“It is no small matter for one to summon me, much less to readily cancel so powerful an obligation.” He looked back to the place that had formerly been the home of the now banished and disgraced demon Nagaroth. “Something of considerable consequence must have ensued for you to do so.”
Returning with eggs and bacon and bread, Malone whispered a few words to the upended skillet, causing it to tumble and bounce its way across the ground until it was once more comfortably situated above the circle of rocks that surrounded the cooking fire. Occasionally, a flicker of flame would burst forth from beneath the heavy cast iron to caress one of old Nick’s boots, like a cat licking its master.
“Why, I should think it would be obvious, in a place like this.” Tossing the bacon onto the skillet, Malone watched as it started to sizzle. He began cracking eggs. “Your former underling, why, he got me good and steamed.”
Free Elections
Combining science and magic is always a tough proposition. Even more so somewhere like the Old West, where science is apt to extend about as far as discussing the ingredients in lye soap. But when confronted with a problem that involves both, you have to employ both to solve it.
Stubbornness is a quality that can be found in equal measure in scientists and magicians. So is avarice. These human characteristics are present regardless of the profession to which one belongs. Dealing with them means dealing with both, understanding both, and being able to call upon both.
The science of puns being somewhat simpler, and absent of magic, I feel comfortable employing it.
* * *
—
“I’m terribly sorry, sir, but we have no water, and I fear that you will have to drink your whiskey straight.”
Though the young bartender was as tough and wiry as the hardscrabble land on which the drinking establishment in which he was currently employed had been raised, his voice trembled slightly as he explained. It was possible (indeed, it was most likely) that his current uneasy disposition was due to the presence of the customer to whom he was compelled to deliver the apology.
Mad Amos Malone had that effect on folks.
The mountain man did not so much rest at the bar as threaten to swallow it. Indeed, his colossal bulk seemed to fill a good portion of the entire Double Eagle Saloon. Standing slightly over or slightly under seven feet tall, depending on how long it had been since he had last made the acquaintance of a bath, and weighing in the neighborhood (a most inhospitable one, the bartender was certain) of three hundred pounds, give or take when he had last trimmed his enormous black beard, Amos Malone was not a man to be denied. It was therefore with considerable relief that the bartender accepted his gargantuan customer’s reply.
Raising his glass, the mountain man nudged back the wolf’s head that covered his scalp. One of the wolf’s eyes blinked. His gaze attending elsewhere, the bartender missed this particular canine impossibility. “I didn’t know thet Heaven lay this near south o’ Denver,” Malone declared solemnly. Draining the shot in a single gulp, he placed the leaded glass back down on the counter with surprising delicacy. “Another, if you please.”
The bartender hesitated, grinned, wondered if it was wise to be grinning, consequently got his mouth all twisted up like a Baptist preacher caught out on a matter of Scripture by a twelve-year-old in Sunday school, and settled for doing as the stranger requested. This time, Malone sipped the amber liquid instead of inhaling it.
“Not my business, but as a matter o’ curiosity, how come you to be out of something as basic as water, son?”
The bartender nervously stroked his own beard. It was reddish blond, washed, neatly trimmed, and a pale imitation of the facial forest that clung to the mountain man’s face like a gray-flecked thundercloud.
“It’s not just the saloons. Whole town’s out of water. Havin’ to haul it from the Carlos River just so’s the kids will have something to drink.” He shook his head sadly. “Poor womenfolk hereabouts ain’t had a bath in weeks. There’ve been fistfights.”
Malone nodded understandingly. “This ’ere is dryish country, fer sure. Rough geology fer findin’ a well.”
The bartender did not blink in surprise, nor otherwise. In Colorado, a country that had been raised up on mines and mining, one heard the word “geology” and its related terms often enough. It was the current source that the mixologist found surprising.
“Can’t drill for water hereabouts, mister. Anybody tries to get a well in comes up dry. But the town’s got a natural spring. A great spring she is, too. Strong flow, water sweet and clear, no arsenic or mercury. The spring’s pretty much the reason the town is here, in what you rightly call rough country for a well.” His expression darkened. “Trouble is, we haven’t been able to draw from it for weeks now.”
