“Holy Mary!” he said, loud enough that Young Ian, at his shoulder, glanced at him, then at what Jamie was looking at, and said something that was probably the Mohawk equivalent.

At the end of the line stood Lachlan Hunt, one of the tenants Jamie had banished from the Ridge. Lachlan hadn’t let his wife go to plead for him; he was among the men who had left. Jamie’s wame clenched into a ball.

Lachlan had seen him, too, and was directing a wide-eyed look of terror at him.

He hesitated, but not more than a few seconds.

“Stop!” he shouted, as loud as he could, and Young Ian backed him up.

“This man—” Jamie said, pointing at Hunt. “He’s one of my tenants.”

“He’s a hell-bound Tory, is what he is!” Cleveland riposted smartly, and lunging forward, dropped a noose over Lachlan Hunt’s head. Jamie flexed his shoulders and felt Young Ian draw up close behind him.

Before he could carry out his plan of butting Cleveland in his massive belly and knocking him over, then jumping on him and enduring whatever Cleveland might do to him long enough for Young Ian to get Hunt away into the darkness, another voice rang out in anguish.

“Locky!” it called. “That’s my brother!” A young man was elbowing his way through the crowd, which was beginning to be amused by this second interruption.

“And I s’pose that’un is somebody’s grandpa, eh?” some wag shouted, pitching a wet pine cone that hit the youngest prisoner in the chest. That caused laughter, and Jamie managed a breath.

“Don’t matter who they are!” someone else yelled. “They’re Tories and they’re gonna die!”

“Not without a trial!”

“Please, please—let me say goodbye to him!” Lachlan’s brother was pushing urgently through the crowd—which, Jamie saw, was letting him. There was even a murmur of sympathy; both prisoner and brother were young men, no more than twenty.

Jamie didn’t wait; he elbowed Ian and slid sideways through the crowd.

The clouds had closed again, and the light beneath the chosen hanging-tree was no more than scattered patches of lighter dark. The tiny fire expired in a final puff of smoke, and Young Ian let fly with the sort of Indian yips and howls that were calculated to startle and freeze the blood of all who heard them. Jamie dived under the tree and grabbed Hunt by his bound arms, propelling him violently away into the nearby forest.

Lachlan staggered, off-balance, but lunged along as well as he could, and within moments they were out of sight of the fire and the stramash that was starting there.

Jamie drew his dirk and sawed at the rope.

“D’ye ken where we are?” he asked Hunt. There was a great deal of racket back by the tree.

“No.” Locky Hunt’s face was no more than a dark oval, but the fear in his voice was clear as day. “Please, sir … please. My—my wife …”