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When the three MacLeans returned to town, they were met in the yard by Sheena, grinning ear to ear.
“You’ll never guess how much I’ve done with the chicks,” she stage-whispered as they walked to the door together. Alisdair looked up at the mention of chicks.
“Have you made the roost all homey for them then?” Neil asked. He’d been let into their secret.
“I have, and more,” replied Sheena.
“Have you plumped them up in the past five days, then?” Muirne asked.
“I have, and more,” Sheena replied with a barely suppressed squeal of delight. “You’ll never guess!”
Older brother and older sister looked at each other, now on the threshold. “What is it, Sheena?” he asked in a whisper. “Tell us before we go in.”
“I’ve already got three customers lined up for when they start laying!” She grinned, evidently pleased at her own business sense and initiative.
“Well, and that’s very well done, Sheena,” Muirne said, putting her arm round her sister. “But that won’t be for a while yet, so be sure not to make rash promises.” Sheena nodded, her smile dimmed only a shade.
Their hands were empty, since they left the tools on the ridge, hidden from sight. They meant only to check on the family, and stock up on oatmeal and potatoes and beans, before returning to their camp.
It was a weekday, and Mrs. Conaghey was at home. Her immediate commencement of patter upon their arrival reminded Neil of his need to find out about Mr. Turner. He wondered when he might steal away to the tavern or the grocer’s to ask around. Thankfully, his mother was up and about and wore only a simple cold cloth draped over her collarbone and her head to stave off the infection. She said she’d be going back with them when they left in a day or two.
“All right then, do we still have credit at the grocer’s?” Neil asked his mother.
“Yes, Neil. Will ye go down this day or wait till tomorrow?”
“Well,” said Neil, ducking his head to glance out the window and assure himself of the time. “There’s plenty of time left in the day; I’ll go now, and be back in time to provide you with supper.” He smiled a secret smile, proud of his subterfuge.
Sheila didn’t notice. “All right, then awa’ with ye. The others might prefer a bit of a scrubbing before launching into more chores, am I right?”
Muirne gave an exaggerated nod of her head while Alisdair did a fast shake of his. Sheila laughed. “Muirne, you’re first. The fire’s hot, you just need to fetch the water.” She handed her two buckets from the hallway, and Muirne took them down to the pump. Meanwhile, Sheena asked Alisdair about the progress they’d made on the ridge.
“Is there a house yet?”
“No, but there’s a floor,” Alisdair replied.
“Are there any walls?”
“Not a full wall, but Neil’s got frames up for two of them. And we collected all the right size rocks to fill in the wall frames to make it nice and warm, that’s what Muirne said,” he recited.
“Fill in the—” Sheena started, but stopped. “Is that really how you do it?”
Alisdair shrugged. “Maybe it’s how they do it here. It might’ve been Mr. Turner’s idea. He came several times to help.”
Sheila’s ears perked up at this, and she listened more closely to the children’s conversation.
“He did? Does he know how to build houses, then?”
Alisdair laughed. “Nor any better than our Neil! But he was helping all the same. He’s pretty strong, ye ken.”
Now it was Sheena’s turn to shrug. Sheila was wondering how Muirne had received him, whether he had stayed the night—heavens, she hoped not—when her thoughts were interrupted by the clomp of boots on the wood of the porch outside.
She heard the muted tones of Mrs. Conaghey’s greeting. Could it be Mr. McLachlan then? she wondered. It seems he has been o’erleaped in the game, she thought with a stab of pity, for she thought him a decent young man.
The clomping stopped, as did Sheena and Alisdair’s chattering, as they all looked to the door to their room. Its knob turned and the door swung in slowly. Through it stepped a grisly, mangy-looking mountain man. He wore ragged canvas trousers, a linen shirt so dirty as to be actually brown in spots, and a stained leather traveling coat reaching to his knees.
His eyes traveled the length of the room, settling on Sheila’s. A cry broke from her lips, followed by his name. “Oh! Gillan!”
He fell to his knees, one hand out to grasp the support of a stool, just as Sandy Wilson came thundering up the steps to the upper hall. Sheila started forward, but he held his other hand low with fingers spread out in a stopping motion. She stopped. “What is it, Gillan? Can ye talk? Are ye only weary, or is it something—”
Sheena and Alisdair had by now recognized him, but were still rooted to the spot in their amazement. The open doorway then showed Sandy, followed by the astonished Mrs. Conaghey. The lanky Sandy had tears in his eyes and a greenish bruise on the side of his face. He was wrangling a cap in his hands something terrible. All eyes turned back to Gillan as he emitted a low strangled sound, something between a cough and a shout. Sheila tried again, kneeling in front of him and looking up into his face. “Gillan, can ye talk? Are you hurt?”
She was cut off by the roar from his person, which was itself cut short as Gillan crumpled forward in pain. Sheila turned toward her younger daughter. “Sheena, go run and fetch the doctor who lives by the kirk. And if you see your brother or sister, hie them hence, for God’s sake. Where is Muirne with that water?”
Sheena bolted toward the door, but stepped gingerly around the space Gillan took up near its entrance. Alisdair edged toward his mother, his gaze locked on the crumpled figure all the while.
“Da?” he whispered. The great shaggy head came up, but not far enough to look out at his son’s eyes. The hand on the ground reached forward to grasp something. Alisdair moved forward and caught the wandering hand in his own. He put it to his cheek and soothed his father. “Don’t worry, Da, you’re home. We’ll take care of ye now.”
