“For another fifteen minutes.” Hargrave let out a snort of dejection. “Years of work, of dreaming, of what might one day be: all gone now because of a lack of time and a bad winter.” A sudden thought made him blink. “What of the schoolteacher Pettiview? Did she not beguile you sufficiently?”
“Beguilin’ be a knack that works both ways, friend Hargrave.” Raising his gaze, Malone peered in the direction of distant Newhope. “Her cookin’ weren’t much to my likin’, but I fear she may have treated herself to overmuch dessert. Last I saw her she were takin’ herself off to the town doctor. To treat a condition recently acquired, I believe she said.” He looked down. “Anyway, I am here. Now let us greet this itch that persists in troublin’ you. A mite further to the eastward, I calculate.”
“To the east? But why?” Hargrave eyed him uncomprehendingly.
Malone turned a fixed gaze in the opposite direction. The farmer followed the mountain man’s stare, but saw only forest and brush, cloud and sky. That, and the mountain man’s idiosyncratic steed. Unbelievably, it was still feeding. Insofar as Hargrave could recall, it had not stopped eating all night, having ingested a veritable mountain of silage. The animal was, if truth be told, looking more than a little bloated. Hargrave did not begrudge it or its owner the fodder; only marveled at an equine appetite the likes of which could scarce be imagined had he not observed its progression for himself.
With sheriff and minions in tow, a triumphant Scunsthorpe presented himself, deed in hand, before mountain man and farmer. Eyeing the moderately thinned forest, the speculator pronounced himself well satisfied.
“The time is at hand, gentlemen.” A snake could not smirk, but Scunsthorpe came close as he looked up at the silent Malone. “The precise time, as you wished it, sir. I can even say, with all honesty, that I am thankful for having met you and for your noteworthy if malodorous presence.” With a wave of one hand he took in the thinned woods. “As you have by your remarkable yet pointless labors saved me a good deal of money by felling such a quantity of valuable timber for me.”
“And I can even say,” Malone replied, “with all honesty, that it were no pleasure whatsoever to havin’ made your acquaintance, though yours is a type I know well, Scunsthorpe.”
The investor shrugged. “Insult me as you wish. I have no time to take offense, for I must perforce take full possession of my new lands.”
Malone nodded, checked the sun, and said, “Five minutes remain, Scunsthorpe. I would advise strongly they be used to move over this way.” Indicating the crest of the nearby hill, he started off in the other direction, toward his placid steed. Uncomprehending and uncaring, a devastated and benumbed Owen Hargrave followed the mountain man’s directions, striding slowly toward the hill and the homestead that were no longer his. So, too, did the sheriff, a heavily mustachioed man who was pleased beyond measure that his intercession would apparently not be required with so formidable a force as the towering stranger.
Uncertain at first, Scunsthorpe’s minions started to follow the disconsolate farmer. Their master, however, betook himself in the other direction, his long legs allowing him to catch up to Malone.
“And get this disgusting excuse of an animal off my property immediately!” Scunsthorpe said loudly as he stomped toward Malone’s placidly munching mount.
Having already reached the stallion, Malone unfastened the stays that secured the heavy horse blanket and flipped it up over his saddle and saddlebags. This small chore accomplished, he whirled and unexpectedly took off in Hargrave’s wake. At a run.
“This way, Scunsthorpe! Follow me while time remains!”
“Pfagh! You try to toy with me, Malone, but Potter Scunsthorpe is not a man to be played with! If you won’t move your swollen fat cow pile of an animal, I’ll move it for you!” Passing the mountain man, he continued toward Worthless, one arm raised preparatory to delivering a sound slap to the horse’s rump.
“Try if you must, Scunsthorpe!” Malone yelled back as he quickened his pace. “But fer your own sake, move round to ’is bow now!”
Scunsthorpe scoffed as he continued his approach. “What’s he going to do, Malone? Kick me? Do you think me so immersed in the law of the land that I am ignorant of the nature of horses?”
