thoughtfully, seeming interested but unfazed by the assorted confessions.

“Aye, a bear’ll do that,” he said. “They’re no picky eaters, bears. Carrion is fine by them.”

Jamie nodded in response, but his attention was still fixed on Josiah.

“Aye, I’ve heard that, forbye. But Tsatsa’wi said he did see the bear take his friend—so it does kill people, no?”

“Well, it killed that one,” Josiah agreed. There was an odd tone to his voice, though, and Jamie’s look sharpened. He lifted a brow at Josiah, who worked his lips slowly in and out, deciding something. He glanced at Kezzie, who smiled at him. Kezzie, I saw, had a dimple in his left cheek, while Josiah’s was in the right.

Josiah sighed and turned back to face Jamie.

“I wasn’t a-goin’ to say about this part,” he said frankly. “But you been straight with us, sir, and I see it ain’t right I let you go after that bear not knowin’ what else might be there.”

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck, and resisted the sudden impulse to turn round and look into the shadows behind me. The urge to laugh had left me.

“What else?” Jamie slowly lowered the chunk of bread he had been about to bite into. “And just … what else might be there, then?”

“Well, ’twas only the once I saw for sure, mind,” Josiah warned him. “And ’twas a moonless night, too. But I’d been out all the night, and my eyes was well-accustomed to the starlight—you’ll know the way of it, sir.”

Jamie nodded, looking bemused.

“Aye, well enough. And ye were where, at the time?”

Near the village we were headed toward. Josiah had been there before, and was familiar with the layout of the place. A house at the end of the village was his goal; there were strings of corn hung to dry beneath the eaves, and he thought he could get away with one easily enough, provided he didn’t rouse the village dogs.

“Rouse one, ye’ve got ’em all a-yowling on your tail,” he said, shaking his head. “And it wasn’t but a couple of hours before the dawn. So I crept along slow-like, looking to see was one of the rascals curled up asleep by the house I had my eye on.” Lurking in the wood, he had seen a figure come out of the house. As no dogs took exception to this, it was a reasonable conclusion that the person belonged to the house. The man had paused to make water, and then, to Josiah’s alarm, had shouldered a bow and quiver, and marched directly toward the woods where he lay hidden.

“I didn’t think as he could be after me, but I went up a tree quick as a bob-tail cat, and not makin’ no more noise than one, neither,” he said, not bragging.

The man had most likely been a hunter, making an early start for a distant stream where raccoon and deer would come to drink at dawn. Not seeing any need of caution so near his own village, the man had not displayed any, walking through the forest quietly, but with no attempt at concealment.

Josiah had crouched in his tree, no more than a few feet above the man’s head, holding his breath. The man had gone on, disappearing at once into the heavy undergrowth. Josiah had been just about to descend from his perch when he had heard a sudden exclamation of surprise, followed by the sounds of a brief scuffle that concluded with a sickening thunk!

“Just like a ripe squash when you chunk it with a rock to break it open,” he assured Jamie. “Made my arse-hole draw up like a purse-string, hearin’ that noise, there in the dark.”

Alarm was no bar to curiosity, though, and he had eased through the wood in the direction of the sound. He could hear a rustling noise, and as he peered cautiously through a screen of cedar branches, he made out a human form stretched upon the ground, and another bending over it, evidently struggling to pull some kind of garment off the prone man’s body.

“He was dead,” Josiah explained, matter-of-factly. “I could smell the blood, and a shit-smell, too. Reckon the little fella caved in his head with a rock or maybe a club.”

“Little fella?” Peter had been following the story with close attention. “How little d’ye mean? Did ye see his face?”

Josiah shook his head.

“No, I saw naught but the shadow of him, movin’ about. It was full dark, still; the sky hadn’t started to go light yet.” He squinted, making a mental estimate. “Reckon he’d be shorter than me; maybe so high.” He held out a hand in illustration, measuring a distance some four and a half feet from the ground.

The murderer had been interrupted in his work of plundering the body, though. Josiah, intent on watching, had noticed nothing, until there came a sudden crack from a breaking stick, and the inquiring whuff of a questing bear.

“You best believe the little fella run when he heard that,” he assured Jamie. “He dashed right past, no further from me than you are now. That was when I got the only good look I had at him.”

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” I said, as he paused to take a gulp of his beer. “What did he look like?”

He wiped a line of foam from the sparse whiskers on his upper lip, looking thoughtful.

“Well, ma’am, I was pretty near sure he was the devil. Only I did think the devil would be bigger,” he added, taking another drink.

This statement naturally caused some confusion. Upon further elucidation, it appeared that Josiah merely meant that the mysterious “little fella” had been black.

