As the cunning man pictured the knife in his mind, his empty hand curled and he reached forward. He saw his fingers closing over the warm bone and cooler metal mountings . . . and when after a moment he felt the knife in his hand also, he withdrew it and opened his eyes. There the knife was, just as it should be.
Old Nathan let out the breath he had been holding unconsciously and set down the soup plate so that he could open the smaller blade. There was a spot of rust on it, which he polished off on his trousers. No help for that: good steel rusted, there were no two ways about it.
"King!" the old man called. "Come over here!"
The bull twisted his forequarters with the speed and grace of a cat taking a mockingbird from the air.
"Says who?" he snorted.
"Mind this, d.a.m.n ye, or we"ll go nowhere!" the man retorted in exasperation. As bad as the Boardman boy. n.o.body"d let Old Nathan get along with his business without an argument.
Grumbling threats that were directed as much against the world as they were the cunning man specifically, King strode deliberately to the fence and his master. Flies glittered against his hide, many of them clumped in chitinous rosettes instead of scattering evenly over the whole expanse. There was a matting of sweat on the bull"s withers from antic.i.p.ation rather than present exercise, and his tail lashed to emphasize the swagger of his hindquarters.
"Three hairs from your poll," said Old Nathan, reaching deliberately between the horns of the big animal whose muzzle bathed him in a hot sweet breath of clover. He kept a wire edge on the knife"s shorter blade, and it severed three of the coa.r.s.e hairs of King"s with no more drag than a razor would have made on so many whiskers.
"And a drop of blood from me," the cunning man continued, stepping back and grimacing at the three long hairs before he chose his location-the back of his left index finger, not the calloused pad-and p.r.i.c.ked himself with the point of the blade.
While the blood welled slowly, Old Nathan wiped the steel clean on his trousers and closed the knife.
Closing his eyes again, he mimed putting the knife away on an invisible shelf. He saw it there, saw his fingers releasing it-and they did release it, so that when he withdrew his hand and opened his eyes, the well-kept tool was nowhere to be seen.
There was enough blood now on the back of the finger which pressed the bull hairs against his thumb.
Sighing, Old Nathan settled himself on his haunches in front of the bowl he had placed on the ground.
One of his splayed knees touched the lowest rail of the fence, giving him a little help in balancing when his mind had to be elsewhere.
Spanish King made a gurgling sound in his throat as he watched over the fence, and his breath ruffled the surface of the water. That would be beneficial to the process, if it made any difference at all. Old Nathan was never sure how the things he did came about. Some things-techniques-felt right at a given time but the results did not always seem to require the same words and movements.
The cunning man dipped the tips of his left index finger and thumb in the shallow basin and whisked the bull hairs through the water. The blood on the back of his finger trailed off in a curve like a sickle blade, dispersing into a mist too thin to have color.
Old Nathan closed his eyes, visualizing the soup plate in which now drifted the blood and the hairs he had released. The water in his mind clouded abruptly-first red as blood, then red as fire, and finally as white as the sun frozen in a desert sky.
The white flare did not clear but rather coalesced like curds forming in cultured milk. The color shrank and gained density, becoming a great piebald bull that romped in a valley cleared so recently that smoke still curled from heaped brush. Tree stumps stood like grave markers for the forest which had covered the ground for millennia.
The bull"s hide was white with a freckling, especially on the face and forequarters, of black and russet spots. Its horns curved sharply forward from above the beast"s eyes, long and sharp and as black as the Devil"s heart. The bull raised its short, powerful neck and bellowed to the sky while its hooves spaded clods from the loam.
The vision shattered. Spanish King was bellowing in fury, rattling the shakes with which the cabin was roofed. Old Nathan shivered back to present awareness, flinging out his arms to save him from toppling backward.
For an instant, the real soup plate trembling on the ground seemed as full of blood as the one which the cunning man had imagined.
