Instead of fighting, Bully Ransden launched himself at the crack between the doorpanel and the jamb, trying to reach Old Nathan’s side of the portal. His father kicked him aside with contemptuous ease.
The landscape across the threshold was a lifeless gray. The occasional quiver of movement was only heat-spawned distortion.
“Cull, he war a very divil fer strength, warn’t he, Ridgeway?” Chance Ransden said. His lips were fixed in a cruel sneer. “Whin strength warn’t enough, he bruk like a China cup. He hain’t airy more spunk thin a dog since I bruk him.”
He dug his toes into the ribs of his son. The younger man whimpered and cringed away.
Old Nathan licked his lips. “Aye, you’re jest the bold feller I recollect, Ransden. Come acrost here en do thet, why don’t ye?”
“No, old man,” Chance said, “you ain’t gitting me over whur you stand.”
He opened the portal a hand’s breadth wider. “But you kin come t’ me—ifen ye dare. And I’ll let my Cull here go across t’ thet side. A soul fer a soul. Thet’s fair, ain’t hit jest?”
He began to laugh. Behind him, Bully Ransden huddled with his arms about his knees. He eyed Old Nathan through the opening with a look of desperate appeal.
“Cullen Ransden,” the cunning man said. “Listen t’ me, boy! What is it thet ye want t’ do?”
“I want t’ get shet uv this place,” the Bully whispered. “Please God, git me shet uv here.”
He was afraid to look up as he spoke. As his father had said, Cullen Ransden had broken. There was no sign of the former man who crushed every opponent with his fists and masterful will.
“Git me out, sir,” Bully begged. “I swear, there hain’t nuthin’ I won’t do fer ye ifen ye only git me free.”
“A soul fer a soul,” Chance repeated. “I’ll let him go across, s’ long ez you pay him clear. Are ye thet much uv a man, Nathan Ridgeway?”
The cunning man shuddered with desire for what he knew he had no right to hope. The boy couldn’t know the price. Only the old man who had lived that price for so many decades could understand it—
But Cullen Ransden knew what he was paying now; and it was too much for him.
“Listen, boy,” Old Nathan said. He tried to speak gently, but his voice was full of too many emotions—hope, fear, and the anger of years. Fate had played a cruel trick on him when he was a youth younger still than Bully Ransden. “Listen. If you come through that door, you’ll live out the rist uv yer life ez an old man. As no man a’tall, by some ways uv lookin’ et it. D’ye hear me?”
Bully Ransden did not speak. His body trembled as he readied himself for another dash toward the opening—which Chance would stop as surely as his weasellike smile was cruel.
“Boy, ye won’t niver git back,” Old Nathan said with desperate emphasis. “You cain’t know what a weak, pulin’ thing ye’ll—”
Bully sprang for the portal. His father’s foot thrust him back. Chance’s long toenails gouged like a beast’s talons.
Old Nathan felt the calm of a decision made for him, in the clearest possible manner. Warn’t right, but warn’t my choice neither.
“Let him go, Chance Ransden,” he said. “I’m comin’ to ye, since thet’s what ye think thet ye want.”
Old Nathan stepped forward. The portal and the forest behind him vanished, leaving him alone on a lava plain with Chance Ransden.
* * *
The sky was pale and yellowish. The air was bitterly cold, with a tang of brimstone.
Chance Ransden stood arm’s-length distant, grinning like a neck-chained monkey. He backed slightly away when the cunning man appeared before him. Bullets had puckered Ransden’s flesh in a dozen different places, and a long pink scar snaked up the right side of his rib cage where a knife had just failed to let out his evil life; but he looked a fine, muscular specimen of a man for all that.
If he was still a man. If he had ever been a man.
“Cull, he made me a good dog, Ridgeway,” Chance said. “You’ll make me a better one.”