“Then y’all will note, and right soon,” shouted Malone as he hastily ducked down behind the top of the rise, “the consequences of his interminable consumption, proceeding without interruption from yesterday morning until this moment, which are presently about to deliver themselves not as a bout of colic, but in the form of…!”
Worthless’s tail rose, perhaps semaphoring a warning. That, more so than any of the mountain man’s admonitions, drew Scunsthorpe’s attention. He hesitated, his eyes widening, and turned abruptly away from the gravely bloated animal.
He was too late.
That noble if unclassifiable creature did not so much break wind as shatter it, destroy it, and biblically obliterate the entire atmosphere directly astern.
A fart of tectonic dimensions lifted the stunned Scunsthorpe off the ground. It blew him backward through the forest in company with the hundreds of trees—pine and ash, maple and oak—that the unquantifiable expression of equine flatulence summarily flattened. It blew him over the horizon and clear out of sight.
Great was the chanting among the local Indians at this brief if invisible manifestation of the sacred Thunderbird. Frantic were the cries of bewildered townsfolk as far away as Eau Claire, whose eau remained claire even if the air they breathed did not. Stunned pike dove deeper into Lake Winnebago, crowding the catfish for space near the bottom. It is said that ten thousand dead frogs washed ashore that day on the beaches of Green Bay.
Though they were both protected and upwind, the sheriff, Scunsthorpe’s underlings, and Owen Hargrave were not entirely spared. The colored gentleman commenced crying and could not stop, while his putty-faced counterpart began retching and did not cease so doing for a good thirty minutes, long after the contents of his stomach had been voided. Blessedly for him, the sheriff had simply passed out, while Hargrave had the foresight to quickly cover his face with a bandanna. As for Malone, being used as he was to the occasional explosive hindgut disquisitions of his mount, he simply rose and brushed at something sensed but unseen in front of his face. It dissipated with thankful rapidity.
Having summarily and volcanically relieved himself of a truly astonishing buildup of gas subsequent to his owner’s granting him permission to do so through the simple mechanism of raising the uniquely restrictive blanket, and apparently none the worse for the episode, Worthless astoundingly resumed his feeding on what little remained of Farmer Hargrave’s reserves.
“What…?” It was all Hargrave, being the only one of the group presently capable of coherent speech due to the fact that his lungs had remained relatively untrammeled, could muster.
“Normally, Worthless eats…normally,” Malone explained as he topped the rise to scrutinize the completely flattened quarter section—and more—of forest. “But if I let him, the stupid sack of silly soak will just continue t’ eat, an’ eat, an’ eat. Until his internal mechanisms, which are as abnormal in their way as the rest o’ him, kin no longer appropriately process their contents. They therefore release at one go all the ignoble effluvia they have unaccountably accumulated, in a volume and at a velocity that would stun any zoologist and cause the most sober veterinarian to forswear his chosen profession on the spot. ’Tis a regrettable social imperfection that Worthless and I usually have no difficulty avoidin’, as I have a care to regulate his feeding carefully. In this instance, however, I considered that lettin’ his appetite run free might in its own perverse fashion prove useful, and relatively harmless bein’ as we are in a relatively unpopulated region.
“And now, if y’all please, I think it both safe and pleasant for you, Mr. Hargrave, t’ see to your fine family and wife, and for me t’ have
the distinct pleasure o’ donning, for the first time in some while, clothing thet has been properly cleaned and disinfected.”
A dazed Hargrave surveyed his one hundred and sixty acres: felled and, if not stacked, at least neatly aligned all in one direction. Why, he mused wonderingly, the force of the equine eruption had even cleanly topped the fallen trees. He had lumber aplenty for his own use, good timber to sell, and cleared forest land sufficient to satisfy the demands of the unrelentingly greedy Scuns….
He looked around.
Where was the unpleasant stick of a speculator, anyway?
He was found several days later, wandering the western shore of Lake Winnebago, a glazed look upon his eye. Save for a broken right arm, a sprained left knee, and a lack of intact clothing, he was apparently unharmed. Wrinkling their collective noses and keeping their distance, his rescuers proceeded to burn his surviving attire while offering the benumbed survivor food and drink. For the latter he was most volubly grateful, but for the former somewhat uncertain.
