“Oh yes!” cried Thing-or-Two. “Talk to Bone Breaker, is it? He’s no better than the rest of you—letting Sweet Thing stick her nose in the air and treat him the way she does! If there were any real men around here, they’d have settled the hash of men like him and you, long ago! When I was a girl, if a girl didn’t want to leave home just yet, much she had to say about it. The man who wanted her just came in one day and swept her off her feet and carried her off—”
“Like Tin Ear, here, did to you? Is that it?” interrupted the male with the sword—and the whole table exploded into gargantuan laughter that made Bill’s ears ring. Even Tin Ear choked appreciatively on the contents of the wooden mug from which he was swallowing, in spite of being, as far as Bill could see, in some measure the butt of the joke.
Thing-or-Two shouted back at them, but her words were lost in the laughter, which took a few minutes to die down.
“Why, I heard it was you, Thing-or-Two, who broke into Tin Ear’s daddy’s house one dark night and carried him off!” bellowed the speaker at the table, as soon as he could be heard, and the laughter mounted skyward again.
This last sally apparently had the unusual effect of rendering Thing-or-Two momentarily speechless. Taking advantage of this, and the gradual diminishing of the laughter, Bill decided it was time to call the attention of the gathering to himself. He had been standing in plain daylight right beside the table all this time, but for some strange reason no one seemed to have noticed him. Now he stepped up to the side of the Dilbian who had been trading insults with Thing-or-Two and poked him in the ribs.
“Hey!” said Bill.
The head of the Dilbian jerked around. Seated, his hairy face was on a level with Bill’s and he stared at Bill now from a distance of less than three feet. His jaw dropped. Behind him, the laughter and other sounds died out, giving way to a stony silence as everyone at the table goggled incredulously at Bill.
“Sorry to bother you,” said Bill, stiffly, in his best Dilbian, “but I’ve just got here, and I’m on my way to the Shorty Residency building, in Muddy Nose Village. Maybe one of you would be kind enough to point me in the right direction for the village, and maybe even one of you wouldn’t mind coming along and giving me a hand with my luggage case?”
He waited, but they only continued to stare at him in fascinated silence. So he added, cautiously, knowing that bargaining was as much a part of Dilbian culture as breathing:
“I could probably scrape up a half-pint of nails for anyone who’d like to help me.”
Again he waited. But there was no answer. Amazingly, the silence of the Dilbians persisted. They were still staring at Bill as if he were some strange creature, materialized out of thin air. Bill felt a slight uneasiness stir inside him. It seemed to him they were gaping at him as if they had never seen a human before, which was strange. His hypnoed information plainly informed him that Shorties—as humans were called by the Dilbians—were well known to the Muddy Nosers. Perhaps he had made a mistake in stopping here, after all.
“A Shorty!” gasped the Dilbian he had spoken to, finally breaking the silence. “As I live and breathe! A real, walking, talking, little Shorty! Out here, all by himself!”
He turned about in his seat and slowly reached out a long arm, which Bill avoided by backing away out of reach.
“Come here, Shorty!” said the Dilbian.
“No thanks,” said Bill, now fully alerted to the fact that there was something very wrong in the situation. He kept backing away. “Forget I asked.” It was high time to remind them of his protected status, he decided. The sworded individual he had been speaking to was already beginning to rise from the table with every obvious intention of laying hands upon him.
“It was just a thought—that I might get one of you to help me,” Bill said rapidly. “I’m a member of the Residency, myself, you know.”
The Dilbian was now on his feet and others were rising. Alarm rang as clearly in Bill as the clanging of a fire bell.
“What’s the matter with you?” he shouted at the oncoming Dilbian. “Don’t you know we Shorties have a treaty with the Muddy Nosers? According to that treaty, you all owe me protection and assistance!”
The male Dilbians, still rising from the table, froze and stared once again for a long second before suddenly bursting out into wild whoops of laughter, wilder and louder than Bill had yet heard from them.
Bill stared at them, amazed.
