Mad Amos Malone

Claim Blame

As I’ve said, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, I like better than to pull together seemingly disparate elements into a cohesive story. For example: Mad Amos Malone, the California gold rush, a couple of tough Irish miners, Scandinavian gold-mining immigrants, and a real place and name. Oh yes, and a certain city in a distant state famed for its own gold discovery.

What made this tale so much fun to write was the collision of two different immigrant cultures, Scandinavian and Irish, with Malone acting, for a change, as not the protagonist but the intermediary. Settling conflicting miners’ claims was a full-time job for some authorities during the gold rush. Who better to utilize his skills to prevent open warfare between such groups than Amos Malone?

Aside from the irritable Scandinavians and Amos himself, everyone else in the story is real and everything really did happen this way. There’s just no mention of the, um, Scandinavians in the history books.

Heck, even Old Pancake was real.

“This be our mountain and our mine and nobody digs here without our permission!”

Peter O’Riley turned beard and body to his partner, the mightily mustachioed Patrick McLaughlin, and then looked back down at the quartet of angry gnomes.

“Now, now, little friends, maybe we can work something out. What if we agreed to mine the strike for shares? Now, wouldn’t that be lovely?”

“No shares. Not lovely.” Norvalst, chieftain of the gnomes, wore suspendered pants, work boots, a long-sleeved white shirt woven of some coarse eldritch material, and a brown cap. His eyebrows were as white and heavy as his shirt, his mien uncompromising and foreboding, and his nose Herculean. His chest was broad, and downsized muscles bulged beneath the sleeves of his shirt.

O’Riley tried another tack. “We’ll take just a quarter of the diggin’s.”

“No quarter. We give none and take none.” A second gnome, stockier and even more muscular than his chief, stepped forward. He held a miniature iron pick, threateningly. “No shares. Our mountain, our mines.”

“We’ll throw in whiskey.” O’Riley leaned over as far as he could go, until his lean jeaned form was all but face-to-face with the gnomic headman. “Lots of whiskey.”

Tiny eyes nearly vanished beneath enormous ivory brows. “No whiskey!” His tone softened ever so slightly. “If you had some real brännvin, now… No! No shares! Now get off our mountain!”

And with that he brought the flat of his small but surprisingly heavy shovel down square and hard on Peter O’Riley’s right foot.

The miner stumbled back and howled as he grabbed at his insulted toes, but his yelp of pain wasn’t half as loud as that of the battle cry of the gang of tetchy little men who now surged forward, swinging picks and hammers and shovels while shouting insults in several languages, a number of which had no honest counterpart among the nations of humankind. McLaughlin running and O’Riley hopping, the two men beat a hasty retreat down the rocky, scrub-covered slope. The enraged gnomes chased them past their diggings, through their unprepossessing camp, and halfway to the river before their anger finally subsided. At that point they broke off the pursuit and, picks and shovels a blur, seemed to melt back into the very ground itself.

His heart hammering against his ribs, McLaughlin bent over and fought to catch his breath. “Well, that’s torn it. The little whoresons don’t seem half-inclined to negotiation.”

A gasping O’Riley nodded agreement. “’Tis mightily unreasonable they are bein’, Pat. I say we toast their refusal with a few cans o’ black powder and leave the sortin’ out to the Almighty.”

“Aye. But that might damage the pit. More work for us. And there be no guarantee it would loosen their grip. Or their determination to hold on to this piece of rock.” He took a deep breath and considered the dry, uninhabited landscape. “Maybe we should try and hire us some help.”

Still breathing hard, O’Riley stretched. Joints crackled like popcorn. His expression was grim, his tone washed with bitterroot. “Sure and now that’s a fine idea, Pat. We’ll just find ourselves a few of the locals and tell ’em we need their help drivin’ a tribe o’ tiny devils off our claim.” Bending over, he held one hand palm facing downward until it was a foot off the hard ground. “This high they are, an’ miners like ourselves. ’Tis naught but a wee inconvenience that we need help with.” He straightened again. “We’d be laughed out o’ the Sierras.”

McLaughlin continued to gaze down the mountainside. “That be true enough, Peter. Though… the last time we went into town for supplies, I heard tell of a gentleman lingering hereabouts who, if the whispers and tales about him are half to be believed, might be inclined to take the reality of our difficulties to heart and without scorn.”

