“I'm Short Schmidt,” said the little one.
“Well, I'm mighty glad to find a couple of countrymen here,” I said. “You wouldn't happen to have a little something for a thirsty traveler, with maybe just enough alcohol to whip the tar out of the germs?”
“First things first,” said Long Schmidt. “We ain't set foot outside our little kingdom in six years, and we got some important questions to ask about the rest of the world.”
“And well you should,” I said. “You'll be pleased and happy to know that we won the War to End All Wars.”
“Who gives a damn about that?” said Short Schmidt. “We're Pittsburgh boys, Pittsburgh born and bred. Where did the Pirates finish last year?”
“Third or fourth, as I recollect,” I answered.
“
Damn
that John McGraw!” said Long Schmidt. “Tell me, Doctor Jones—who won the Kentucky Derby of 1917?”
“Seems to me that it was Omar Khayyam,” I said.
“Yahoo!” cried Short Schmidt, tossing a necklace into the air. “If we ever get back to Casey's Bar, old Flathead Mahoney is gonna owe me a double sawbuck!”
“We didn't mean to forget our manners, Doctor Jones,” said Long Schmidt. “It's just that certain things are very important to us. Now we'll join you in that drink.” He clapped his hands twice, and a couple of ripe young maidens brought us a round of fruit drinks, with just a little something extra added.
“So, Doctor Jones,” said Short Schmidt when we had all had a couple of long swallows, “what brings you to the kingdom of the Malaloki?”
“Friendship, curiosity, an adventurous spirit, and mostly a woman named Melora,” I said.
“Ah, yes, Melora,” said Short Schmidt. “Lovely girl.”
“Our wife,” added Long Schmidt.
“One of ’em, anyway,” said Short Schmidt. “Truth to tell, Jones, the blasted village is damned near overflowing with goddesses-by-marriage.”
“Easy now, brother,” said Long Schmidt. “Doctor Jones is a man of the cloth. Perhaps he disapproves.”
“No such a thing,” I assured them. “Solomon had a pile of wives, and the Good Book never said a word against him.”
“Doctor Jones,” said Short Schmidt with a smile, “you got the makings of a right friendly neighbor.”
“Thank you kindly,” I said. “You fellers mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
“Go right ahead,” said Short Schmidt.
“Who are the Malaloki, and how'd you ever get to be gods here?”
“Well, that's kind of a long story, Doctor Jones,” said Long Schmidt. “Me and Short came over to Africa seven years ago to scare us up some diamonds. Didn't seem that hard when we planned it, but I'll be damned if we could find a single one.”
“Diamond mines is well hid in these parts,” I agreed.
“
Mines?
” exclaimed Short Schmidt. “Son of a bitch! We thunk they grew inside oysters!”
“That's pearls,” I said. “Did you find any of them, at least?”
“Never even found an oyster,” said Short Schmidt. “Came near to getting et by crocodiles a couple of times.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, if you ever go oyster hunting again, I think you'll have a little more luck in the ocean than in the rivers.”
“We ain't likely to ever see a ocean again,” said Long Schmidt mournfully. “Let me get back to the main thrust of our tragic story, Doctor Jones, so you'll know why we're so happy to see you.”
“Be my guest,” I said, taking another drink that one of the local maidens offered me.
“Like Short told you, we came here to seek fame and fortune, mostly the latter. Matter of fact, we had a little more fame with the local constabularies than we could handle, which is how we came to take our leave of the civilized portions of Africa and head inland.”
“We set up shop as traders,” added Short Schmidt. “We'd make a round of the Zulus, swapping brass cartridges for goats. Then we'd trade the goats for salt, trade the salt for cattle, and sell the cattle at market. It was a tidy little business.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Well, we had a little difference of opinion with a tribe called the Shona about whether having a couple of friendly drinks and smokes together constitutes a bonafide proposition of marriage, and we had to take our leave of them a little more quickly than we would have liked.”
“Perfectly understandable,” I said.
“My thoughts precisely,” said Long Schmidt. “I just wish the Shona could have seen it that way. Anyway, we took off in the middle of the night, and since our bushcraft ain't exactly up to snuff, especially by Shona standards, we kept on running for two days and two nights, just to make sure that we weren't being followed too closely.”