King stamped through a narrow circle, feinting toward invisible foes. His own horns flared more broadly from his head than did those of the piebald giant in the vision, but Old Nathan would not have sworn that King"s weapons were really longer from base to point.
The bull calmed, though with the restive calm of a high-mettled horse prepared to race. He paced back to the fence, raising his hooves high at each step, and demanded, "Where is he? Where is that one?"
Old Nathan stood, aiding himself with one hand on the nearest fencepost. Before answering, he stooped to pick up the soup plate and sluice the hairs and water from it. There was no trace of blood, only one drop spread through a pint. The cat had vanished again also, whether through whim, King"s antics, or what he had seen Old Nathan conjure in the water.
"What in d.a.m.nation!" shouted John Boardman as he burst through the back doorway of the cabin. His dog loped ahead of him and yapped, "A fight, is there a fight?"
"I don"t know we want any truck with this, big feller," said the cunning man to his bull. Memory of the beast glimpsed on the newground was blurring already, but though the details faded, they left a core of brutal power that could not be forgotten.
"What in d.a.m.n-nation are ye about?" the visitor repeated as he paused just outside the cabin. "I never in all my born days heard a bellerin" like thet!"
"Why, old man, I"ll knock this poor farm t" flinders ifen you cross me!" roared Spanish King, and suited action to his words with a sweep of his head. Old Nathan jerked his hand away just in time. A horn struck the stout cedar fencepost and skewed it so badly from its socket in the soil that the top rails fell to the ground.
"G.o.d"n blazes!" cried the Boardman boy as he hopped back within the st.u.r.dy cabin.
"King, d.a.m.n ye!" Old Nathan shouted as he slapped the bull hard on his flaring nostrils. "Did I say we"d not go? D"ye think I care ifen yer neck"s broke fer yer foolishness?"
"Hmph!" snorted the bull as he calmed again. "See thet you"re straight with me, old man." He walked away from the bedraggled fence, throwing his head back once over his powerful shoulder to repeat, "See thet you are."
No lack of d.a.m.n fools in the world, thought the cunning man as he trudged back to the house and his visitor. Human d.a.m.n fools and otherwise.
"Oh, there"ll be a fight!" yelped the b.i.t.c.h in cheerful antic.i.p.ation of carnage. She jumped up against Old Nathan from behind, the mud on her paws icy against the bare skin above his waistband. He swatted her away awkwardly, because the dog was to his left and he did not want to break the plate he carried in that hand. The b.i.t.c.h ran back to her master and smudged his fawn-colored waistcoat as he too tried to thrust her off.
"Here, d.a.m.n ye, here," said Old Nathan to the dog in a coaxing voice as he knelt, embarra.s.sed to have lost his temper with the animal. She sprang back to him, calming somewhat as he kneaded the fur over her shoulders and prevented her from jumping further.
Boardman walked forward again. "Well?" he said, fluffing back the tails of his coat with his hands behind him. The gold chain of his watch stood out in the sunlight, as did the muddy pawprints on his vest. "Well, what am I t" do?"
"Now hush," Old Nathan said firmly to the b.i.t.c.h. He rose to his full height, topping his visitor"s average frame by a full hand"s breadth.
"I kin make it so"s ye kin plow yer newground," the cunning man went on. "If thet"s what ye want. And the cost of it to you is a hundred minted dollars."
"What?" the younger man blurted, stepping back as if his b.i.t.c.h had leaped up in his face. "Why, I paid Bully Ransden only ten to clear it, and he thought himself paid well."
"I ain"t sellin" ye forty acres, John Boardman," the cunning man replied with his jaw and black beard thrust out. "What I hev to offer is Sally Ann Hewitt, and whether er no she"s a hundred dollars value is a question ye"ll answer yerself."
"You think I cain"t pay thet," the younger man said in flat anger, meeting Old Nathan"s eyes.
"I think yer daddy kin," said the cunning man. "But it makes no matter to me, yea "r nay."
"Then ye"ll hev yer silver money," said his visitor. "Though I reckon you"re humbug, and we"ll hev that money back outen yer hide if ye fail us."
