Алан Дин Фостер: Mad Amos Malone

The mountain man spit out dirt and bark and looked upward. The dragon was in the air, spinning, twisting, convulsing spasmodically, thoroughly out of control, screaming like a third-rate soprano attempting Wagner as it whirled toward the distant moon.

Mad Amos slowly picked himself off the ground, dusted off the wolf’s head that served him for a hat, and watched the sky until the last scream and final bellow faded from hearing, until the tiny dot fluttering against the stars had winked out of sight and out of existence.

From his wallow near the riverbank, Worthless glanced up, squinted, and neighed.

Mad Amos squatted and gathered up the tumbaga bar. He paid no attention to the coterie of symbols he’d so laboriously scratched into the earth. They’d been put there to draw the dragon’s attention, which they’d done most effectively. Oh, he’d seen Brightbodyblackheart checking them out before landing! The dragon might bellow intimidatingly, but like all its kind, it was cautious. It had taken the bait only when it was certain Mad Amos owned no magic effective against it. Mere mortal weapons like guns and bullets, of course, it had had no reason to fear.

Malone used his tongue to pop the second bullet, the one he hadn’t had to use, out of his cheek and carefully took the huge cartridge apart. Out of the head drifted a pile of dust. He held it in his palm and then, careful not to inhale any of it, blew it away with one puff. The dust duplicated the contents of the bullet that had penetrated Brightbodyblackheart: mescaline concentrate, peyote of a certain rare type, distillate of the tears of a peculiar mushroom, coca leaves from South America, yopo—a cornucopia of powerful hallucinogens that an old Navajo had once concocted before Mad Amos’s attentive gaze during a youthful sojourn in Canyon de Chelly many years before.

It was not quite magic, but then, it was not quite real, either. The dragon had been right: Mad Amos had not had the words to kill it, had not had the symbols. And it wasn’t dead. But it no longer lived in the real world of men, either. In a month, when the aftereffects of the potent mixture had finally worn off and Brightbodyblackheart could think clearly once more, it might wish it were dead. Of one thing Mad Amos was reasonably certain: the dragon might hunger for gold, but it was not likely to come a-hunting it anywhere in the vicinity of Colorado.

Carefully he repacked that seemingly modest pair of saddlebags and prepared to break camp, casting an experienced eye toward the sky. It was starting to cloud over again. Soon it would snow, and when it started it again, it wouldn’t stop until April.

But not for two or three days yet, surely. He still bad time to get out of the high mountains if he didn’t waste it lollygaggin’ and moonin’ over narrow escapes.

He put his hands on his hips and shouted toward the river. “C’mon, Worthless, you lazy representative of an equine disaster! Git your tail out of that mud! North of here’s that crazy steamin’ land ol’ Jim Bridger once told me about. I reckon it’s time we had a gander at it… and what’s under it.”

Reluctant but obedient, the piebald subject of these unfounded imprecations struggled to its feet and threw its master a nasty squint. Mad Amos eyed his four-legged companion with affection.

“Have t’ do somethin’ about that patch on his forehead,” he mused. “That damn horn’s startin’ t’ grow through again….”

I love Latin. I never studied the language, but I love the sound of it, the rhythms. Every time I encounter Latin, usually as a quote from some famous long-dead native speaker, my mind immediately flashes to the glory that was Rome. I see massive temples, the Colosseum, the Baths of Caracalla, and the Appian Way. We actually lived on a street called Appian Way. Not the Roman one. Ours ran right by the famous Santa Monica Pier in southern California. The only thing even remotely Roman about it was a nearby pizza place.

Such imaginings, of course, do nothing if transported to the Old West. There rise no grand temples to Zeus in South Dakota, reverberate no sounds of Roman legions marching on their way to battle in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. But while the Empire has vanished, the language remains. So one day I found myself amusedly translating one of the West’s most iconic symbols into that wonderful old language of Cicero and Tacitus, and with nothing else to go on, handed the result over to Amos Malone to see what he could do with it.

The clerk frowned as the Indian entered the hotel. Fortunately, it was late and the last of the regular guests had already gone off to bed. The nearby parlor was empty. He hurried around from behind the front desk.

“We don’t allow Indians in here. Get out.”

The young man was simply dressed in pants and open shirt of trade cotton. His black hair hung down to his neck and was secured by a red headband. To the clerk he appeared as one of the unclean. The visitor ignored the order and stared with undisguised curiosity at the etched bowl of the imported hurricane lamp that illuminated the entryway.

“I told you to get out,” the clerk repeated, louder but not loud enough to disturb the guests. He wondered if he should wake the owner, Mrs. Hedrick, or maybe even send for the sheriff. “You understand English? Savvy?”

“I’m looking for a man,” came the soft reply. “Big man.”

“Listen, you, I don’t care if you’re looking for…” He hesitated. “How big a man?”

“Very big. Bigger than man ought to be. Big crazy man.”

Reflexively, the clerk glanced up the stairs. By an odd coincidence, someone fitting that terse description had checked in early this morning. “His name wouldn’t happen to be Malone, would it?”

“That him.”

“What do you want with Mr. Malone?”

“Got business with him.”

“What kind of business?”

“What kind of business not your business.”

“Look, heathen, I…” But again the clerk hesitated. Something about this young savage marked him as different from the tired members of the Gila River tribe the clerk saw in the village of Phoenix during the day, trading vegetables and hides and game for simple tools and muslin from back East. He decided that it would be better not to wake Mrs. Hedrick, better still not to fetch the sheriff.

He also noticed for the first time that his visitor was very tired, as though he’d come a long way through the January night in an awful hurry. Best not to cross a man in a great hurry even if he was only an Indian.

“Up the stairs… quietly . People are sleeping. Can you read?”

A single nod.

“Number six. Down the hall on your right.”

“Thanks.”

The clerk watched until the young man disappeared onto the upper landing. Then he quickly checked to make sure the pistol in the drawer behind the front desk was loaded, even though the Indian had entered unarmed.

As for the guest whose rest the visitor was about to disturb, that was none of the clerk’s business, was it? Besides, he was more than a little certain that the occupant of room number six could take care of himself.

At the end of the hall the young man knocked on a door. A voice boomed back from within.

“Go away! Get lost! A pox on your privates, tarantulas in your boots, and ticks in your beard, and I promise you worse if you don’t leave me in peace!”

The young man considered this thoughtfully, noted that he had no beard, and replied, “May I come in?”

Silence. Then, “Oh, hell, come on, then.”

It was dimly lit inside. A single lamp glowed on a far wall by the window. His eyes adjusted to the weak illumination. Then he closed the door behind him. Quietly, as the nervous white man downstairs had requested.