Old Nathan, Second Edition by David Drake

Author:David Drake [Drake, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2013-01-28T18:31:33+00:00

THE FOOL

“Now jest ignore him,” said the buck to the doe as Old Nathan turned in the furrow he was hoeing twenty yards ahead of them.

“But he’s looking at us,” whispered the doe from the side of her mouth. She stood frozen, but a rapidly pulsing artery made shadows quiver across her throat in the evening sun.

“G’wan away!” called Old Nathan, but his voice sounded half-hearted even in his own ears. He lifted the hoe and shook it. A hot afternoon cultivating was the best medicine the cunning man knew for his aches . . . but the work did not become less tiring because it did him good. “Git, deer!”

“See, it’s all right,” said the buck as he lowered his head for another mouthful of turnip greens.

Old Nathan stooped for a clod to hurl at them. As he straightened with it the deer turned in unison and fled in great floating bounds, their heads thrust forward.

“Consarn it,” muttered the cunning man, crumbling the clod between his long, knobby fingers as he watched the animals disappear into the woods beyond his plowland.

“Hi, there,” called a voice from behind him, beside his cabin back across the creek.

Old Nathan turned, brushing his hand against his pants leg of coarse homespun. His distance sight was as good as it ever had been, so even at the length of a decent rifleshot he had no trouble in identifying his visitor as Eldon Bowsmith. Simp Bowsmith, they called the boy down to the settlement . . . and they had reason, though the boy was more an innocent than a natural in the usual sense.

“Hi!” Bowsmith repeated, waving with one hand while the other shaded his eyes from the low sun. “There wuz two deer in the field jist now!”

They had reason, that was sure as the sunrise.

“Hold there,” Old Nathan called as the boy started down the path to the creek and the field beyond. “I’m headed back myself.” Shouldering his hoe, he suited his action to his words.

Bowsmith nodded and plucked a long grass stem. He began to chew on the soft white base of it while he leaned on the fence of the pasture which had once held a bull and two milk cows . . . and now held the cows alone. The animals, startled at first into watchfulness, returned to chewing their cud when they realized that the stranger’s personality was at least as placid as their own.

Old Nathan crossed the creek on the puncheon that served as a bridge—a log of red oak, adzed flat on the top side. A fancier structure would have been pointless, because spring freshets were sure to carry any practicable bridge downstream once or twice a year. The simplest form of crossing was both easily replaced and adequate to the cunning man’s needs.

As he climbed the sloping path to his cabin with long, slow strides, Old Nathan studied his visitor. Bowsmith was tall, as tall as the cunning man himself, and perhaps as gangling.

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