Checking the straps on his saddlebags, Malone looked down at him. “I said I’d come and have a look-see at your problem. That I have done. I did not know that your rival claimants also had a deed. It would appear to me, fellers, that you have a situation here. One that is on your hands, not mine.”
“But what are we to do?” O’Riley was wringing his hands. “We’d fight them, but though they be small there be many of them.” A throbbing in his right big toe brought uncomfortable remembrance to the fore. “They have weapons.”
Malone seemed to hesitate. Then he stopped what he was doing and turned back to the two men. Behind him, his mount rolled its eyes and neighed disgustedly.
“I’ll not get in the middle of a fight where both sides have a claim to right, wrong, and gold. But though I’ll not engage in any fighting, I did say I would help if I could, and so it shall be.” Removing a round, fist-sized green bottle from one saddlebag, he began to retrace his steps toward the diggings. Gleeful as schoolboys, the miners followed. Desperate to maintain the flow of conversation, McLaughlin gestured at the bottle.
“As pretty a piece of crystal as a lady’s perfume container, sor. Where be the cut glass from? New York? Paris?”
“No place whose name you’d know,” Malone informed him. “And ’tis not glass. It’s an emerald.”
The miner expressed surprise. “Do you mean to say, sor, that that there bottle is made of emeralds?”
“No. I said it is an emerald.”
In front of them on the far side of the camp, the gnomish throng still waited. At the return of the miners and the mountain man, small, callused hands tightened determinedly on the hardwood shafts of picks and shovels. Hard rock chisels were drawn from belts and readied to be used as knives. Shovels were pointed sharp edge outward toward the three approaching humans.
Malone halted well short of the impending confrontation. Having seen the hexagonal-barreled Sharps slung across the back of Malone’s mount, O’Riley was surprised the mountain man had not brought the enormous gun with him. Perhaps, he thought, the giant was intending to do battle solely with the LeMat pistol holstered at his belt. In truth, Malone had no intention of employing either weapon. He turned to confront the uneasy miners.
“Now then, you happy sons of the Auld Sod, I’m goin’ t’ need a smidgen of your blood.” Subsequent to which declaration of intent he removed from his belt a bowie knife that in size would not have been out of place among the flailing swords at Agincourt. Noting the untrammeled shock on the faces of the two men, Malone hesitated a moment, realized his mistake, and smiled sheepishly.
“Sorry, fellers. I was fer a moment distracted.” To the great relief of the miners, he replaced the enormous blade in its sheath and fumbled in several pockets before withdrawing a pencil-sized length of steel that gleamed in the setting sun. “This here’s a mite better fer the purpose, I reckon. Not to mention fer your constitution.”
Stepping forward, he placed the business edge of the scalpel against O’Riley’s thumb and drew back the blade with a precision and delicacy of touch that would have drawn the admiration of Boston’s finest surgeons. Anticipating the cut, the miner grimaced but did not cry out. Turning to the nervous McLaughlin, Malone repeated the action. Then he stepped back.
“Hold out your thumbs and let the blood fall upon the land you claim as your own. Do it now!”
The booming command was enough to focus the miners’ attention and they hastened to comply. Bright red blood dripped from the twin cuts to stain the dry earth. Removing the stopper from the bottle he had brought with him, Malone poured the green contents onto the ground, where it mixed with the miners’ blood. A glutinous mist began to form. Taking a tentative sniff, McLaughlin was surprised to find that the fog smelled of clover. Raising his other enormous arm over his head, Malone seemed to strike the darkening sky as he thundered.
“Talamh seo éileamh againn, is é seo óir linne, deirimid an fhóid Auld!”
The strange words meant nothing to McLaughlin, but O’Riley’s eyes grew wide. He hadn’t heard the original language of his people spoken since as a child he had come to the New World with his parents. The liquid vowels sang in his ears as the mountain man’s invocation echoed off the stony hillsides. The mass of gnomes drew back a step or two, but they did not flee.
A low, ominous cloudbank was coalescing, taking shape between them and the miners. It was damp and ichorous and shot through with green lightning. Behind the men the miners’ horses stamped, whinnied, and rolled their eyes as they fought to stampede. Meanwhile Malone’s mount mustered a single squint-eyed glance in the direction of the crackling, boiling cloud, shook his head, and returned to placidly cropping the sparse ground cover as if nothing was amiss with the world.
When at last the furious lightning ceased flashing and the final echo of thunder rolled into the distance, the cloudbank dissipated to reveal… a second host of small men. But their beards, which were varied and profuse and in general more thoroughly combed, tended to blond and black rather than gnomish white. Instead of attire suitable for digging, their garments tended to the loose and colorful. This fashion extended to their hats, which were equally as diverse as their facial hair, but not to their boots, which were universally black.
McLaughlin might not have remembered the Gaelic of his family, but for anyone who hailed from the old country there was no mistaking the identity of the multitude of newcomers.
“Sure and beggora,” he declared breathily, “but they cannot be anything but leprechauns!”
“Leprechauns.” Standing beside his partner, O’Riley was no less dazed by the manifestation. “No, it cannot be.” Whereupon one standing in the forefront of the diminutive newcomers turned, strode directly toward the two men, and promptly whacked the hesitant miner’s right foot with the stout and finely carved shillelagh he carried.
“Who cannot be, ye daft mental malingerer!” Whirling to find himself confronted by Malone, the pint-sized combatant raised black eyebrows that terminated in neatly coiffed points. “Mother Macrie, ’tis the giant who built the causeway!” Taking a deep whiff of the mountain man, he wrinkled up a considerable nose. “And with a pong to match the rest o’ him!”
“Bear grease.” Malone was apologetic. “Good for healin’ cracked heels.”
“Gah!” Retreating several steps, the taoiseach of the leprechauns pointedly waved a hand back and forth in front of his face. “For what mysterious end have ye have drawn us unwilling and in haste to this godforsaken place, monster?”
Malone nodded toward the staring, openmouthed miners. “Two o’ your ex-countrymen need your help in a matter o’ land use.”
“Land use, ’tis it?” Forcing himself to ignore the piquant fragrance rising from the vicinity of the mountain man’s feet, the stocky green-clad figure tapped his open palm with the shillellagh. “A problem with the English again?”
“Not exactly.” Turning, Malone indicated the throng of watching gnomes. “Your relations have a small mine on this here land. These knäckebröd-eating immigrants from the northeast likewise claim it as their own and are uncommon insistent on keepin’ it all fer themselves.”
“Are they now? A mine, you say?” Malone nodded. “And why should me and the rest of the boyos get ourselves involved in a dispute between man—offspring o’ Erin though they be—and mice?”
“Say there now, stranger…,” began the chief of the gnomes. But the rest of his words were drowned out by a desperate McLaughlin.
“We’ll pay you!” The miner spoke without hesitation. “We know—I remember—that your kind is fond of gold. We have gold. In our mine.” Raising a hand, he pointed toward the pit.