" "Us," " Old Nathan repeated with a sneer. "Oh, aye, you"d do wonders, boy. But I"ll not fail."
In the pasture behind him, Spanish King bawled a challenge to the world.
When Old Nathan saw him, Bully Ransden was plowing on a hilltop a furlong from the road. Unlike horses, bulls have no certain gait between ambling and a panic rush, so the younger man easily had time to outspan his plow oxen and trot down the hill. He met Old Nathan and King in front of the cabin Ransden shared with a black-haired woman. The homeplace, where Ransden"s mother still lived, was a quarter mile away on the far side of the acreage.
"So-o-o . . ." said Bully Ransden, arms akimbo and his legs spread to put one boot just within each of the road"s single pair of wagon ruts. "Where d"ye think you wuz goin", old man?"
"You know me, Cullen Ransden," Old Nathan replied. He laid an arm over the neck of Spanish King and murmured, "Whoa, now, old friend, we"ll have us t" drink and a bit uv rest here."
He was a fine figure to look at, was Bully Ransden. He stood as tall as Old Nathan and supported with his broad shoulders a bulk of muscle that the older man could never have matched at the height of his physical powers long decades before.
Ransden"s long hair was bright blond, the sole legacy he had received from the father who had beaten the boy and the boy"s mother indiscriminately . . . until the night the eleven-year-old Cullen proved that fury and an axe handle made him a better man than his father. The elder Ransden had bolted into the night, streaming blood and supplications, never to be seen since in the county.
Cullen Ransden had now spent a decade reinforcing the lesson he had taught himself that night: that his will and his strength would gain him aught in the world that he wanted. All the county knew him as Bully, but no one as yet had shown that wisdom of his to be false.
"Oh, I know the humbug what skins fools worse"n a Yankee peddler," Ransden said in mock agreement.
He took a step forward and Old Nathan stepped also, halving the distance between them to little more than the reach of a fist. It was a dangerous choice, putting his back to the horns of Spanish King. If he did not step forward, however, it would look as though he were trying to shelter in the bull"s strength-a challenge that Ransden would likely meet with a blow of his ox-driving whip to King"s nose.
Besides, Old Nathan was as little willing to crouch away from trouble as the bull was, or Bully Ransden.
"Well, where"s the water, then?" King grumbled as he sidled to the hitching post before Ransden"s door and began rubbing his black hide on it.
"I"d thank"ee fer a bucket uv water, as the day"s a hot"un," said the cunning man. His shirt of homespun wool, gray where it was dry, was black with sweat in the middle of the back and beneath his armpits. As he stood, he lifted his hat and fanned himself with it, smelling nervousness and anger in his own perspiration.
"Cull, what-" called a clear voice.
As both men turned to look over the back of Spanish King, a woman appeared at the open door of the cabin. She wore a gingham dress over a shift, and the body beneath was so youthfully taut that it had shape despite the loose garments. Her hair was black and might have fallen to her ankles had it not been caught up with pins and combs. Amazingly, it was clean and shone like strands of burnished metal when the sunlight past the edge of the porch touched it.
"Well," she continued, "what do we hev?"
"We got the liar as says he"ll plow Boardman"s newground when I couldn"t," said Bully Ransden. He glanced back at the cunning man with the eye of a butcher for a hog squealing in the chute. "It"s what he does, milk old women and boys with no more b.a.l.l.s "n old women."
"Ransden, leave this be afore-" Old Nathan began, his mind white with the fear of the thing Bully was about to say and what would come when he replied.
"Ye know, Ellie," Bully Ransden continued, still astraddle the center of the path, "his own b.a.l.l.s, they wuz shot off by the Redcoats at New Or-leens."
"Did your mother tell you that, Cullen Ransden?" Old Nathan said softly. His skin formed layers, hot and p.r.i.c.kly on the outside while the inner surface froze against his flesh as hard as the ice on which Satan shivered in h.e.l.l. "And did she tell ye besides how thet came t" be her business?"
