"I didn't know it did that!" I blurted, staring in fascination.
Jenny moved the cup to catch the stream, and nodded.
"Oh, aye. The babe's sucking starts it, but once the milk lets down, all the child need do is swallow. Oh, that feels better." She closed her eyes briefly in relief.
She emptied the cup onto the ground, remarking, "Shame to waste it, but there isna much to do wi' it, is there?" Switching hands, she placed the cup again and repeated the process with the other breast.
"It's a nuisance," she said, looking up to see me still watching. "Everything to do wi' bairns is a nuisance, almost. Still, ye'd never choose not to have them."
"No," I answered softly. "You wouldn't choose that."
She looked across the fire at me, face kind and concerned.
"It isna your time yet," she said. "But you'll have bairns of your own one day."
I laughed a little shakily. "First we'd better find the father."
She emptied the second cup and began readjusting her dress.
"Oh, we'll find them. Tomorrow. We have to, for I canna stay away from wee Maggie much longer than that."
"And once we've found them?" I asked. "What then?"
She shrugged and reached for the blanket rolls.
"That depends on Jamie. And on how much he's made them hurt him."
Jenny was right; we did find the Watch the next day. We left our campsite before full day, pausing only long enough for her to express more milk. She seemed to be able to find trails where none existed, and I followed her without question into a heavily wooded area. Quick travel was impossible through the brushy undergrowth, but she assured me that we were taking a much more direct route than the one the Watch would have to follow, bound as they were to roads by the size of their group.
We came on them near noon. I heard the jingle of harness and the casual voices I had heard once before, and put out a hand to stop Jenny, who was following me for the moment.
"There's a ford in the stream below," she whispered to me. "It sounds as though they've stopped there to water the horses." Sliding down, she took both sets of reins and tethered our own horses, then, beckoning to me to follow, she slid into the undergrowth like a snake.
From the vantage point to which she led me, on a small ledge overlooking the ford, we could see almost all of the men of the Watch, mostly dismounted and talking in casual groups, some sitting on the ground eating, some leading the horses in groups of two and three to the water. What we couldn't see was Jamie.
"Do you suppose they've killed him?" I whispered in panic. I had counted every man twice, to be sure I had missed no one. There were twenty men and twenty-six horses; all in plain view, so far as I could see. But no hint of a prisoner, and no telltale gleam of sun on red hair.
"I doubt it," Jenny answered. "But there's only one way to find out." She began to squirm backward from the ledge.
"What's that?"
"Ask."
The road narrowed as it left the ford, becoming little more than a dusty trail through dense stands of pine and alder on either side. The trail was not wide enough for the Watch to ride two abreast; each man would have to pass down it in single file.
As the last man in the line approached a bend in the trail, Jenny Murray stepped suddenly out in the road ahead of him. His horse shied, and the man struggled to rein it in, cursing. As he opened his mouth to demand indignantly what she meant by this behavior, I stepped out of the bush behind, and whacked him solidly behind the ear with a fallen branch.
Taken completely by surprise, he lost his balance as the horse shied again, and fell off into the roadway. He wasn't stunned; the blow had only knocked him over. Jenny remedied this deficiency with the assistance of a good-sized rock.
She grabbed the horse's reins and gestured violently to me.
"Come on!" she whispered. "Get him off the road before they notice he's gone."
So it was that when Robert MacDonald of the Glen Elrive Watch recovered consciousness, it was to find himself securely tied to a tree, looking down the barrel of a pistol held by the steely-eyed sister of his erstwhile prisoner.
"What have ye done wi' Jamie Fraser?" she demanded.
MacDonald shook his head dazedly, obviously thinking her a figment of his imagination. An attempt to move put paid to this notion, and after an allowance for the statutory amount of cursing and threatening, he at last reconciled himself to the idea that the only way to get loose was to tell us what we wanted to know.
"He's dead," MacDonald said sullenly. Then, as Jenny's finger tightened ominously on the trigger, he added in sudden panic, "It wasna me! It was his own fault!"