She turned and pointed eastward. “That way, a half day’s ride, Amos Malone. But there’s no stage going back that direction for another fortnight.”
“Then we’d best get started, ma’am.” He turned and mounted his horse, extended down a hand, and pulled her up behind him as though she weighed nothing at all. “Let’s go, Worthless,” he told his mount.
The horse turned and started eastward.
“Your pardon, Amos,” said Mrs. Makepeace from her delightfully warm position immediately at his back, “but I don’t believe I saw you unhitch this animal.”
“That’s because he wasn’t hitched, ma’am.” He patted the horse’s neck. “Worthless don’t cotton to bein’ tied up. He’s pretty good about staying in one place, though, so I don’t insist on it no more. I only have trouble with him when there’s a mare in heat around.”
“That’s understandable, of course,” she replied gravely, putting both arms around his waist and holding tight.
At which sight the piebald steed of uncertain parentage let out a most unequine laugh….
The Makepeace farm was located beside a burbling little stream not far from the north fork of the American River. Less than twenty years before, the entire length of that river had been aswarm with thousands of immigrants in search of instant fortune, for the bed of the American River had been paved with gold. Now the gold and most of the immigrants were gone. Only the scoured-over river remained, draining farmland that was worth far more than the yellow metal that made men blind. A few, though, like Hart Makepeace, had seen the richness in the soil that had been stripped of its gold and had stayed on in the hope of making a smaller but surer fortune.
Now, however, it seemed that something small and vicious was determined to quash that dream. Malone could smell it as they trotted into the fenced yard. His suspicions were confirmed by the sound of a plate shattering somewhere inside the modest little farmhouse.
“She’s still at it,” Mary Makepeace said nervously, peering around the bulk of the mountain man. “I’d prayed that she’d be gone by now.”
Malone shook his massive head, squinting toward the house. The evil that lay within was strong enough to make his nose wrinkle and start a pounding at the back of his neck. “Not likely, ma’am. Witchens are persistent stay-at-homes, especially if they choose to make your home theirs. They’re not likely to leave voluntarily, nor put to rights the damage they’re fond o’ doin’.”
“Then what am I to do?”
“What we can, ma’am. What we can.” He dismounted and helped her down….
The kitchen had been turned into a wreck worse than that of the Hesperus. Only a few pieces of porcelain and crockery remained intact. Cracked china littered the wooden floor, mixed with the contents of dozens of baskets and jars. Pickles lay scattered among fruit turned rancid. Home-canned jams and preserves had made the oak planks slick as river rock. A butter churn lay forlorn and shattered across the room, below the sink pump that had been torn loose from its mounting bolts. Broom straw was everywhere, sticking to walls and floor alike.
Buzzing and soaring through the air above this culinary wreckage on a sliver of wood the size of a good cigar was the tiny figure of a wrinkled old woman. Her gray hair flowed from beneath a little scrap of a bandanna, and her skirt was stained with pepper sauce. She had a nose the size and color of a rotten grape, and her skin was the shade of old tobacco juice. On either side of that heroically ugly nose flashed tiny eyes sharp and dangerous as the business end of a black scorpion.
“Hee-hee-hee-hee!” she was cackling as she tore through the air of the ruined kitchen like a drunken dragonfly. “More’s the food and more’s the pity, hee-hee-hee!” Crash! A pot of beans went spinning to the floor.
Mary Makepeace huddled fearfully behind the imposing bulk of Amos Malone. “M-m-make her go away, Amos. Oh, please make her go away and put to rights the damage she’s done!”
“Where’s the rest of your family?” Malone asked her.
“Over… there.” She fell to sobbing again as she pointed.
Standing in a far corner of the kitchen, a fistful of cigars clutched in one frozen hand, was a wooden figure of startling realism. It was not made in the image of a stolid Plains Indian, though, but rather in that of a young man clad in woolen white shirt, suspenders, work boots, a pair of Mr. Levi’s revolutionary new pants, and an expression that mixed bafflement with sheer terror.
“That’s my husband, Hart,” Mary Makepeace bawled, “and those large cookie jars at his feet are our sons, Frank and Christopher.”
Malone nodded, his expression grim. “You got yourself a mean’un, for sure.” He readied himself.
They waited while the witchen continued to engage in her orgy of destruction. At last the tiny evilness clad in the guise of an old woman zoomed over to hover in the air a foot in front of Malone’s beard.
“Oh-ho-hee-hee,” she laughed gleefully. “So the missy of the house has come back, eh? Good! I was so busy, I missed you the first time!” She glared mischievously at the terrified Mary. “What would you like to be? A nice harp, perhaps? You’d make a good-looking harp, missy. Or maybe that’s too fine for such as you, yes, too fine by half. A beer mug, maybe, for some filthy-minded man to drink from? Or how about a slop jar? Hee-hee-hee! Yes, that’d suit you, yes, yes, a green-eyed slop jar!” She whirled around in a tight circle, delighted at her own perverse inventiveness. Mary Makepeace cowered weakly behind Malone.
The witchen tried to dart around him. Each time, he blocked her path with a big, callused hand. Finally the enraged little nastiness floated up to stare into his eyes.
“Now, what’s this, what’s this what interferes with my housework, eh? I think it’s alive. I think it does live, I think. At first I thought it was a big sack of manure the missy had pushed ahead of her to hide behind, but now I see that it moves, it moves, hee-hee-hee. Could it be that it talks as well, could it?”
“You are, without question,” Malone said studiously, “the vilest, most loathsome-looking little smidgen of bile it’s ever been my displeasure to set eyes upon.”
“Flattery’ll get you anywhere, sonny,” she cackled. Then, in a dark tone rich with menace, she added, “Perhaps if I put those eyes out for you, you wouldn’t be troubled with setting them on me, eh?” When Malone didn’t respond, she said, “What shall I do with you, with you? You’re too big to make into a piece of furniture for this besotted kitchen. Maybe I’ll turn you into a kitchen, yes, yes? Yes, with a nice little cook fire in your belly.” Her tiny eyes blazed threateningly. “I’ll bake my bread in your belly, man.”
Ignoring her, Malone whispered to Mary Makepeace, “Have you and your husband been fighting lately, ma’am?”
“Of course not,” she started to say. “We were happily…” Then she recalled what Mad Amos Malone had told her about being able to smell a liar some good distance away and thought better of her response. “Yes, yes, we have been.” She was shaking as she stared at the floor. “But if only I could have him back, Amos! We fought over such little, insignificant things! And the children… I’ll never yell at my dear boys like that again!”
“Most folks don’t think clearly about the consequences o’ strong words when they’re spewin’ ’em, ma’am. That’s what likely brought this badness down on you. Fightin’ can poison a home, and a kitchen’s especially sensitive to it. If the other conditions are right—not to mention the ether conditions—well, you’ve seen what can happen.”