Mountain Magic

by David Drake

  Old Nathan added more wood to the fire, then began a task to keep his hands full and his mind calm. As he worked, he clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and called softly, "Hey there! Anybody t' home?"

  "Who's thet you're speakin' to, then?" the mule demanded from the other side of the closed door. Like everything else about the cabin, the door panel was crude but massively strong. It had wrought iron hinges and crossed straps of iron on the outer face.

  "I reckon there might be somebody as could tell me about Bynum Hardy," Old Nathan answered. "A squirrel, maybe, er a mouse."

  The mule snorted. "Naught here t' bring airy soul," the beast said. " 'Cept a man, I reckon, 'n they ain't got the sense God gave a rock."

  Old Nathan opened his mouth to snarl a reply; but when he thought through the mule's comment, it was all true enough. No food, and shelter worse nor a log rotted holler. . . .

  He went on with his task.

  "Whut is hit you're doin' in thur, then?" the mule asked.

  It occurred to the cunning man that his animal was uneasy, though there was little chance of a bear or a painter hereabouts. Bynum Hardy's cabin was strengthened against human enemies, not beasts. . . .

  "I'm pulling the charge from my rifle gun," Old Nathan said. He tipped down the flintlock's muzzle. The powder charge dribbled along the bore and out onto a square of hard-finished leather. From there he would transfer the powder back to the polished cowhorn whose wooden stopper measured the charge proper to this weapon.

  "Whutever possessed ye t' do sich a durn-fool thing as that?" the mule demanded in outrage. "Whut sort uv place d'ye think this is, anyhow?"

  On the table before Old Nathan lay the ball and the patch lubricated with a mixture of butter and beeswax. He would not use tallow, anymore than he would eat meat; from a bird, a beast, or a human, it was all the same in his mind.

  "Ifen I leave the charge in the bore overnight," he said softly, more to himself than the mule, "hit'll draw water 'n rust. And besides . . ."

  Firelight winked from fresh, unoxidized lead where the screw in the back of the cunning man's ramrod had dug in to withdraw the ball. When he returned home, Old Nathan would recast the bullet; but—needs must and the Devil drove—he could use the ball as it was. Seated with the screw gouge down against the powder, it would fly true enough for the purpose.

  "And besides," the old man said, "I don't reckon whativer comes 'll be much fazed by a rifle ball, so mebbe hit's best I don't put temptation in my way."

  The mule grunted, but it said nothing more.

  Old Nathan set the empty flintlock in a corner beside the door, away from the smoke and sparks of the fire. There weren't any pegs to hang a rifle up properly, though he didn't guess a man as rich and fearful as Bynum Hardy had done his business without a gun to hand.

  He set the cloth-wrapped paste of corn meal on the hearth and raked coals over it to cook the batter into ash cakes. It wasn't so very late, but it felt late.

  The Devil himse'f knew it felt late.

  * * *

  The sauce pan was full of leather-britches beans boiled with hot peppers. Old Nathan set the container on the table, then stepped back to the fireplace to fetch the ash cakes.

  "Hey!" the mule snorted. "Ye've comp'ny comin', old man!"

  Old Nathan poised for a moment, hunched over the hearth with his eyes closed. Well, he hadn't come all this way not t' meet Bynum Hardy. He straightened and walked to the door, opening it wide.

  Something—somebody—was climbing out of the well. The figure was almost over the curb, but Old Nathan had time Gray Jack and the witchwoman didn't have. Time to run . . . except there was never a good time to run.

  The mule snorted restively. The beast was a warm presence, but Old Nathan could see nothing of it beyond the glint of starlight on one wide, staring eyeball.

  Bynum Hardy wore a suit of rusty black with a collarless shirt. The soles of his ankle boots were patched with patterned cowhide. He and his garments were as clear as though a living man stood in broad daylight, but whatever illuminated the figure cast no glow on the solid objects around it.

  "I'm not so durned a fool thet I'll wait here!" the mule muttered as it moved off at a shambling trot. The animal's course was marked by occasional sparks from its shoes on quartz and the crash of undergrowth at the edge of the clearing.

  Bynum Hardy began walking up the short trail to the cabin.

  Old Nathan went back inside. He left the door open. His fire had burned down, but its orange flames had a cheerful character that he hadn't imagined in them until after he saw the cold gray light dripping onto the surface of the figure from the well.

