"Sir, is thet you?" the boy asked cautiously.
"Who en blazes d"ye think hit "ud be?" the cunning man snapped.
"Don"t know thet "un," snorted Spanish King. His big head swung toward the visitor, and one horn dipped menacingly.
"Ye"d not be here, blast ye," said Old Nathan, slapping the bull along the jaw, " "ceptin" fer him."
"Yessir," said Bowsmith. "I"m right sorry. Only, a lot uv what I seed t"night, I figgered must be thet I wuz drinkin"."
"Took long enough t" fetch me," rumbled the bull as he snuffled the night air. He made no comment about the blow, but the way he studiously ignored Bowsmith suggested that the reproof had sunk home.
"Summer"s nigh over."
He paused and turned his head again so that one brown eye focused squarely on the cunning man.
"Where wuz I, anyhow? D"ye know?"
"Not yet," said Old Nathan, stroking the bull"s sweat-matted shoulders fiercely with the curry comb.
"Pardon, sir?" said the boy who had walked into the circle of torchlight, showing a well-justified care to keep Old Nathan between him and Spanish King. Then he blinked and rose up on his bare toes to peer over the bull"s shoulder at the horse. "Why," he blurted, "thet"s the spit en image uv my horse Jen, only thet this mare"s too boney!"
"Thet"s yer Jen, all right," said the cunning man. "There"s sacked barley in the lean-to out back, effen ye want t" feed her some afore ye take her t" home. Been runnin" the woods, I reckon."
"We"re goin" back home?" asked the horse, speaking for almost the first time since she had followed Spanish King rather than be alone in the night.
"Oh, my G.o.d, Jen!" said the boy, striding past Spanish King with never a thought for the horns. "I"m so glad t" see ye!" He threw his arm around the horse"s neck while she whickered, nuzzling the boy in hopes of finding some of the barley Old Nathan had mentioned.
"Durn fool," muttered Spanish King; but then he stretched himself deliberately, extending one leg at a time until his deep chest was rubbing the sod. "Good t" be back, though," he said. "Won"t say it ain"t."
Eldon Bowsmith straightened abruptly and stepped away from his mare, though he kept his hand on her mane. "Sir," he said, "ye found my Jen, en ye brung her back. What do I owe ye?"
Old Nathan ran the fingers of his free hand along the bristly spine of his bull. "Other folk hev took care uv thet," the cunning man said as Spanish King rumbled in pleasure at his touch. "Cleared yer account, so t" speak."
The pine torch was burning fitfully, close to the ground, so that Bowsmith"s grimace of puzzlement turned shadows into a devil"s mask. "Somebody paid for me?" he asked. "Well, I niver. Friends, hit must hev been?"
Spanish King lifted himself and began to walk regally around the cabin to his pasture and the two cows who were his property.
"Reckon ye could say thet," replied Old Nathan. "They wuz ez nigh t" bein" yer friends ez anybody"s but their own."
The cunning man paused and grinned like very Satan. "In the end," he said, "they warn"t sich good friends t" themselves."
A gust of wind rattled the shingles, as if the night sky were remembering what it had heard at the Neill place. Then it was silent again.
The Box "What "m I bid what "m I bid what "m I bid?" Sheriff Tillinghast rattled out like a squirrel complaining.
"Come on, fellers, a nice piece like this could set in the finest parlor in New Orleens."
What a grotesquely carven chest like the one at auction would be doing in any kind of parlor in New Orleans was an open question, but a rough-hewn man ahead of Bully Ransden and Ellie in the crowd called, "I"ll give ye a dollar fer the blame thing!"
"Bid a dolla bid a dolla bid a dolla!" the sheriff caroled. "Who"ll gimme two gimme two?"
He paused for breath and a practiced glance around the gathering, checking for anyone who might be on the verge of raising the bid. n.o.body. . . .
The sheriff lifted the jug of whiskey from the table beside him, where his clerk marked down the winning bids against the lot numbers. "Who"ll gimme two?" the sheriff repeated. "A dram uv good wildcat fer the man as bids two dollars!"
"Two dollars!" cried a fellow down in front. He probably didn"t have the money to his name, much less in his pocket, and the auction was for ready cash . . . but the bidding was already too slow for the auctioneer to dare risk stifling the little life it had finally gathered to itself.
"Two dolla two dolla two dolla, who"ll gimma three?" prattled the sheriff.
"Ugh!" said Ellie as she hugged herself closer to Bully Ransden. "Who"d hev thet ugly ole thing in their house noways?"
The Bully grunted without enthusiasm. He was present because Ellie had wanted to come, "t" pick up a purty fer the house," and he wasn"t going to have his woman going to an auction alone. Next time, though, she could stay to home. . . .
The chest finally sold for three dollars and a half. Taxes had acc.u.mulated for many years on the Neill property, but neither Sheriff Tillinghast nor any of his predecessors had chosen to bring matters to a head while the Baron was in possession. When Baron Neill and his whole clan vanished-no one knew or cared where, so long as the Neills were gone for good-the sheriff had promptly set the tax sale.