Brows hard and sharp as Vermont granite drew together, and the barkeep could’ve sworn he heard a grinding noise. “Mind my askin’ why not?”
The younger man sighed. “There’s someone sittin’ on it. Funny old coot rode his wagon into town weeks ago. Did no harm at first. Even ate here once or twice. Then one day he unlimbered this old chair he had tied to his wagon, dragged it through town, set himself down atop the spring cap, closed the main valve, and wouldn’t move. Can’t no one get past his feet or that chair to open it back up.”
Malone considered. “This,” he murmured, “strikes me as passing strange.”
“Ain’t the half of it.” The bartender refilled the mountain man’s empty glass without having to be asked. “We tried polite at first. He wouldn’t budge. So a couple of our local miners decided to take matters into their own hands, so to speak. Tried to pull him out of his chair. Went easy, at first. Then hard. Big fellers, they both were, but they couldn’t shift the old fart an inch. Got some more help, until there were altogether five of them workin’ on him. Still wouldn’t move.” He shook his head at the memory of it.
“Tied chains to the legs of that chair and hooked ’em to a team. Four dray mares, big and strong from hauling mining equipment. Those horses did strain until I thought they would fall over, mister, and through it all that chair and that old man did not so much as give out with a creak. Pretty much exasperated by then, the sheriff, he pulled out his Colt and pointed it at the old man and said—I heard him for myself—he said, ‘You git your sorry skinny trespassin’ old ass off the town water source right now or by the rights invested in me by the State of Colorado and in full sight of the Good Lord himself, I will put a bullet in you, sir, right where you squat!’ ”
Malone’s face was impassive. “What happened?”
The bartender took a deep breath. “Well, mister, that old man, he just looked up at the sheriff with this funny glint in his eye and said, ‘If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just continue to set a spell.’ So the sheriff, he fired once. Nothing happened. The old man, he stayed a-sittin’. And that bullet, near as anyone can reckon, it traveled about two feet, stopped deader than an Apache confronted by a naked Norwegian, and fell to the ground.” He nodded to his left, in the direction of the swinging doors. “Far as I know, it’s still there. Ain’t nobody in town dared to touch it.”
“The sheriff?” Malone inquired.
“Ain’t nobody seen him since. Still runnin’, I reckon. His eyes got as big as an owl’s, they did. Pretty much everybody else who was around at the time took off and ran, too. Can’t say as I blame ’em. So that’s why we ain’t got no water in town. Old man says he’ll move hisself and his damn chair off the spring valve for a thousand dollars. In gold. The mayor and the town’s leading business folk, they’re talkin’ about it. Drillin’ sideways into the spring to bypass the existing underground plumbing might work. Miners contend it might also ruin the natural flow permanent-like. But a thousand dollars…” His voice trailed away as he shook his head sadly. “He doesn’t get up to eat, doesn’t get up to drink, doesn’t get up for anything. Just sits
there and rocks, back and forth, back and forth, smilin’ at nothing in particular.”
Silence lay middlin’ in the saloon for several minutes. This was due to a combination of the solemnity that had infected the town like typhoid, a current dearth of patrons, and the fact that those customers who were present found themselves uncharacteristically subdued in the presence of the human mountain ensconced at the bar.
Eventually Malone leaned forward slightly. To his credit the bartender did not shy from this increased proximity, not to mention the actual eclipse, though the bouquet that emanated from the well-traveled mountain man did cause the young man’s nostrils to clench involuntarily.
“Now then, son, what I’m about to ask you is pretty important. This old coot o’ yours: Did he say, ‘I think I’ll just continue to set a spell’? Or did he say, ‘I think I’ll just continue to set a spell’?”
The barkeep frowned. “Don’t rightly know. I wasn’t close enough to hear what he actually said. Was repeated to me by them that were.”
Malone straightened. Across the room, a quartet of hardened miners abruptly abandoned their card game and departed the premises as expeditiously as possible.