The younger man could have been blasted by a thunderbolt without the hair p.r.i.c.kling up more sharply on his head and arms. He struck with the suddenness of reflex and the skill of long years" practice with the blacksnake whip in his hand.
It was a measure of what lay at Ransden"s core that the target his instinct chose was the ton of muscle that was Spanish King rather than the spa.r.s.e old man who looked unable to stand the very wind of a blow.
The whip, long enough to drive a team of four span, curled out and around Old Nathan as if it were really the snake its braided leather mimicked. Ransden could flick a fly from an oxen"s ear without touching the beast itself, but this time he aimed to cut. The crackling end of the whip touched Spanish King at the base of the tail, where the hair gave way to the bare skin of the bull"s a.n.u.s.
Rather than bolting like a startled cow or an ox broken to the whip and yoke, Spanish King reacted as a predator might have. The bull spun, questing for the presumed horsefly with a clop of his square incisors.
Old Nathan ducked and lurched sideways to avoid the bull"s sweeping horns. The four-inch hickory hitching post that Spanish King swatted in the other direction with his haunches broke off even with the ground and clubbed Ellie on its way to thudding against the cabin"s log forewall.
King danced back, hooves splaying, as his eyes searched for the horsefly which had escaped him at the first attempt. "When I find her!" the bull bellowed, referring to the horsefly. "When I find her!" His tail lashed. Blood welling from the whip-cut began to dribble along the appendage in dark red streaks.
As the old man and the woman sprawled, Bully Ransden dropped his whip. He lunged for the porch but had to back hastily away as Spanish King stepped between, tossing his head over either of his shoulders in turn.
The cunning man took a pinch of dust between his right thumb and forefinger as he lay on his opposite hand and hip. "Ransden!" he called.
The younger man glanced instinctively toward his name. Old Nathan blew the dust at his face, though at four yards distance none could actually have reached the Bully. He sprang back anyway and fell, clutching his eyes and shouting, "I"m blind, d.a.m.n ye!"
The cunning man scrambled to his feet, sweeping up the hat he had dropped in dodging. His bull was pacing smartly down the road, striding at a rate half again that of his normal walk. He kept switching his tail and looking behind him, searching for the horsefly he was still convinced had stabbed him.
Old Nathan followed the bull at a rate just enough short of a trot to save his dignity. Ransden was up on his feet, thrusting his arms out before him as he stumbled in the direction of his cabin.
"Ellie?" he called, his voice rising in fear on the second syllable. He would regain his sight within minutes, perhaps less, but all he could know for the moment was that his eyes felt as if they had been plucked out and their sockets filled with sand.
Ransden"s black-haired woman was gripping the doorjamb with one hand to help pull herself upright, while the other hand clamped against her side where the hickory post had struck. Under other circ.u.mstances, Old Nathan might have helped her-but under other circ.u.mstances, King wouldn"t have bolted, and the cunning man had no wish to be present when Bully Ransden found he could see again.
For that matter, there were men not so touchy as the Bully who would sooner see their woman die than watch another man lay hands on her. The couple would do well enough without the cunning man"s ministrations, and Old Nathan himself would do far better by getting out of the way.
The road curved, skirting the base of the hill which Ransden had been plowing, so by the time Old Nathan caught up with his bull they were out of sight of the cabin. A creek, nameless and at present shallow, notched the road and Spanish King stood there fetlock-deep in the water, drinking. He ignored the cunning man"s approach.
There was no ford proper, since the stream could be stepped across at any point save when it was in spate-and then it became uncrossable for its full length. The steep banks were a barrier to most beasts and all vehicles, so here, where the road crossed, they had been trampled down by use with little intention toward the road"s long-term improvement.
Rather than squelch through the mud into which the main path had been churned, Old Nathan gripped the stem of one of the mimosas which grew as thick as a man"s arm. He lowered himself cautiously down the bank to the smooth-washed stones of the streambed. Only then did King look up at him and grunt, "Well?" from lips that still s...o...b..red the water he had been drinking.
