“What’s hap’nin?” Ellie cried. Firelight gleamed on her fear-widened eyes. “What is hit?”
Old Nathan lifted the lamp chimney and shook it, spilling the flies unharmed from their glass prison. Mating complete for their lifetimes, they buzzed from the cabin on separate paths.
The trousers on the table quivered again. The tip of a barbel peeked from the waistband.
“Hain’t airy thing hap’nin’ now,” the cunning man said. “I figgered thet’s how you’d choose hit t’ be.”
Bully Ransden leaped into the paddock and mounted his horse bareback. He kicked at the gate bars, knocking them from their supports.
Madame Taliaferro appeared at the door, breathing in great gasps. The peignoir she wore was so diaphanous that with the lamplight behind her she appeared to be clothed in fog. She stared in horror at Bully Ransden.
Riding with nothing but his knees and a rope halter, Ransden jumped his horse over the remaining gate bars and galloped out of the mirror’s field. Taliaferro and her black servant watched him go.
“I’ll be off, now,” Old Nathan said. There was nothing of what he’d brought to Ransden’s cabin that he needed to take back. “I don’t choose t’ meet Bully on the road, though I reckon he’ll hev things on his mind besides tryin’ conclusions with me.”
He was shivering so violently that his tongue and lips had difficulty forming the words.
“But what’s the matter with Cull?” Ellie Ransden begged.
“Hain’t nothin’ the matter!” Old Nathan gasped.
He put a hand on the doorframe to steady himself, then stepped out into the night. Had it been an ague, he could have dosed himself, but the cunning man was shaking in reaction to the powers he had summoned and channeled . . . successfully, though at a price.
Ellie followed him out of the cabin. She gripped Old Nathan’s arm as he fumbled in one of the mule’s panniers. “Sir,” she said fiercely, “I’ve a right to know.”
“Here,” the cunning man said, thrusting a tissue-wrapped package into her hands. “Yer Cull, hit niver was he didn’t love ye. This is sompin’ he put back t’ hev Rance Holden wrap up purty-like. I told Rance I’d bring it out t’ ye.”
The girl’s fingers tugged reflexively at the ribbon, but she paused with the packet only half untied. The moon was still beneath the trees, so there was no illumination except the faint glow of firelight from the cabin’s doorway. She caressed the lines of the ivory comb through the tissue.
“I reckon,” Ellie said deliberately, “Cullen fergot ’cause of all the fishin’ he’s been after this past while.” She tilted up her face and kissed Old Nathan’s bearded cheek, then stepped away.
The cunning man mounted his mule and cast the reins loose from the rail. He was no longer shivering.
“Yer Cull, he give me a bullhead this forenoon,” he said.
“We goin’ home t’ get some rest, naow?” the mule asked.
“Git up, mule,” Old Nathan said, turning the beast’s head. To Ellie he went on, “T’night, I give thet fish back t’ him; an fer a while, I put hit where he didn’t figger t’ find sech a thing.”
As the mule clopped down the road at a comfortable pace, Old Nathan called over his shoulder, “Sure hell thet warn’t whut Francine Taliaferro figgered t’ see there!”
THE FOOL
“Now jest ignore him,” said the buck to the doe as Old Nathan turned in the furrow he was hoeing twenty yards ahead of them.
“But he’s looking at us,” whispered the doe from the side of her mouth. She stood frozen, but a rapidly pulsing artery made shadows quiver across her throat in the evening sun.
“G’wan away!” called Old Nathan, but his voice sounded half-hearted even in his own ears. He lifted the hoe and shook it. A hot afternoon cultivating was the best medicine the cunning man knew for his aches . . . but the work did not become less tiring because it did him good. “Git, deer!”
“See, it’s all right,” said the buck as he lowered his head for another mouthful of turnip greens.
Old Nathan stooped for a clod to hurl at them. As he straightened with it the deer turned in unison and fled in great floating bounds, their heads thrust forward.