“No, he eats fish,” I assured my new acquaintance. Seeing me craning my neck, he courteously dropped to his haunches, his knee joints popping like rifle shots as he did so. His face thus coming into view, I found his features still obscured by a bushy black beard. An incongruous snub nose poked out of the undergrowth, surmounted by a pair of wide and gentle hazel eyes.
“Well, I’m surely obliged to hear that. Wouldn’t care to have a chunk taken out my leg, so early in the day.” He removed a disreputable slouch hat with a ragged turkey feather thrust through the brim, and bowed to me, loose snaky black locks falling forward on his shoulders. “John Quincy Myers, your servant, ma’am.”
“Claire Fraser,” I said, offering him a hand in fascination. He squinted at it a moment, brought my fingers to his nose and sniffed them, then looked up and broke into a broad smile, nonetheless charming for missing half its teeth.
“Why, you’ll maybe be a yarb-woman, won’t you?”
“I will?”
He turned my hand gently over, tracing the chlorophyll stains around my cuticles.
“A green-fingered lady might just be tendin’ her roses, but a lady whose hands smell of sassafras root and Jesuit bark is like to know more than how to make flowers bloom. Don’t you reckon that’s so?” he asked, turning a friendly gaze on Ian, who was viewing Mr. Myers with unconcealed interest.
“Oh, aye,” Ian assured him. “Auntie Claire’s a famous healer. A wise-woman!” He glanced proudly at me.
“That so, boy? Well, now.” Mr. Myers’s eyes went round with interest, and swiveled back to focus on me. “Smite me if this ain’t Lucifer’s own luck! And me thinkin’ I’d have to wait till I come to the mountains and find me a shaman to take care of it.”
“Are you ill, Mr. Myers?” I asked. He didn’t look it, but it was hard to tell, what with the beard, the hair, and a thin layer of greasy brown dirt that seemed to cover everything not concealed by his ragged buckskins. The sole exception was his forehead; normally protected from the sun by the black felt hat, it was now exposed to view, a wide flat slab of purest white.
“Not to say ill, I don’t reckon,” he replied. He suddenly stood up, and began to fumble up the tail of his buckskin shirt. “It ain’t the clap or the French pox, anyhow, ’cause I seen those before.” What I had thought were trousers were in fact long buckskin leggings, surmounted by a breechclout. Still talking, Mr. Myers had hold of the leather thong holding up this latter garment, and was fumbling with the knot.
“Damnedest thing, though; all of a sudden this great big swelling come up just along behind of my balls. Purely inconvenient, as you may imagine, though it don’t hurt me none to speak of, save on horseback. Might be you could take a peep and tell me what I best do for it, hm?”
“Ah.…” I said, with a frantic glance at Fergus, who merely shifted his sack of beans and looked amused, blast him.
“Would I have the pleasure to make the acquaintance of Mr. John Myers?” said a polite Scottish voice over my shoulder.
Mr. Myers ceased fumbling with his breechclout and glanced up inquiringly.
“Can’t say whether it’s a pleasure to you or not, sir,” he replied courteously. “But be you lookin’ for Myers, you’ve found him.”
Jamie stepped up beside me, tactfully inserting his body between me and Mr. Myers’s breechclout. He bowed formally, hat under his arm.
“James Fraser, your servant, sir. I was told to offer the name of Mr. Hector Cameron by way of introduction.”
Mr. Myers looked at Jamie’s red hair with interest.
“Scotch, are you? Be you one of them Highlander fellows?”
“I am a Scotsman, aye, and a Highlander.”
“Be you kin to Old Hector Cameron?”
“He is my uncle by marriage, sir, though I have not met him myself. I was told that he was well known to you, and that you might consent to guide my party to his plantation.”
The two men were frankly sizing each other up, eyes flicking head to toe as they talked, appraising bearing, dress, and armament. Jamie’s eyes rested approvingly on the long sheath-knife at the woodsman’s belt, while Mr. Myers’s nostrils flared wide with interest.
“Comme deux chiens,” Fergus remarked softly behind me. Like two dogs. “…aux culs.” Next thing you know, they will be smelling each other’s backside.
Mr. Myers darted a glance at Fergus, and I saw a quick flash of amusement in the hazel depths before he returned to his assessment of Jamie. Uncultured the woodsman might be, but he plainly had some working knowledge of French.
Given Mr. Myers’s olfactory inclinations and lack of self-consciousness, I might not have been surprised to see him drop to all fours and perform in the manner Fergus had suggested. As it was, he contented himself with a careful inspection that took in not only Jamie but Ian, Fergus, myself, and Rollo.
“Nice dawg,” he said casually, holding out a set of massive knuckles to the latter. Rollo, thus invited, instituted his own inspection, sniffing industriously from moccasins to breechclout as the conversation went on.
“Your uncle, eh? Does he know you’re coming?”
Jamie shook his head.
“I canna say. I sent a letter from Georgia, a month ago, but I’ve no way to tell whether he’s had it yet.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Myers said thoughtfully. His eyes lingered on Jamie’s face, then passed swiftly over the rest of us.
“I’ve met your wife. This’ll be your son?” He nodded at Ian.
“My nephew, Ian. My foster son, Fergus.” Jamie made the introductions with a wave of his hand. “And a friend, Duncan Innes, who’ll be along presently.”
Myers grunted, nodding, and made up his mind.
“Well, I should reckon I can get you to Cameron’s all right. Wanted to be sure you was kin, but you got the look of the widder Cameron, in the face. The boy some, too.”
Jamie’s head jerked up sharply.
“The widow Cameron?”
A sly smile flitted through the thicket of beard.
“Old Hector caught the morbid sore throat, up and died late last winter. Don’t figure they get much mail, wherever he is now.”
Abandoning the Camerons for matters of more immediate personal interest, Myers resumed his interrupted excavations.
“Big purple thing,” he explained to me, fumbling his loosened thong. “Almost as big as one o’ my balls. You don’t think it might could be as I’ve decided sudden-like to grow an extry, do you?”
“Well, no,” I said, biting my lip. “I really doubt it.” He moved very slowly, but had almost got the knot in his thong undone; people in the street were beginning to pause, staring.
“Please don’t trouble yourself,” I said. “I do believe I know what that is—it’s an inguinal hernia.”
The wide hazel eyes got wider.
“It is?” He seemed impressed, and not at all displeased by the news.
“I’d have to look—somewhere indoors, that is,” I added hastily “—to be sure, but it sounds like it. It’s quite easy to repair surgically, but…” I hesitated, looking up at the Colossus. “I really couldn’t—I mean, you’d need to be asleep. Unconscious,” I amplified. “I’d have to cut you, and sew you up again, you see. Perhaps a truss—a brace—might be better, though.”