He folded the blade and put his knife away.
The rich man trotted up the trail, but the sack’s weight slowed him. Anyhow, Old Nathan’s long legs had covered more miles in their time than Bascom Hardy had rode over. The two men reached the cabin together.
Hardy reached to close the door. The cunning man held the panel open with an arm as thin and hard as a hickory pole.
“Reckon you’ll want light,” Old Nathan said. “Lessen ye brung a tallow dip?”
The fury left the rich man’s face. “No,” he said. “I reckon the door kin stay.”
The poke was folded three times at the neck, but it had no drawstring tie. Hardy opened the end and gently fed its contents onto the table like a farmer squeezing milk from a cow’s udder.
The contents were gold, all gold but for one thin Spanish dollar.
“Oh . . .” the rich man sighed as he laid a glittering worm of coins across the surface of the rickety table.
There were twenty-dollar double eagles and every manner of other gold coins of the United States, but that was no more than half the assemblage. British guineas gleamed beside broad coins bearing the image of Maria Theresa, and the gold of a score of other nations and dynasties spilled across the table with them.
The folk who settled central Tennessee came from every part of Europe and from the world beyond. Those who had wealth brought it with them; and a part of that wealth had stuck to the fingers of Bynum Hardy. . . .
Old Nathan looked at the gold and looked at the face of Bascom Hardy; and began to pack his traps.
The rich man’s fingers moved with the precision of a clock’s escapement as he ordered the mingled coins into stacks and rows. Old Nathan rolled and tied his blanket, then gathered loose items and packed them in his budget.
He saved the sauce pan out. He’d scour that with water and sandy clay when he reached the well.
Gold chinked and whispered across the tabletop. Bascom Hardy did not look up.
“There’s the matter uv my pay,” the cunning man said.
Hardy started upward. For the first instant, his face bore the snarl of a fox surprised in a henhouse; but that passed as quickly as a lightning flash, leaving behind the stony haughtiness of a banker in his lair.
“Your pay, old feller?” Hardy said. “Show me the writing! I s’pect you know there’s no contract between us, not so’s any court ‘ud find.”
Old Nathan said nothing; only stared.
Bascom Hardy met the cunning man’s eyes, then looked away.
“I’m a generous man,” the rich man said. His fingers played across his stacks of gold, touching them as lightly as wisps of spidersilk trailing from the grass. “I wouldn’t hev it said I didn’t treat a man better thin the law requires.”
He glanced up, meeting Old Nathan’s eyes briefly, then looking down again. On the table before Hardy were eleven guineas in stacks of five and five and one. His sallow index finger touched the lone piece, then raised again to hover above the sheen of pale African gold.
With a convulsive movement, Bascom Hardy slid the Spanish dollar instead across the table toward the cunning man.
“There,” the rich man said. “Take it ‘n thankee. I’ll tell all I come to thet you’re a clever man. Thet’ll be money in yer pocket so long as ye live.”
Old Nathan took the eight-real coin between two fingers and turned it over. He set the silver piece back on the table.
“I tell ye!” Hardy said, his voice rising. “There’s no contract! You cain’t force me t’ pay you airy a cent!”
Old Nathan picked up his saddlebags and pan in one hand, then paused in the doorway to take his rifle from where he’d leaned it.
“Hain’t loaded,” he said with a tiny smile. “Don’t guess there’s ought I’ll meet t’ worry me on the road back.”
He walked out of the cabin. Hardy’s bodyguard had dismounted by the cabin. He watched the cunning man sidelong, nervously lipping his moustache.
“Wait!” Bascom Hardy called from the doorway. “Take your pay. It’s good silver!”