The wind rose, bringing mournful thunder with it. Malone and Dungannon stepped out into the blowing rain and shielded their eyes. Finally Malone had to put a big hand on the foreman’s shoulder and spin him around.
“You’re lookin’ the wrong way!” the mountain man shouted against the wind.
“But the line ends here” was the reply. Already Dungannon was soaked to the skin. “It has to be coming up from the south. There’re no rails north of here!”
“What makes you think it’s coming down rails?” Malone yelled at him.
At the same time Dungannon saw it coming. His face turned pale as whitewash, and he turned and bolted. Malone let him go, stood his ground, and made sure the two leather pouches were close at hand while he fought to keep the rain out of his eyes.
Worthless was brave and loyal but no equine fool. With an astonishing heave on his bridle, he wrenched both posts out of the ground and went bounding off like blazes to the west, the hitching rail bouncing wildly along behind him.
“I’ll be hornswoggled,” Malone muttered as he stared northward. Ma-Hok-Naweh had been right: white man’s medicine seen through Indian eyes.
Thundering down out of the scrub-covered hills came the Iron Horse. Lightning flashed on its metallic flanks. It breathed no smoke and whistled no greeting. Its eyes were the fiery orange of the wood box, and the spirits of the dead kept its engine well stoked. It rattled and banged as it ran, and there was a blind indifference about it that was more terrifying than any overt sense of purpose could have been. Looking at it, you’d think it had no more sense in its iron skull, no more care for what it was trampling underfoot, than did a train.
Big it was, bigger than any horse, iron or otherwise. It came crashing into the camp, kicking aside piles of big ties like they were toothpicks, orange eyes flaming, its massive iron hooves making pulp of wheelbarrows and buckets and storage sheds. While Malone stared, it took the most recently completed section of rail in its teeth and pulled, ripping up a hundred feet of new line as if it were toying with a worm. It turned and kicked out with both hind feet. The rail-laying locomotive parked on the siding nearby went flying, tons of steel and wood, and landed loudly in a shallow pool of rainwater.
Then it came for Malone.
The wind and lightning and rain had drowned out its approach and kept the men in their warm beds, but when a locomotive flies a hundred yards through the air and lands hard on the ground, it makes a good bit of noise. A few sleepy-eyed, tough-skinned laborers began stumbling out of their tents.
Malone could smell steel breath and squinted against the iron filings that were spit his way. Taking a deep breath, he spoke in a voice as large as any the clouds overhead could muster:
“WHOA!”
That brought the iron monster up short for just an instant, more startled than intimidated. It was long enough for Malone to take aim and fling the two handsful of colored sand he held. Somehow, in spite of the wind and rain, that sand stayed compacted long enough to strike the broad iron chest.
Without pausing to see if he’d thrown true, Malone began to recite in booming tones:”Hey-ah-hey-hey, ah-wha-tey-ah, hey-hey-oh-ta-hoh-neh,” and added for good, if unscholarly, measure: “Now git!”
A few shouts sounded dimly from those workers awake enough to see something towering over the camp there in the rain, but by the time they reached the place where Malone stood standing, hands on hips, staring off into the storm, the mountain man was all alone.
“What happened, mister?” one man yelled.
Another stuck his head into the foreman’s tent. “Mr. Dungannon? Mr. Dungannon, sir!” He emerged a moment later. “He ain’t here.”
“Who’re you?” Malone asked.
“Harold Sipes, sir. I’m tie and spike supervisor for this section of line. What the devil happened here, sir? I thought I saw something…something impossible.”
“That you did, Harold.”
“Where’s Mr. Dungannon?”
Malone turned back southward. He thought he could still hear a distant clanking through the wind, but he couldn’t be sure. His ears were full of rainwater and iron filings. “Mr. Dungannon told me he’s tired o’ the railroad business and that he’s gone south fer his health. Before he left, he did tell me one thing to pass on to his immediate subordinate. I guess that’d be you, Harold. He said to be sure to tell you t’ move the track a couple o’ miles east of here before you start northwest up toward the Salt River. Said to be sure the company stays well clear of those old ruins the Indians call the Big House.”
