He opened the front door wider to leave. The motion pulled a breeze that scattered a slush of gray pinfeathers across the cabin floor. It was always amazing to see how many feathers a bird had, even a small bird.
“He had his say,” muttered the cat past a mouthful of titmouse, ” ‘n I had mine.”
Old Nathan scowled—at the cat’s ruthlessness, and at the image of that same set of mind which he knew was within his own soul.
* * *
“Thur’s horses waitin’ up around the next bend,” said the mule as his shoes click-clicked down the loose stones of the sloping trail. “Thur’s men with ’em too, I reckon.”
“Thankee,” said Old Nathan.
He shifted his flintlock so that it lay crossways to the saddle horn, not slanting forward. The undergrowth springing from this rocky clay soil was open enough that the long barrel wouldn’t catch; and it was neither polite nor safe to offer a stranger his first view of you over a rifle’s muzzle.
“Thet mean we’re goin’ t’ set a piece, thin?” the mule asked.
“I reckon it does,” the cunning man agreed.
The mule blew its lips out. ” ‘Bout damn time,” it muttered.
It was a good beast. Always grumbling, but no worse than any other mule; and always willing to do its job, though never happy about it.
Bascom Hardy scrambled to his feet when he saw Old Nathan mounted on the mule. His bodyguard Ned was a step slower, but that was because the half-breed’s first thought was to point the musket toward the sudden sound. Ned had a hard man’s instincts, but he warn’t sharp enough nor quick enough t’ be a problem if he decided to try conclusions at the small end of a rifle.
Folk hereabouts hed got soft. Back in the days when he followed Colonel Sevier to King’s Mountain, then men were men.
The hillside had never been cut for planting. Bynum Hardy’s cabin was just out of sight among pines and the dogwoods which had grown up where the narrow clearing let in the sun. Old Nathan knew the building was there, though, because he’d seen it in the silver shield of his knife. The well that he’d seen also, just downslope of the dwelling, set right there next the trail where Bascom Hardy and his man waited.
Hardy tugged out his watch, gold like the chain on which it hung, and flipped up the cover of its hunter case. “I figgered I’d come t’ make sure you kept your bargain,” he said irritably. “I’d come t’ misdoubt thet you would.”
“You keep yer britches on,” snapped the cunning man. A feller who used a watch t’ tell time in broad daylight spent too much of his life with money in tight-hedged rooms. . . . “I said I’d be here, ‘n here I am—”
He looked pointedly up at the sky. The sun was below the pine-fringed rim of the notch, but the visible heavens were still bright blue “—well afore time.”
“Could use a drink,” the mule grumbled. It kept walking on, toward the well. There wasn’t a true spring house, but the well had a curb of mud-chinked fieldstones and a shelter roof from which half the shingles had blown or broken.
“Us too,” whickered Bascom Hardy’s walking horse, tied by his reins to a trailside alder. He jerked his head and made the alder sway. “Didn’t neither of ’em water us whin we got here, ‘n thet was three hours past.”
“Lead yer horses t’ me,” Old Nathan grunted as he swung off the mule. “I’ll water the beasts like a decent man ought.”
The curb’s chinking was riddled with wasp burrows. The well rope had seen better days, but it was sound enough and the wooden bucket was near new. The old one must uv rotted clean away, for a man as tight as Bynum Hardy to replace it.
Old Nathan looked down into the well.
“There’s nothing there, I tell ye,” Hardy said. A tinge of color in his voice suggested the rich man wasn’t fully sure he spoke the truth—and that it might be more than callous disregard for his horse which kept him away from the well.