OLD NATHAN(68)

She shook herself. "He's changed, right enough. He ain't my Cull no more. He's jest comin' out like his pappy, the way folks allus warned me he'd do and I paid thim no nivermind."

"I knew Chance Ransden," the cunning man said uneasily. "Bully hain't no frind t' me, but he hain't noways his pappy."

The thing uv it was, Chance Ransden would hev acted exackly the way Bully acted now—cunning and cruel and as petty as he was deceitful. . . .

"I thought he warn't like thet," Ellie said. "But I was wrong, an' I'm payin' fer it, Mister Nathan, payin' fer bein' a f-f-fool!"

She put her hands to her face again, and this time he did put his knobby old arm around her, holding the rifle out to the side and him no kind of man since the Tory bullet gelded him like a shoat at King's Mountain back in '79. . . .

"Thet blamed old box!" Ellie sobbed against the cunning man's coat. "Thet's what set him off rememb'rin' his Pappy. I'd throw hit in the fire but hit's too late naow. . . ."

Old Nathan looked at the box on the mantelpiece. His face slowly lost its anger. He disengaged himself carefully from the young woman.

"This is the thing ye mean?" he said, leaning his rifle against the cabin wall so that he could take the box in both hands.

"Thet's so," Ellie agreed. The preternatural calm in the old man's voice stilled the trembling of her own.

"Thin mebbe," Old Nathan said softly, "you're wrong about the cause. . . . And hit might happen thet you're wrong t' think I couldn't be airy he'p besides."

* * *

The cunning man stared at the box in his hands. His concentration was so deep that though he heard the sound of a foot on the half-log floor of the porch, the possible meaning of the noise didn't register for an instant.

Ellie Ransden looked at Old Nathan, realized that he had slid beneath the immediate present, and snatched his flintlock rifle from where it leaned against the wall. "I hear ye there!" she called in a clear, threatening voice as she sighted down the barrel toward the door.

Old Nathan tore himself free of the walls of his trance like a beetle emerging from its chrysalis. The girl and the cabin's interior had both been present in his mind; now focus and solidity returned to them the way dough fills a biscuit mold.

"Ellie?" a woman called through the closed panel. "Hit's Sarah Ransden, and I'd admire t' speak with you fer a bit."

The cunning man rolled his shoulder muscles to loosen them. For a moment, it had seemed that his fingertips were growing into the box; that they were becoming roots or that the knife-carved wood changed to flesh and began to pulse with a life of its own. . . .

"Who's with ye, Sarah?" Ellie demanded. She lowered the stock from her shoulder to her waist, but the gunlock was still roostered back and the muzzle aimed toward the door.

"She's alone, child," Old Nathan murmured. Something had broken—or turned—in Ellie Ransden since the time the Bully struck her face this morning.

"I'm alone, child," Sarah said bitterly. "I been alone these ten years gone, since my son left me. As you should know."

"Come in an' set, thin," Ellie replied. "Tain't barred."

She lowered the hammer and replaced the rifle where Old Nathan had set it. "I beg pardon, sir," she muttered sheepishly without meeting the cunning man's eyes. "I shouldn't hev took hit on myse'f t' do thet."

The cunning man sniffed. "En why not?" he said.

Sarah Ransden recoiled as she saw Old Nathan, though he was looking past her toward the empty forest across the roadway. "Mister Ridgeway," she said formally from the doorway. "I come t' speak with my datter, but I don't mean t' intrude."

"Come in er go out, Miz Ransden," Ellie said with evident hostility. "Thar's some uv us here warn't born in a barn."

Sarah flinched. The cunning man stepped to her and drew her into the cabin with his free hand. His boot pushed the door to until the latch clicked.

"I hain't yer datter," the younger woman said. "You let me know right plain thet I warn't good enough fer yer boy the one time I come callin' on ye. He turnt his back on you years ago, but I warn't good enough!"

"Ellie," Old Nathan said quietly, "thar's no call fer thet. Sarah, what is it brings ye here?"

"Yer Cull ain't good enough fer me now, Miz Ransden!" Ellie cried. Her right cheek was bone white, but the swollen print on the left flared like an August rose. "Ifen he don't hang afore he comes back, I'll leave."

The anger that had kept Ellie ramrod straight poured out through a memory, leaving her suddenly vulnerable. She touched her left cheek, then lowered her hand and stared at the fingertips.