O’Riley sniffed. “One man? Did you not see the size of the little monsters’ army? We need many guns to fight them, Pat. Guns aplenty, and men with no fear o’ the unnatural to hold them back from using them. For this be no ordinary bit o’ intervention we’re dealin’ with.”

Still looking down the raw, rugged mountainside, McLaughlin stroked his mustache, the twin points of which drooped to below his chin. “Strange as it seems, Peter, I heard somewhat the same about this particular fellow.”

“Well, good sor, we got gnomes, sor.”

Sitting by the side of the creek that hemmed the little valley as prettily as a blue ribbon around the brim of a young girl’s bonnet, the giant in the buckskins and leather puffed thoughtfully on his meerschaum as he contemplated both the stream and his visitors’ problem. A wolf’s-head cap covered but could not constrain the mad dash of black and gray hair that spilled out behind and to the sides. While McLaughlin waited patiently and O’Riley wondered if confronting this brooding accretion of undisciplined humanity was such a good idea, Amos Malone silently pondered water, greenery, rock, and infinity.

Eventually he turned and rose. And rose, and rose, until Peter O’Riley was convinced he and his partner had made a bad decision indeed. With a smile that materialized amid a vast flush of beard, Malone put them at ease.

“What kind o’ gnomes?”

The supplicants exchanged a glance. McLaughlin spoke up. “Well now, Mr. Malone, sor, we don’t rightly know, the classification of supernatural folk not bein’ among our general store o’ expertise.”

“They’re miners, sor,” O’Riley put in. “Sittin’ on our claim, they are, and won’t get off. We offered them free shares in all our takings, we did, and they outright refused, resortin’ to hostilities to force us off what’s rightly ours.”

Malone tapped the bowl of his pipe on a rock, checked the interior, then consigned it carefully to the depths of a pocket in his enormous shirt. McLaughlin could have sworn he heard the pale graven face on the pipe let out a small cough.

“Rightly yours?”

O’Riley didn’t hesitate. “That be God’s honest truth, sor. Worked that claim for weeks now, we have. Got the proper papers an’ all. Had weak luck we did until Mother Fate took pity on us and all our hard work.” He grinned, showing a miner’s typical assortment of damaged orthodonture. “About to give up on the place, we was. Abandon the claim, as it were, when wouldn’t you know we discovered that the bottom of the pit that we’d sunk merely to collect water for our rockers was layered with gold.”

McLaughlin nodded confirmation. “Enough to make us rich right quick, it is. Or was, until these little men showed up an’ drove us off our land. Off our own claim!”

“Talk like foreigners, too,” O’Riley added darkly, conveniently discounting his own transatlantic origins.

“I see.” Malone was walking toward his horse as he spoke, compelling the miners to follow. The mountain man’s mount, McLaughlin observed, was of dimensions in keeping with that of Malone himself, though for the life of him the miner could not identify the elephantine breed. “And what is it exactly you fellers want of me?”

Once again the partners made eye talk. “There’s whispering around these parts,” McLaughlin began hesitantly, “that you, sor, are conversant with certain branches and aspects of knowledge that are denied the average man. Given our distressed circumstances, it would seem that you would be the only one hereabouts in possession of sufficient education in such matters to cope with our unique difficulty.”

Malone looked back at the miner. As he did so, McLaughlin could have sworn that the mountain man’s wolf’s cap peered down at him as well.

“Gnomes.” A far-off look came into Malone’s eyes. “Don’t much care for ’em myself.” His voice grew faint with reminiscence. “There was thet time in Trondheim…” Towering over the two men, he nodded curtly. “Right, then. I reckon we can go and have a chat with your gnomish interlopers. Ain’t no harm in a friendly powwow, even with gnomes. Beyond that I make no promises.”

“That’d be fine, sor, that’d be just fine of you!” McLaughlin was beaming, his partner still wary. “Now then, Mr. Malone, sor, if you wish to discuss the matter of payment for your services…? In truth we’re just poor hardscrabblers, but I swear we’ll do our best to make this right by you.”

