Part 51 (1/2)
The rocker still nodded from the vehemence with which the old man had risen from it; back and forth, a skritch and a squeal against the wear-polished pine floor.
Hardy blinked and returned to the present moment, but his voice was husky with memory as he said, ”Bynum 'n me, we didn't git on, never had from childhood. We split Pappy's holdings when he died, and I don't mind tellin' ye that Bynum would hev cheated me on the settlement-but I was too sharp fer him!”
”You were full blood kin, you and your brother?” Old Nathan asked suddenly.
Bascom Hardy blinked again. ”Eh?” he said. ”The same mother, you mean? Thet's so, but I don't see how it sig . . .”
His voice trailed off as he heard it echoing previous words.
Old Nathan reached into the air above and behind his head. His eyes were open but fixed somewhere far beyond the solid log walls of his cabin. He felt . . . and it was there, his fingers closing on the bone-scaled jackknife as they always did when he twisted them just right.
He wasn't sure where the knife was or how he found it; but he did find it, this time and each time before, and perhaps the next time as well.
His visitor's eyes narrowed. Hardy was sure that the knife had come from Old Nathan's sleeve, or perhaps had been hidden all the time by the cunning man's long k.n.o.bby fingers . . . but it looked as though- Old Nathan handed the knife to Hardy and said, ”Take it, take it. There's no magic t' this.”
No more was there; but wherever the knife had been was cooler than the late-August air of the cabin.
Bascom Hardy frowned as he took the knife. It was an ordinary two-blade jackknife, with German-silver bolsters and scales of jigged bone. The s.h.i.+eld in the center of one yellow scale was the only thing to differentiate it from thousands of other knives brought into the territory in peddlers' packs.
The inset was true silver, which Old Nathan himself had hammered from a section of ten-cent piece and fixed to the knife by a silver rivet.
”Rub the silver plate with yer thumb 'n hand it back to me,” the cunning man directed. Hardy obeyed, but he frowned both at the brusque tone of the command and his inability to tell what the older man had in mind.
”Tell your tale, Bascom Hardy,” Old Nathan repeated quietly. He held the knife with the s.h.i.+eld facing him. When he whispered a few words under his breath, the silver became a clouded gray.
”When I heard the discounts Bynum was takin', I rid right over to him,” Hardy said. ”Fust time I'd seen him since we settled Pappy's estate, but blood's thicker 'n water.”
”And gold's thicker nor both,” the cunning man muttered, his eyes on the s.h.i.+eld.
”Lived in a little sc.r.a.pe-hole cabin not so big as this,” Bascom Hardy said scornfully. ”Bynum never knew thet if money was power, then power was money too. You got to put out to bring in, the way I do.
He was the elder by a year, but I'm the one who got the sense.”
”Some families,” said Old Nathan, ”the one child's as big a durned fool as the next.” If he had glanced up as he spoke, the comment would have been pointed, but the cunning man continued staring at the knife in his hand.
”He'd took to his bed,” Hardy continued. ”He knowed he was failin', thet was sure. Didn't own a thing no more but the cabin and a few sticks o' furniture-” The visitor's eyes danced around the room in which he sat. ”And gold. He'd sold all thet land and all them notes-of-hand for gold. And he wouldn't tell me where it was he kept the gold.”
A figure formed, on the silver s.h.i.+eld or in Old Nathan's mind; he couldn't be sure, nor did it matter. A crab-faced man, his skin stained yellow by the lingering death of his liver, lying on a corn-shuck mattress with a threadbare blanket pulled up to his throat. The man was bald and aged by sickness, so that he might as easily have been Bascom Hardy's father as brother.
”He warn't able t' care for that gold!” Bascom Hardy added bitterly. ”He warn't able t' care fer nothin, him a-layin' there on the bed and not a servant in the house. Couldn't get up to fetch a dipper of water, Bynum couldn't!”
”Hadn't any neighbors in t' he'p him, then?” Old Nathan asked.