“And on the third morning,” continued Short Schmidt, “we ran up against this here crater. We were both feeling kind of tired and out of sorts, what with having been running for our lives all that time, so we thought we'd climb up the wall of the crater a way and take a little rest once we were out of sight. Well, we stumbled onto some tunnel or other, and an hour later here we were, surrounded by the lost tribe of the Malaloki.”
“Of course, they ain't so lost as they was,” added Long Schmidt, “with both of us and now you stumbling across them, but they're lost enough. I don't think we'll ever get out of here.”
“Make up your mind,” I said. “Are you gods or are you prisoners?”
“Well, truth to tell,” said Short Schmidt, “there seems to be a fine and highly technical legal line between the two. Seems that their legends told of a couple of gods who would come here disguised as white men.”
“Well, you got no problem that I can see,” I said
“Hah!” snorted Long Schmidt.
“The problem,” said Short Schmidt, “is that two
other
white guys wandered in here about fifty years ago, and after they'd got all the ladies pregnant and picked up the choicer gemstones, they just up and left.”
“So the Malaloki have decided that as long as we stay here we must be gods, and we can do damned near anything we want,” continued Long Schmidt. “But the second we leave, we've proved that we're just men after all, and they've got about twenty beefy young men on the other side of that crater wall waiting to make pincushions out of us.”
“I can see where that might get to be a nuisance,” I agreed.
“That's why we sent Melora after you,” said Short Schmidt.
“By the way,” I said, “I'm supposed to tell you that Melora didn't break the sacred armband. I kind of stomped on it accidentally.”
“'Tain't noways sacred anyhow,” said Short Schmidt. “We knew that one of the young bucks was going to Germiston for some seeds to plant, so we snuck it into his pouch and told Melora that he'd went and swiped a sacred object.”
“How come?” I asked.
“Melora ain't exactly the most humorous critter we've ever run into,” said Long Schmidt. “We figured she'd move heaven and earth to get that armband back, and we were kind of hoping that she'd wipe out enough locals so that someone would follow her back here, like maybe an army or something big like that.”
“So while we're delighted to see a fellow countryman, and especially one who knows how the Pirates are doing these days,” said Short Schmidt, “I'd have to say that on the whole you represent a considerable disappointment to us, meaning no offense.”
“None taken,” I said. “Who
are
the Malaloki, anyway?”
“As near as we can figure it,” said Long Schmidt, “they're the descendants of some Roman outpost. Probably been living in the crater some fifteen hundred years or so. A few of ’em leave every now and then to buy things we can get down here and to learn a little English, but they always come back. For a while there we and Short really talked up the outside world in the hope that one by one they'd all go out and make their way and leave us alone here with the jewels, but so far it ain't happened.”
“So here we are,” concluded Short Schmidt, “gods of the Malaloki, with the power of life and death over our subjects and every whim catered to—so long as we don't walk more than six hundred yards from where we are now. We may never see the Pirates again!”
“Power of life and death, you say?” I asked.
“We're gods, ain't we?”
“Why not kill ’em off and just walk out free as birds?” I suggested.”
“We've thunk it over long and hard,” admitted Short Schmidt. “But while we don't back off none at a little serious swindling and cardsharking, murdering a whole lost tribe would probably put us off our feed.”
“Of course, we may eventually get around to killing off all the menfolk,” added Long Schmidt. “I don't like the way they look at us whenever we get married, which is pretty damned often now that I come to think of it.”
“Well, now, brothers,” I said, “you sound right happy and fulfilled as things stand. What in the world would you do if you ever got out of here?”
“Run like hell,” said Short Schmidt devoutly.
“I mean after that,” I said.
“See if we couldn't land us a grubstake and marry us a couple of good women and settle down, making sure to buy lifetime season tickets to the Pirates. Is old Honus Wagner still playing for them?”
“He quit five or six years back, as I recollect,” I said.
“Damn!” said Short Schmidt. “No wonder they ain't won any pennants to speak of.”
“
Damn
that John McGraw and his Giants!” added Long Schmidt passionately.
I could see they were bound and determined to talk about baseball for a few hours, so I decided that it was a good time to take my leave of them. “Well,” I said, “this has been a fascinating experience, hobnobbing with a couple of flesh-and-blood gods and seeing a lost civilization and all, but I think maybe the time has come for me to depart.”