“He did?” The supervisor wiped water from his head. “He never said nothing like that to me before.”
“Mr. Dungannon took a sudden interest in the culture of the local people. It were his last wish before he left.”
Sipes looked uncertain. “Well, sir, I don’t know as how I have the authority to alter the recommendations of the survey.”
“Harold, remember what you think you saw out here when you came stumblin’ out o’ your warm bed? Somethin’ a mite impossible, you said?”
“Yes, I…” He paused and found himself staring into black eyes so deep that they just went right on through into that big hirsute head, never really stopping anywhere, just fading on and on into dark nothingness. “Actually, sir, maybe I didn’t see much of anything. It was awful dark. Still is. Leastwise, I don’t think I’d write my missus I saw it.”
“Or your superiors, either. They wouldn’t take well to such a tale, I think. Be a good idea to shift that line.”
“Um, maybe it would at that, sir. Now that you put it clear like you have, I expect it would be the sensible thing to do, especially seeing as how it was Mr. Dungannon’s last request.”
“Before he left to go south,” Malone added.
“Yes, sir. Before he left to go south. I’ll see to it.”
“Good man, Sipes.” Malone turned from him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date with a clean bed and new linen. But first I’ve got to run down my fool horse.” He gestured toward two holes in the ground nearby, now half-full of water. “Went and took off with the whole damn hitchin’ rail, he did.”
Sipes glanced at the holes and smiled. “Not arguing with you, mister, but there ain’t a horse alive strong enough to pull that hitching rail out of that rock. I saw them posts set in myself. There was talk of putting a small station here someday and they were put in to last.”
Malone was already wandering out of earshot, a sour expression on his face. “Then where d’you expect that rail’s got to, Harold? Worthless ain’t no normal horse.” As the rain began to close in around him, he raised his voice. “You hear that, you good-for-nothing, four-legged, useless hunk o’ coyote bait! Wait till I get my hands on you, you lily-livered, swaybacked equine coward!”
Supervisor Sipes listened until the falling rain swallowed up sight and sound of the mountain man. No, he thought, that wouldn’t be no normal horse, mister. And you sure ain’t no normal human being. Then he saw the torn-up section of track and wondered how the wind had done that, and then his eyes lit on the laying locomotive lying on its side like a dead mammoth a good hundred yards away, and he knew the wind hadn’t done that.
Then he thought back to what he’d half maybe glimpsed through the storm and decided it would be a good time to get back into bed under the covers where it was safe. But by now there might be scorpions crawled in there to get out of the rain, and he hesitated.
Until something far way, but not far enough away, went clank and the supervisor decided that for the remainder of this night, anyways, it would be smarter to bed down with the scorpions….
Witchen Woes
I think that once writers have decided to put the word “witch” into a story, they should be able to go in any direction they choose and produce something of interest. My wife introduced me to the fable of the kitch
en witch, who keeps watch over that part of the home. But in my mind, “benign” and “witch” are not words that play well together.
What if a kitchen witch turns out to be more witch than kitchen? Worlds might not be at stake, empires might not tremble: after all, your average kitchen witch tends to run to the diminutive. But even a characteristically small one could, if so inclined, make a lot of trouble in a household. Malone always being ready to lend a helping hand, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant the problem, I thought I’d present him with a conundrum more irritating than earthshaking.
Not much of a problem, you might say. But then, it’s not your kitchen that’s under siege.
* * *
—
Amos Malone was sipping at his fourth whiskey when the distraught woman wandered into the saloon. Her mere presence served to indicate the degree of her distress, for no female citizen of good repute would enter a hard-core drinking establishment unescorted unless her motivation arose from intentions indecent or insane.