Sheila looked with mute distress at Sandy, who couldn’t yet put two words together in the face of such a homecoming. Muirne returned then, nearly losing her hold on the buckets as she careened to a halt behind her father in the doorway. “I nearly ran into Sheena—” Her eyes sought her mother’s.
“It’s your father come back, and in a bad state.” Sheila took the buckets and dumped their contents into the tub heating on the brazier. She tossed in a few cloths in preparation. But how to lay him out? she wondered.
“Gillan,” Sheila said. “Can you make it to the bed, man?” He gave no sign of hearing at first, but when Sandy lined up on one side and Muirne on the other, he pushed himself up from the floor into a position between them. They barely managed to get under his arms before his full weight pulled downward again, but they did. They pulled and dragged him over to the far wall where the bedding was, and laid him down as carefully as they could. He fell the last few inches with a gasp.
Alisdair moved to sit next to his father where he could make sure to observe his chest rising and falling with breath. Sheila stirred the barely-warm water with a wooden spoon, her eyes staring determinedly down into the pot, not allowing her shock at yet another strange entrance into their lives to engulf her in despair. Muirne asked about a doctor and was informed that’s what Sheena was about. She grabbed the buckets back and went for more water, returning rather more quickly.
“I’m to the grocer’s now to fetch Neil.” The mention of the name caused Gillan’s head to turn and a groan to escape his lips. “And I hope Sheena is back before me with the doctor,” Muirne added.
She was. As Muirne vanished out of sight past the corner, Sheena hove into view from their one window from the other direction. She was accompanied by Mr. Coldwell, Pictou’s resident doctor, carrying his black bag.
Mrs. Conaghey ushered the doctor into the room, and finally sought Sheila’s eye. “Is there aught I can do for ye, missus? Is your boy coming in? Do you need any cloths or smelling salts?”
“Yes, I think we will need more clean cloths, thank you, Mrs. Conaghey. And Muirne is out seeking Neil. We should all be together soon, and—” her voice had caught, and she steadied herself, resuming her determined stare. “We shall see what the doctor says,” she said simply.
Mr. Coldwell was already examining Gillan, shucking off his stained coat and shirt to examine him. They saw the large bruises then: yellowing around his right shoulder, a purple one below his left ribs, a yellow-green mass on his upper left arm. And the wide cuts on his neck and hands that had been stuffed with a paste of herbs and bound with strips of his former shirt. Sheila was appalled, and could not help but show it. What had happened to her optimistic, strong man? Why on earth had he been assaulted in such a fashion, since a methodical assault it most certainly resembled. Or maybe a very bad tumble down a hill? The speculative questions flew around and around in her head, and soon she felt dizzy enough to sit down herself.
She looked to Gillan, seeing only his boots hanging off the bed since the doctor obscured her view of him. Those boots—she shivered. They weren’t his.
As the doctor was cataloguing Gillan’s ills, Sandy started talking in a low murmur.
“There weren’t nothing we could do, missus, they just set upon us! They worked us both over, but seemed to concentrate on Mr. MacLean here.”
Sheila interrupted. “Who did it, Sandy?”
“We couldn’t see them, missus. They came upon us just at sundown on the road back. We had news of a new sawmill to start and so were setting back, when these two big men fell into attack, without saying a word! So strange I couldn’t believe it, until the second one hit me across the shoulder.”
Sheila saw how he was standing, with one shoulder higher than the other, the weight on one foot. “Ye’re nae hurt too then, Sandy?” The doctor glanced over his spectacles at this.
“Not as badly as this. But do sit down, boy. I’ll see to you next.”
Sheila wanted to ask Sandy more questions, but then Neil rushed in, followed by Muirne. Sheila saw her son’s eyes wild with something; was it fear? Anger? More like the desperation of an animal cornered. He approached Gillan’s body and gazed at his face.
On hearing Muirne’s hurried message, he had bolted out of the shop without so much as an excuse hurled in the direction of the shopkeeper. Muirne had run in his wake, shouting for him not to be mad, to slow down, to wait for her. But he’d had to make it back to Gillan’s side in time—Muirne had said he looked bad enough to die. Neil needed to see him, tell him about their situation here, their prospects. That might give him will to live, if his failures in the city had cast him down.
What he was confronted with here was not merely failures, however. His stepfather had indeed been badly beaten. Dr. Coldwell’s cleaning out of the cuts with alcohol had made even the semi-conscious Gillan cry out in a pitiful, gurgling way. He applied another solution and put on clean bandages. When he had cleaned him up as best he could, he gave the family his prognosis: three broken ribs, multiple inflammations of the internal organs, most worriedly the spleen, and a dangerous fever. They heard his orders with solemn attention: rest, broth and hot milk, and keep him warm.
“I’ll be back to check on him this evening, and bring my bloodletting implements. We’ll worry about those ribs once he’s past the fever.”
They all turned to Sandy once Mr. Coldwell left. He couldn’t give them much more information other than how the trip had gone up until the attack: they’d met that old Mr. Brown near Tadoussac, as had been written, and there’d been no love lost between them. They’d seen the new sawmill near Quebec City, and Sandy had been impressed. They’d started back full of optimism. Then those mysterious blackguards had fallen on them, and it had been a miserable struggle the next twelve days to make their way eastward through the wilderness to Pictou.
“We did get a lift the last thirty miles with a Pictou farmer, though,” he said.
None of it comforted them, not even the lift. There was no reason for two men to attack them so fiercely on the road, as they had no money to steal. And for Sandy, who was lanky as a beanpole and about as solid, to have suffered less damage? They must have had it in for Gillan. But why?
The MacLeans settled in for a long night and an uncertain morning.