“Well . . .” Bowsmith murmured, turning his head slowly in his survey. He had expected to feel awe, and lacking that, he did not, his tongue did not know quite how to proceed. Then, on the wall facing the fireplace, he finally found something worthy of amazed comment. “Well . . .” he said, pointing to the strop of black bullhide. The bull’s tail touched the floor, while the nose lifted far past the rafters to brush the roof peak. “What en tarnation’s thet?”
“Bull I onct hed,” Old Nathan said gruffly, answering the boy as he might not have done with anyone who was less obviously an open-eyed innocent.
“Well,” the boy repeated, this time in a tone of agreement. But his brow furrowed again and he asked, “But how come ye keep hit?”
Old Nathan grimaced and, seating himself in the rocker, pointed Bowsmith to the upright chair. “Set,” he ordered.
But there was no harm in the lad, so the older man explained, “I could bring him back, I could. Don’t choose to, is all, cuz hit’d cost too much. There’s a price for ever’thing, and I reckon that ‘un’s more thin the gain.”
“Well,” said the boy, beaming now that he was sure Old Nathan wasn’t angry with him after all.
He sat down on the chair as directed and ran a hand through his hair while he paused to collect his thoughts. Bowsmith must be twenty-five or near it, but the cunning man was sure that he would halve his visitor’s age if he had nothing to go by except voice and diction.
“Ma used t’ barber me ‘fore she passed on last year,” the boy said in embarrassment renewed by the touch of his ragged scalp. “Mar’ Beth Neill, she tried the onct, but hit wuz worser’n what I done.”
He smiled wanly at the memory, tracing his fingers down the center of his scalp. “Cut me bare, right along here,” he said. “Land but people laughed. She hed t’ laugh herself.”
“Yer land lies hard by the Neill clan’s, I b’lieve?” the cunning man said with his eyes narrowing.
“Thet’s so,” agreed Bowsmith, bobbing his head happily. “We’re great friends, thim en me, since Ma passed on.” He looked down at the floor, grinning fiercely, and combed the fingers of both hands through his hair as if to shield the memories that were dancing through his skull. “Specially Mar’ Beth, I reckon.”
“First I heard,” said Old Nathan, “thet any uv Baron Neill’s clan wuz a friend to ary soul but kin by blood er by marriage . . . and I’d heard they kept marriage pretty much in the clan besides.”
Bowsmith looked up expectantly, though he said nothing. Perhaps he hadn’t understood the cunning man’s words, though they’d been blunt enough in all truth.
Old Nathan sighed and leaned back in his rocker. “No matter, boy, no matter,” he said. “Tell me what it is ez brings ye here.”
The younger man grimaced and blinked as he considered the request, which he apparently expected to be confusing. His brow cleared again in beaming delight and he said, “Why, I’m missin’ my plowhorse, and I heard ye could find sich things. Horses what strayed.”
Lives next to the Neill clan and thinks his horse strayed, the cunning man thought. Strayed right through the wall of a locked barn, no doubt. He frowned like thunder as he considered the ramifications, for the boy and for himself, if he provided the help requested.
“The Bar’n tried t’ hep me find Jen,” volunteered Bowsmith. “Thet’s my horse. He knows about findin’ and sichlike, too, from old books. . . .” He turned, uncomfortably, to glance at the volumes on the shelf there.
“I’d heard thet about the Baron,” said Old Nathan grimly.
“But it wuzn’t no good,” the boy continued. “He says, the Bar’n does, must hev been a painter et Jen.” He shrugged and scrunched his face up under pressure of an emotion the cunning man could not identify from the expression alone. “So I reckon thet’s so . . . but she wuz a good ol’ horse, Jen wuz, and it don’t seem right somehows t’ leave her bones out in the woods thet way. I thought maybe . . . ?”