Her arrival distracted several pairs of eyes from cards, drinks, and the unwholesome hostesses who were the only other non-males present that afternoon in the Piccadilly. Several hands groped for her, and her country prettiness provoked more than one lascivious proposal. She ran the gauntlet of hopeful debauchery as she searched the crowd for someone in particular, twisting out of one grasp after another, skirt and hair flying, yanking her shawl free of the grimy, rum-slick fingers that clutched at it.
One ex-miner was more persistent (or less drunk and therefore more accurate) than the rest, for he soon had her in a firm grip with both hands. “Now, don’t be so contrary, little lady.” He leaned close and spoke with breath that was borderline flammable. “Howsabout a little kiss?”
Her back arched as she fought to dodge his mouth and the miasma that issued from the inebriated depths beyond. “I am a married woman, sir, and a decent one. I’ll thank you to let go of me!”
Laughter rose from the surrounding tables at this pious declaration. “Shore you is, missy,” her captor jeered. “As to the fust, thet don’t give me no trouble, and as to the second, it naturally explains whut yer doin’ in a fancy hotel like this!”
More laughter—which Malone found he could not ignore though he had done so to the entire contretemps up to then. Generally he was of a mind to attend solely to his own business, but there was something in the woman’s attitude and tone that led him to believe she might be as upstanding as she claimed. Anyhow, it was a slow afternoon in the sleepy town of Sacramento, and he didn’t have anything better to do, so he downed the last of the amber liquid remaining in his shot glass, set the glass down slowly on the oak bar, wiped his lips, and turned. On his face was an expression that made the bartender make haste to sink out of sight.
“Pardon me, friend,” Malone rumbled in a voice that sounded as if it were rising from the bottom of a mine shaft, “but it appears the lady is in some trouble and doesn’t need any additional of your makin’.”
“And jest whut business be it of…” The ex-miner hesitated as he caught sight of his questioner. “…Mad Amos Malone?” he continued, his voice suddenly less than a whisper.
Mad Amos Malone stood a mite taller and spread a tad wider than most men…and not a few bears. He was—or had been—a member of that unique breed known as the mountain man: that peculiar subspecies of Homo sapiens closely related to both the angel and the Neanderthal. Sane folk left such individuals alone.
The young woman wrenched around, and her eyes grew wide as she caught sight of Malone. “Sir, if you are truly the Amos Malone they call mad, then you are he whom I have been seeking.”
Danged if she didn’t have green eyes, Malone mused. He’d always been a sucker for green eyes. “Then that makes it personal.” Malone took a step toward the ex-miner, who was no featherweight himself. “You kin understand my concern now, friend.”
“Yeh. Shore I kin, mister.” The other man kept his eyes focused on the mountain man as he let go of the woman and edged aside.
“Now then, ma’am,” Malone said politely (such limpid green eyes!), “this is hardly the place to engage in genteel conversation. I suggest we step outside.”
“Thank you, Mr. Malone.” Pulling her shawl protectively about her shoulders, she headed for the swinging doors, Malone following in her wake.
As they reached the doors, Malone sensed the nervous whisper of retreating air behind him. Air’s funny that way. It can laugh, it can cry, and it knows when to get out of the way. Air ain’t no fool.
Neither was Amos Malone, who whirled and brought his hand up as he jerked to one side. Several gasps were heard, and a few cards fluttered to the floor of the saloon as he plucked the knife out of the air not three inches from the place his neck had been just seconds earlier.
The ex-miner who had thrown it let out a strangled cry and crashed through the back-alley door, pausing neither to recover his property nor to turn the lock.
Years later, a few who claimed they had been there swore that they saw the mountain man lean forward and whisper a few words to the knife before throwing it in return. One of those insisted that the knife answered back. At the time, though, none of them voiced their observations, not wishing to be thought of by their friends as unbalanced. On one account, however, all agreed. Malone threw that knife so hard an echoing thunder trailed behind it like a dog worrying a wagon. It went straight through the gap the miner had made in the course of executing his precipitate exit, then turned sharply to the right, down the alley. A minute or so passed before a distant scream reached the attentive listeners.