Again Malone flashed the broad smile that showed his teeth were, if naught else, at least as impressive as the rest of him. “Let’s first see what it is exactly we’re dealin’ with here, gentlemen, and then we’ll speak to the doing o’ good by it.” Without another word and displaying a surprising litheness of movement, he swung himself up into the massive saddle. At this his mount looked back at him, let out a disgusted snort, spat something at the ground that for just the barest fraction of an instant lay smoking, and started off into the hills. It occurred to O’Riley that though he had not seen Malone pull on the reins, the horse had headed in the correct direction. A fluke, he thought as he and McLaughlin hurried to where they had secured their own horses to a nearby tree. And no doubt typical of Malone himself. The man seemed a collection of flukes, not all of them necessarily benign.

Which, given the current situation he and his partner were facing, might not be entirely a bad thing.

It was a late afternoon when they finally arrived back at their diggings. To the miners’ great relief, nothing appeared to have been disturbed. Their tent still stood, and the rest of their meager belongings and supplies remained where they had been left. As for the pit itself, that sainted glory-hole-to-be, as near as they could tell it had not been filled in or otherwise damaged. Except for some scattered brush, the slope where they had been working so hard was still barren and unappealing. It mattered not. That which was truly worthwhile lay below ground and out of sight. But not, hopefully, for long.

Dismounting, Malone studied his immediate surroundings. The slope was crusted with gravel and broken rock, like crumbs on a coffee cake. Of the miners’ tiny tormentors there was no sign, a fact which he immediately pointed out to his anxious hosts.

“No need to concern yourself on that score, Mr. Malone, sor.” McLaughlin was solemn in the face of expectation. “We know how to summon them forth.”

With that he and his partner set to work, using bucket and winch to draw water as well as gravel and sand from the pit, dumping it in the big rocker and working it through, cursing all the while. As soon as they finished they presented the rocked batch for Malone’s inspection.

“See the gold, sor!” O’Riley did not try to hide his excitement and enthusiasm. “Almost washes itself out if not for all the blue-black glar that surrounds it. Clogs the rocker that muck does, and just makes for more work.”

Malone nodded sagely. “Gold it is, my friend. You two have struck it fair.”

“Nothing fair about it!” The voice that interrupted was high-pitched but insistent.

The mountain man turned. Where a moment earlier had been only scrub-laden hillside there now stood a mass of small menfolk. Armed with the tools of their trade, they glared ominously at the intruders. Before Malone could respond, O’Riley was replying—while being careful to remain behind the bigger man and keeping his feet well out of shovel range.

“Sure an’ we’re back, you little bugger-mothers! You say this is your mountain. Well, we’ve brought a mountain of our own!”

The leader of the gnomes tilted his head back to gaze up at the hireling. And back, and back, until his small thick neck could abide no further inclination. Malone reacted by kneeling before him. Though appreciative of this courtesy, the chief let out a small but distinct grunt of disapproval.

“Matters not how big you be, sir. There are many of us, and should you choose to interfere in this private matter, we will cut you down to size as quickly as we can dig and shore a cross-tunnel.”

“Now then, hövding, there be no need for threatening here.” Malone gestured back to where the two miners stood watching, at once fascinated and fearful. “Let’s talk this out in the manner of a proper stämma and see if we can’t come to a conclusion that leaves all parties equally satisfied and content.”

The chief’s enormous eyebrows rose in surprise. “You know a little of the truespeak! What manner of man be you?”

“A mannered one, I reckon. These fellers say this ’ere mine is theirs. I don’t expect they need the whole mountain t’ satisfy their claim.” He squinted upslope. “Seems to me there’s plenty o’ room fer all of you. They say they’ve filed right and proper papers to this place.”

“That’s right!” Coming forward, O’Riley pulled from his shirt pocket a sheet of paper that he proceeded to unfold and thrust first at the gnome, then at Malone. “All registered correct, as any fool can plainly see. No matter his size.”

The mountain man smiled thinly. “Perhaps best not to inject matters o’ size into this discussion, Mr. O’Riley.”

“Pagh!” Turning, the gnome made a short, sharp gesture. One of his tribe promptly scurried forth. Slighter in build than the majority of his fellows, he wore a red cap with a bent peak and thick glasses. From within a multitude of pockets in his oversized jacket, he drew forth a scroll. This he proceeded to unroll until it stretched from his ink-stained fingers past his chief, past Malone, past the two startled miners, past the assembled horses, and another ten yards down the mountainside before the end finally came to rest against a creosote bush.

