The stranger smirked. “That’s all you got left, friend? My bag’s still near full.”
“I don’t much like to travel heavy.” Carefully, Malone pushed the single seed into the soil, using one callused thumb to shove it deep. Then he stepped back and waited.
The tree that blossomed forth was no larger than any one of the dozen walnut trees that now blocked the stream from view. As soon as it reached its full growth, Hotchkiss approached to pick from a lower branch.
“Walnuts,” he declared disappointedly as he cracked the shell with the butt of his knife. With the point of the blade, he pried out the contents, popped them into his mouth, and chewed reflectively. “No worse, but no better.”
“Pick another,” Malone suggested.
Hotchkiss looked at him funny but complied. It seemed that his eyes couldn’t get any bigger than before, but they did. “Pecans.” He stared wonderingly at Malone. “On the same tree?”
“Thought you’d be the kind who’d appreciate good nuts,” Malone told him. “Why stop now?”
The young farmer picked some more. His delighted wife joined him. Together they sampled the tree’s bounty.
“Peanuts… on a tree!”
“Chestnuts,” his wife exclaimed. She displayed the rest of her pickings to the mountain man. “What are these, Mr. Malone?”
He examined the contents of her perfect hands. “The big curved ones are Brazil nuts. Little curved ones are cashews.”
“What are cashews?” Hotchkiss asked.
“They don’t come from around here, but they’re good to eat,” Malone told him. “Those big round ones are macadamias, from Australia.” He peered up into the tree. “I reckon there’s some up in there I don’t rightly know myself.”
The stranger walked right up to his taller opponent to search his face. “You’re a very clever man, friend. Very clever indeed. But you’re no farmer’s friend. And whatever you be, I swear you can’t match this.”
He stepped back and took a seed the size of a peanut from his sack. It pulsed with a faint inner light of its own, as though a tiny heart were beating inside the hard outer covering. Instead of scattering it carelessly as he had the others, he planted this one very carefully. Malone thought the stranger whispered some words over it as he ground it into the soil with the heel of his boot. Then he stepped back.
From a red refulgent patch of earth another tree emerged, its branches sagging under the mass of multihued fruit they carried. The trunk of the tree seemed permeated with that pale red glow, which did not diminish when the tree ceased growing. There were apples and oranges, lemons and limes and soursops, jackfruits and star fruits and litchis and rambutans—fruits that never should have grown in that dirt, in that country. It was a cornucopia of fruit sprung from a single unsuspecting square of soil.
Even Malone was impressed and said so.
“Go on,” the stranger said proudly, “taste some of it. Taste any of it.”
The mountain man carefully scrutinized one of the groaning branches. He picked a couple of rambutans and began to peel them, the sugary white centers emerging from behind the spiny red outer husks. The stranger looked on intently as Malone put one fruit to his lips. Then he hesitated.
“You must be gettin’ a mite hungry yourself after so much hard work.” He held out the other rambutan.
The stranger waved him off. “No, thank you, but I enjoyed a fine supper and am quite content.”
“Oh, go on,” Malone urged him. “I dislike eatin’ by meself.”
Hotchkiss frowned at the stranger. “Is something wrong with the fruit?”
“No, of course not.” The blond man hesitated, then took the proffered fruit. Eyes locked, the two men ate simultaneously.
“Can I have some, too?” Emma Hotchkiss asked coyly. “I’m not full at all. In fact, I’m just ever so positively empty inside.”
Malone smiled at her. “Maybe later, ma’am. We need to make sure it’s truly ripe.”
“Oh, I think it is.” She smiled up at him. “But if you’re not sure, then I’ll wait until you are.”
“Pretty good,” Malone said, tossing aside the nut that lay at the center of the fruit. He wiped his lips with the back of a huge, hairy hand. “You know your crops, Sam the farmer’s friend, but I ain’t so sure you know your soil. This hereabouts is soured fer sure, and not all the fruits and vegetables and grains that you or I could grow on it in a night will cure that.”
The stranger did not hear. His face had acquired a faintly green glow itself. A hand went to his stomach as he turned to Hotchkiss.
“Are you all right, sir?” the young farmer inquired, alarmed.
“I am. Just a mite too much of my own bounty, I fear. Might your fine little community be home to a competent physician?”
Hotchkiss nodded. “Dr. Heinmann. Travels between towns hereabouts. He’s at the hotel for another day, I think, but should be leaving tomorrow.”
“Then I’d best hurry.” Suddenly the stranger was running back toward the farmhouse, exhibiting more energy than at any time that night.
“What happened to him?” Hotchkiss asked. Malone followed the stranger with his eyes as the man reached the house, mounted his steed, and urged it into a mad gallop toward town. Retching sounds drifted wistfully back over the fields toward them.
“I reckon he got too full of himself. He has a lot of knowledge but ain’t quite sure how to control it. Your land hereabouts is soured. With his kind of help it’d grow you one fine crop this year and probably fail the next, mebbe forever. By which time the likes of Sam the farmer’s friend would have harvested whatever he desired from this part of the world and moved on.” He glanced in Emma Hotchkiss’s direction, but rather than mark his point, she only gazed back at him invitingly, ignoring such inconveniences as admonitory implications.
Hotchkiss was crestfallen. “You’re saying that the trouble’s still in the ground and that it can’t be fixed? That all our efforts here are doomed to failure?”
“Oh, no, I didn’t say nothin’ like that, Will. The problem can be rectified by the application of an appropriate nitrogen-fixin’ substance, not by seein’ how many outrageous fruits and vegetables one man can grow in a night by trickery and deception.”
“Nitro fix…?” Hotchkiss frowned up at him. “What kind of talk is that?”
“Science, my young friend. The same science that makes the telegraph work and steam engines turn wheels. There’s all kinds o’ science stalking about the world, even among vegetables.”
“Where do we get this kind of substance?”
“Wal, now, it might take some time to gather what you need from certain islands I know, like the Galapagos, or certain holes in the ground, like in New Mexico, but seein’ as how you folks have already had such a bad time of it and are so far down the road o’ discouragement, I thought it best to attend to the problem as quickly as possible. So while we’ve been out here playin’ farmer, your difficulties have already been attended to.”
“Already? You mean the ground is fixed?”
“Yep,” said Malone. “Won’t grow you no already-wined grapes or many-nut trees, but you’ll do right well hereabouts with regular walnuts and grapes, wheat if you need it, and a bunch of other stuff I don’t reckon you know much about yet. Like artichokes.” He stroked his beard. “I reckon I’d try the oranges a mite farther south, though.”
“But the soil—how did you put it right?”
Malone put a fatherly hand on the young farmer’s shoulder. “Now, don’t you worry yourself none about the hows here, son. Sometimes it’s jest better to accept things than to question everything.”