“Why, you crazy little Shorty!” cried the voice of Thing-or-Two furiously behind him. “Can’t you tell the differences between people, when you see them? These aren’t honest folk like us here around the village! They’re those thieves and plunderers and no-goods from the Outlaw Valley! They’re outlaws—and they never signed any kind of treaty with anybody!”
Chapter 2
Thing-or-Two’s shouted warning explained matters, but it came, if anything, a little late. By the time she had finished speaking, the leading outlaw was almost upon Bill, and Bill was already in motion.
He dropped his luggage case and ducked desperately as the big Dilbian hands made a grab for him. They missed, and he spun about only to find himself running in the wrong direction. With whoops and yells the whole crew of outlaws was after him. Every way he turned, he found a towering, nine-foot figure barring his escape.
Not that an immediate attempt to escape would do him any good at the moment, he realized almost at once. Bill’s first reaction had been that of any small animal being chased by larger ones—to duck and dodge and take advantage of his reflexes, which were faster simply because he was smaller. The Dilbian outlaws, being all nearly twice Bill’s size and several times his weight, were by that very fact slower and clumsier than he was. In fact, after the first leap to escape, he found himself evading their clutches with relative ease.
But even as he realized he could do this, he saw the spot he was in. At first he had been dodging about only in order to find a clear space in which he could make a run for the forest. Now he realized that simply running away was no solution. The reflexes of the Dilbians might be slower than his, but their huge strides could cover the same among of ground at double his speed. They could catch him in no time if he simply tried to outrun them in a straight-away chase.
His only hope, he realized now, still dodging desperately about the farmyard, was to keep evading them in this small area until they began to grow winded, and then take his chances on outrunning them. If he could only keep this up, he thought—ducking under a flailing dark-furred arm as thick as a man’s thigh—for just a few minutes more…
“Hold it!” the outlaw leader was shouting. “Don’t let him run you ragged. Circle him! Circle him! Herd him into a corner!”
Bill’s hopes took a nose dive. He dodged and spun about, but without finding an opening. Already the outlaws were forming a semicircle, long arms extended sideways, that was herding him back against the front wall of the house. They were closing in, now…
Bill made a feint toward the right end of the semicircle, and then made a dash toward the left end, with the wild thought of diving between the legs of the outlaw leader, standing at the corner of the house. But at the last second the outlaw stepped forward and whooped in a powerful voice Bill had come to recognize.
“Got you, Shorty!”
Bill braked to a frantic halt. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the rest of the semicircle closing rapidly on him. He looked back at the outlaw leader, standing crouched now and ready by the interlaced butt ends of the logs at the corner of the house. The leader spread his arms and reached forward—
—And went suddenly flat on his face with a furry figure atop him, as a wild war cry split the air.
“I’m a Muddy Noser and proud of it!” roared the still-drunken voice of Tin Ear, in triumph. “Run, Shorty!”
But there was no place to which Bill could run. Other outlaws had rushed over to bar the escape route opened up by the fallen leader. Glancing wildly about, Bill looked up and saw that where the roof o
f the house joined the wall there was an opening leading to some dark interior, probably a loft or attic. The alternating ends of the logs in the front and side walls of the house were notched and interlocked together so that they stuck out like the tips of the fingers of two hands, interlaced at right angles to each other. They were as good as a ladder to someone Bill’s size. He had not won a climbing medal in Survival School, back on Earth, for nothing. He went up the log ends like a squirrel.
A second later he had dived into the dark, loftlike area to which the opening he had seen gave entrance. For a moment he simply lay there, panting, on what seemed to be a rough bed of poles, which was probably a roof to the room or rooms below. Then, as he began to breathe easily once more, he squirmed about, crawled back to the entrance, and looked down and out.
Tin Ear was slumbering or unconscious on the ground at the spot where he had jumped the outlaw leader. The leader himself was on his feet with the other outlaws clustered around the corner of the house, and one of their number was trying to climb the sixteen or eighteen feet up the same ladder of log ends Bill had used.
