I couldn’t wait any longer. I left the refuge of my tree and scrambled up the mountainside, slipping and falling and scrambling on all fours.
I came high enough to be able to see what was going on. Chaos, but the shooting had all but stopped. I made my way up higher, onto the meadow. I was drenched in sweat, my legs shaking from the tension of the last hour and my heart pounding like a steam hammer.
Where are you? Where are you?
There was a crush of men at one side of the meadow; the Loyalist prisoners, half of them in green Provincial uniforms, the rest farmers like our own men …
Our own—I tried to look in all directions at once, to see, if not Jamie himself, someone I knew.
I saw Cyrus. The Tall Tree, looking as though he’d been struck by lightning, his face black with powder smoke except where the sweat had made runnels. He was standing up, though, looking about him in a dazed sort of way.
People were moving, everywhere, jostling, milling—one young man ran into me, knocking me off-balance. I caught myself and began to say “I beg your pardon” by reflex.
Then I saw that he had Jamie’s rifle.
“Where did you get that gun?” I said fiercely, and grabbed him by the arm, squeezing as hard as I could.
“Who the hell are you?” He was shocked and offended, trying to pull away. I dug my fingers into his armpit, and he yelped and jerked, trying to get away.
“Where did you get it!” I screamed.
I was clinging like grim death and he screamed, too, writhing and cursing. He kicked me solidly in the shin, but he loosed his hold on the rifle and I let go his other arm and snatched it.
“Tell me where you fucking got this, or so help me God I will beat you to death with it!”
His eyes showed white, like a panicked horse, and he backed away from me, hands out in placation.
“He’s dead! He don’t need it no more!”
“Who’s dead?” I hardly heard the words; the blood had surged so hard into my ears that they were ringing. But a big hand clasped me by the shoulder and pulled me away from the boy. He promptly turned to flee, but Bill Amos—for it was he—let go of me and with two giant strides he had hold of the boy, picked him up with both hands, and shook him like a rag.
“What’s going on, Missus?” he asked, setting the boy down and turning to me. The words were calm, but he wasn’t; he was trembling all over with a mixture of bloodlust and reaction, and I thought he might just kill the boy inadvertently; his big fist was squeezing the boy’s shoulder rhythmically, as though he couldn’t stop, and the boy was squealing and begging to be let go.
“This—” I couldn’t hold the rifle; it slipped from my grasp and I barely caught it, its butt jolting into the ground. “It’s Jamie’s. I need to know where he is!”
Amos blew out a long breath and huffed air for a moment, nodding.
“Where’s Colonel Fraser?” he asked the boy, shaking him again, but more gently. “Where’s the man you took this’n from?”
The boy was crying, head wobbling and tears making tracks through the dirt and powder stains on his face.
“But he’s dead,” he said, and pointed a shaking finger toward a small rocky outcrop near the edge of the saddle, maybe fifty yards away.
“He’s bloody not!” I said, and slapped him. I shoved past him, hobbling—his kick had bruised my shin, though I didn’t feel pain—leaving Bill Amos to deal with whatever he felt like dealing with.
I found Jamie lying in a patch of dry grass, just behind the outcrop. There was a lot of blood.
I FELL TO my knees and groped frantically through his heavy clothes, wet with sweat—and blood.
“How much of this blood is yours?” I demanded.
“All of it.” His eyes were closed, his lips barely moving.
“Bloody fucking hell. Where are you hit?”
“Everywhere.”
I was deeply afraid he was right, but I had to start somewhere. I could see that one leg of his breeks was sodden with blood. No arterial spurting, though, that was good … I started feeling my way down his thigh.
“Dinna … fash, Sass …” He wheezed deeply. With tremendous effort, he opened his eyes and turned his head enough to look up at me.
“I’m … no … afraid,” he whispered. “I’m not.” A bout of coughing seized him. It was nearly silent, but the violence of it shook his whole body. He wasn’t coughing up blood …
Why is he coughing? Pneumothorax? Cardiac asthma? His shirt was sodden. If a ball had touched his heart but not penetrated …