“What makes you think
you're
going anywhere?” demanded Long Schmidt.
“What reason have you got to keep me?” I said. “I told you everything I know about baseball, and nobody's got around to declaring me a god yet.”
“First you got to help us get out of here,” said Short Schmidt. “After all, fair is fair.”
“I don't see nothing fair about it,” I said, getting a little hot under the collar.
“Don't look so glum, Jones,” said Long Schmidt. “If you actually
do
figure a way to get us out of here, we'll let you scoop up a handful of gems on the way out.”
Which of course put a whole new light on things.
I let one of their wives lead me to a little hut, and I lay down in a hammock and divided my attention between her and the problem at hand, spending most of the night tackling first one and then the other. And by morning I had the solution.
I hunted up Melora, who was about as giggly as ever, which is to say not at all, and told her that I had hit upon a way to turn her gods and husbands into a pair of contented stay-at-homes.
“Truly?” she said, her eyes widening.
“Trust me,” I said confidently.
“It is almost too much to ask.”
“It all depends on you, Melora,” I told her.
“What must I do?” she asked.
“I want you to pick up a couple of rubies or emeralds from wherever it is you guys are hiding them, and then go on a little shopping trip to Germiston for me.”
I had to explain what I wanted two or three times before she finally understood, and I told her to make sure to take a couple of husky lads along to haul my purchase back.
Then, after she left sometime around noon, I brought out the Good Book and decided to see if I couldn't bring a little of the true religion to these white heathen and get them to cast their false gods out into the cold, just in case my other idea didn't work.
Well, I was at it for the better part of three weeks and no one got converted, but we all had a fine old time singing hymns and trying to live up to the doings and deeds of all them holy men, especially in regard to all the begatting they did.
The Malaloki were fair to middling cooks, and were the first of Roman descent I'd run across who didn't smother everything in tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. The Schmidt brothers had shown them how to make a kind of wine from fermented fruits that didn't taste too good but packed one hell of a punch, and between the eating and the drinking and the begatting I sure couldn't see why they were so all-fired eager to leave.
Twenty days after Melora left she returned, with her two companions lugging a batch of packages. I had them put the stuff into my hut before the brothers saw them, and went to work. When I was done assembling everything, I made sure it all worked and then called Long Schmidt and Short Schmidt over.
“What have you got to show us, Jones?” said Long Schmidt, ducking his head down to get in through my doorway.
“Looks kind of like a radio,” said Short Schmidt.
“Shortwave,” I said.
“Should that mean something?” asked Long Schmidt.
I held the earphones between them and started cranking the dynamo.
"The Pirates lead two to nothing in the seventh, and John McGraw is calling Heinie Groh back and is sending Frankie Frisch up to pinch-hit with runners on first and—"
I pulled a tube out of the set and smashed it on the floor of the hut.
“My God!” wailed Short Schmidt. “What have you done?”
“Nothing much,” I said pleasantly. “I got a spare hidden away.”
“Where?” screamed Long Schmidt in agonized tones.
“Why, if I told you, it wouldn't be hidden much longer, would it?” I asked.
“Fix it!” screamed Short Schmidt.
“It's
my
radio,” I said. “I put it together and I attached it to the dynamo and I even laid six hundred feet of antenna up the side of the crater. I'll fix it when I feel like listening to it again. Right now, though, I'm planning on taking a nap.”
“We'll kill you!” bellowed Long Schmidt, tears streaming down his bearded face.
“That ain't going to get you your tube,” I said.
“What do you want for it?” said Short Schmidt, getting down on his knees and sobbing a little.
“Oh, nothing much,” I answered. “Maybe just my freedom and a handful of gemstones to tide me over during hard times.”
“That was to be your reward for getting us out of here,” said Long Schmidt accusingly.
“Why not think over your position for a minute?” I said. “You got more wives than you can shake a stick at, you got a couple of cushy lifetime jobs with no heavy lifting, and you got the Pittsburgh Pirates just a couple of huts away. You got more precious stones than anyone ever thought existed, and nice weather, and three squares a day. Are you sure you really
want
to leave?”