“I don’t like forfeits, either. Might be harmful to my reputation.”
“And do you have a reputation, friend?” Sam asked him tauntingly.
“Here and there. Not always good. How about you?”
“Me? Why I’m Sam, just plain Sam. The farmer’s friend.” He winked at Emma Hotchkiss. Her husband didn’t see it, but Malone did. She responded by licking her upper lip. From what Malone could see, it didn’t look chapped.
“What say we have a look at these fine folks’ uncooperative land, Mr. Malone.”
The mountain man nodded. “I think that’d be a right sound place to begin.”
Hotchkiss provided lanterns to complement the light of the full moon. The four of them walked outside, the young farmer and his wife leading the way toward the nearest field. The stranger toted a large canvas satchel, his eyes eagerly following Emma Hotchkiss as he envisioned the bonus he imagined would be his before the night was over. Malone carried a small pouch he’d extracted from one of his saddlebags and with unvoiced disapproval watched the stranger watching Emma.
The sound of wood striking ground drew their attention. Everyone looked toward the corral as two shapes bolted into the moonlight.
“I tried to tell you, Will, that your mare was coming into heat,” Emma Hotchkiss said accusingly.
“Don’t worry none, son.” Malone followed the galloping, rollicking pair of steeds with his eyes as they disappeared over the nearest hill. “Worthless won’t hurt her. They’ll have themselves their run, and he’ll bring ’er back.”
Hotchkiss looked uncertain. “Can’t you call him in?”
Malone shook his head. “Worthless pretty much does as he pleases. I reckon they’ll have themselves a tour of most o’ your property before he feels winded enough to amble on back.”
“Hard to believe that a man who can’t control his horse can do much with the earth,” the stranger observed insinuatingly.
The mountain man looked down at him. “Tryin’ to control Worthless would be about like tryin’ to control the earth. Myself, I’d rather have a friend for a mount than a slave.”
The neatly turned field stretched eastward, bathed in pale moonlight. Ryegrass whispered warningly beneath their feet. A single silhouetted tree stood leafless, lonely, and bruised amid a mound of broken yellow rock. There was no wind, no clouds: it was a place where a man could smell silence.
A deep creek ran between the two sloping halves of the field. Malone studied it thoughtfully, then bent to examine the soil. Lifting a pinch of dirt to his nose, he inhaled deeply, then tasted of the soil. He straightened.
“Sour,” he declared brusquely as he brushed his hands together to clean them.
The stranger nodded, eyeing the mountain man with new respect. “That was my thought as well. You do know something about the earth, friend.”
Malone eyed him evenly. “This and that.”
The stranger hesitated a moment longer. “Well, then, this looks like as good a place to begin as any.” Reaching into his satchel, he fumbled around until he found a pinch of seed. He flicked it earthward and waited, eyes glittering.
“Father Joseph!” Will Hotchkiss whispered, gazing in disbelief at the ground.
Where the seed had landed, tiny pools of light appeared in the sterile furrow. They spread, trickling together within the soil, a pale green glowing effulgence staining the dark loam.
As the four looked on, tiny stems broke the surface. Vines first, climbing toward the moon like umber snakes. Three feet high they were when they halted. Like soap bubbles emerging from a child’s toy pipe, bright red fruit began to appear beneath the green leaves, swollen and red-ripe as the lips of a succubus. The stranger turned proudly to the farming couple. His words were directed at both of them, but his eyes were intent on Emma Hotchkiss.
“Well, now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
“Tomatoes,” Hotchkiss was muttering. “Finest damn tomatoes I ever seen. In March.” He eyed the stranger warily. “This ain’t farming, sir. It’s witchcraft.”
“Not at all, friend, not at all,” the stranger replied, smooth as cream. “Merely the application of sound agrarian principles.” He glanced at the mountain man. “Wouldn’t you agree, sir?”
“Too soon to say.” Malone grunted and reached into the bag he carried. Choosing another furrow, he scattered seeds of his own.
The earth did not glow where they landed. Instead, it rumbled softly like an old man’s belly. Emma Hotchkiss put her palms to her face as she stared. Even the stranger backed away.
Not vines this time, but entire trees emerged from the ground. Fruit appeared on thickening branches, bright and bursting with tart juice. At Malone’s urging, Will Hotchkiss tentatively plucked one from a lower branch and rotated it with his fingers.
“Oranges.” His gaze shifted between the modest tomato bushes and the full-blown orchard, and he did not have to give voice to how he felt.
Frowning, the stranger selected and spread another handful of seed. This time the vines that arose with unnatural rapidity from the earth were shorter but thicker than those that had preceded them. With a grandiose wave of his hand, he beckoned the young farmer close.
Will Hotchkiss knelt to examine the thumb-sized dark fruit. “Grapes,” he exclaimed. “And already ripe!”
“Sam, that’s fabulously clever,” said Emma Hotchkiss, throwing her arms around the stranger and bussing him not anywhere near his cheek. He responded without hesitation, both of them ignoring her husband, who was wholly intent on the miraculous grapes.
Malone surveyed the scene and shook his head. Then he sighed and carefully dusted a nearby mound with seed. This time it was as if the earth itself coughed rather than rumbled, as if uncertainly trying to digest the unexpected fodder. New vines emerged with astonishing speed: to everyone’s surprise except Malone’s, they looked no different from those the stranger had just called forth.
“Well.” Will Hotchkiss sounded slightly disappointed. “A tie.”
“Things ain’t always as they seem, son. Taste one,” Malone suggested.
The young farmer did so, and as the grape squinched between his teeth, his eyes widened. He stared wonderingly up at the mountain man.
“Already turned to wine… on the vine!”
“Mr. Malone!” his wife exclaimed. “How wonderful!” But her attempt to explore her other guest was doomed to defeat, as Malone was too tall for her to reach, even on tiptoe, and he declined to bend. She settled for favoring him with a look that despite his moral resolve raised his body temperature half a degree.
“I don’t know how you did that.” The stranger’s disposition had passed from mild upset to middlin’ anger. “But fruit isn’t all that this land will produce if coaxed by someone who knows truly the ways of the soil.”
He whirled and flung a handful of seeds in a wide arc. Where they struck, a section of earth the size of Hotchkiss’s corral began to burn with cold green fire. Clods and clumps of earth were tossed aside as trunks two feet thick erupted from the ground. No fruit hung bounteous and ready to pick from the gnarled, newly formed branches. Hotchkiss searched a black extrusion until he found the first of the small oval clusters that were as wooden-dark as the branch itself.
“Walnuts,” he exclaimed, picking one. “Ripe and full-meated.”
“Oh, yes,” his wife murmured huskily.
The stranger eyed Malone challengingly.
“That’s quite a feat,” Malone said. He held up his pouch. “Don’t carry near that much seed with me. So I reckon one’ll have to do.” Digging into the much smaller second sack, he removed a single seed.