Free The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon Page B

but the thief-taker’s face suddenly changed, going from wariness to alarmed disgust.
    “
Ja
, only to look.” Mrs. McGillivray was not watching; she patted Senga and let her go. “Ve go now to Salem, where
ist meine Familie.
Maybe ve find there a good
Mann
, too.”
    Myers had stepped back from the confrontation now, his shoulders drooping in relaxation. He inserted a finger under the edge of his breechclout, scratched his buttocks comfortably, and glanced around, evidently no longer interested in the proceedings. Seeing me looking in his direction, he ambled back through the sapling grove.
    “No need to worry more, ma’am,” he assured Mrs. McGillivray. “I knew Jamie Roy would take care of it, and so he has. Your lad’s safe.”
    “Ja?”
she said. She looked doubtfully toward the sapling grove, but it was true; the attitudes of all the men had relaxed now, and Jamie was handing the thief-taker back his set of manacles. I saw the way he handled them, with brusque distaste. He had worn irons, at Ardsmuir.
    “Gott sei dank,”
Mrs. McGillivray said, with an explosive sigh. Her massive form seemed suddenly to diminish as the breath went out of her.
    The little man was leaving, making his way away from us, toward the creek. The sound of the swinging irons at his belt reached us in a faint chime of metal, heard between the shouts of the crowd behind us. Jamie and Rob McGillivray stood close together, talking, while Fergus watched the thief-taker’s departure, frowning slightly.
    “Exactly what did Jamie tell him?” I asked Myers.
    “Oh. Well.” The mountain man gave me a broad, gap-toothed grin. “Jamie Roy told him serious-like that it was surely luck for the thief-taker—his name’s Boble, by the way, Harley Boble—that we done come upon y’all when we did. He give him to understand that if we hadn’t, then this lady here”—he bowed toward Ute—“would likely have taken him home in her wagon, and slaughtered him like a hog, safe out of sight.”
    Myers rubbed a knuckle under his red-veined nose and chortled softly in his beard.
    “Boble said as how he didn’t believe it, he thought she was only a-tryin’ to scare him with that knife. But then Jamie Roy leaned down close, confidential-like, and said he mighta thought the same—only that he’d heard so much about Frau McGillivray’s reputation as a famous sausage-maker, and had had the privilege of bein’ served some of it to his breakfast this morning. Right about then, Boble started to lose the color in his face, and when Jamie Roy pulled out a bit of sausage to show him—”
    “Oh, dear,” I said, with a vivid memory of exactly what that sausage smelled like. I had bought it the day before from a vendor on the mountain, only to discover that it had been improperly cured, and once sliced, smelled so strongly of rotting blood that no one had been able to stomach it at supper. Jamie had wrapped the offending remainder in his handkerchief and put it in his sporran, intending either to procure a refund or to shove it down the vendor’s throat. “I see.”
    Myers nodded, turning to Ute.
    “And your husband, ma’am—bless his soul, Rob McGillivray’s a real born liar—chimes in solemn-like, agreeing to it all, shakin’ his head and sayin’ as how he’s got his work cut out to shoot enough meat for you.”
    The girls tittered.
    “Da can’t kill anything,” Inga said softly to me. “He willna even wring a chicken’s neck.”
    Myers raised his shoulders in a good-humored shrug, as Jamie and Rob made their way toward us through the wet grass.
    “So Jamie promised on his word as a gentleman to protect Boble from you, and Boble promised on
his
word as a . . . well, he said as he’d keep clear of young Manfred.”
    “Hmp,” said Ute, looking rather disconcerted. She didn’t mind at all being considered an habitual murderess, and was quite pleased that Manfred was out of danger—but was rather put out at having her reputation as a