“Their deed,” he informed the two restless miners, “appears to be in order.”
Barely restraining his outrage, O’Riley shook their own deed at the diminutive chieftain. “Sure an’ ’tis enough o’ this! Where’s it registered, huh? Ours comes right and true from the territorial agency in Genoa! Where’s his registered?”
The chief folded his stubby but powerful arms and replied defiantly. “Asgard.”
McLaughlin sniffed disdainfully. “Ain’t never heard o’ no Asgard, Nevada Territory.”
“Nonetheless,” Malone told him, “they have a legitimate claim.” He looked back at the chieftain and his assembled prickly tribe. They were just itching for a fight. You could smell it. Nor were they put off by Malone’s size. Such a reaction was to be expected, he knew, of folk who spent their considerable lives underground while hewing their way through solid rock. Rising from his crouch, he turned and headed in the direction of his mount. Equally anxious, the two miners followed close on his heels, clinging to him like remoras to a shark.
“Sor! Mr. Malone, sor,” McLaughlin exclaimed, “you’re not leavin’ us now, are you? You promised to help.”
Checking the straps on his saddlebags, Malone looked down at him. “I said I’d come and have a look-see at your problem. That I have done. I did not know that your rival claimants also had a deed. It would appear to me, fellers, that you have a situation here. One that is on your hands, not mine.”
“But what are we to do?” O’Riley was wringing his hands. “We’d fight them, but though they be small there be many of them.” A throbbing in his right big toe brought uncomfortable remembrance to the fore. “They have weapons.”
Malone seemed to hesitate. Then he stopped what he was doing and turned back to the two men. Behind him, his mount rolled its eyes and neighed disgustedly.
“I’ll not get in the middle of a fight where both sides have a claim to right, wrong, and gold. But though I’ll not engage in any fighting, I did say I would help if I could, and so it shall be.” Removing a round, fist-sized green bottle from one saddlebag, he began to retrace his steps toward the diggings. Gleeful as schoolboys, the miners followed. Desperate to maintain the flow of conversation, McLaughlin gestured at the bottle.
“As pretty a piece of crystal as a lady’s perfume container, sor. Where be the cut glass from? New York? Paris?”
“No place whose name you’d know,” Malone informed him. “And ’tis not glass. It’s an emerald.”
The miner expressed surprise. “Do you mean to say, sor, that that there bottle is made of emeralds?”
“No. I said it is an emerald.”
In front of them on the far side of the camp, the gnomish throng still waited. At the return of the miners and the mountain man, small, callused hands tightened determinedly on the hardwood shafts of picks and shovels. Hard rock chisels were drawn from belts and readied to be used as knives. Shovels were pointed sharp edge outward toward the three approaching humans.
Malone halted well short of the impending confrontation. Having seen the hexagonal-barreled Sharps slung across the back of Malone’s mount, O’Riley was surprised the mountain man had not brought the enormous gun with him. Perhaps, he thought, the giant was intending to do battle solely with the LeMat pistol holstered at his belt. In truth, Malone had no intention of employing either weapon. He turned to confront the uneasy miners.
“Now then, you happy sons of the Auld Sod, I’m goin’ t’ need a smidgen of your blood.” Subsequent to which declaration of intent he removed from his belt a bowie knife that in size would not have been out of place among the flailing swords at Agincourt. Noting the untrammeled shock on the faces of the two men, Malone hesitated a moment, realized his mistake, and smiled sheepishly.
“Sorry, fellers. I was fer a moment distracted.” To the great relief of the miners, he replaced the enormous blade in its sheath and fumbled in several pockets before withdrawing a pencil-sized length of steel that gleamed in the setting sun. “This here’s a mite better fer the purpose, I reckon. Not to mention fer your constitution.”