There was a good crowd, 300 at least, swirling around the run-down cabin and sheds, but the bidding was slow. At the current rate, the auction wouldn"t bring enough to cover the acc.u.mulated tax bills.
"I don"t like this place airy bit," Ellie murmured, more to herself than to Bully. He grunted noncommittally and, though he didn"t draw away from her touch, neither did he circle her with his strong right arm.
The sheriff wiped his brow with a kerchief. His a.s.sistants were Mitch Reynolds and Jeb Cage, a pair of idlers working for the promise of whiskey after the auction. Tillinghast motioned them to bring up the next lot.
This place had an atmosphere even after the Neills themselves were gone. It made folk uneasy and weighed down the bidding. Even the sheriff, spurred by the knowledge that part of the taxes he collected went directly into his pocket by law-and another portion arrived there by other means-was unable to raise a proper enthusiasm for his task.
Tillinghast"s a.s.sistants grunted as they lifted a small travelling case containing a uniformly bound set of books. "Here we go!" the sheriff said. "Must be nigh twinty books right here, "n a real jam li"l chest besides. Who"ll start the bid at five dollas?"
"What"re the books?" someone called from the crowd.
"Hit don"t signify!" snapped Sheriff Tillinghast. "Why, they"s so many I reckon thar"s one uv airy thing a man might wish t" read!"
"They"re Frinch," Jeb Cage said unexpectedly. If Tillinghast had known the blamed drunken fool could read, he would have told Cage to keep his mouth shut on pain of losing the promised popskull.
The crowd burst out laughing. A number of the folk here spoke French from keelboat journeys down the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi to New Orleans. The vocabulary learned in the cribs of the French Quarter was not the language of Voltaire; and anyway, speaking was not the same as reading.
"Hey, Shuruff!" somebody called. "I figger you know now whur thet Frinchman disappeared on the way from Columbia back in twinny-siven, don"t ye?"
"Some of the books, they may be Frinch, I don"t know," Tillinghast said loudly in an attempt to retrieve the situation. He wiped his forehead again. "Now, this is a right fine chest. Who"ll start the bidding at a dolla a dolla a dolla, who gimme a dolla?"
"Why, I reckon the Frenchman, he give the durn thing t" Baron Neill fer free!" a heckler called from the crowd.
"Aye!" another chimed in. "An" he fed their hogs fer "em in a neighborly way too er it"s a pity!"
"Cull, I don"t reckon I want t" stay much longer," Ellie Ransden murmured to the man at her side.
She"d dragged him to the auction for a change, and in the vague hope that something pretty for the cabin might be going at the slight price she and Bullie could afford. She"d ignored who-and what-the Neills were, though. You couldn"t separate an object from its past, any more than you"d eat pork from a sow been grubbing in a grave. . . .
"I give ye a dolla," offered a farmer named Murchison. "Reckon the case, hit"s worth sompin."
Tillinghast glanced around the personalty waiting for sale. He saw his chance to keep the bidding alive by throwing in an item he hadn"t a prayer of selling by itself. He raised a cubical box some six inches to a side and placed it atop the chest of books.
"Hyar!" the sheriff called. "We"ll sweeten the pot fer all you bettin" men out thar. This here box, hit goes with the books t" boot."
Ellie felt Bully Ransden stiffen as though he had been changed to a statue of oak. She looked at him in surprise. His mouth was slightly open.
"Waal, what"s in the durned box, Shurrif?" someone demanded from the back of the crowd.
"Don"t rightly know, Windell," Tillinghast replied smugly. "Don"t rightly see how hit opens, neither.
Reckon airy man with a drap uv sportin" blood"ll want the box t" larn fer himse"f, though."
The box made no sound when it was shaken. Either it was empty or, just possibly, it wasn"t a box at all: merely a block of wood less dense than it seemed from its hard surface to be.
The cube"s base and top were smooth. A band around the center of the four sides was undercut in a pattern of vertical half-round sections. The patterning might have been sliced from lathe-turned dowels, but equally they could have been carved from the block"s surface by an expert.
There was nothing in the box, or there was no box-but the object would do to spur the bidding.
"Thet"s mine," said Bully Ransden. He pushed forward as though the people in front of him in the crowd were no more than stalks of barley sprouted ankle high. "I"ll take hit."
"Cullen?" Ellie said. She caught at the big man"s leather vest, more to stay attached than to restrain him.
He hunched his shoulders and pulled away, oblivious to her touch.
"Cull, what"re ye-"
Sheriff Tillinghast drew himself up stiffly, but he did not protest aloud. Murchison didn"t face the specter of Bully Ransden, cold-eyed and broad-shouldered, bearing down on him like a landslide. He cried, "Hey naow, what"s this? We"re biddin" fer riddy cash, we are!"
Bully reached the front of the crowd. He shrugged, clearing a s.p.a.ce with his elbows the way an angry bull sweeps his horns across the ground.
"I"ll give ye cash," Ransden said in a husky voice that ripped like a saw through pinewood. His great, calloused hand dragged out the purse hanging by a thong on the inside of his waistband. He opened the throat and poured the contents of the purse, all coin and the savings of a lifetime, out onto the clerk"s table.
