“The old witch’s son, Cunningham. You know he’s been trading, down to the Cherokee villages, just the other side o’ the Line?”

Jamie nodded, eyes fixed on Cloudtree’s face. He was mixed blood, a handsome man with silky long brown hair, though with a petulant curve to his mouth.

“Not everybody listens to him,” Cloudtree assured him. “But he’s got some few men down there, maybe twenty, will follow him. He calls ’em his militia, but he ain’t fought Indians before or he’d know better. They take his guns, his powder, and his medals, though, and they’d likely do what he asked—for a while.”

“What is it that he’s asking?” Jamie had stopped wiping his hands and now held the towel twisted between them.

“I ain’t heard this from him,” Cloudtree said, leaning in and lowering his voice, “but I heard it from two o’ the men in Keowee, ones he paid. There’s a redcoat officer named Ferguson, set to go to and fro in the mountains, raising Loyalist militias and arresting rebels, hangin’ men and burning houses. Cunningham’s wrote Ferguson a letter, naming your name and saying he ought to come here with his troops, ’cuz you a king beaver ’mongst the rebels and your pelt would be worth the trouble to take it.”

All the air seemed to have been sucked out of the byre. After a moment, though, Jamie took a long breath and let it out slowly.

“Do you know when?” he asked calmly.

Cloudtree shrugged.

“I don’t know ’bout Ferguson. Seems he’s got plenty to keep him busy where he is. But Cunningham’s got tired o’ waitin’ for an answer. The men I talked to say he means to arrest you himself and take you to Ferguson—so’s Ferguson can hang you for show, I mean. They say”—he looked at his hands and folded down the fingers, counting—“eight days from yesterday. Cunningham’s waitin’ on a fellow name of Partland, who’s comin’ from Ninety-Six with some more men.”

Jamie’s eyes met mine, and I knew we were thinking the same thing: Seven nights from now was Lodge night. If they were coming for Jamie, that would be the logical time to do it. It was a good two hundred miles from the settlement of Ninety-Six to the Ridge, but Partland and friends might well make it.

“That bloody snake!” I said. I was alarmed and angry, but anger was definitely on top. “How dare he?”

“Well, I did take their guns away, Sassenach,” Jamie said mildly. “I told ye they’d resent it.”

He looked thoughtfully at Aaron and absently wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He grimaced, rubbed the hand on his breeches, and spat into the straw.

“Aye,” he said. “Ye’ve done me a service, Mr. Cloudtree, and I will remember it. Tell me—d’ye ken a man named Scotchee Cameron?”

Aaron had been looking around the byre, interested, but came to attention at that name.