Stepping forward, he placed the business edge of the scalpel against O’Riley’s thumb and drew back the blade with a precision and delicacy of touch that would have drawn the admiration of Boston’s finest surgeons. Anticipating the cut, the miner grimaced but did not cry out. Turning to the nervous McLaughlin, Malone repeated the action. Then he stepped back.
“Hold out your thumbs and let the blood fall upon the land you claim as your own. Do it now!”
The booming command was enough to focus the miners’ attention and they hastened to comply. Bright red blood dripped from the twin cuts to stain the dry earth. Removing the stopper from the bottle he had brought with him, Malone poured the green contents onto the ground, where it mixed with the miners’ blood. A glutinous mist began to form. Taking a tentative sniff, McLaughlin was surprised to find that the fog smelled of clover. Raising his other enormous arm over his head, Malone seemed to strike the darkening sky as he thundered.
“Talamh seo éileamh againn, is é seo óir linne, deirimid an fhóid Auld!”
The strange words meant nothing to McLaughlin, but O’Riley’s eyes grew wide. He hadn’t heard the original language of his people spoken since as a child he had come to the New World with his parents. The liquid vowels sang in his ears as the mountain man’s invocation echoed off the stony hillsides. The mass of gnomes drew back a step or two, but they did not flee.
A low, ominous cloudbank was coalescing, taking shape between them and the miners. It was damp and ichorous and shot through with green lightning. Behind the men the miners’ horses stamped, whinnied, and rolled their eyes as they fought to stampede. Meanwhile Malone’s mount mustered a single squint-eyed glance in the direction of the crackling, boiling cloud, shook his head, and returned to placidly cropping the sparse ground cover as if nothing was amiss with the world.
When at last the furious lightning ceased flashing and the final echo of thunder rolled into the distance, the cloudbank dissipated to reveal…a second host of small men. But their beards, which were varied and profuse and in general more thoroughly combed, tended to blond and black rather than gnomish white. Instead of attire suitable for digging, their garments tended to the loose and colorful. This fashion extended to their hats, which were equally as diverse as their facial hair, but not to their boots, which were universally black.
McLaughlin might not have remembered the Gaelic of his family, but for anyone who hailed from the old country there was no mistaking the identity of the multitude of newcomers.
“Sure and beggora,” he declared breathily, “but they cannot be anything but leprechauns!”
“Leprechauns.” Standing beside his partner, O’Riley was no less dazed by the manifestation. “No, it cannot be.” Whereupon one standing in the forefront of the diminutive newcomers turned, strode directly toward the two men, and promptly whacked the hesitant miner’s right foot with the stout and finely carved shillelagh he carried.
“Who cannot be, ye daft mental malingerer!” Whirling to find himself confronted by Malone, the pint-sized combatant raised black eyebrows that terminated in neatly coiffed points. “Mother Macrie, ’tis the giant who built the causeway!” Taking a deep whiff of the mountain man, he wrinkled up a considerable nose. “And with a pong to match the rest o’ him!”
“Bear grease.” Malone was apologetic. “Good for healin’ cracked heels.”
“Gah!” Retreating several steps, the taoiseach of the leprechauns pointedly waved a hand back and forth in front of his face. “For what mysterious end have ye have drawn us unwilling and in haste to this godforsaken place, monster?”
Malone nodded toward the staring, openmouthed miners. “Two o’ your ex-countrymen need your help in a matter o’ land use.”
“Land use, ’tis it?” Forcing himself to ignore the piquant fragr
ance rising from the vicinity of the mountain man’s feet, the stocky green-clad figure tapped his open palm with the shillellagh. “A problem with the English again?”
“Not exactly.” Turning, Malone indicated the throng of watching gnomes. “Your relations have a small mine on this here land. These knäckebröd-eating immigrants from the northeast likewise claim it as their own and are uncommon insistent on keepin’ it all fer themselves.”
“Are they now? A mine, you say?” Malone nodded. “And why should me and the rest of the boyos get ourselves involved in a dispute between man—offspring o’ Erin though they be—and mice?”