There was neither anger nor skittishness in the bull"s tone. He had forgotten the whip-cut or filed it at the almost instinctual level which warned that horseflies bit like coals from the floor of h.e.l.l.
Bully Ransden would likely be less forgetful about the incident, but not even hindsight offered the cunning man a view of a more desirable resolution. Ransden could be a bad enemy, if he chose; but so could Old Nathan, the Devil"s Master. Perhaps the boy would let bygones be bygones.
"Come on, thin, big feller," said the cunning man, embracing the bull"s humped shoulders before readjusting the slung panniers holding a day"s food for both of them. "Savin" ye"d rather go back home thin go on with all this?"
"Humph!" Spanish King snorted. He gathered himself and sprang lightfootedly out of the stream, his forehooves planted solidly on the bank top and his hind legs crossing them neatly in the same motion, like the feet of a horse at a gallop. "I"ll fight that one. Sure as the sun rises."
And he bellowed a challenge that silenced for a fearful moment the birds whose chattering made the woods a living place.
"I mis...o...b..ed you," said John Boardman. His saddle blanket was folded as a pad at the base of an oak tree, but he had been pacing restively for some time before King and Old Nathan appeared around the bend in the road. "It"s late in the day, and I thought ye might not come."
"Said I would," Old Nathan replied, wrinkling his nose in disgust at a man who was surprised when another man kept his word. "Long about evenin", I said." He waggled his beard toward the west, where the sun would have been visible near the horizon were it not for the forest that stretched in all directions from the winding road.
"Well, I thought-" temporized Boardman as he tried to find some useful way to continue the sentence.
One of his hands held the heavy saddlebag he had carried even as he paced alone on the road. His free hand played with the b.u.t.t of the six-barreled pistol thrust between his belt and waistband instead of loose in his pocket. His gelding tugged its reins to browse more leaves from the sapling to which it was tethered.
"Well, I brought the money," Boardman began again, hefting the leather bag, "but you"ll not have it till ye"ve done as ye claim. Laid the curse."
Old Nathan snorted. He and Spanish King had continued to saunter forward as the men talked. The bull"s cleft hooves spread under his weight at every step, and he placed them with greater care than would a horse shod against the stones which rain and traffic had brought to the surface of the narrow road. Despite his size, King"s step was so quiet that his approach had gone unremarked by Boardman who had been awaiting it desperately.
"Oh, I guess ye"ll pay for the work I do ye," the cunning man said. He paused, his arm across the back of Spanish King whose tail-tip flicked like a pendulum. "I don"t guess yer sech a fool as ye"d face the powers I"d bring onto yer head ifen ye played me false."
That was more bl.u.s.ter than not. Mere money was unlikely to be worth the trouble it would take to bring a major sending onto a man as well protected as the wealth and servants of Boardman"s father made the boy. Nonetheless, the threat was useful . . . and not wholly empty. Old Nathan flew hot frequently, and the anger puffed away like flame from thistledown. But he was capable of cold rages also; and they, like glaciers, ground inexorably to a conclusion.
"Well," said Boardman, "I"ll take ye into the valley."
He began to resaddle the gelding. It was a comment on his focus and nervousness that he tried to spread the saddle blanket with one hand for some moments before he thought to set down the satchel with the money. Old Nathan waited, his strong, k.n.o.bby fingers ma.s.saging the bull"s hide while Spanish King rumbled in pleasure and antic.i.p.ation.
The track to Big Bone Valley meandered a quarter mile from the public road, through forest which had remained unaffected by white settlement of the region. Custom and Boardman"s deed both gave him the right to lay out a fifteen-foot cartway through the intervening land, the waterless side of a tilted rockshelf.
Instead, someone-perhaps Bully Ransden-had hacked down so straight a path through the spa.r.s.e undergrowth that Old Nathan only with difficulty could walk abreast of his bull.