“Got some time afore dinner. Reckon I’ll go have a chat with this mulish visitant o’ yours. Might be I can persuade him t’ set himself somewhere else, and forgo the gold he’s attemptin’ to wrest from you folks.”
“You can try all you want, mister. Lord knows you’re the biggest thing I’ve seen this side of Pikes Peak, but I guarantee even you can’t pull him out of that old chair of his.”
Halfway to the door, Malone looked back. Eyes black as a six-year-old’s pudding-induced nightmare regarded the bartender. “Who said anythin’ about pulling?”
Outside the Double Eagle, a man was standing in the street just off the raised boardwalk and screaming. Or maybe he was crying. Probably both, Malone reflected as he paused to take in the scene. Certainly the second man lying on the ground and clutching himself was crying. Most likely, the prone one did not have the wherewithal remaining to scream. There was also a boy of about ten, who was standing on the boardwalk quietly observing the prospect before him. Malone leaned toward him. Unlike the denizens of the saloon, the lad was too young to exhibit the instinctive fear that someone of Malone’s size and appearance usually engendered.
“What happened here, son?”
The boy considered the man-mountain. “This here your horse, mister?”
“It be. His name’s Worthless.”
The youth turned back to squint at Malone’s mount. Worthless squinted back out of the eye located within a circular white patch. A leather bandage covered the stallion’s forehead. Beneath the leather, something indeterminate bulged intriguingly.
“Never seen a horse like this, mister.”
“He’s part Shire, part Appaloosa, part mistral, part—”
“What a ‘mistral’?”
Malone grinned slightly. “French breed.” He nodded toward the man who was screaming and crying.
“For God’s sake, make him move! Git ’im off me!”
Malone ignored the man’s pleas. “These two fellers been botherin’ Worthless?”
“I think they were trying to steal him, mister.”
The mountain man nodded. “That would explain why he’s standin’ on that poor feller’s right foot. Wouldn’t want Worthless standin’ on my foot, that’s fer sure.” He nodded at the man lying on the ground who was holding himself and moaning. “What happened to thet one?”
“I think he was trying to pull off your saddlebags when your horse kicked him. Right in the collywobbles.” The boy looked confused. “I swear, sir, your horse, he kicked out straight sideways. But cain’t no horse do that. A horse’s leg just goes pretty much forward and back. Ain’t never heard of a horse that could kick out straight sideways. Kinda surprised me.”
Malone nodded at the man on the ground. “Not as much as it must’ve surprised this feller.” Straightening, he stepped off the boardwalk, put his leather-clad left foot in a hanging stirrup, and mounted up. The added weight only caused the man whose right foot was pinned beneath Worthless’s left front hoof to scream all the louder.
“OH GAWD, I’M DYING, LORD SAVE ME!”
Malone chucked the reins. The stallion looked back up at him.
“C’mon, you useless lump o’ coyote bait. I got to see a man about a settin’. Or a spell. Reckon it might be a bit o’ both.”
It was only when rider and mount turned away from the saloon and started up the town’s main street that the boy noticed the horse had never been tied to the saloon’s railing. As for the would-be horse thief whose foot had been trapped, he promptly clutched at his lower leg and fell to the dirt alongside his equally incapacitated companion. Both foot and boot, the youth noted with interest, had been squashed flat as a potato pancake.
The stranger’s horse had been big, and heavy—but that heavy? Why, to crush a man’s boot and foot so purely flat, it seemed to the boy that the peculiar stallion would had to have been made out of solid iron.
The town spring was located uphill and off to one side of the main street. The miners who had plumbed it had made a good job of the work, finishing it off with aged hardwood banded with iron. The life-giving rattle of running water was absent from the feeder pipe that emerged from the control cap. Eyeing the valve that normally controlled the volume, Malone wondered where the spring’s natural flow was going now that the pipe designed to convey it into town had been closed off.
Might be that the old man seated in the battered rocking chair directly in front of the currently inaccessible steel wheel would know.