“Wasn’t ’til I went along to that Gathering of yours that it come to me that some regular folks just are black,” he explained. “I hadn’t never seen anybody who was, nor heard tell of it, neither.”

Kezzie nodded soberly at this.

“Devil in the Book,” he said, in his odd, gruff voice.

“The Book,” it seemed, was an old Bible that Aaron Beardsley had taken somewhere in trade and never found a buyer for. Neither of the boys had ever been taught to read, but they were most entertained by the pictures in the Book, which included several drawings of the devil, depicted as a crouching black creature, going about his sly business of tempting and seduction.

“I didn’t see no forked tail,” Josiah said, shaking his head, “but then, he went by so fast, stood to reason I might have missed it in the dark and all.”

Not wanting to draw the attention of such a person to himself, Josiah had stood still, and thus been in a position to hear the bear giving its attention to the unfortunate inhabitant of the village.

“It’s like Mr. Peter says,” he said, nodding at Peter Bewlie in acknowledgment. “Bears ain’t particular. I never did see this ’un, so I can’t say was it the white one or no—but it surely did eat on that Indian. I heard it, chawin’ and slobberin’ like anything.” He seemed untroubled by this recollection, but I saw Brianna’s nostrils pinch at the thought.

Jamie exchanged looks with Peter, then glanced back at Josiah. He rubbed a forefinger slowly down the bridge of his nose, thinking.

“Well, then,” he said at last. “It seems that not all the evil doings in your brother-in-law’s village can be laid at the ghost-bear’s door, aye? What wi’ Josiah stealin’ food, and wee black devils killing folk. What d’ye ken, Peter? Might a bear take a taste for human flesh, once he’d had it, and then maybe go to hunting humans on his own?”

Peter nodded slowly, face creased in concentration.

“That might be, Mac Dubh,” he allowed. “And if there’s a wee black bastard hangin’ about in the wood—who’s to say how many the bear’s killed, and how many the wee black devil’s done for, and the bear takin’ the blame?”

“But who is this wee black devil?” Bree asked. The men looked from one to another, and shrugged, more or less in unison.

“It must be an escaped slave, surely?” I said, lifting my brows at Jamie. “I can’t see why a free black in his right mind would off go into the wilderness alone like that.”

“Maybe he isn’t in his right mind,” Bree suggested. “Slave or free. If he’s going around killing people, I mean.” She cast an uneasy look at the wood around us, and put a hand on Jemmy, who was curled in a blanket on the ground beside her, sound asleep.

The men looked automatically to their weapons, and even I reached under my apron to touch the knife I wore at my belt for digging and chopping.

The forest seemed suddenly both sinister and claustrophobic. It was much too easy to imagine lurking eyes in the shadows, ascribe the constant soft rustle of leaves to stealthy footsteps or the brush of passing fur.

Jamie cleared his throat.

“Your wife’s not mentioned black devils, I suppose, Peter?”

Bewlie shook his head. The concern with which he had greeted Josiah’s tale was still stamped upon his grizzled face, but a small touch of amusement gleamed in his eyes.

“No. I can’t say as she has, Mac Dubh. The only thing I recall in that regard is the Black Man o’ the West.”

“And who is that?” Josiah asked, interested.

Peter shrugged and scratched at his beard.

“Aye, well, I shouldna say it’s anyone, so to speak. Only that the shamans say there is a spirit who lives in each o’ the four directions, and each spirit has a color to him—so when they go to singin’ their prayers and the like, they’ll maybe call the Red Man o’ the East to help the person they’re singing for, because Red is the color of triumph and success. North, that’s blue—the Blue Man, to give the spirit of the North his right name—that’s defeat and trouble. So ye’d call on him to come and give your enemy a bit of grief, aye? To the South, that’s the White Man, and he’s peace and happiness; they sing to him for the women with child, and the like.”

Jamie looked both startled and interested to hear this.

“That’s verra like the four airts, Peter, is it no?”

“Well, it is, then,” Peter agreed, nodding. “Odd, no? That the Cherokee should get hold of the same notions as we Hielanders have?”

“Oh, not so much.” Jamie gestured to the dark wood, beyond the small circle of our fire. “They live as we do, aye? Hunters, and dwellers in the mountains. Why should they not see what we have seen?”

Peter nodded slowly, but Josiah was impatient with this philosophizing.

“Well, what’s the Black Man o’ the West, then?” he demanded. Both Jamie and Peter turned their heads as one to look at him. The two men looked nothing alike—Peter was short, squat, and genially bearded, Jamie tall and elegant, even in his hunting clothes—and yet there was something identical in their eyes, that made little mouse-feet run skittering down my spine. “What we have seen,” indeed! I thought.

“The West is the home of the dead,” Jamie said softly, and Peter nodded, soberly.

