A Breath of Snow and Ashes Read Online Free PDF

and an involuntary lifting of his shoulders.
    “I’ll have a look in the light, but it may not be too bad,” I said, observing this. “He walked some way, after all. Let’s get him up to the house.”
    The men made shift to get him up the trail, Ian’s arms over their shoulders, and within minutes, had him laid facedown on the table in my surgery. Here, he told us the story of his adventures, in a disjoint fashion punctuated by small yelps as I cleaned the injury, clipped bits of clotted hair away, and put five or six stitches into his scalp.
    “I thought I was dead,” Ian said, and sucked air through his teeth as I drew the coarse thread through the edges of the ragged wound. “Christ, Auntie Claire! I woke in the morning, though, and I wasna dead after all—though I thought my head was split open, and my brains spilling down my neck.”
    “Very nearly was,” I murmured, concentrating on my work. “I don’t think it was a bullet, though.”
    That got everyone’s attention.
    “I’m not shot?” Ian sounded mildly indignant. One big hand lifted, straying toward the back of his head, and I slapped it lightly away.
    “Keep still. No, you aren’t shot, no credit to you. There was a deal of dirt in the wound, and shreds of wood and tree bark. If I had to guess, one of the shots knocked a dead branch loose from a tree, and it hit you in the head when it fell.”
    “You’re quite sure as it wasn’t a tomahawk, are ye?” The Major seemed disappointed, too.
    I tied the final knot and clipped the thread, shaking my head.
    “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a tomahawk wound, but I don’t think so. See how jagged the edges are? And the scalp’s torn badly, but I don’t believe the bone is fractured.”
    “It was pitch-dark, the lad said,” Jamie put in logically. “No sensible person would fling a tomahawk into a dark wood at something he couldna see.” He was holding the spirit lamp for me to work by; he moved it closer, so we could see not only the ragged line of stitches, but the spreading bruise around it, revealed by the hair I had clipped off.
    “Aye, see?” Jamie’s finger spread the remaining bristles gently apart, tracing several deep scratches that scored the bruised area. “Your auntie’s right, Ian; ye’ve been attacked by a tree.”
    Ian opened one eye a slit.
    “Has anyone ever told ye what a comical fellow ye are, Uncle Jamie?”
    “No.”
    Ian closed the eye.
    “That’s as well, because ye’re not.”
    Jamie smiled, and squeezed Ian’s shoulder.
    “Feeling a bit better then, are ye?”
    “No.”
    “Aye, well, the thing is,” Major MacDonald interrupted, “that the lad did meet with some sort of banditti, no? Had ye reason to think they might be Indians?”
    “No,” said Ian again, but this time he opened the eye all the way. It was bloodshot. “They weren’t.”
    MacDonald didn’t appear pleased with this answer.
    “How could ye be sure, lad?” he asked, rather sharply. “If it was dark, as ye say.”
    I saw Jamie glance quizzically at the Major, but he didn’t interrupt. Ian moaned a little, then heaved a sigh and answered.
    “I smelt them,” he said, adding almost immediately, “I think I’m going to puke.”
    He raised himself on one elbow and promptly did so. This effectively put an end to any further questions, and Jamie took Major MacDonald off to the kitchen, leaving me to clean Ian up and settle him as comfortably as I could.
    “Can you open both eyes?” I asked, having got him tidied and resting on his side, with a pillow under his head.
    He did, blinking a little at the light. The small blue flame of the spirit lamp was reflected twice over in the darkness of his eyes, but the pupils shrank at once—and together.
    “That’s good,” I said, and put down the lamp on the table. “Leave it, dog,” I said to Rollo, who was nosing at the strange smell of the lamp—it was burning a mix of low-grade brandy and turpentine. “Take hold of my fingers,