  He recollected how much afraid he'd been at King's Mountain—after the bullet hit him. His buckskin breeches wet with hot blood, and him unwilling to look down to see what the bullet had done. Though he knew where the bullet passed—and what it passed through on its way.

  Old Nathan spilled the layers of ash and burned-out coals from the cloth over his cakes. Before he placed the ash cakes on the table, however, he added a fresh log to the fire.

  When he turned with the cakes, Bynum Hardy was at the door.

  "Howdy do," Old Nathan said in a voice as gruff and clear as that with which he'd greet any benighted traveller. He put the hot corn cakes down on a slab of bark and peeled the cloth off the top of them. "How ye gettin' on?"

  "All right, I guess," said Bynum Hardy. He sounded as though he were still calling up out of the well, but it might be he always sounded that way—alive as well as now that he was dead.

  He looked at the cunning man and added, "I hope you're well?"

  "About like common," Old Nathan said. He flicked his bearded chin to indicate the food on the table. "Set 'n eat with me, won't ye? Hain't much, but it's hot."

  "No thankee," said the cabin's dead owner. He walked around the table to the hearth. His feet did not sound on the puncheon floor. "Reckon I'll jist warm myse'f at yer fire, ifen ye don't mind."

  Old Nathan stared at the dead man's back. "Suit yerse'f," he said; and sat on the sawn round of treebole; and began to eat.

  The food had no taste in his mouth, for all the pepper in the beans and a touch of onion in the ash-cake batter.

  When the cunning man finished his meal, using his hands and the spoon from his budget, he looked at Bynum Hardy again. Mostly the fellow held his palms out to the fire, but occasionally he turned his hands to warm the backs. His body appeared solid as a living man's, but the cold internal glow defined parts which should have been in shadow.

  Old Nathan took another swig from his water bottle. The last bite of ash cake hed like t' stuck in his throat. . . .

  He got up and stepped to the hearth, carrying the slab of poplar bark he'd cut for a plate. Bynum Hardy moved aside in a mannerly fashion, making room for the living man. His figure had no temperature Old Nathan could feel, neither as warm as life, nor cold like a corpse buried three months in the wet clay.

  The fire had sunk to a few sawteeth of flame and coals reflecting back from white ash. The cunning man tossed the bark in and watched it flare into bright popping yellow. Bynum Hardy folded his arms, but he did not back away.

  "If ye like," Old Nathan said, "I'd throw another stick er two on the fire fer ye."

  No response. "Er you kin fix it the way ye choose, I reckon."

  The bark burned away to a twisted black scrap. The room seemed darker than before the quick flames had lighted it.

  Bynum Hardy turned and said, "Thankee, but I reckon this'll do me. You jist go about yer business."

  Old Nathan met the dead man's eyes. "Myse'f," he said, "I figger I'll turn in. Hit's been a long day."

  He opened his blanket roll, took off his boots, and settled down against a sidewall, away from both the fire and the rotten scraps of Bynum Hardy's bed.

  He didn't guess he'd be able to sleep. Bedding down was the best way to keep from showing the fear that would otherwise consume him.

  But sleep the cunni
ng man did, looking back toward the settling fire and the crisply illuminated figure standing in front of it.

  * * *

  Old Nathan awoke.

  It was nigh about midnight from the fire's state. The hearth cast a patch of warmth into the air, but only the faintest glow suggested coals were still alive.

  Bynum Hardy was walking toward the door, and his boots made no sound.

  "Howdy," the cunning man said.

  The ghost image turned and looked at him. "Reckon I'll go off, now," he said in hollow tones. "Thankee fer the fire. I been mighty cold the past while."

  Hardy took another step toward the open door.

  "I thought there was maybe a message ye wanted t' speak," Old Nathan said, supporting his torso with one arm. "Fer yer brother, it might be."

  Bynum Hardy turned again. "Not here," he said. "You foller me t' home, then I'll give you a word t' take t' Bascom."

  "I understood this t' be yer cabin," Old Nathan said. He fetched his left boot forward in the dark and began to draw it onto his foot.

  "Hain't mine now," said Bynum Hardy. "You foller me, and ye'll git the word ye come fer."