“And the Black Man o’ the West is death himself,” he added. “Or so say the Cherokee.”

Josiah was heard to mutter that he didn’t think so very much of that idea, but Brianna thought even less of it.

“I do not believe that the spirit of the West was out in the woods conking people on the head,” she declared firmly. “It was a person Josiah saw. And it was a black person. Ergo, it was either a free black or an escaped slave. And given the odds, I vote for escaped slave.”

I wasn’t sure it was a matter for democratic process, but I was inclined to agree with her.

“Here’s another thought,” she said, looking round. “What if it’s this little black man who’s responsible for some of the half-eaten people? Aren’t some of the African slaves cannibals?”

Peter Bewlie’s eyes popped at that; so did the Beardsleys’. Kezzie cast an uneasy look over his shoulder and edged closer to Josiah.

Jamie appeared amused at this suggestion, though.

“Well, I suppose ye might get the odd cannibal here and there in Africa,” he agreed. “Though I canna say I’ve heard of one amongst the slaves. I shouldna think they’d be verra desirable as house-servants, aye? Ye’d be afraid to turn your back, for fear of being bitten in the backside.”

This remark made everyone laugh, and relieved the tension somewhat. People began to stir and make preparations for going to bed.

We took especial care in putting the food into two of the saddlebags, which Jamie hung up in a tree, a good distance from the camp. Even if the ghost-bear had been revealed to be less powerful than previously supposed, there was an unspoken agreement that there was no sense taking chances.

For the most part, I managed to put aside the knowledge that we lived in a wilderness. Now and then some tangible evidence would shove the fact under my nose: nocturnal visits by foxes, possums, and raccoons, or the occasional unnerving screams of panthers, with their uncanny resemblance to the crying of women or the shrieks of small children. It was quiet now, where we were. But there was no way of standing in the center of those mountains at night, submerged in the absolute black at their feet, listening to the secret murmurs of the great trees overhead, and pretending that one was anywhere but in the grip of the forest primeval—or of doubting that the wilderness could swallow us in one gulp, if it cared to, leaving not a clue behind of our existence.

For all her logic, Brianna was by no means immune to the whispers of the forest—not with a small and tender child to guard. She didn’t help with the readying of camp for the night, but instead sat close to Jemmy, loading her rifle.

Jamie, after a quick look at Brianna, announced that he and she would take the first watch; Josiah and I the next, and Peter and Kezzie the last watch of the night. Heretofore, we hadn’t kept a watch, but no one complained at this suggestion.

A long day in the saddle is one of the best soporifics, and I lay down beside Jamie with that utter gratitude for being horizontal that compensates for the hardest of beds. Jamie’s hand rested gently on my head; I turned my face and kissed his palm, feeling safe and protected.

Peter and the Beardsley twins fell asleep within seconds; I could hear them snoring on the other side of the fire. I was nearly asleep myself, lulled by the quiet, half-heard talk between Jamie and Bree, when I became aware that the tenor of their conversation had changed.

“Are ye worrit for your man, a nighean?” he asked softly.

She gave a small, unhappy laugh.

“I’ve been worrit since they hanged him,” she said. “Now I’m scared, too—or should that be ‘scairt’?” she asked, trying to make a joke of it.

Jamie made a low noise in his throat, which I think he meant to be soothing.

“He’s in no more danger tonight than he was last night, lass—nor any night since he set out.”

“True,” she answered dryly. “But just because I didn’t know about ghost-bears and black murderers last week doesn’t mean they weren’t out there.”

“My point precisely,” he replied. “He’ll be no safer for your fear, will he?”

“No. You think that’s going to stop me worrying?”

There was a low, rueful chuckle in reply.

“I shouldna think so, no.”

There was a brief silence, before Brianna spoke again.

“I just—keep thinking. What will I do, if something does happen—if he … doesn’t come back? I’m all right during the day, but at night, I can’t help thinking …”

“Och, well,” he said softly. I saw him tilt up his head to the stars, blazing overhead. “How many nights in twenty years, a nighean? How many hours? For I spent that long in wondering whether my wife still lived, and how she fared. She and my child.”

His hand ran smoothly over my head, gently stroking my hair. Brianna said nothing in reply, but made a small, inarticulate sound in her throat.

“That is what God is for. Worry doesna help—prayer does. Sometimes,” he added honestly.

“Yes,” she said, sounding uncertain. “But if—”

“And if she had not come back to me”—he interrupted firmly—“if you had not come—if I had never known—or if I had known for sure that both of you were dead …” He turned his head to look at her, and I felt the shift of his body as he lifted his hand from my hair and reached out his other hand to touch her. “Then I would still have lived, a nighean, and done what must be done. So will you.”