Ellie gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. Her teeth bore down firmly on the first knuckle of her right index finger.
Bully Ransden took the box. Tillinghast quivered with a desire to a.s.sert his own authority, but he noticed how easily Bully"s hands spanned six inches to grip the box between thumb and forefinger.
"Waal, what"s the bid, thin, Shurrif?" Murchison demanded. "Might be I"d choose t" raise my own!"
Ransden turned and faced the farmer before Sheriff Tillinghast formed a response. "This box is mine, Murchison," he said in a voice hard as millstones.
"Three dollar and thutty-sivin cents," announced the clerk who had counted the spill of coins while the others concerned themselves with the human elements of the incident.
"Now, thet"s a right good bid, boys," Tillinghast said in false camaraderie.
"You say airy word more, Murchison," Ransden promised, "en ye won"t see t"morry dawn."
He struck his muscular right arm out to the side and raised his thumb as if he were gouging an eye.
n.o.body who had seen Bully Ransden fight doubted the truth of the threat.
The crowd swayed back from Bully Ransden the way a horse shies when he comes upon a corpse in the trail. From the rear of the gathering, a voice called, "Shurrif, hit"s time "n past ye did sompin about these carryins on!"
"There"s enough here fer you too, Jake Windell, ifen ye want it!" Ransden boomed. He held the small box against his chest protectively as he glared out over the crowd. His eyes flashed, and his long blond hair caught a sunbeam to halo him.
"Bids closed," Tillinghast said. He rapped his gavel down. "And a right good bid hit was, too. The next item, now-"
Ransden strode back through the crowd that parted for him as the waters before Moses. Ellie managed to swiggle to his side, but Ransden gave every indication of having forgotten completely about her.
"Hey, Bully!" the sheriff called. "Them books, they"re yours now too."
Ransden ignored him. After a moment, Tillinghast began calling out the next lot, a pair of European chairs on which the Neill clan had whittled with their knives.
Bully Ransden unhitched his horse and mounted. He blinked in surprise when Ellie finally caught his attention by tugging on his leg. He pulled her up onto the crupper behind him, then turned the horse"s head toward home.
"Cull, sweetest?" Ellie asked in a small voice. "What"s the box thet ye wanted hit so bad?"
Ransden carried his prize instead of giving it to the woman to carry as he would normally have done. He said nothing for a moment, then admitted, "I don"t know quite what hit is. But it war my pappy"s box en the thing he loved afore all others. And I reckon I"ll larn why soon enough."
Two cardinals were plucking pokeberries near where Old Nathan sat with his back against a warm rock overlooking the valley. "Waal, is she goin" to make trouble?" one bird demanded of other.
"How "n tarnation "ud I know?" the second bird answered in the same harsh, peevish tones; not that anybody was likely to mistake a cardinal on the best day of his life for a songster. "Don"t guess she is.
They ain"t ginerly, humans ain"t."
Old Nathan turned his head. The outcrop was in the way of him seeing anything behind him unless he stood up. If the birds hadn"t said "she," the cunning man might have been concerned enough to rise. As it was-he didn"t much care to be disturbed, but he didn"t guess any woman was likely to try for his scalp when she found him here.
From the outcrop on which Old Nathan sat, he could see the smoke of six chimneys. The valley was open and sunlit. The cleared fields had been harvested, and much of the foliage had fallen from the woodlots and thickets.
"Hmph!" said a cardinal. "Don"t even look et us. Does she think she"s sech a beauty herse"f?"
Old Nathan"s thoughts had been meandering down pathways in which alternate pasts shimmered as if behind walls of gla.s.s; untouchable now because of the decisions the cunning man had made, and the decisions fate had made for him. Some beautiful, some bleak; all void, and after seventy-odd years, all too many of them stillborn.
He didn"t want to move, but if someone was coming, he had to. He rose to his feet, straightening his lanky limbs; carefully, because he was an old man and stiff, but with a certain grace yet remaining to him.
Sarah Ransden, coming around the rock with her head lowered, gasped and drew back at the motion.
"Hain"t a bear, Miz Ransden," the cunning man said dryly. "En I was jest leavin" anyhow."
" "Sarah" was a good enough name sixty years ago, Nathan Ridgeway," the old woman snapped, embarra.s.sed at her instinctive surprise. "Reckon hit still might be."
She looked down into the valley. Sarah Ransden-Sarah Carmichael as she"d been when she and Old Nathan were children together-was a tall woman, though age had made her stoop. She had never been beautiful, though she might have been called handsome and indeed still was. Sarah hadn"t married in her youth, which was a pity; and late in life she"d wed Chance Ransden, which was far worse.
The old woman shivered and drew her blue knitted shawl more closely about her. "Hit"s goin t" storm, I reckon," she muttered.
Old Nathan frowned. The only clouds were some wisps of mare"s tails standing out against a background of high-alt.i.tude haze.
The cunning man"s index finger drew a figure in the lichen of the outcrop. He kept his eyes on the simple character as he muttered a phrase beneath his breath, then gestured Sarah"s attention upward toward the sky.