OLD NATHAN(18)

On or through the knife's silver window, Bynum's jaundiced image mimed the words Bascom spoke aloud.

" 'Come back here', that was how he put it," Bascom continued, "and then he died." Hardy frowned at the memory. "Didn't even ask fer a drink, though I had the dipper right there."

He looked up, his brown eyes full of purpose and as hard as polished chert. "I want you t' set up in Bynum's old cabin when the moon goes in, three nights from now. You listen t' what he says and you won't be the loser fer it, you hear me?"

Old Nathan was in a dream state where all knowledge was bounded by the blurry walls of the tunnel which linked him to the shield on the knife scale. It was broad daylight in the world of the cabin, but formless gray in his mind.

Bascom Hardy's voice penetrated with difficulty to the cunning man's consciousness. The cries of birds and animals going about the business of their lives were lost in the shadows.

"Hit's been nigh three months since your brother died," Old Nathan said. The face on the silver was changing to that of a hard, square man of middle age. His front teeth were missing. "Who did ye put t' setting up afore me?"

"I don't see it signifies," Bascom Hardy grumbled. His host's blurred consciousness disturbed him, though he had no idea of what was going on behind Old Nathan's hooded eyes.

After a moment, Hardy said, "Gray Jack it was. I have enemies, you kin see thet. He looked out fer me, the way Ned does now. I figgered when the new moon come again, Jack could spend a night in the cabin. If anybody come by t' speak—waal, he was a brave man, so he told me."

Old Nathan's lips twisted into an expression that could have been a smile or a sneer, whichever way a man wanted to read it. "You didn't say to him thet it was your dead brother would come t' speak, did ye?" he said. His voice echoed from the gray tunnel of his mind.

"How did I know it was?" the rich man blazed in defensive anger. "Anyhow, Jack didn't ask me, did he? And there's an all-fired mess of gold thet my brother hid somewhur, a mess of gold, I tell ye!"

"There's a well in front of yer brother's cabin," Old Nathan said as images streamed across the silver and through his mind.

"There's nothin' to the well but water 'n a rock floor," Bascom Hardy said dismissively. "D'ye think I didn't try thet the first thing out whin Bynum died?"

"Sompin come out of the well," the cunning man said. "What I cain't tell, because my mirror's silver and there's things silver won't show . . . but I reckon it was yer brother."

"Gray Jack said nobody come," Bascom said harshly. "I knowed he was lying. Shook like an aspen, he did, whin he tole me in the morning. I figger he run away soon as he seen Bynum."

"You figger wrong," Old Nathan said, too flat to be an argument. "The cabin has one door only, and Bynum was to thet door afore yer man heard him. He'd hev run if he could, but he hid under the bed. And yer brother, he et the supper and went out t' the well again."

"There's nothing in thet well, I tell you!" Bascom shouted. "Nor in the cabin neither! I warrant I searched it like no cabin been searched afore."

He swallowed, then continued more calmly, "Bynum, he's burried t' the back of the plot, not the front. I'd hev put him in the churchyard down t' Ridley, but the Baptists wouldn't hev him. I reckon they figgered I oughta pay them—but how was I t' do thet, I ask you, whin I haven't found airy cent of Bynum's money?"

Old Nathan smiled again. "Don't guess money was the problem, them not wanting yer t' bury yer brother," he said. The distance from which he spoke took the edge off the words. "What happened t' Jack, Bascom Hardy?"

The rich man looked up at the roof poles. A strip of bullhide dangled from them, the horns at the top and the coarse hairs of the bull's tail-tip brushing the floor. "I reckon," he lied, "Jack went off on his own."

"He hung hisself," said the cunning man.

"And what if he did?" Bascom Hardy shouted. "Hit was his own choice, warn't it? Just like the poor folk, they don't hoe their crop 'n thin they blame me when I buy their land at the sheriff's sale!"

"Was a woman the next time," said Old Nathan as the images in his silver-washed mind changed. "Old Mamie Fergusson from Battle Branch down Columbia way."

Bascom Hardy had come to Old Nathan because of the cunning man's reputation, but he squirmed nonetheless at proof of the reality behind that reputation. "Guess hit might hev been. She come t' me. I reckon she thought she'd find the gold herse'f, but what she said was she'd sit up fer me."

"Calls herse'f a witch," Old Nathan said quietly. "There's other folks as call her worse."