Spacepaw

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “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 the 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 of 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 about 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 he 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 muscu
lar 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 impatiently. “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 loud 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 he 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, tom 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 outlaw 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.

  “Climb—on to my back—” grunted that individual, between strides. “Sit on the dingus, there! It’s the same one I used for the Half-Pint-Posted. Then I can get down to some serious moving!”

  Staring down over the furry shoulder, Bill saw something like a crude saddle anchored between the straps crossing the Dilbian’s back. Hanging on tight to the thick neck beside him, he climbed on over the shoulder and, turning around, got himself seated down on the saddle. He grabbed the shoulder straps for added support and anchored his legs in the back straps below.

  “All set,” he said, finally, the words jolted out of his mouth into the other’s ear.

  “All right,” grunted the other. “Now we leave them eating dust. Watch a real man travel, Pick-and-Shovel!”

  The rhythm of the tall native’s stride changed—it was a difference like that between the trot and the gallop of a horse. Bill, clinging to the straps, looked back and saw they were drawing away almost magically from their pursuers. In fact, even as he watched, some of the outlaws began to slow down to a walk and drop out of the chase.

  “They’re giving up!” he said in the ear of his mount.

  “Sure, they would,” answered that individual. “I knew they’d see it right off—they couldn’t catch me. No one can catch me, Pick-and-Shovel. Never could, never will— Lowlander, Uplander, nobody!”

  He slowed to a steady, swinging walk. Bill looked shrewdly at the back of the furry head eight inches in front of his own nose.

  “You’re the Hill Bluffer, aren’t you?” he inquired.

  “Who else?” snorted the other. Bill got the idea that the Hill Bluffer would have been impressed only if Bill had failed to recognize him. The Dilbian went into a half-chant. “Hill Bluffer, that’s my name and fame! Anything on two feet walk away from me? Not over solid ground or living rock! When I look at a hill, it knows it’s beat, and it lays out flat for my trampling feet!”

  “Er—yes,” said Bill.

  “You’re lucky to get me,” stated the Hill Bluffer in a more conversational tone, but with no show of false modesty. “Just luck you did. When the other Shorties decided to bring you in here, they looked me up right away. Could I take a leave of absence from carrying the mail between Humrog Village and Wildwood Peak, and come down to the Lowlands here to take care of another Shorty? Well, it wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I just happened to have an experienced substitute handy to take over the mail route. So I came on down. The ten pounds of nails was all right, but it didn’t have much to do with it.”

  “It didn’t?” asked Bill.

  The Hill Bluffer snorted. It sounded like a small factory explosion and shook Bill upon his saddle perch like a small earthquake.

  “Of course not!” said the Hill Bluffer. “That’s good pay, but a man wants more than that. This was a matter of reputation. After having taken care of a Shorty once before, could I let another one get himself into all kinds of trouble down here without me? Of course not!”

  “Well … thanks,” said Bill. “I appreciate it.”

  “You’ll appreciate it more by the time you’re done,” said the Hill Bluffer cheerfully. “Not that you’d have needed me just for protection against these fat-muscled, weak-livered Lowland folk with their sticks and their knives and their swords and their shields and such-like. Can you beat it? No, it wasn’t protection you needed down here, Pick-and-Shovel. It was experience, and a good, clean-thinking tough cat of a mountain man like myself to back it up. Well, here we are at Muddy Nose Village.”

  Here, in fact, they were.

  Now he looked up and saw, indeed, that they were beginning to travel down the miry main street of some kind of native settlement village. Bill could see how the village had gotten its name.

  At first, as they moved between the two rows of log buildings that lined the street, they attracted little attention. But soon they were spotted by the various other Dilbians Bill saw lounging around the fronts of the buildings, and deep bass shouts began to summon other local inhabitants from the interior of the structures. Bill found himself and the Hill Bluffer being bombarded by questions, most of them humorous, and few of them polite, as to his identity and his immediate intentions now that he had arrived at his destination.

  He had, however, no chance to answer, for the Hill Bluffer strode swiftly on, grandly ignoring the tumult around them, like an aristocrat taking a stroll among peasants whom it would be beneath his dignity to notice. Bill tried to imitate the postman’s indifference. The Bluffer came at last to the far end of the village s
treet, and to a rather wider, more modem-looking log structure there, which sat back a little ways from the other buildings of the village. Bill, finding his wits sharpened by events since he had landed on this world, noticed that the door to this final building was cut in the generous proportions necessary to admit a Dilbian, even a Dilbian as tall as the Hill Bluffer. But, by contrast, the windows in the building were cut down low enough so that a human being would be able to look out of them.

  “All right. Here we are,” he said, halting. “Light down, Pick-and-Shovel, and get whatever Shorty-type gear you’ll need. Then you can get the story straight from Sweet Thing herself, and we’ll be off to Outlaw Valley to see about getting Bone Breaker to turn loose Dirty Teeth.”

  Bill slid down from the broad, furry back, relieved to have his feet on a solid surface once more. He found himself standing in a pleasantly sunlit sort of reception room with some Dilbian-sized benches around the walls and a good deal of empty space between them. He looked toward a half-open door, which evidently led deeper into the building.

  “What?” he answered, as the Hill Bluffer’s last words registered on him. “Wait a minute. I don’t think I better go anyplace right away. I’ll be expected to stay here until I talk to the Resident and his—I mean—the other Shorty who’s staying here.”

  “Are you deaf, Pick-and-Shovel?” boomed the Hill Bluffer, exasperated.

  Surprised, Bill turned to face him.

  “Didn’t you hear what I was just saying to you?” demanded the Bluffer. “You can’t just sit down here and wait for either Dirty Teeth or the Tricky Teacher. Don’t you Shorties ever know anything about each other? You can sit here all you want, but neither one of them’s going to show up.”

  Bill stared at the tall Dilbian. His scrambling mind finally evoked the hypnoed information that Tricky Teacher was the Dilbian name of the Resident, Lafe Greentree, and that Dirty Teeth was the name the natives had pinned on Greentree’s female trainee-assistant—apparently because she had been observed brushing her teeth one day and the Dilbians had jumped to the obvious conclusion that anyone who cleaned their teeth like that as a regular practice must have strong need to do so. But even with this additional knowledge, the Bluffer’s last words made no sense.