“Say there now, stranger…,” began the chief of the gnomes. But the rest of his words were drowned out by a desperate McLaughlin.
“We’ll pay you!” The miner spoke without hesitation. “We know—I remember—that your kind is fond of gold. We have gold. In our mine.” Raising a hand, he pointed toward the pit.
“Gold now, is it?” The dark eyes of the leprechaun taoiseach glittered. “ ’Tis hardly fair to tempt a leprechaun with gold. But in this instance we’ll let it pass.” He straightened as much as his foot-high body would allow. “Sure an’ we’ll help you then, boyos. We’ll save your claim for you and leave with nothing but a fair share of the shiny stuff, no more than is needed to fill a few kettles.”
O’Riley found himself suddenly reluctant, but the two miners conversed and came to an agreement, for, as McLaughlin pointed out, what choice did they have? Having taken stock of the matter, the giant mountain man was clearly inclined to wash his hands of it. They would have to engage supernatural help from the old country or none at all.
“It’s a bargain, then.” McLaughlin stuck out his hand and O’Riley matched him a second later, but by that time the taoiseach of the green-clad visitants had already raised his shillelagh high above his head and was leading a raucous charge in the direction of the waiting gnomes.
What a fabulous confusion there thence ensued! What a furor, a fight, what a conflagration of physical confrontation! The hills were alive with the sound of cursing, in Gaelic and Norse and half a dozen other tongues not utilized in such scandalous fashion since the old gods fled the noisome proximity of a fecund humanity for the peace and contentment of an otherworldly retirement among the clouds. Sticks and shovels clashed, knees were raised, heads were butted, and butts were kicked. There was punching and screaming and biting and insulting on a scale all out of proportion to the size of those doing the wielding, and more than once ’twas the words and not the weapons that inflicted the deepest damage.
Keeping well clear of the downsized but decidedly ferocious mayhem that was taking a steady toll on small arms, legs, faces, torsos, and groins, Peter O’Riley and Patrick McLaughlin looked on with trepidation lest the fury on the mountainside expand to include and overwhelm the boulder behind which they had taken precipitous refuge. Meanwhile an estimably nonchalant Amos Malone built a fire and made supper.
The fighting surged back and forth past sunset and on into the night with neither side being able to gain an advantage. There was a fair amount of blood, a lot of bruising and contusing, but no deaths among the hardy and determined combatants. It was only when the upper half of a shattered shillelagh smashed into his campfire and upset his coffeepot, thus causing the pungent contents to spill out upon the surrounding rocks, where they dissolved several chunks of quartz-laden granite, that Malone finally had enough.
“Sure an’ he’s up!”
“Wha—what?” O’Riley blinked tiredly, having fallen asleep despite the noise of the boisterous conflict.
“The mountain man. He’s up.” McLaughlin pointed. “Maybe he’s finally goin’ to do something.”
The other miner rubbed at his eyes. “Don’t see why he didn’t in the first place. Big as he is, I expect if he wanted to he could flatten the lot of ’em, both sides.”
McLaughlin was nodding agreement. “I dunno what stopped ’im. Scruples or somethin’.”
Ignoring the blizzard of flying wood and mining implements, Malone waded into the thick of the fighting. From time to time an addled leprechaun or disoriented gnome would mistakenly take a swing at him. Shilleleghs bounced off ironlike legs and set their owners to vibrating helplessly, as did shovels and hammers. One swarthy gnome who did his best to drive the point of his pickaxe into a gargantuan thigh found the tip bent in half by long-worn leather so infused with sweat, animal fat, and impregnated meteoric dust that the pants were as stiff and hard as Galahad’s armor.
“NOW LOOK HERE!”
It was a command that rumbled and reverberated across the battleground, raced avalanchelike down the slope, and sufficiently unsettled a pair of wandering grizzlies so badly that they fell all over themselves in their haste to flee the immediate neighborhood. Fighting halted immediately as each and every undersized combatant turned to look in the direction from whence the bellowing had arisen.