The piano player circumspectly resumed his off-key rendition of “I’ll Wake You When the Mail Boat Comes In,” and the other inhabitants of the Piccadilly Saloon returned to their poker and drinks.
“I hope you did not kill him, Mr. Malone,” the young woman said as they exited into the street.
“No, ma’am. I don’t cotton to killin’ drunks. Most times they don’t know what they’re about. Just gave him a warnin’ prick, so to speak, somewhere between his waist and his holster.”
“I am glad to hear it. I would not want to be the cause of another man’s death.” She looked a little uncertain. “Am I mistaken, or did I clearly see that knife you threw make a sharp turn to the right upon leaving this establishment? Such a thing is contrary to nature…for a knife.”
Malone shrugged, his expression noncommittal. “There’s not much that’s contrary to nature if you just know how to sweet-talk her along a little.”
“Which is precisely why I have sought you out among those ruffians, Mr. Malone. It is said among those in the know that you are familiar with many things the rest of us have no desire to be familiar with. I have desperate need of someone with such knowledge, for I am at my wit’s end what to do.”
She started to sob. Malone knew they were real tears, not merely tears concocted for his benefit. Real tears smell different from falsified ones, and mountain men are known for their acuity of smell.
Malone thought the tears looked faintly green.
“Now, ma’am, it’s true I’ve been exposed to certain things they don’t teach in eastern colleges, but I can’t presume to help you until I know the nature of your trouble. Clearly it’s affected you deeply.”
“Not only me,” she replied, “but my entire family as well. It’s a calumny for which I blame myself.”
“Family? Oh,” said Malone, crestfallen (ah, fare thee well, ocean eyes). He drew himself up and put aside his disappointment. “I’ll help if I can, of course. I was never one to turn away from a lady in distress.”
“You are gallant, sir.”
“No, ma’am, just stupid. What be your problem…and your name?”
“Oh. Excuse me for not saying to start with. Mary Makepeace is my name, sir, and Hart Makepeace my husband.” She dabbed at her face with a tatte
d handkerchief redolent of lilac. “I have a kitchen witch, Mr. Malone.”
“Call me Amos. Or Mad,” he chuckled, “if you prefer.” Then, seriously, “A kitchen witch? You mean one of those little good-luck figures made out of paper and wood and paint and scraps of old cloth?”
“No, sir…Amos. A real kitchen witch, and the very manifestation of horror she is, too. She won’t leave me alone, and she won’t bring back my poor family, and I…and I…” The flow of tears started again from those vitreous green orbs, and Malone found himself holding and comforting her—a not entirely unpleasant circumstance.
A derisive snort sounded nearby. Malone glanced toward the hitching rail, where a mongrelized, oversized, squint-eyed hooved quadruped was giving him the jaundiced eye. He made a face at the sarcastic creature, but he did take the hint. Reluctantly, he eased the unhappy Mrs. Makepeace an arm’s length away.
“A real witch, eh? In the kitchen? I’ve heard of ’em before, but they’re supposed to be pretty scarce hereabouts. They’re the inspiration for those little doll figures you find in kitchens, but the real ones are twice as ugly and a hundred times more dangerous.”
She stared up at him (with emeralds, he thought…olivine and malachite). “You…you mean that you believe me, sir…Amos?”
“I can tell a liar as far off as a month-dead wapiti, ma’am, and ’tis plain for any fool to see that you’re tellin’ the truth. I’m not sure if I can be of any help, though. For its size, a witchen—for that’s what you’re afflicted with as sure as a djinn dry-cleans his clothes—packs a mighty powerful wallop. But I’ll do what I can. Where’s your place at?”
She turned and pointed eastward. “That way, a half day’s ride, Amos Malone. But there’s no stage going back that direction for another fortnight.”
“Then we’d best get started, ma’am.” He turned and mounted his horse, extended down a hand, and pulled her up behind him as though she weighed nothing at all. “Let’s go, Worthless,” he told his mount.