He’d killed the wolf with one shot, as it leaped. She’d seen it struck and twisted by the impact in midair, and then its body had dropped heavily upon her legs and she had curled more tightly round her dog as all the trembling aftermath of fear coursed through her.
Effie should have reached her first. She’d been the nearest, and she could run strongly for a woman of her age, but it was not a woman’s boots that kicked the carcass of the wolf aside, nor yet a woman’s legs that knelt beside her.
“Are ye hurt?” MacPherson’s voice had sounded too rough. “Mary, are ye bitten?”
“No.” She had not thought her voice would come at all, yet there it was, if weak. And Effie had by then arrived and knelt beside her too.
MacPherson had said, “Search her and be sure. Be sure.”
He’d risen and his boots had paced in Mary’s line of vision until Effie, having looked at Mary’s feet and legs and arms and hands, had told him in relief, “She’s not been bitten.”
He had moved away then and had stood beside the river for some minutes, paying little heed to Thomson who had finished crossing on his own and seemed much taken with the marksmanship of his protector. “Truly, I have never seen a shot like that, sir, not in all my life. Is it the rifling that does make the gun so accurate?”
MacPherson had not answered, nor said anything at all since then that Mary could remember.
“Was it a mad wolf?” the elder boy asked. He was not that much older than his little brother, but had, Mary thought, the most serious eyes.
So she soothed him with, “No, it was only a hungry one. Sometimes, when winters are long, it makes animals desperately hungry.”
“And would it have eaten Frisque?”
“It wanted to.” She looked across at where the little dog was lying in the elder boy’s arms, reveling in all the new attention being paid to him.
This family was a young one, with the parents not yet thirty and the eldest of the children—a small girl with golden hair—no more than ten. The children had been turned out of their bed last night to bundle round their parents on the mattress and the floor, while their bed had been given to Mary and Effie, but they did not seem to feel themselves hard done by, and they’d made a great fuss over Frisque, who had abandoned Mary’s feet last night to sleep among the children.
Now the elder boy stroked Frisque’s soft ears and said, “I would not let him walk so close beside the river. It’s too dangerous. You should take better care of him.”
His mother turned then from the hearth, where she’d been seasoning a pot of soup. She was a tall and straight-backed woman with a pretty face. “You must not speak like that,” she told her son. “It’s very rude. Apologize.”
He did, but put his face down so it rested on the dog’s smooth head, and Mary gently said, “But you are right, I should take better care of him. He is an old dog now and is not used to such long journeys.”
“You could leave him here with us,” the boy suggested.
And his mother turned again. “Why don’t you go and help Papa?”
“He’s gone to cut more wood. He does not like me helping, when he’s cutting wood.”
“Then take your brother and your sister and go clean the bedrooms. Go.”
“Can Frisque come, too?”
The children’s faces turned with hope to Mary, and she nodded, and in a confusion of scraping chairs and dancing feet they rose and went off to their chores.
“I apologize, madam,” their mother said, and smiled. “They’ve never seen so small a dog before. They’re very taken with him.”
Mary said, “And he with them. It’s been a long time since he has had children he could play with.” And she told the woman of Frisque’s history: how he had been raised and loved by her own neighbor’s children, only to be left behind without a backward glance when they had moved away. “This likely brings back happy memories for him, being here. Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps he thinks his children have come back for him.”
Effie, entering the kitchen, asked, “Whose children?” She had two herself, just then—the tiny infant in her arms, the little toddling girl in tow and clinging tightly to her skirts. When Mary answered, Effie nodded. “Yes, he’ll not wish to leave with us.”
Thomson said, “Nor will you, from the look of it.” He smiled as he watched Effie settle herself in a chair with her charges, cradling the baby in the crook of one elbow while the toddling girl climbed to her lap to be held with the other arm. “You do that very gracefully, madam.”
“I’ve had much practice.”
The mother asked her, “Have you many children of your own?”
“I only had the one, God rest her soul, but I have been a nurse to many.”
“Then,” the mother said to Mary, “you must start a family soon, so she’ll have children she can care for.”
Mary faintly smiled and looked away. Her wandering gaze fell on MacPherson, sitting looking at the mantel of the kitchen hearth, and in English she remarked, “You’re very quiet, Mr. Jarvis.”
His glance slid briefly sideways, as though waiting for there to be a point to that comment, and when none was provided he looked back to the mantel. “She should wind her clock.”
Mary hadn’t noticed the clock, to be honest. It wasn’t a large one—a wooden-cased table clock with a small handle on top and a face edged with brass. When she translated MacPherson’s comment for their hostess, the young woman said, “Oh, I know. It was my mother’s, but it’s broken, it no longer works. It used to have a lovely chime.”