Malone’s voice dropped from the apocalyptic to the merely stentorian. “It’s plain clear that this ain’t goin’ nowhere and it’s gettin’ there fast. I said I wouldn’t take no sides in this here fracas and I intend to keep true to my words. But there’s been enough bashin’ and thrashin’ this night fit to unsettle half a dozen worlds, and it’s time ’twas settled.” Searching the battlefield, he sought out and found the hövding of the gnomes.
“I’ve a proposition for you and your tribe, sir, if you’ll lend me an ear.”
“Well…” His chubby face dirty and streaked and a deep bruise showing on one arm, the gnome chieftain gripped his left ear and began to bring up the cold chisel he held in his other hand.
“No, no,” Malone said quickly. “Just heave to and give a listen.” The chief lowered the chisel.
“Now then,” the mountain man began, “at heart this is all about gold….”
“Sure and ain’t it always.” Having come up behind him, the leader of the leprechauns was paying close attention.
“What if,” Malone continued, still addressing himself to the gnomish chieftain, “I promised to send you and your fellows to a place where there’s more gold than is to be found on your claim here? A place where folks like these”—and with a gesture he indicated the two distant but not disinterested miners—“won’t bother you fer a while, at least. A place where you can mine away t’ your mean-spirited little hearts’ content?”
The chief considered. It was a bold and generous offer, to be sure. That was, if in truth it was more than just a promise. He studied the hulking mountain man closely.
“And if we should accept, who be you, sir, to carry out such an audacious enterprise?”
“I am Amos Malone.”
The chief of the gnomes started visibly. “I’ve heard of you. Even down in the deep dirt, that name…”
“Rings fondly?” Malone opined.
“Nay. Sets off alarms.” White brows drew together. “It’s said even in Nifelheim that you are quite mad.”
“I occasionally get upset, ’tis true.” Malone wished for the pleasure of his pipe, but now was not the time to break away for a smoke. “But I hold to my word. Will you and yours break off this futile conniption and accept my proposal?”
The chief paused, then turned and moved to rejoin the mass of his fellows. There followed a good deal of gnomish disputation, at the conclusion of which the chieftain returned to the waiting Malone and stuck out a thickly callused hand.
“ ’Tis a bargain then. If you can deliver your side of it.”
“A bargain set.” Malone straightened. Tilting back his head, he studied the sky, inhaled deeply of the air, felt carefully of the ground with his booted feet. He was here. They needed to be there. The projected transposition had to be voluntary on the part of those being sent, otherwise he could have tried it earlier. But he disliked involving himself in mass transplantations. They tended to induce colic.
“Gnome långt hemifrån, flyga till guld, tid att ströva.”
A white cloud appeared. Broad and capacious, it descended slowly to cover the assembled gnomes until at last it reached the ground. The last thing O’Riley and McLaughlin saw of their gnomish tormentors was the chief, glaring at them and threatening murder and dismemberment if Malone failed to follow through on his promise. Then the cloud, like a prime San Francisco fog, lifted and was gone. With it went the gnomes, down to the last sharpened pick and pointed cap.
“You did it!” McLaughlin sprinted to the mountain man’s side. “They’re gone. They’re really gone.”
“Wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with me own two eyes.” O’Riley would have broken out in a jig but he was too emotionally and physically exhausted.
“And now, sirs, if ’tis all right with you, we will be collectin’ our pay for doin’ the fightin’ that led to this happy conclusion.” With that the taoiseach of the leprechauns was off to give orders to his green-clad troops. The lot of them were soon busy bustling over the miners’ pit.
* * *
—
Ögrad stood beside his chief, his eyes wild with anger.
“He’s cheated us! The great lumbering smelly man has cheated us!” With one short, thick arm he gestured at the wild ocean before them. “This is no new habitation, but home!”
Mad Amos Malone Page 27