  He went out the door. The cunning man hopped after him, pulling on his right boot.

  It wasn't a surprise, not really, to see Bynum Hardy disappear back into the well.

  Old Nathan paused at the curb. He gripped the well rope, wishing he were younger; wishing—

  No. He was where he chose to be, and he was the man he chose to be. He wouldn't have it otherwise.

  Hand over hand, Old Nathan climbed down into darkness.

  * * *

  Old Nathan's head dropped below the level of the well curb. The world above him became a handful of gray blotches cast on greater blackness: patches where shingles missing from the shelter roof showed the sky. Some hint of light must remain to the heavens, though there had been no sign of it when the cunning man looked up before grasping the well rope.

  He waited for the splash that meant Bynum Hardy had reached the surface of the water. He heard nothing but his own breath wheezing in the square stone confines of the well shaft.

  He waited for his boots to touch the water. Wondered what he would do then, go on like a blame fool till he was soaked and cold, or haul up again and tell Bascom Hardy that he'd failed. . . .

  He didn't come to a conclusion. The choices kept walking through his mind as his strong old hands lowered him further—until he realized that if this rope led anywhere, it was not to the water from which Old Nathan drank and drew for the horses.

  The cunning man's mouth worked, but he said nothing aloud. He'd not been able to pray since King's Mountain; and this was no place for a man to curse.

  His arms ached. He sweated with the effort of the descent, but the droplets runneling down the troughs beside his spine were cold by the time they soaked the waistband of his trousers.

  Abruptly, Old Nathan began to laugh. He wheezed from exhaustion, but the humor was real enough. It wasn't every durn fool who had time to see what an all-mighty durn fool he'd been for the last time in his life!

  There was Zeb Frawley, who thought he could call down lightning, which was maybe right—and thought he could direct that lightning's path, which was wrong as wrong, and his bloated body to prove it the next morning. There was John Wesley Ives who'd witched Leesha Tazewell into his bed—and forgot that while Rufe Tazewell didn't know a lick of magic, he could shoot out a squirrel's eye at thirty paces; or shoot through the bridge of John Wesley Ives' nose at a hundred, as it turned out.

  Then there was—

  The weight came off the cunning man's arms. The distant echo of his laughter rumbled back to him, as if from the walls of an immense cavern. He felt nothing under his feet to support him, but neither was he falling.

  The air around the cunning man was not black but gray, a gray so dense that he could not see his own hands when he raised them to his face. His calloused palms felt rough and loose from the pull of the rope.

  "Bynum Hardy!" he called. "I've come t' ye. Now show yerself!"

  He didn't know what he expected; only that he was no longer afraid. He'd faced this one till he beat the part of it that was in him; and for the rest, well, every man had his time, and if this was his time—so be it.

  The gray cleared like fog streaming in a windstorm. A long tunnel with a figure at the end of it, then up close enough to touch: Bynum Hardy, twisting like a pat of butter across a hot skillet, and nowhere to go however it turns.

  "I played yer games," Old Nathan said harshly. "Now I'll hev my side of the bargain. Give me the word t' take t' your brother."

  "D'ye know where I am, wizard?" Bynum Hardy said. He spoke through tight-clenched lips, like a man tensing against the pain of a gunshot—knowing that his blood and life ran out regardless.

  "Thet makes no matter t' me," Old Nathan replied harshly. "Hit's between you 'n whoever it was put ye here. Just answer me where yer brother's gold is at."

  "The gold's in the pivot log of the well," Hardy said. "But it hain't Bascom's gold."

  Vague figures reached up from behind the dead man, or they may have been wisps of fog. Something constrained and tortured Bynum Hardy, but there was no sign of it to the cunning man's eyes.

  "Tain't your'n anyways," Old Nathan snapped. His conscious mind had only loathing for the tortured figure, but the skin of the cunning man's arms pricked up in goosebumps from the sight. It warn't fright; only the way his body was contending.

  But the righteous truth was, he wanted no more part of this wherever place.

  "I've told you what Bascom wants t' hear," Bynum Hardy said, twitching and grimacing between the words. "Now I'll tell ye what he must hear. He's t' take thet gold and give it t' them poor folk I wronged when I was alive. Tell him!"

