Part 50 (1/2)

”Chased off t'other bull, did he?” the b.i.t.c.h remarked, stretching her muzzle out to snuffle Spanish King.

Her right forepaw began a cautious step forward as she continued, ”Wouldn't hev believed it, but he's gone sure 'nuff. Mean 'un, thet. Too mean t' live nor die, seemed t' me.”

”Whoa, Virgil!” John Boardman called to his gelding, who had stopped twenty feet from the carcase anyway. The odors of blood and death threw the horse into a s.h.i.+vering panic not far short of driving him off in a mad stampede back up the way he had come. The gelding calmed somewhat when his rider dismounted, knotted the reins on an upturned tree root, and stepped between him and the scene of slaughter.

”Well, I reckon ye did it,” said Boardman as he approached Old Nathan as cautiously as his dog had done a moment before. The landowner could not scent fiery rage in the cunning man's sweat, but he could watch and wonder at the knife and the sinewed, capable hands flaying a strip of hide from the bull's back.

”I rode all the way from the west boundary cut t' here,” the younger man continued-standing out of knife range. ”And Virgil s.h.i.+ed nary onct but when a pigeon flapped up in 'is face. Couldn't hev rid 'im here this time yestiddy.”

”Said I'd do it,” Old Nathan muttered, then wrinkled his face in embarra.s.sment. This boy couldn't know it, but success had never been more doubtful than in the moment it came . . . and the cunning man had no heart now for bl.u.s.ter, when his hands were red to the elbows with the blood of Spanish King.

Old Nathan did not stand up or even uncross his legs, but he paused in what he was doing to give Boardman his attention and a full answer. ”What wuz here,” he said, ”hit's gone and won't be back. Ye kin plow here er pasture, whatever you please.”

The cunning man resumed his work. He had already removed a hand's breadth of hide from Spanish King's nose to his croup. The horns were included by a strip of the poll.

”There's a thing I wonder, though,” said Boardman, squatting down on his haunches with care not to let the tails of his frock coat brush the b.l.o.o.d.y soil. ”The spring, ye see, it's closed up. The rock's cracked down all around it, and hain't no water come out at all.”

He pointed toward the creek, as if Old Nathan would not already have noticed. The slime of finely divided clay particles gleamed between stones where it was still damp. Higher up on the rocks, the mud was cracking and lifting its edges toward the naked sun.

The cunning man ignored him, making the final cuts at the base of the dead bull's tail.

”Well,” continued Boardman, disconcerted both by the older man's activity and his lack of response to the implied question, ”I reckon thet's no affair of yourn. I'll hire Bully Ransden en his team t' grub out the landslip and get the spring t' flowing agin.”

Old Nathan stood up slowly, lifting with his left hand the strop he had just cut and still holding in his right the knife which the coating of blood joined to his flesh. ”He kin grub t' h.e.l.l, I reckon,” the cunning man said, ”and he'll not strike water there. What lived through the flow uv that spring, it's gone now and the water besides.”

Boardman overbalanced as he tried to stand up and had to brace his right fingertips on the ground. His face had a queasy expression as he straightened, and he neither looked at that hand nor allowed the splayed fingers to touch one another for some moments.

”I see,” he said in a voice that made it clear he understood nothing of what he had just been told. ”Well, I reckon the Bully'll grub till he fetches water somehow.”

The cunning man began to coil the b.l.o.o.d.y strap he held, starting from the back but letting the tail stick out to one side because it was too stiff to roll. The fresh hide made a fat bundle as well as a heavy one.

The younger man waited for Old Nathan to add something further, until it became evident that he had said all he cared to say. ”Well,” began Boardman. He paused to clear his throat, starting to s.h.i.+eld the cough with his right hand. Then he thrust the member with its charnel slime back down at his side, a safe distance from his pants leg.

”Rub it in clean earth,” said Old Nathan unexpectedly. His hands were occupied, but he twisted his neck so that his beard gestured up the slope where the ground was loose and dry. ”Better'n water t' clean thet, evens if there wuz water.”

”Well,” said Boardman. ”Well, thank . . .” He trudged a few steps away, scuffing his boots to find suitable soil and clear it of ash and soot. ”Oh,” he added as if by afterthought as he turned. ”Reckon we might pay you yer price . . . though I don't know we ought to”-his gaze glinted away from Old Nathan's hard green eyes like lamp oil dripping from ice-”seeins as we don't want it put about that we wuz sacrificin' bulls 'r any sich heathen thing.”

He did not realize that Old Nathan still held the open jackknife until the cunning man carefully set the roll of hide back on the ground. The horns, connected by a strip of skin but removed from their bony cores, flopped loose.

”Don't you dare t' threaten me!” the younger man bleated. He scuttled backward two steps with his hands out in prohibition toward Old Nathan, then tumbled over a stump in mewling panic.