The chieftain of the gnomes punctuated this presentation with a derisive sniff. “Our claim deed.”

“Now wait a minute…!” McLaughlin began. But Malone had already begun to read the extensive document.

How he could discern the tiny print, much less make sense of the lines of gibberish that to O’Riley looked like nothing more than chicken scratches, neither miner could imagine. With a speed that astonished even the gnomes, the mountain man had soon scanned the entire lengthy document. Having concluded his unnaturally swift perusal, he handed the mass of paper back to the care of the gnomish clerk, who, muttering under his breath, entered into the arduous task of rerolling it.

“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 fragrance 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.

Stepping clear of the assembled little people, he once again raised an arm: the left one this time. As he declaimed he waved his hand toward the mob of watching gnomes. The result was to dust them with a sprinkling of clotted bear fat and jerked deer meat with a pinch of eagle feather added for thaumaturgic seasoning. Whether one happened to be conversant with transcendental auguries or not, this would not have struck a casual onlooker as a particularly efficacious combination.

“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!”

“Nay, stand and consider a moment.” Novalst, the chief, gestured at the white-capped sea beside which he and his tribe had been deposited. “This is not our ancient coast. Smell. Drink deep of it. It is not the same. The land is similar, the climate familiar, the sea alike, yet all are different.”

Reluctantly, his second-in-command complied. As he did so, some, but not all, of his initial fury faded. “So. I concede the point. Another sea it is. But of gold I smell naught.”

“It is here. It is here.” Novalst turned a slow circle. “I can feel it.”

At that moment several of their companions came running toward them. In their cupped hands they held sand taken from the nearby beach. Among the particles of quartz and feldspar were flecks and nodules of… gold.

Novalst looked upon this wonder and was pleased. Even Ögrad experienced a deeply felt change of heart. “I am ashamed. The giant was not merely true to his word: he bested it. Who could think of such a thing? A beach full of gold!” Turning, he surveyed the frozen, barren landscape that was so like that of their ancestral home. “This will make a fine place to live. And no humans.”

“No.” Kneeling, Novalst picked up some of the gold-rich sand that had been deposited there and let it trickle free between his fingers. “But they will come. Sooner or later they will come here. Humans always find such places. Yet this I predict: The first of them will be men who know and respect us, and so will not interfere with our dwelling underground in this land. Others will follow and settle here, and though they know us not will call it after us.” Rising, he spread his arms wide, ignoring the chill Arctic wind that was whipping his shirt around him.

“This place will be known as the City of the Gnome!”

As black kettle after black kettle was lifted from the pit, the unsettling sensation that had started in the pits of the miners’ stomachs grew progressively more discomfiting.

“A lot of gold they’re taking out.” A patently unhappy O’Riley was chewing on his lower lip as he followed the procedure.

“An awful lot,” agreed his partner edgily.

“Their ‘fair share.’” Having relit his pipe, Malone gazed down at the two men. “You agreed. Unless both of you wish a shillelagh up your respective fundaments, I wouldn’t interfere. Also, I’ve seen the blight an’ sickness these folk can inflict on those who cross ’em.”

“What?” McLaughlin could not help himself. “What happens to those who do?”

“Why, they find themselves transformed, forever to dwell ill and afflicted among those whom they have tried to cheat.” The tiny fires of Hell bristled in the bowl of his pipe. “They become leperchauns.”

The late-rising moon was still in ascent when the last of the enchanted little people from the old country paid their farewells. Tired and sore but demonstrably content, the taoiseach confronted Malone where he was seated by his campfire.

“’Twas an experience as unique as it was unexpected to be called hither by you, Amos Malone. A rud is annamh is iontach.”

Malone smiled pleasantly. “I quite agree. ‘That which is strange is wonderful.’”

“One would almost think you had a bit o’ the green in you yourself. “

“I am a reservoir to all shades of magick,” the mountain man told him. “When I ain’t skinnin’ beaver, that is.” He nodded toward the other side of the fire, which blazed no less bright than the lights at the bottom of his jet-black eyes. “Best to tell your people over there thet Worthless ain’t fer stealin’. Couple o’ your boyos already tried when I was busy seein’ off your northlander counterparts.”

