OLD NATHAN(16)

The cabin had few amenities, though they were all the owner required. Two chairs—the rocker to set in, and the straight chair by the table for when he ate, wrote, or did figures. Chests along one sidewall with stored clothing and a handful of personal items—nothing that would tempt a thief. On the table, an alcohol lamp; and on the chimney board above the walk-in fireplace, five fine porcelain cups, a plate, and a few knickknacks of less obvious purpose.

Hardy focused again on the cunning man's hot green eyes. "Waal," he said, "I guess you're a man wouldn't be feared of a spook, now, would ye?"

He thought nothing of the sort. His voice cajoled, encouraging Old Nathan to create a fearless self-image which would agree to do whatever the rich man wanted done—but feared to do himself.

"Say yer piece," Old Nathan said flatly. The chair rocked minutely beneath him, scritch-scritch; the high pine back moving no more than an inch at a stroke.

A pair of titmice, blue-gray with a black tip to their crests, flew in the cabin's open front door and perched for a moment—one on the underside of a roof pole and the other on the muzzle of the cunning man's rifle.

"My brother Bynum died over t' Maury County nigh three months ago," Bascom Hardy said. "A day past the new moon. He was a rich man, rich as rich."

"Tsk! There's a cat here," chirped one of the titmice as it fluttered from the gun to the roof, then out the back door in concert with its companion. "Tsk! But he can't ketch us!"

"Like you are yerse'f," Old Nathan stated flatly. He knuckled his beard, black despite his age, with his knobby right hand.

The cat's head turned to watch the birds. His tail beat twice. The second time it made a soft thump against the puncheon floor. The big tom got up from beside the rocker and walked toward the visitor's chair with an evil look in his eyes.

"That's true, I am," Bascom Hardy said. His tone was half between irritation at being interrupted and pride at what he took for flattery. "But that's not a speck t' do with my brother, and my brother Bynum's the reason I'm here."

He glanced around again, unable or unwilling to keep his lip from lifting in a sneer.

The cat rubbed firmly against the visitor's ankles, leaving a track of hair against the fabric of the black trousers. Hardy squawked, jerking his legs aside as though his boots had slid him into a cesspool.

"Cat!" Old Nathan snapped, coming up off the rocker. "You git back from there!"

The cat lifted his nose. "Hmpf," he said. "That un don't half hate cats, don't he?"

The cunning man's left index finger pointed. A spark of static popped in the air between Old Nathan and the animal.

"All right, all right," the cat grumped. "Keep yer britches on." He padded across the floor, then disappeared out the back door in a single fluid bound.

Bascom Hardy settled himself again in his chair. "That's better," he growled. He indicated the roof poles with a lift of his clean-shaven chin. "If thet dirty beast comes up t' me again, I'll kick him right through yer shakes."

Old Nathan remained standing. "Did you hear thet I don't eat meat, Bascom Hardy?" he asked.

Hardy raised an eyebrow. "I heard thet," he said. "I don't see how it signifies."

"But," the cunning man rasped, "ye never heerd I was a Quaker as wouldn't larrup a man to an inch of his life ifen he kicked my cat in my home. Did ye now?"

He grinned at his visitor. His eyes flashed like sparks of burning copper.

"I beg your pardon," said Bascom Hardy. His voice was sincere, at least in its undertone of fear.

Old Nathan relaxed and walked again to the water barrel. "Tell yer tale, Mister Hardy," he said. "Tell yer tale."

"I reckon Bynum knew his time or purty close to it," Bascom Hardy resumed. "For nigh a month, he'd been sellin' his notes and his land holdins—at a discount to shift 'em fast, like he'd gone out of his head!"

Hardy's voice lowered from its tone of shrill disbelief. He bent forward and added, "But he turned it into gold, all his paper and land into gold; and there must 've been a mort of it, rich as Bynum was!"

Old Nathan felt his skin tingling. There was nothing he could put a name to, no image or echo from the words his visitor had spoken; but there was something here waiting, and mayhap waiting for the cunning man himself. . . .

Old Nathan saw the image of gold coins tumbling across the surface of the rich man's mind, as though the brown eyes were windows to Hardy's thoughts. "Go on," he said. "Tell yer tale, Bascom Hardy."

The rocker still nodded from the vehemence with which the old man had risen from it; back and forth, a skritch and a squeal against the wear-polished pine floor.