It appeared most strange to his rescuers, and while a cause could not immediately be determined, it was clear to one and all in attendance that the man’s olfactory senses had been irrevocably damaged, for he could not smell so much as one of his own farts.
A Mountain Man and a Cat Walk into a Bar…
Certain things in life are unavoidable. The weather. Falling in love. Summer sniffles. Jokes that begin with “A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar…,” “A pilot, a truck driver, and a boat captain walk into a bar…,” “An ecdysiast, an enthusiast, and an entrepreneur walk into a bar….”
Well, you’re out of luck: I don’t know any of those.
But I do know that one day, bereft of inspiration, I was thinking about those jokes I don’t know, and Amos Malone came to mind, and I mused, “A mountain man and a…walk into a bar.”
I just didn’t have anything to put in place of that central “…”
But our seven cats did.
* * *
—
“What’re you starin’ so hard at, old-timer?” Malone asked as he swung his buckskin-clad left leg up and over the vertiginous back of his mount. Dust motes erupted from where his boot whumped into the unpaved main street of the central Kansas town. The impact left an imprint, much as an elephant might do in the soft mud of Lake Victoria’s foreshore.
His leathery, weathered visage much softened by the early light of evening, the curious senior squinted at the enormous horse from which its equally gargantuan rider had just dismounted.
“Tryin’ to decide which of you is bigger, your animal or you.” Turning his head to his left, he spat into the street. The tobaccoid spittle immediately sank and vanished into a dry wagon rut several inches deep. “That’s a might interestin’-looking critter you’re riding.” He raised a slender but muscular arm and pointed. “What’s that leather patch across his forehead for?”
Malone tugged at the wide, silver-studded belt that struggled to encircle his waist. “He gets sunburned easy.”
“Ain’t you goin’ to tie ’im up?”
Swaying toward the entrance of the hotel saloon like a China clipper battling a Force 8 gale, Malone glanced back briefly to where he had left thick reins hanging loose.
“Worthless ain’t goin’ nowhere. He’ll stay put.”
The old man continued masticating the unnameable. “Well, what if somebody takes a hankerin’ to make off with ’im?” He grinned with the remainder of his teeth, between which there was ample space for whistling and perhaps the occasional misguided flying insect. “Me, for example.”
Malone lowered his gaze, the wolf’s head that covered his scalp sliding slightly forward. “Why then, I reckon you’d stay put, too.” He nodded once in the direction of his seemingly somnolent horse. “Anyways, I wouldn’t try it. We been on the trail awhile and Worthless, he’s getting’ on to bein’ a mite hungry.”
The old man started to chuckle. “That so? What’s he gonna do? Mistake me for a bucket o’ oats?”
The towering mountain man just smiled back, his own orthodonture flashing surprisingly white among the surrounding jungle of gray-flecked black beard. Then he turned, stepped up onto the protesting wood plank sidewalk, ducked his head, and pushed through the double doors leading into the saloon.
The old man looked after him for a moment, then turned back to the untethered horse that was part Percheron, part Arabian, and parts of something other. Appraising the reins falling vertical and unsecured, he took a step toward them. Swinging its head around, the unclassifiable quadruped closed one eye, squinted out of the other, and gave a snort. That did not give the tough oldster pause. What did was the puff of smoke that emerged from both equine nostrils to feather away into the early evening air.
Abruptly smacked upside the head with second thoughts, the old man turned around right quick and began to walk away. Swiftly, with an occasional nervous glance back over his shoulder. Seeing that the horse was still watching him and perhaps detecting a flicker of red in that single squinting eye, the oldster proceeded to accelerate his pace accordingly.
Malone just did avoid nudging the cat with his right foot as he entered the saloon’s main room. A fleeting glance in the animal’s direction as it darted in off the street and dashed past him showed an ordinary tabby of average size. Its coat was in surprisingly good shape for a street cat, in coloration falling somewhere between gold and tan, with a distinctive black swath running across its upper back from shoulder to shoulder. Hugging the baseboard while striving to be as inconspicuous as possible, it raced away from Malone to disappear among the tables.
