Moon-Face and Other Stories

by Jack London
CONTENTS

MOON-FACE
THE LEOPARD MAN'S STORY

LOCAL COLOR
AMATEUR NIGHT

THE MINIONS OF MIDAS
THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH

ALL GOLD CANYON
PLANCHETTE

MOON-FACE
John Claverhouse was a moon-faced man. You know the kind, cheek-bones wide

apart, chin and forehead melting into the cheeks to complete the perfect
round, and the nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the circumference,

flattened against the very centre of the face like a dough-ball upon the
ceiling. Perhaps that is why I hated him, for truly he had become an offense

to my eyes, and I believed the earth to be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps
my mother may have been superstitious of the moon and looked upon it over the

wrong shoulder at the wrong time.
Be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. Not that he had done me what

society would consider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The evil was of a
deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so intangible, as to defy clear, definite

analysis in words. We all experience such things at some period in our lives.
For the first time we see a certain individual, one who the very instant

before we did not dream existed; and yet, at the first moment of meeting, we
say: "I do not like that man." Why do we not like him? Ah, we do not know why;

we know only that we do not. We have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I
with John Claverhouse.

What right had such a man to be happy? Yet he was an optimist. He was always
gleeful and laughing. All things were always all right, curse him! Ah I how it

grated on my soul that he should be so happy! Other men could laugh, and it
did not bother me. I even used to laugh myself--before I met John Claverhouse.

But his laugh! It irritated me, maddened me, as nothing else under the sun
could irritate or madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of me, and would not

let me go. It was a huge, Gargantuan laugh. Waking or sleeping it was always
with me, whirring and jarring across my heart-strings like an enormous rasp.

At break of day it came whooping across the fields to spoil my pleasant
morning revery. Under the aching noonday glare, when the green things drooped

and the birds withdrew to the depths of the forest, and all nature drowsed,
his great "Ha! ha!" and "Ho! ho!" rose up to the sky and challenged the sun.

And at black midnight, from the lonely cross-roads where he turned from town
into his own place, came his plaguey cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep

and make me writhe and clench my nails into my palms.
I went forth privily in the night-time, and turned his cattle into his fields,

and in the morning heard his whooping laugh as he drove them out again. "It is
nothing," he said; "the poor, dumb beasties are not to be blamed for straying

into fatter pastures."
He had a dog he called "Mars," a big, splendid brute, part deer-hound and part

blood-hound, and resembling both. Mars was a great delight to him, and they
were always together. But I bided my time, and one day, when opportunity was

ripe, lured the animal away and settled for him with strychnine and beefsteak.
It made positively no impression on John Claverhouse. His laugh was as hearty

and frequent as ever, and his face as much like the full moon as it always had
been.

Then I set fire to his haystacks and his barn. But the next morning, being
Sunday, he went forth blithe and cheerful.

"Where are you going?" I asked him, as he went by the cross-roads.
"Trout," he said, and his face beamed like a full moon. "I just dote on

trout."
Was there ever such an impossible man! His whole harvest had gone up in his

haystacks and barn. It was uninsured, I knew. And yet, in the face of famine
and the rigorous winter, he went out gayly in quest of a mess of trout,

forsooth, because he "doted" on them! Had gloom but rested, no matter how
lightly, on his brow, or had his bovine countenance grown long and serious and

less like the moon, or had he removed that smile but once from off his face, I
am sure I could have forgiven him for existing. But no. he grew only more

cheerful under misfortune.
I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and smiling surprise.

"I fight you? Why?" he asked slowly. And then he laughed. "You are so funny!
Ho! ho! You'll be the death of me! He! he! he! Oh! Ho! ho! ho!

What would you? It was past endurance. By the blood of Judas, how I hated him!
Then there was that name--Claverhouse! What a name! Wasn't it absurd?

Claverhouse! Merciful heaven, WHY Claverhouse? Again and again I asked myself
that question. I should not have minded Smith, or Brown, or Jones--but

CLAVERHOUSE! I leave it to you. Repeat it to yourself--Claverhouse. Just
listen to the ridiculous sound of it--Claverhouse! Should a man live with such

a name? I ask of you. "No," you say. And "No" said I.
But I bethought me of his mortgage. What of his crops and barn destroyed, I

knew he would be unable to meet it. So I got a shrewd, close-mouthed,
tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage transferred to him. I did not

appear but through this agent I forced the foreclosure, and but few days (no
more, believe me, than the law allowed) were given John Claverhouse to remove

his goods and chattels from the premises. Then I strolled down to see how he
took it, for he had lived there upward of twenty years. But he met me with his

saucer-eyes twinkling, and the light glowing and spreading in his face till it
was as a full-risen moon.

"Ha! ha! ha!" he laughed. "The funniest tike, that youngster of mine! Did you
ever hear the like? Let me tell you. He was down playing by the edge of the

river when a piece of the bank caved in and splashed him. 'O papa!' he cried;
'a great big puddle flewed up and hit me.'"

He stopped and waited for me to join him in his infernal glee.
"I don't see any laugh in it," I said shortly, and I know my face went sour.

He regarded me with wonderment, and then came the damnable light, glowing and
spreading, as I have described it, till his face shone soft and warm, like the

summer moon, and then the laugh--"Ha! ha! That's funny! You don't see it, eh?
He! he! Ho! ho! ho! He doesn't see it! Why, look here. You know a puddle--"

But I turned on my heel and left him. That was the last. I could stand it no
longer. The thing must end right there, I thought, curse him! The earth should

be quit of him. And as I went over the hill, I could hear his monstrous laugh
reverberating against the sky.

Now, I pride myself on doing things neatly, and when I resolved to kill John
Claverhouse I had it in mind to do so in such fashion that I should not look

back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate bungling, and I hate brutality. To me
there is something repugnant in merely striking a man with one's naked

fist--faugh! it is sickening! So, to shoot, or stab, or club John Claverhouse
(oh, that name!) did not appeal to me. And not only was I impelled to do it

neatly and artistically, but also in such manner that not the slightest
possible suspicion could be directed against me.

To this end I bent my intellect, and, after a week of profound incubation, I
hatched the scheme. Then I set to work. I bought a water spaniel bitch, five

months old, and devoted my whole attention to her training. Had any one spied
upon me, they would have remarked that this training consisted entirely of one

thing--RETRIEVING. I taught the dog, which I called "Bellona," to fetch sticks
I threw into the water, and not only to fetch, but to fetch at once, without

mouthing or playing with them. The point was that she was to stop for nothing,
but to deliver the stick in all haste. I made a practice of running away and

leaving her to chase me, with the stick in her mouth, till she caught me. She
was a bright animal, and took to the game with such eagerness that I was soon

content.
After that, at the first casual opportunity, I presented Bellona to John

Claverhouse. I knew what I was about, for I was aware of a little weakness of
his, and of a little private sinning of which he was regularly and

inveterately guilty.
"No," he said, when I placed the end of the rope in his hand. "No, you don't

mean it." And his mouth opened wide and he grinned all over his damnable
moon-face.