I had seen the sort of cases used to ship firearms, many times. In France, in Scotland, in America—it didn’t matter what the time period, a bang-stick is a bang-stick, and you need a long, narrow box if you want to carry a large number of them.
I didn’t recognize either of the men, and I didn’t wait about to introduce myself. I took myself and my milkweeds off as fast as I could go.
Luckily, I found Jamie within half an hour, passing the time of day with Tom MacLeod, the coffin maker.
“Who’s dead?” I gasped, out of breath from scrambling down the mountain.
“No one, yet,” Jamie said, eyeing me. “But ye look like ye’re about to be, Sassenach. What’s happened?”
I set my basket on a sawhorse, sat down on another, and told them, pausing to gasp for breath or gulp water from the canteen Tom handed me.
“Nothin’ up that path but Captain Cunningham’s place, is there?” Tom observed.
“Ye mean they maybe didna go up that way by accident, aye?” Jamie stuck his head out of the coffin shed and looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain soon. Be a pity if our friends find themselves stuck in the mud.”
Tom grunted in approval, and without further consultation went into his house, returning in less than a minute with an old leather hat on his head, a good rifle in his hand, a pistol in his belt, and a cartridge box slung over his bowed shoulder. He had a second pistol in his other hand, which he gave Jamie. Jamie nodded, checked the priming, and stuck it in his own belt. Absently touching his dirk, he nodded to me.
“Go get Young Ian, will ye, Sassenach? I saw him mowing in his upper field not an hour since.”
“But what—”
“Go,” he said, though mildly. “Dinna fash, Sassenach. It will be fine.”
I FOUND YOUNG Ian, not in his upper field, but in the woods nearby, rifle in hand.
“Don’t shoot!” I called, spotting him through the brush. “It’s me!”
“I couldna mistake ye for anything save a small bear or a large hog, Auntie,” he assured me as I pawed my way through a clump of dogwood toward him. “And I dinna want either one of those today.”
“Fine. How about a nice, fat pair of gunrunners?”
I explained as well as I could while jog-trotting along behind him as he detoured through the field in order to grab his scythe, which he thrust into my hands.
“I dinna think ye’ll have to use it, Auntie,” he said, grinning at the look on my face. “But if ye stand there blocking the trail, it would be a desperate man would try to go through ye.”
When we arrived, we discovered that the trail had already been effectively blocked by the first mule’s burden, which he had succeeded in shedding completely. When Ian and I showed up a little way below the gunrunners, the first mule, enjoying his new lightness of spirit, was nimbly climbing over the pile of bags, boxes, and wickerwork toward us, intent on joining his fellow, who was not letting his own pack stop him from browsing a large patch of blackberry brambles that edged the trail just there.
Evidently, we had arrived almost at the same time as Jamie and Tom MacLeod, for the two gunrunners had turned to gawk at me and Ian just as Jamie and Tom came into sight on the trail above them.
“Who the devil are you?” one of the men demanded, looking from me to Ian in bewilderment. Ian had tied up his hair in a topknot to keep it out of the way while mowing, and without his shirt, deeply tanned and tattooed, he looked very like the Mohawk he was. I didn’t want to think what I must look like, comprehensively disheveled and with my hair full of leaves and coming down, but I gripped my scythe and gave them a stern look.
“I’m Ian òg Murray,” Ian said mildly, and nodded at me. “And that’s my auntie. Oops.” The first mule was nosing his way determinedly between us, causing us both to step off the path.
“I’m Ian Murray,” Ian repeated, stepping back his rifle in a relaxed-but-definitely-ready position across his chest.
“And I,” said a deep voice from above, “am Colonel James Fraser, of Fraser’s Ridge, and that’s my wife.” He moved into sight, broad-shouldered and tall against the light, with Tom behind him, sunlight glinting off his rifle.
“Catch that mule, will ye, Ian? This is my land. And who, may I ask, are you gentlemen?”
The men jerked in surprise and whirled to look upward—though one cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder, to keep an eye on the threat to the rear.
“Er … we’re … um …” The young man—he couldn’t be much more than twenty—exchanged a panicked look with his older companion. “I am Lieutenant Felix Summers, sir. Of—of His Majesty’s ship Revenge.”