These were occupied by the usual assortment of cardplayers, double-dealers, braggarts, liars, cowpokes, military veterans, military deserters, failed gold miners, unremarkable townsfolk, and a sprinkling of seriously underdressed women who had lately been deficient in regular church attendance. The volume of their conversation dropped by about half when Malone lumbered into the room. He disliked the effect his size and appearance had on regular folks, but there was nothing much he could do about it.
Making his way to the far end of the bar, he quietly settled down on the last, empty bar stool. This prompted a rush by the half dozen or so patrons seated nearby to vacate their stools, the occupants thereof having experienced a sudden mutual desire to betake themselves somewhere else. When the rest of the crowd saw that the enormous newcomer wasn’t about to pull off anyone’s leg and start gnawing on it, the usual energetic conversation was resumed by the room’s relieved populace.
“Whiskey,” Malone told the barkeep politely. When that uneasy but admirably professional attendant produced a bottle that looked as if it might have been filled at a horse trough, a frown crossed Malone’s face. “Better.” Pulling a less unsanitary container from a shelf on the backbar, the rotund bartender placed it in front of Malone and removed its predecessor. “Better,” the mountain man reiterated.
This time the barkeep dug under the bar until he found and brought forth a stoppered glass bottle immaculate of shape and label. Malone examined it with a practiced eye, then nodded approvingly. “That’ll do. Leave it and a glass.” The barkeep was relieved to comply.
An hour or so passed in silent contemplation. Apart and away from the now-isolated Malone, money was lost, temporary assignations were forged, two men were thrown out for fighting, two women were cheered on for fighting. Vociferous accusations of cheating at cards were resolved without the use of gunplay, which in contrast to the way it was portrayed in dime novels was noisy, dangerous, and counterproductive for all concerned. A steady stream of regulars and visitors came and went.
One of the latter drew more than the usual casual looks, mostly because the fellow had his dog with him. A handsome black chow, it trotted along behind its owner as they made for the bar. The animal certainly was in better shape than its human, who was tall but of a girth
suggestive of a pampered life in the city, and not one spent toiling at manual labor. He had two chins or three depending on whether he was looking up or down, an absurdly long thin mustache more suited to the face of a riverboat gambler, and piercing blue eyes that were small and sharp. His nose was plump and red, as if a ripe plum had been plucked from its tree and glued to his face. When he removed his handsome but oversized wide-brimmed hat, it was to reveal a pate ornamented with a flourish of carefully coiffured blond curls. As near as anyone could tell, they were actually growing out of his head and were not the result of some desultory scalping of an anonymous ten-year-old girl.
Defying caution and present convention, he took a seat once removed from where Malone, a mountainous figure wreathed in buckskins, wolf headdress, and Zen, sat steadily working his way through the bottle in front of him. The chow did not sit. Instead, it took up an alert stance directly beside its owner’s stool. The newcomer ordered, took a sip from his glass, had the barkeep pour him another. Looking over, Malone nodded in the direction of the chow.
“Judgin’ by his attitude, your dog don’t seem t’ like me much.”
Jowls aquiver, the man turned blue eyes to him. “It isn’t you.” With evident deliberation, he lowered his gaze. “It’s your cat. Elehzub doesn’t like cats.”
A surprised Malone looked down at his feet. Sprawled half on, half off the upper portion of his right boot was the tabby over whom he had nearly stumbled while entering the saloon. It lay on the battered leather with its eyes shut, one paw under its jaw, purring contentedly. Occasionally it would move its head, rubbing against Malone’s ankle. Given the profound panoply of odors that clung to that outsized footwear, the feline’s response was not surprising.
The newcomer’s attitude, which until now had ranged from placid to outright indifferent, turned suddenly unpleasant. The blue eyes narrowed. “I don’t like cats, either. In fact, I hate cats.”
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