However, the log ends were too small for the big feet and hands of the Dilbians. The climber was finding fairly good support for his toes, but he was able to hang on to the log ends higher up only by his fingertips. His attention was all on those fingertips, and Bill had a sudden inspiration. Leaning out and reaching down the short couple of feet that separated the climber’s head from the entrance, he put his hand on the top of the hard, furry skull and shoved outward with all his strength.
The head went back, and the climber’s fingertips lost their precarious grip. There was a yell and a thud, and the climber landed on his back in the farmyard dirt. Roaring with rage, he scrambled to his feet as if he would climb again, but checked himself at the foot of the log corner, and dropped his upreaching arms.
“It’s no use!” he growled, turning away toward the outlaw leader. “There’s nothing you can really get a grip on. You see what he did to me?”
“Go get some fire from the stove inside,” said the outlaw leader, struck by a happy thought. “We’ll burn him out of there!”
“No, you don’t!” trumpeted the voice of Thing-or-Two in the background. “Paying outlaw-tax is one thing, but you’re not burning down our house! You try it and you’ll see how fast I get to Outlaw Valley and tell Bone Breaker on you! You just try!”
Her words stopped a concerted move toward the front door of the house. The outlaws muttered among themselves, occasionally glancing up to the opening from which Bill was looking down. Finally, the leader looked up at Bill’s observing face.
“All right, Shorty!” he said, sternly. “You come down out of there!”
Bill laughed grimly.
“What’s so funny?” glowered the outlaw leader.
Bill had a sudden, desperate inspiration. His hypnoed information had just reminded him of a double fact. One, that preserving face—in the human, Oriental sense—meant a great deal to the Dilbians, since an individual Dilbian had no more status in the community than his wit or his muscles could earn for him. Two, that in Dilbian conversation the more outrageous statement you could get away with, the more face-destroying points you were able to score on an opponent. Maybe he could bluff his way out of this situation by making it so humiliating for the outlaws that they would go off and leave him alone.
“You are!” he retorted. “Why’d you think I stuck around here instead of running off? Laugh? Why, I could hardly keep from splitting my sides, watching all of you falling all over yourselves trying to catch me. Why should I come down and stop the fun?”
The outlaws stared at him. The leader scowled.
“Fun?” growled the leader. “Are you trying to tell us you did all that running around for fun?”
“Why, sure,” said Bill, laughing again, just to drive the fact home, “you didn’t think I was scared of you, did you?”
They blinked at him.
“What do you mean?” growled the leader. “You weren’t scared?”
“Scared? Who? Me?” said Bill heartily, leaning a little farther out of his hole to talk. “We Shorties aren’t scared of anything on two legs or four. Or anything else!”
“Oh? Then how come you don’t come down from that hole now?” demanded one of the other outlaws.
“Why, naturally,” said Bill, “there’s six or seven of you and only one of me. If it wasn’t for that—”
“Hey, what’s up?” boomed a new voice, interrupting him. Bill raised his eyes to look beyond the outlaw group and the outlaws themselves turned to stare. Strolling out of the woods was the tallest, leanest Dilbian Bill had seen so far. He was unarmed, but he was as much taller than the general height of the sword-bearing outlaws as they were taller than Thing-or-Two, and his fur was a light, rusty-brown in color.
“Some of your business, Uplander?” growled the outlaw leader.
“Why, not if you say it’s not,” responded the newcomer genially, strolling up to the group. “But you look like you got something cornered up in Tin Ear’s roof, there, and—”
“It’s a Shorty,” growled the outlaw leader, turning to look once more at Bill, and apparently accepting the newcomer without further protest. “He’s got up in there and if you try climbing up, holding on with your finger and toenails, he shoves you off. And he just sits up there laughing at us.”
“That a fact?” said the tall Dilbian. “Well, I know how I’d get him out of there.”
“You?” snorted the leader. “Who says you could get him down if we can’t?”
“Why, because I wouldn’t have to climb,” said the tall Dilbian, easily. “You see, I’m just a hair or two bigger than the rest of you. Want me to try?”
