The Neill clan had made their bed. Now they could sleep in it with the sheriff.
* * *
“Gittin’ right hot,” said Bowsmith as he squatted and squinted at the nail he had placed on the splits according to the cunning man’s direction. “Reckon the little teensie end’s so hot hit’s nigh yaller t’ look et.”
Old Nathan gripped the trimmed stem with both hands and twisted as he folded it, so that the alder doubled at the notch he had cut in the middle. What had been a yard-long wand was now a pair of tongs with which the cunning man bent to grip the heated nail by its square head.
“Ready now,” he directed. “Remember thet you’re drawin’ out the iron druther thin bangin’ hit flat.”
“Wisht we hed a proper sledge,” the boy said. He slammed the smaller stone accurately onto the glowing nail the instant Old Nathan’s tongs laid it on the anvil stone.
Sparks hissed from the nail in red anger, though the sound of the blow was a clock! rather than a ringing crash. A dimple near the tip of the nail brightened to orange. Before it had faded, the boy struck again. Old Nathan turned the workpiece 90Sdg on its axis, and the hand-stone hit it a third time.
While the makeshift hammer was striking, the iron did not appear to change. When the cunning man’s tongs laid it back in the blue sheet of hickory flame, however, the workpiece was noticeably longer than the smith had forged it originally.
Old Nathan had been muttering under his breath as the boy hammered. They were forging the scale on the face of the nail into the fabric of the pointer, amalgamating the proteins of Jen’s hoof with the hot iron. Old Nathan murmured, “As least is to great,” each time the hammer struck. Now, as the nail heated again, the gases seemed to flow by it in the pattern of a horse’s mane.
“Cain’t use an iron sledge, boy” the cunning man said aloud. “Not fer this, not though the nail be iron hitself.”
He lifted out the workpiece again. “Strike on,” he said. “And the tip this time, so’s hit’s pinted like an awl.”
The stone clopped like a horse’s hoof and clicked like a horse’s teeth, while beside them in the chimney corner the fire settled itself with a burbling whicker.
As least is to great . . .
* * *
Eldon Bowsmith’s face was sooty from the fire and flushed where runnels of sweat had washed the soot away, but there was a triumphant gleam in his eyes as he prepared to leave Old Nathan’s cabin that evening. He held the iron pointer upright in one hand and his opposite index finger raised in balance. The tip of his left ring finger was bandaged with a bit of tow and spiderweb to cover a puncture. The cunning man had drawn three drops of the boy’s blood to color the water in which they quenched the iron after its last heating.
“I cain’t say how much I figger I’m ‘bliged t’ ye fer this,” said Bowsmith, gazing at the pointer with a fondness inexplicable to anyone who did not know what had gone in to creating the instrument.
The bit of iron had been hammered out to the length of a man’s third finger. It looked like a scrap of bent wire, curved and recurved by blows from stone onto stone, each surface having a rounded face. The final point had been rolled onto it between the stones, with the boy showing a remarkable delicacy and ability to coordinate his motions with those of the cunning man who held the tongs.
“Don’t thank me till ye’ve got yer Jen back in her stall,” said Old Nathan. His mind added, “And not thin, effen the Neills burn ye out and string ye to en oak limb.” Aloud he said, “Anyways, ye did the heavy part yerself.”
That was true only when limited to the physical portion of what had gone on that afternoon. Were the hammering of primary importance, then every blacksmith would have been a wizard. Old Nathan, too, was panting and worn from exertion; but like Bowsmith, the success he felt at what had been accomplished made the effort worthwhile. He had seen the plowhorse pacing in her narrow stall when steam rose as the iron was quenched.