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.