OLD NATHAN(67)

"Come in, Mister Nathan," she said making a pass at a formal curtsey. "I'm all sixes 'n sivins, b-but—"

Her control broke. She didn't blink or avert her eyes, but tears started from the corners of them. "—the good Lord knows thet I'm glad t' see ye!"

Old Nathan mounted the porch steps with his own rifle in one hand and the remains of Bully Ransden's in the other. He paused in the doorway and eyed the trees again. No doubt the Bully was watching from concealment like a fox circling to eye the hounds on his scent, but if he'd been willing to meet the cunning man he could have done so from the protection of his own walls.

Had the thing that looked like Ransden been Bully Ransden in fact, he would have died on his porch before he ran from any hundred men.

Old Nathan shut the door behind him.

The cabin was a wreck. All the furnishings had been damaged to some degree. The chairs' slatted backs were punched in, a boot had smashed the face panels of the storage chests, and the bed frame was missing so that the straw tick and blankets lay on the floor in a pile that Ellie had just attempted to arrange.

Someone had with systematic brutality broken the sturdy legs of the table. It stood upright due to repairs made with twine and splints of leather.

Bully Ransden was a better-than-fair journeyman carpenter. Repairs to the table were Ellie's work.

"Where's yer cattle, Miz Ransden?" the cunning man asked with calculated brutality. He set the broken weapon down on the table carefully, but the splints were firmer than he had feared.

Ellie faced him. "Drunk up er gambled away," she said bluntly. There warn't no point tryin' t' put a fine face on the bus'ness, not ifen ye wanted a cure fer hit. . . .

"Hain't like Bully," Old Nathan said aloud.

"Hit's like Cull these three months past," Ellie replied. Her face twisted into an expression Old Nathan had not seen on it before when she talked about her man. "Hit's like the Bully."

The porcelain plate that had held the place of honor on the Ransden's fireboard was gone. The only ornament there above the hearth was a nondescript wooden box with no evident hinges or keyhole.

For the first time, Ellie took in the shattered rifle which the cunning man had returned to its owner's cabin. "Oh," she whispered. "Oh, Mister Nathan, did he . . . ?"

The cunning man frowned in concern. When Ellie saw the gun, her mind had turned to ambush and murder.

"Naow," he said, "nothin' so turrible ez what yer thinkin' on. I heerd some noise in my shed last night, and the feller makin' it dropped this behind him. I thought yer man might know sommat about hit."

"I reckon he might," Ellie Ransden agreed coldly. She daubed unconsciously at the fist print on her cheek, trying it the way one might try a scab. In the same controlled voice she continued, "Last month, whin thet feller from Saint Louie was clubbed down on the Columbia road. . . . ?"

Old Nathan nodded. A traveller had stopped to relieve himself while the other men in his party rode on. One of his friends had gone back when he decided the night was too dark to leave a man alone on an unfamiliar trail. The sound of the companion's hoofbeats drove away a figure crouching with a knife raised to finish what a blow from behind had begun.

"Cull war out thet night," the girl continued. "Like he is most times now. Nixt day he come in 'n he hed a watch 'n chain. He—"

Her voice began to break. "He saw me look at it," she said, speaking faster and louder to finish the story before she lost control completely. "He a'mos' hit me thin, an' he told me not t' tell a soul what it was he had—" tumbling, word over word "—but I've tolt you now, Mister Nathan!"

Ellie turned so that her back was to her visitor. She was sobbing. In a small voice she continued, "Wax Talbot, he took a shot at Cull when his wife screamed out t' the barn whin Cull war s'posed t' be he'pin' butcher some hogs."

The cunning man still held his rifle. He was uneasy about many things. The only one to which he could put a name was the possibility that the cabin's owner would burst through the doorway with an axe raised, so the rifle's familiar touch was that of a raft to a drowning man.

He wanted to put a hand on Ellie's shoulder to comfort her, but he wasn't sure that wouldn't be a worse idea than any he'd had before.

"This been goin' on three months, Miz Ransden?" Old Nathan asked. "Why hain't ye been t' see me? Might be I could he'p."

Ellie wiped her face on her sleeve. When the cuff, decorated with home-style embroidery, slid up, Old Nathan saw that her wrists were bruised also. His face didn't change, but it was already set in the lumpy gray lines of a thundercloud.

"I don't guess no woman magicked my Cull this time, Mister Nathan," the girl said wearily. Her expression hardened momentarily. "Though I hear tell some uv the sluts hereabouts, they hain't so perticular as Adele Talbot was."