The leprechaun was mightily offended. “Sir, you accuse my men of attempted theft? I withdraw my compliment, sir!”

Malone shrugged. “As you will. While you’re at it, you might withdraw the last o’ your innocents from Worthless’s immediate environs. I’m afraid not all o’ them escaped his attentions.”

Uncertain, the leprechaun leader beckoned for several of his followers to join him. None offered an apology, but when the enormous equine lifted his right front foot off the ground and revealed what was stuck to the bottom of his hoof, they set to work scraping off the greenish remains with uncommon alacrity.

The last of them had vanished when a cry rang out from the vicinity of the mine pit. Peter O’Riley’s anguished wail rose above the crackle of Malone’s fire and the sounds of the night.

“Gone! It’s all gone! They’ve taken everything!” Then he was charging down the hillside toward Malone. McLaughlin tried but was unable to stop his partner from getting right up in the mountain man’s face, the smell notwithstanding.

“You son of a bitch! You let them take all our gold! All that trouble and fighting, for nothing! We’d have been better off dealing with the gnomes ourselves. We could’ve given them ninety percent share and still been better off than this! Go hlfreann leat!”

Throughout the full length of the miner’s diatribe, Malone had continued staring at the fire. Now he lifted his gaze. What the irate miner saw there made him draw back behind his fury.

“I’d calm down if I were you, friend. It’s said that too much anger can be bad fer a man’s health. As fer your suggestion, I’ve already been to Hell and back, thank you very much.”

McLaughlin was pulling his friend away now, to one side of the fire, and trying desperately to settle him down. Realizing he had no real hope of taking out his frustration on the giant mountain man and that it didn’t matter anyway now that the gold was gone, O’Riley fell to sobbing.

“Gone. All gone. Spirited back to the old country in a damn lot o’ kitchen pots, no less. And us that set it all in motion left with nothing.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Malone rose. “You still have your claim. I reckon there’s still some gold in it.”

Pushing away his partner’s attempts at comfort, an unashamed O’Riley wiped at his eyes. “All the easy gold’s gone. Taken by that lot o’ unscrupulous green midgets. Nuggets an’ dust just lyin’ there in the water at the bottom o’ the pit, waitin’ t’ be scooped up, an’ they surely did the scoopin’. What’s left, if anything, is for hard rock mining, for them that has the resources.”

“Or the will.” Malone had walked over to his horse and was making preparations to depart. McLaughlin could have sworn the empty coffeepot hopped up into an open saddlebag all by itself—but then, it was dark now. “You two can do it, if you’ve the backbone. Get a loan, hire help, do the work. The difficult work.” His tone hardened. “Instead o’ tryin’ t’ bring out gold with buckets and wishes.”

“Oh, sure an’ ’tis easy for you to say.” Though not as impetuous, McLaughlin was no less upset than his partner. “Do you know what hard rock mining entails, Mr. Malone?”

“Tough work. Dedication. Drive.” The mountain man paused. “Or I reckon you could sell out t’ someone who has those qualities you seem to find so elusive.”

“Right.” A despondent O’Riley laughed. “Who’d be fool enough to buy a claim from which the easy gold has been taken and the rest o’ which is a mess of rocker-ruining blue-black muck? He’d have to be half-crazy.”

“Got just the man for you.” Malone mounted up. “Old Pancake.”

McLaughlin frowned. “T.P.? You’re right, he is half crazy.” He shook his head. “Buy out this gutted claim? What a load!”

“Couldn’t’ve put it better myself, Mr. McLaughlin. Work it yourself or sell out. ’Tis up to you, as life is to any man. Meanwhile you might have a closer look at your blue-black glar.”

“Huh!” O’Riley spat. But sideways, careful to lead with the liquid well away from the mountain man. “Reckon we might as well entertain offers, if anyone’s loony enough to actually be interested.”

“A man’s life teeters on such choices.” Once again Malone did nothing to the reins yet his animal began to move as if he had been clearly instructed. Or perhaps had decided to start off on his own. The two miners watched as the enigmatic mountain man disappeared over a ridge, his departure silhouetted by the moon as he passed in front of it. Or maybe over it.

To the end of their days they could never decide which.