Bascom's voice had caught when he mentioned the dipper of water. The cunning man did not need his arts to imagine the hale brother at the bedside, tempting the sick man with sight of a cool drink that could be his if only he spoke where his wealth was hidden. . . .
”Bynum didn't hold with neighbors pokin' their noses in his business,” Bascom Hardy said sharply.
Old Nathan smiled at the silver. ”No more do you,” he said.
”Thet's as may be!” his visitor snapped. ”I told you once, it's not me thet's your affair, d'ye hear?”
”Say on, Bascom Hardy,” the cunning man said.
Hardy settled back in his chair, though he couldn't have been said to relax. ”He said he'd come back and tell me of the gold whin the moon was new again,” Bascom said.
On or through the knife's silver window, Bynum's jaundiced image mimed the words Bascom spoke aloud.
” 'Come back here', that was how he put it,” Bascom continued, ”and then he died.” Hardy frowned at the memory. ”Didn't even ask fer a drink, though I had the dipper right there.”
He looked up, his brown eyes full of purpose and as hard as polished chert. ”I want you t' set up in Bynum's old cabin when the moon goes in, three nights from now. You listen t' what he says and you won't be the loser fer it, you hear me?”
Old Nathan was in a dream state where all knowledge was bounded by the blurry walls of the tunnel which linked him to the s.h.i.+eld on the knife scale. It was broad daylight in the world of the cabin, but formless gray in his mind.
Bascom Hardy's voice penetrated with difficulty to the cunning man's consciousness. The cries of birds and animals going about the business of their lives were lost in the shadows.
”Hit's been nigh three months since your brother died,” Old Nathan said. The face on the silver was changing to that of a hard, square man of middle age. His front teeth were missing. ”Who did ye put t'
setting up afore me?”
”I don't see it signifies,” Bascom Hardy grumbled. His host's blurred consciousness disturbed him, though he had no idea of what was going on behind Old Nathan's hooded eyes.
After a moment, Hardy said, ”Gray Jack it was. I have enemies, you kin see thet. He looked out fer me, the way Ned does now. I figgered when the new moon come again, Jack could spend a night in the cabin. If anybody come by t' speak-waal, he was a brave man, so he told me.”
Old Nathan's lips twisted into an expression that could have been a smile or a sneer, whichever way a man wanted to read it. ”You didn't say to him thet it was your dead brother would come t' speak, did ye?” he said. His voice echoed from the gray tunnel of his mind.
”How did I know it was?” the rich man blazed in defensive anger. ”Anyhow, Jack didn't ask me, did he?
And there's an all-fired mess of gold thet my brother hid somewhur, a mess of gold, I tell ye!”
”There's a well in front of yer brother's cabin,” Old Nathan said as images streamed across the silver and through his mind.
”There's nothin' to the well but water 'n a rock floor,” Bascom Hardy said dismissively. ”D'ye think I didn't try thet the first thing out whin Bynum died?”
”Sompin come out of the well,” the cunning man said. ”What I cain't tell, because my mirror's silver and there's things silver won't show . . . but I reckon it was yer brother.”
”Gray Jack said n.o.body come,” Bascom said harshly. ”I knowed he was lying. Shook like an aspen, he did, whin he tole me in the morning. I figger he run away soon as he seen Bynum.”
”You figger wrong,” Old Nathan said, too flat to be an argument. ”The cabin has one door only, and Bynum was to thet door afore yer man heard him. He'd hev run if he could, but he hid under the bed.
And yer brother, he et the supper and went out t' the well again.”
”There's nothing in thet well, I tell you!” Bascom shouted. ”Nor in the cabin neither! I warrant I searched it like no cabin been searched afore.”
He swallowed, then continued more calmly, ”Bynum, he's burried t' the back of the plot, not the front.
I'd hev put him in the churchyard down t' Ridley, but the Baptists wouldn't hev him. I reckon they figgered I oughta pay them-but how was I t' do thet, I ask you, whin I haven't found airy cent of Bynum's money?”
Old Nathan smiled again. ”Don't guess money was the problem, them not wanting yer t' bury yer brother,” he said. The distance from which he spoke took the edge off the words. ”What happened t'