”What's that?” his dog barked, leaping to her feet and baring her teeth. ”Don't touch him now, don't touch him!”

Old Nathan raised the knife beside his ear and flicked the blade closed with his thumb. The blood on it and his forearm were already black. He made a motion that young Boardman's eyes could not follow, and the weapon vanished somewhere.

”Boy,” the cunning man whispered, ”we hev a bargain you and me, and ye'll keep yer part of it as I did mine.”

He paused. Though Old Nathan's face was shaded by the brim of his hat, it seemed to Boardman, looking up from his sprawl, that the old man's eyes spit green sparks like pinches of copper salts thrown in a lamp flame.

”But . . .” continued the cunning man in the same whisper which carried as if his lips were an inch from the hearer's ear, ”if I ever hear you've told anyone thet I killed a friend fer you, who hain't enough man t'

hev rubbed the scale from 'is hoofs. . . . Ifen I ever hear thet, John Boardman, I'll cut a strop offen you as I done with him, and ye'll scream while I do it.”

Old Nathan snapped his fingers above his head . . . but the sound was loud as a thunderclap, and Boardman thought he saw looming behind the cunning man the shape of a great black bull.

The Gold ”Might save a few fer the rest of us,” squawked the mockingbird as Old Nathan dropped another blackberry into his poplar-bark basket.

Old Nathan looked up from what he was doing and snagged his hand in the thorns. ”Go 'way, bird,” the cunning man grumbled as he detached himself from the brambles. ”Ye don't look ill-fed-and if ye did starve, the world 'd be a better place without your screechin'.”

He eased a half step farther. The blackberry vines grew out from the margin of the woods into his oats.

They'd need to be cut back before Old Nathan cradled the grain-but first he'd have berries.

”Tsk!” said the bird. ”Now thet's a lie if ever I heard one! Why”-he half-spread his black-and-white barred wings to examine the interlocking edges of the flight feathers-”ifen I wish to, there's no prettier tune in all the world 'n mine.”

Old Nathan grunted and collected three more of the ripe black fruit. The fingertips of his right hand were stained purple.

The strap supporting the basket over Old Nathan's left shoulder was cloth, gray linsey-woosey worn soft as soft from the days it was a s.h.i.+rt. Though the fabric didn't bite flesh the way a bail of split white oak would have done, there was nigh a gallon of blackberries in the bucket already. That, plus the weight of the long rifle in the cunning man's left hand, had about convinced him that it was time to traipse back to the cabin.

He reached out once more. The mockingbird got to the berry first and twisted his neck quickly to pluck it.

”Git on with you!” the cunning man said in irritation. He prodded with his rifle muzzle. The bird flew to the top branches of a dogwood growing up beside the cleared field.

Old Nathan scowled, mostly at himself. He hadn't needed the berry . . . and the bird was right, his best call was as pretty as anything on earth. Finer 'n a nightingale, said the English beau who'd heard both.

Purple juice squirted from both sides of the mockingbird's beak. It lifted its throat and swallowed, keeping one sharp black eye on Old Nathan.

”Tsk!” the bird repeated. ”Don't know why you carry thet old smoke-pole anyhow. You don't hunt.”

Old Nathan found a ripe berry and twisted it off the vine. He popped it into his mouth instead of the bucket. Sweet and tart together, and gritty from the tiny seeds. Better 'n the all-sweet of honey, lessen you had a perticular notion for sweet.

”Don't eat meat,” the cunning man corrected. ”Thet don't mean I choose t' find a bear in my own patch and hev nothin' to go on but a bear's good natur.”

The mockingbird trilled merrily at the ridiculous notion of a bear having a good nature. ”Tain't no bears hereabouts,” the bird sang. ”There's a couple folk up t' your cabin though, waitin' you. People's worse nor bears, most times.”

Old Nathan glanced north reflexively, in the direction of his cabin. There was nothing to be seen through the heads of his grain and the swell of the ground. Even if he'd been in a treetop like the bird, he didn't guess he'd have been able to tell much. His old eyes were sharp enough still, at a distance; but he wasn't a mockingbird for vision, no more than he was a bull for strength.

”Reckon I better go see 'em, thin,” the cunning man muttered. ”Reckon they've come t' consult me, not t'

raise trouble.”

But he checked the priming of his long rifle first; because what the mockingbird had said about humans and bears was pretty much Old Nathan's opinion too.

When the cunning man came up to the back door of his cabin, past the greetings of his two cows and the mule, the visitors were standing, but they hadn't been on their feet long. The cane-bottom rocker still tapped back and forth, and the straight chair had been moved to a corner where a man sitting in it could face out with solid logs behind him.

The man who'd gotten up from the rocker was Bascom Hardy. Hardy might not be the richest man in the county as he claimed, but he was right enough the richest man who'd made his money here.

”Earned his money” was another matter. Hardy dealt in loans and land-and in the law, to enforce those dealings.