Jamie, he said, had been mounted double, arms bound with a leather strap, behind one of the Watch, riding between two other men. He had seemed docile enough, and they had taken no particular precautions when fording the river six miles from the mill.
"Damn fool threw himself off the horse and into the deep water," said MacDonald, shrugging as well as he could with his hands tied behind him. "We fired at him. Must have hit him, for he didna come up again. But the stream's swift just below the ford, and it's deep. We searched a bit, but no body. Must ha' been carried downstream. Now, for God's sake, ladies, will ye no untie me!"
After repeated threats from Jenny had elicited no further details or changes in his story, we decided to accept it as true. Declining to free MacDonald altogether, Jenny did at least loosen his bonds, so that given time, he might struggle out of them. Then we ran.
"Do you think he's dead?" I puffed, as we reached the tethered horse.
"I don't. Jamie swims like a fish, and I've seen him hold his breath for three minutes at a time. Come on. We're going to search the riverbank."
We cast up and down the banks of the river, stumbling on rocks, splashing in the shallows, scratching our hands and faces on the willows that trawled their branches in the pools.
At last Jenny gave a triumphant shout, and I splashed my way across, balancing precariously on the mossy rocks that lined the bottom of the burn, shallow at this spot.
She was holding a leather strap, still fastened in a circle. A smear of blood discolored one side.
"Wiggled out of it here," she said, bending the circlet between her hands. She looked back in the direction we had come, down that jagged fall of tangled rocks, deep pools and foaming rapids, and shook her head.
"How ever did ye manage, Jamie?" she said, half to herself.
We found an area of flattened grass, not far from the verge, where he had evidently lain to rest. I found a small brownish smudge on the bark of an aspen nearby.
"He's hurt," I said.
"Aye, but he's moving," Jenny answered, looking at the ground as she paced back and forth.
"Are you good at tracking?" I asked hopefully.
"I'm no much of a hunter," she replied, setting off with me close behind, "but if I canna follow something the size of Jamie Fraser through dry bracken, then I'm daft as well as blind."
Sure enough, a broad track of crushed brown fern led up the side of the hill and disappeared into a thick clump of heather. Circling around this point turned up no further evidence, nor did calling produce any answer.
"He'll be gone," Jenny said, sitting down on a log and fanning herself. I thought she looked pale, and realized that kidnapping and threatening armed men was no pursuit for a woman who had given birth less than a week before.
"Jenny," I said, "you have to go back. Besides, he might go back to Lallybroch."
She shook her head. "No, that he wouldna. Whatever MacDonald told us, they're no likely to give up so easy, not with a reward at hand. If they havena hunted him down yet, it's because they couldn't. But they'll have sent someone back to keep an eye on the farm, just in case. No, that's the one place he wouldna go." She pulled at the neck of her gown. The day was cold, but she was sweating slightly, and I could see growing dark stains on the bosom of her dress, from leaking milk. She saw me looking and nodded. "Aye, I'll have to go back soon. Mrs. Crook's nursing the lassie wi' goat's milk and sugar water, but she canna do without me much longer, nor me without her. I hate to leave ye alone, though."
I didn't much care for the thought of having to hunt alone through the Scottish Highlands for a man who might be anywhere, either, but I put a bold face on it.
"I'll manage," I said. "It could be worse. At least he's alive."
"True." She glanced at the sun, low over the horizon. "I'll stay wi' ye through the night, at least."
Huddled around the fire at night, we didn't talk much. Jenny was preoccupied with thoughts of her abandoned child, me with thoughts of just how I was to proceed on my own, alone with no real knowledge of geography or Gaelic.
Suddenly Jenny's head snapped up, listening. I sat up and listened myself, but heard nothing. I peered into the dark woods in the direction Jenny was looking, but saw no gleaming eyes in the depths, thank God.
When I turned back to the fire, Murtagh was sitting on the other side, calmly warming his hands at the blaze. Jenny snapped round at my exclamation, and uttered a short laugh of surprise.
"I could ha' cut both your throats before ye ever looked in the right direction," the little man observed.