One of the men swung the door to and rotated a peg to hold it closed. The candleflame thrashed in the breeze, then steadied to a dull, smoky light as before.
“Now . . .” said the Baron slowly, “I’ll tell ye what we’re going’ t’ do.”
Alone of the Neill clan, he was seated. Some of those spread into the farther corners could see nothing of the patriarch save his legs crossed as he sat on the stall bar. There were over twenty people in the barn, including the infants, and the faint illumination accentuated the similarity of their features.
Len, the grandson who held the bullhide, crossed his arms to squeeze the bundle closer to his chest. He spread his legs slightly, and two of his bearded, rat-faced kin stepped closer as if to defend him from the Baron’s glare.
The patriarch smiled. “We’re all goin’ t’ be stronger thin strong,” he said in a sinuous, enticing whisper. “Ye heard Simp—he’d gain strength whether er no the strop wuz over his back. So . . . I’ll deacon the spell off, en you all speak the lines out after me, standin’ about in the middle.”
He paused in order to stand up and search the faces from one side of the room to the other. “Hev I ever played my kinfolk false?” he demanded. The receipt in his left hand rustled, and the stem of his pipe rotated with his gaze. Each of his offspring lowered his or her eyes as the pointer swept the clan.
Even Len scowled at the rolled strop instead of meeting the Baron’s eyes, but the young man said harshly, “Who’s t’ hold the hide, thin? You?”
“The hide’ll lay over my back,” Baron Neill agreed easily, “en the lot uv you’ll stand about close ez ye kin git and nobody closer thin the next. I reckon we all gain, en I gain the most.”
The sound of breathing made the barn itself seem a living thing, but no one spoke and even the sputter of the candle was audible. At last Mary Beth, standing hipshot and only three-quarters facing the patriarch, broke the silence with, “You’re not ez young ez ye onct were, Pa. Seems ez if the one t’ git the most hed ought t’ be one t’ be around t’ use hit most.”
Instead of retorting angrily, Baron Neill smiled and said, “Which one, girl? Who do you pick in my place?”
The woman glanced around her. Disconcerted, she squirmed backward, out of the focus into which she had thrown herself.
“He’s treated us right,” murmured another woman, half-hidden in the shadow of the post which held the candle. “Hit’s best we git on with the business.”
“All right, ol’ man,” said Len, stepping forward to hold out the strop. “What er ye waitin’ on?”
“Mebbe fer my kin t’ come t’ their senses,” retorted the patriarch with a smile of triumph.
Instead of snatching the bullhide at once, Baron Neill slid his cold pipe into the breast pocket of his coat, then folded the receipt he had taken from Bowsmith and set it carefully on the endpost of the stall.
Len pursed his lips in anger, demoted from central figure in the clan’s resistance to the Baron back to the boy who had been ordered to hold the bullhide. The horns, hanging from the section of the bull’s coarse poll which had been lifted, rattled together as the young man’s hands began to tremble with emotion.
Baron Neill took off his frock coat and hung it from the other post supporting the bar on which he had waited. Working deliberately, the Baron shrugged the straps of his galluses off his shoulders and lowered his trousers until he could step out of them. His boots already stood toes-out beside the stall partition. None of the others of the clan were wearing footgear.
“Should we . . . ?” asked one of the men, pinching a pleat of his shirt to finish the question.
“No need,” the Baron said, unbuttoning the front of his own store-bought shirt. “Mebbe not fer me, even. But best t’ be sure.”
One of the children started to whine a question. His mother hushed him almost instantly by clasping one hand over his mouth and the other behind the child’s head to hold him firmly.