Old Nathan broke eye contact. He shook his head slightly and said, “No, I won’t do thet.”
“But ye could?” Ellie said sharply. The complex of emotions flowing across her face hardened into anger and determination. The woman who was wife to Bully Ransden could either be soft as bread dough or as strong and supple as a hickory pole. There was nothing in between—
And there was nothing soft about Ellie Ransden.
“I reckon ye think I couldn’t pay ye,” she said. “Waal, ye reckon wrong. There’s my combs—”
She tossed her head; the three combs of translucent tortoiseshell, decorative but necessary as well to hold a mass of hair like Ellie’s, quivered as they caught the light.
“Rance Holden, he’d buy thim back fer stock, I reckon. Mebbe thet Modom Francine—” the viciousness Ellie concentrated in the words would have suited a mother wren watching a blacksnake near her chicks “—’ud want thim fer her hair. And there’s my Pappy’s watch, too, thet Cullen wears now. Hit’ll fetch somethin’, I reckon, the case, hit’s true gold.”
She swallowed, chin regally high—but looking so young and vulnerable that Old Nathan wished the world were a different place than he knew it was and always would be.
“So, Mister Cunning Man,” Ellie said. “I reckon I kin raise ten silver dollars. Thet’s good pay fer some li’l old charm what won’t take you nothin’ t’ make.”
“I don’t need yer money,” Old Nathan said gruffly. “Hain’t thet. I’m tellin’ ye, hit’s wrong t’ twist folks around thet way. Ifen ye got yer Cullen back like thet, ye wouldn’t like what it was ye hed. An’ I ain’t about t’ do thet thing!”
“Thin you better go on off,” Ellie said. “I’m no sort uv comp’ny t’day.”
She flung herself onto the bed, burying her face in the quilt. She was sobbing.
Old Nathan bit his lower lip as he stepped out of the cabin. Hit warn’t the world I made, hit’s jest the one I live in.
“Leastways when ye go fishin’,” the mule grumbled from the porch rail, “thur’s leaves t’ browse.”
Wouldn’t hurt him t’ go see Madame Taliaferro with his own eyes, he reckoned.
Inside the cabin the girl cried, “Oh why cain’t I jes’ die, I’m so miser’ble!”
* * *
For as little good as he’d done, Old Nathan guessed he might better have stayed to home and saved himself and his mule a ride back in the dark.
The sky was pale from the recently set sun, but the road was in shadows. They would be deeper yet by the time the cunning man reached the head of the track to his cabin. The mule muttered a curse every time it clipped a hoof in a rut, but it didn’t decide to balk.
The bats began their everlasting refrain, “Dilly, dilly, come and be killed,” as they quartered the air above the road. Thet peepin’ nonsense was enough t’ drive a feller t’ distraction—er worse!
Just as well the mule kept walking. This night, Old Nathan was in a mood to speak phrases that would blast the bones right out of the durned old beast.
Somebody was coming down the road from Oak Hill, singing merrily. It took a moment to catch actual phrases of the song, “. . . went a-courtin’, he did ride . . .” and a moment further to identify the voice as Bully Ransden’s.
“. . . an’ pistol by his side, uh-huh!”
Ransden came around the next bend in the trail, carrying not the bottle Old Nathan expected in his free hand but rather a stringer of bullheads. He’d left the long cane pole behind somewhere during the events of the evening.
“Hullo, mule,” Ransden’s horse whinnied. “Reckon I ate better’n you did t’night.”
“Hmph,” grunted the mule. “Leastways my master ain’t half-shaved an’ goin’ t’ ride me slap inter a ditch ‘fore long.”
“Howdy, feller,” Bully Ransden caroled. “Ain’t it a fine ev’nin’?”
Ransden wasn’t drunk, maybe, but he sure-hell didn’t sound like the man he’d been since he grew up—which was about age eleven, when he beat his father out of the cabin with an ax handle.