He was at least as weathered as his chair. While the latter was adorned with lingering flecks of red and green paint, the oldster wore faded Levi’s and a pale plaid shirt open at the collar. A ring on one finger had been pounded out of a single nugget. His hair flowed gray around his shoulders, while his beard was as long, snake-slender, and white as that of an entire line of Amish patriarchs. The hat on his head was stained with the tears of eons. Or possibly cheap bourbon. Sometimes, Malone reflected, the two were hard to tell apart.
Dismounting, he left Worthless standing by himself and approached the spring source. The old man looked up at his approach. And up, and up, until one withered hand finally had to push back the age-worn hat to allow its owner a proper and complete viewing.
“Well now, if you ain’t the biggest pile I ever done seen—and I done seen some fairly big ones in my time.”
“I reckon you’re a bit o’ a pile yourself, denyin’ these good folks water.”
The old man chuckled. Half his teeth were gold, too. They alternated precisely with the remaining natural enamel: one gold, one white, one gold, one white.
“Business, my enormous friend, jest business.”
“I find extortion the business equivalent o’ what eventually results from a feller eatin’ a whole sack o’ unsalted beans.”
“Hmph! These drylanders send you up here to try and get my goat?” He grinned. “Or to move me, or try to reach under my chair? You kin try if you want, ox-brother, but won’t do you no good. You’ll only strain your back, and mebbe your brain.” One hand slapped down hard on a wooden arm of the chair. “When Versus Wrathwell decides to set a spell, ain’t nothin’ on Heaven or Earth moves him!”
Malone was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. “Reckon you must be right, though I expect Worthless there might shift you an inch or three. Once had him drag off a lightning-downed sequoia that were blockin’ our way. He don’t much care for pullin’, though. Says he ain’t no mule, to be hooked up to a load. So guess ain’t nobody gonna pull you off that spot, or that chair.”
“Damned right!” Wrathwell huffed. “Guess you got more sense hidin’ behind that face wire o’ yours than I first thought.” He pointed down toward the town. T
he boy who had witnessed the ill-fated attempt to steal the mountain man’s horse was standing in the street, looking up toward the site of the spring. Several townsfolk had joined him in staring. One well-dressed man had bent over and was talking softly to the lad.
When Malone continued to stare, the oldster made a face at him. “Well, you gonna stand there till the stink gits tired and rolls off you, or you gonna do somethin’ useful and tell them sorry-ass no-hopers to pay me what I asked?”
“Neither one, grandpa.” As Malone started toward him, the old man’s expression tensed and he gripped the arms of his chair with long, bony fingers. But Malone didn’t touch him, did not try to move him. Instead, he sat down as close as he could get to the paint-peeling piece of furniture, crossed legs the size of tree trunks, and rested his enormous, gnarled hands on his leather-clad knees.
Wrathwell’s gaze narrowed. “Jest whut d’you think you’re doin’?”
Malone shrugged. “It’s a free country. Thought I might just set a spell.”
The oldster’s eyes widened. Then he began to laugh; a raucous, otherworldly cackle that boded no good. “Right then, I gits it! You think you kin outset me! Is thet it?” When the mountain man didn’t reply, Wrathwell’s crowing subsided to mere amusement. “So be it. Set till you get tired, old sod. Set still till the sun starts to burn your brow, till the Colorado night ices your liver. Set till hunger claws at your insides like you’ve swallowed a pepper-haired cat and thirst grates your throat like a carrot peeler. Ain’t nobody ever outset Versus Wrathwell, and I kin assure you thet no iggorant bucket o’ beef escaped from a Chicago slaughterhouse will be the first!”
And so saying, he sat back in his birch chair, turned his gaze toward the distant clouds, and began to rock.
Malone sat still as the stone beneath his backside, and stared. Slightly downslope, a singular amalgamation of equine complexity observed this tableau for about five minutes before snorting loudly, turning, and trotting back into town, there to regard an empty trough before nuzzling up against the tired, thirsty mare tied beside it. In less than a minute she was rolling her eyes and looking decidedly stinkweed.