Алан Дин Фостер: Mad Amos Malone

In 1981 my wife and I and our dogs and cats moved from Big Bear Lake, California, into a historic single-story ranch-style house in Prescott, Arizona. We remain today in the same house, surrounded by native vegetation, visited frequently by coyotes and owls and occasionally by bobcats and deer, and bedeviled by chipmunks and pack rats. We chose the place for its location at the terminus of a dead-end road and for the redoubtable materials used in its construction.

At the time, I was vaguely aware that while it did not possess the same name recognition as Tombstone or Deadwood or Dodge City, Prescott could boast of its own substantial Old West lineage, most notably for being the home of the world’s oldest rodeo. This meant nothing to me, as I was not and am not a rodeo fan. When I look at a bull rider, I see hamburger, not a sport.

But the longer we lived here, the more aware I became of Prescott’s unique heritage. Virgil Earp, Wyatt’s brother, was the town sheriff for a while. Big Nose Kate, Doc Holliday’s longtime mistress, is buried in one of the local cemeteries. Silent film star Tom Mix had a ranch here and shot some of his films in the area. On a completely different note, the fine western painter Irish McCalla lived here during her last years. Those who recognize the name will more likely remember her as Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Even as a senior, she still looked the part. Ran into her on Cortez Street one day but was too shy to say anything.

That has nothing whatsoever to do specifically with Prescott or the Old West, but viewers of fifties TV will understand why I mention it.

Despite living in a town parts of which could (and have) doubled for a film set (see Junior Bonner, with Steve McQueen and Robert Preston… or maybe Billy Jack, or the remake of The Getaway ), I never drew any story inspiration from our initial visits nor immediately after we moved into our new home. My ramblings tend to take place on other worlds, or in lands of pure fantasy.

One day my wife and I were standing together contemplating adding incidental items like furniture to our new den. This exercise was complicated by the fact that we had no money, having sunk every bit of it into the house itself. We were also struggling to decide what to put on a second-floor landing that led to a single small upstairs room before continuing onward to, curiously, dead-end against the far wall. I commented that the large empty space over our heads needed something: perhaps a fake stuffed bear.

“Why not a dragon?” JoAnn responded.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “There were no dragons in the Old West.”

She eyed me archly and without missing a beat shot back, “How do you know?”

Which, as such observations are wont to do, got me to thinking. The result was the first Mad Amos story. I had no thought of doing more than the one.

That was, as those of mathematical bent will note, eighteen stories ago.

It is a pleasure to have them all gathered together here in one volume, like so many chocolates. Or, as Amos Malone would say, shots of whiskey. Feel free to drink deep.

Amos Malone didn’t exist when I began to write Folly . As hinted at already, the story’s genesis involved a dragon. A Chinese dragon, to be precise. I made him a visitor from the Far East because I get tired of your standard European dragon and because such an origin allowed me to place him in the context of the Chinese laborers building the western portion of the first transcontinental railroad. Add in the dragonish affection for gold and… well, the story began to take form from there.

But how to deal with such an intimidating intruder? Who, in the Old West, could handle a dragon? It would have to be someone with knowledge of such creatures, someone unafraid, yet someone who belonged to the environment. I couldn’t just import a white-bearded wizard in a pointy hat to magic a dragon away with a wave of his wand. So… no pointy hats. No wands. No long white beards.

The exploits of the mountain men in the early American West often read like magic. Why not a mountain man who could work a little magic himself? An outsized talent in every sense of the word, but one who retained his essential mountain manness. I’d have to equip him with the right weapons, the right attire, an appropriate mount, and a pair of saddlebags capable of holding, should a particularly sorceral situation arise, more than hardtack and salt pork. Locals would be sure to find such a character passing strange. Maybe even a little bit… mad.

So Amos Malone came into being as a foil for an expat Chinese dragon. And after that, wouldn’t you know it: the dadgum half-crazy sonuvabitch and the worthless steed he rode in on just wouldn’t go away.

Hunt and MacLeish had worked for the Butterfield Line for six and seven years, respectively. They’d fought Indians, and been through growler storms that swept down like a cold dream out of the eastern Rockies, and seen rattlers as big around the middle as a horse’s leg. All that, they could cope with; they’d seen it all before. The dragon, though, was something new. You couldn’t blame ’em much for panicking a little when the dragon hit the stagecoach.

“I’m tellin’ ya,” Hunt was declaring to the Butterfield agent in Cheyenne, “it were the biggest, ugliest, scariest-lookin’ dang bird you ever saw, Mr. Fraser, sir!” He glanced back at his driver for confirmation.

“Yep. S’truth.” Archie MacLeish was a man of few words and much tobacco juice. He was tough as pemmican and as hard to handle, but the incident had turned a few more of the brown-stained whiskers in his copious beard gray as an old Confederate uniform.

“It come down on us, Mr. Fraser, sir,” Hunt continued emphatically, “like some great winged devil raised up by an angry Boston temperance marcher, a-screamin’ and a-hollerin’ and a-blowin’ fire out of a mouth filled with ugly, snaggled teeth. ’Twere a sight fit t’ raise the departed. I gave it both barrels of Evangeline.” He indicated the trusty ten-gauge resting in a corner of the office. “And it ne’er even blinked. Ain’t that right, Archie?”

“Yep,” confirmed the driver, firing accurately into the bronze-inlaid pewter spittoon set on the floor beside one corner of the big walnut desk.

“I see.” The Butterfield agent was a pleasant, sympathetic fellow in his early fifties. Delicate muttonchop whiskers compensated somewhat for the glow the sun brought forth from his naked forehead. His trousers were supported by overloaded suspenders that made dark tracks across an otherwise immaculate white shirt. “And then what happened?”

“Well, both Archie and me was ready t’ meet our maker.” Hunt was deadly earnest. “You got to understand, Mr. Fraser, sir, this varmint were bigger than coach and team together. Why, them poor horses like t’ die afore we coaxed and sweet-talked ’em into town. They’re bedded down in the company stable right now, still shakin’ at the knees.

“Anyways, this ugly bird just reached down with one claw the size o’ my Aunt Molly’s Sunday dress and plucked the strongbox right off the top o’ the coach, snappin’ the guy ropes like they was made o’ straw. Then it flew off, still a-screechin’ and a-brayin’ like the grandfather of jackasses toward the Medicine Bow Mountains.”