  "If bein' poor meant bein' virtuous," Old Nathan said in sudden anger, "thin there'd be a sight less wickedness in the world. D'ye think scatt'ring money on good folk 'n bad alike is going t' buy you out uv this here place?"

  "Don't you be a greater fool 'n God made ye, Nathan Ridgeway," said the dead man, speaking a name Old Nathan thought there wasn't a soul in the county to remember or care.

  Bynum Hardy leaned forward, against the pull of invisible, flamingly-cold bonds. He gasped with pain, then went on, "Hit don't signify what they were, good men nor bad. Hit's what I did thet put me here. I squeezed, 'n whin they cried out I squeezed the harder, fer thet meant they were weak. Bascom's to give the gold t' them as I took it from, their crops 'n their land . . . and if I could, the very clothes they wore."

  The skin of Bynum Hardy's cheeks drew out to either side, as though men with tongs had gripped him. He sobbed wordlessly with his eyes closed for a moment. "All the gold, all the prayers on earth, wizard . . ." Hardy managed to whisper.

  His eyes opened, filled with pain, as he continued, "None of it's airy good t' me now. Hit's all too late. I never done a speck uv good t' airy soul while I was alive—but I'll do this now fer my brother Bascom, ifen he'll only listen. Tell him t' give my gold away, and maybe he'll find a better place whin he follows me."

  A spasm of something unendurable dragged a scream from the dead man's throat. "Tell him thet . . ." he rasped, and the smoke-gray emptiness swept over Old Nathan again.

  The cunning man felt movement, but he could not tell how or whither. There were moans, but they might have been the blood soughing in his ears—

  And the clammy fingers that twice plucked Old Nathan's garments could have come from his imagination alone. . . .

  * * *

  "Thur's a couple horses comin' down the trail," called the mule. "Reckon thur's men with 'em too."

  It was dawn, thought barely. Old Nathan was wrapped in his blanket, but he felt as stiff and cold as if he'd spent the night in the rain on a barn roof.

  He threw his cover back. His feet were bare, and his boots stood upright at the foot of the blanket.

  The mule stuck its head in the cabin's open door. "Wouldn't turn down some b
reakfast," it said. "Say, whur was it ye went last night?"

  Old Nathan drew his boots on. "Don't know thet I did," he said as he stood up.

  The mule snorted and backed away to allow the cunning man to pass him. "Don't give me thet," the beast said. "What d'ye take me fer, a horse? I watched fum the trees whilst you went down the well with thet feller. Didn't see ye come back, though."

  Old Nathan kneaded the mane and neck muscles of his mule. The beast butted him and muttered contrarily, "Naow, thur's no cause fer this." It was happy for the attention nonetheless.

  "If I was down thet place . . ." the cunning man said. He looked toward the well, but he thought about somewhere far more distant. "Thin I'm right glad I did come back, however thet was."

  He strode toward the well.

  "Hoy!" called the mule. "Ye forgit my breakfast!"

  "I forgit nothing!" Old Nathan growled without turning around. "Ifen you come down here, yer majesty, I'll pull ye some water, though."

  He had the third bucketful in the trough and the mule was drinking, when Bascom Hardy and his half-breed companion came around the bend in the trail. The bodyguard led. When Hardy saw that the cunning man was up and about, he pushed his horse past his servant's and trotted the short distance to the well.

  "Waal, what did ye see, old man?" Bascom Hardy demanded.

  He wore the same clothes he'd wore yesterday, and he'd slept in them. There was a wild look in his eyes that reminded Old Nathan of Hardy's brother Bynum; and reminded him also that there was more than hot iron as could torture a man.

  "I seen yer brother," the cunning man said simply. "He's in a right bad place—"

  "Told ye he tried t' cheat me of Pappy's prope'ty, didn't I?" the rich man crowed. He swung out of the saddle. "But where's the gold, thin, tell me thet?"

  Hardy's horse, with a patch of mud on its side that hadn't been curried off, would have bumped Old Nathan on the way to the water if the cunning man hadn't stepped back. The mule raised its huge, bony head from the trough and said, "Tsk! Watch it, purty boy, er they'll find yer ribs in the middle uv next week."

  "But I'm parched!" the horse whinnied.

  "Let the poor feller drink, mule," the cunning man said. "He's jist the way he was born. Hain't nothin' he kin help."