“You can try for all I care,” grumbled the leader, and the rest of the outlaws muttered agreement. On the ground, Tin Ear was beginning to sit up and look about himself, somewhat dazedly. “But it won’t do any good.”
“Think so?” said the tall Dilbian, unruffled. “Let me just take a little look, first.” He moved to directly below Bill’s bolthole. “Look out up there, Shorty—here I come!”
With these last words he crouched suddenly, then sprang, flinging up his unbelievably long arms at the same instant. Bill ducked back from the entrance, instinctively, as with a thud, ten powerful, furry fingers appeared, hooked over the bottom log of his entrance. A second later and the face of the newcomer rose to stare in interestedly at him.
Still holding himself by his grip on the entrance, the tall Dilbian performed the further muscular feat of sticking his head partway into the hole. Bill braced himself to resist capture. But, astonishingly, what came from the intruder was nothing more than a hoarse whisper.
“Listen! You’re the Pick-and-Shovel Shorty?”
“Well—uh,” Bill whispered back, confused. “My Shorty name’s actually Bill Waltham, but they warned me I’d be given—”
“Sure!” whispered the Dilbian immediately. “That’s what I said. You’re Pick-and-Shovel. Now, listen. I’m going to get them to back off. When they do, you take a leap out of there, and I’ll get you away from them. Understand?”
“Yes, but—”
Bill found himself talking to empty air. A thud from the ground outside signaled that his interviewer had dropped to earth. Bill crept forward and looked out. Below him, the tall Dilbian was muttering to a close huddle of the outlaws, all of them with their heads down. Apparently the muttering was supposed to be confidential, but the words of it came clearly to Bill’s ears.
“…You got to be tricky with these Shorties,” the tall Dilbian was saying. “Now, I told him I’d talk you all into going away and leaving him alone. So the rest of you go hide around the corners of the building, and when he climbs down, I’ll get between him and the corner of the house here, and the rest of you can run out and catch him. Got it?”
The outlaws muttered gleeful agreement. Heads were lifted.
“Well,” yawned the outlaw leader, in a lou
d voice, pointedly not looking up in Bill’s direction, “guess we better be moseying along back to the valley. Let’s go, men.”
All pretending elaborate unconcern, the outlaws wandered off around the other front corner of the house leaving their pile of loot behind them; and a moment later Bill could plainly hear the heavy thud of a number of Dilbian feet, running around the back of the building to just out of his sight behind the corner below him, and stopping there.
“Well, Shorty,” said the tall Dilbian in loud tones looking up at Bill. “Like I told you, they’ve all gone back to the valley”—his voice suddenly dropped to an undertone, and the held out his two enormous paws—“all right, Pick-and-Shovel, come on! Jump!”
Bill, who had been crouching poised in the entrance of his hiding place, hesitated, torn over the decision of whether to believe what the tall Dilbian had said to him or believe what the same individual had just told the outlaws below. He remembered however, the hypnoed fact that Dilbians would go to almost any lengths to avoid the lie direct, although perfectly willing to twist the truth through any contortions necessary to produce the same effect.
The tall Dilbian had said he would get Bill away from the outlaws. Having said it, he was almost duty-bound to perform at least the letter of his promise. Besides, Bill remembered in the nick of time, the outlaws had first addressed the newcomer as “Uplander”—and Bill’s information had it that there was little love lost between Uplanders, or mountain-dwelling Dilbians, and the Lowlanders.
Bill jumped.
The big hands of the Uplander fielded him with the skill of an offensive end in professional football. And a second later they were running.
Or rather, the Dilbian was running, and Bill was joggling up and down in his grasp.
Behind them, Bill could hear the sudden, furious shouts of the outlaws. Craning his head around a pumping hairy elbow, Bill saw the outlaws swarming out from behind the farmhouse in pursuit. At the same time he felt himself lifted up over the shoulder of the tall Dilbian.
The Right to Arm Bears (dilbia) Page 14