Then Thing-or-Two unconsciously, if conveniently, came to his aid.
“Sweet Thing!” the older Dilbian female exploded, on an indrawn, snarling note.
“You just bet it’s me!” snarled Sweet Thing in return, advancing into the clearing. She stopped some fifteen feet from the other three. She did not put her hands on her hips, but Bill got the strong impression that if this had been a Dilbian gesture, she certainly would have done so. “And here you are with my Shorty!” Her eyes scorched them all, but ended upon Grandpa Squeaky. “You!”
“Hey, now,” protested Grandpa Squeaky, with a perceptible quaver in his voice. A quaver of tremulous old age which contrasted markedly with his energy of a moment before.
“What were you doing to Pick-and-Shovel?”
“None of your business!” snapped Thing-or-Two.
“Pick-and-Shovel!” called Sweet Thing. “What were they doing to you here?”
“They seemed to be putting me on trial—or something,” shouted Bill back. He found himself wondering how he could have originally have wondered, on first seeing Sweet Thing, what made her attractive to the outlaw. Right now she was looking decidedly beautiful to him. In fact, the only individual who could have looked much more beautiful would have been Lafe Greentree, himself, with a cast on his broken leg if necessary, but with a handgun in his fist. “This Grandfather here—”
He tried to point at Grandpa Squeaky with his head, but both the pointing and the finishing of the sentence were unnecessary.
“Grandfather!” cried Sweet Thing, scorching Grandpa Squeaky with her eyes again. “You, a Grandfather!” She laughed scornfully. “A fine, squeaking Grandfather you’d make, with your nose in a beer cup all day long! You, a Grandfather! Wait’ll I tell my father! I’ll just tell More Jam that you’ve been pretending to be a Grandfather—”
“No!” cried Squeaky Grandpa, agonized. “Sweet Thing, you wouldn’t do that to an old man? You wouldn’t tell your father about a little harmless joke like this? You wouldn’t—”
“You better get out of here fast, then,” said Sweet Thing ominously.
“I’m going—I’m going—” Squeaky Grandpa lost no time in putting his words into action. He was across the clearing and into the brush, in a sort of tottering rush before he had finished repeating himself the second time. Sweet Thing’s eye swung to the other two females. These, however, did not show the satisfactory sort of response that Grandpa Squeaky had exhibited.
“For your information, Sweet Thing,” said Thing-or-Two grimly, “you can tell your father about this every day and twice on Sunday, and much it’ll mean to me!”
“How much will it mean to you, though,” said Sweet Thing, in a surprisingly gentle voice, “when my father tells the whole village how you’ve been making fun of them by putting up poor old Grandpa Squeaky to act like he’s the sort they might pick for a Grandfather? Don’t you think that might bother you just the least little bit?”
“Why—” Thing-or-Two broke off sharply. She hesitated. “Why, they’d never believe such a thing. Never in a lifetime!”
Nonetheless, Bill noted, a good deal of the fire had gone out of her tone of voice.
“They won’t believe it?” echoed Sweet Thing in a voice filled with innocent wonder. “Not even when More Jam tells them he saw it with his own two eyes?”
“Saw it?” Thing-or-Two darted a sudden, nervous glance around her at the silent brush enclosing the dell. Her voice stiffened. “More Jam wouldn’t lie to the whole village. He wouldn’t do such a thing!”
“Not if I just refused to cook for him until he did?” queried Sweet Thing, in the same innocent and wondering tone. “Of course, Thing-or-Two, you’re a lot older than I am and you know best. But I should think that if I really told my father I wouldn’t do any more cooking for him, that he wouldn’t hesitate about telling everybody what he really saw with his own two eyes here in this clearing.”
Thing-or-Two stared angrily back at the younger female. But after a second, the stiffness seemed to leak out of her. She snorted angrily—but also she began to move. With her head in the air, she marched across the clearing and into the brush, and Bill heard her moving away from them. He looked back at Sweet Thing, who was now facing Perfectly Delightful, the only one of the original three conspirators left in the dell.
“You can go, too,” said Sweet Thing, in a voice that suddenly had become very ugly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Perfectly Delightful lightly. “Everybody knows what an obedient young girl I am. Naturally I had to do what my elders said—like when Thing-or-Two and Grandpa Squeaky told me to come along here.”
“They aren’t telling you what to do now,” said Sweet Thing.
“Oh, I don’t know,” repeated Perfectly Delightful, gazing absently at the same white clouds drifting overhead that had earlier interested Mula-ay—but without failing to watch Sweet Thing at the same time out of the corners of her eyes. “They told me earlier to see that Pick-and-Shovel, here, didn’t get loose and run away. They haven’t told me anything to change that. They’ve just gone off. Maybe they’re going to be back a little later. Or maybe they figured I’d stay here and guard the Shorty for them. I really don’t know what else I can do,” said Perfectly Delightful, helplessly withdrawing her eyes from the clouds at last and fixing them firmly on Sweet Thing, “but stay right here and see that nobody tampers with this Shorty.”
As Perfectly Delightful had been talking, Sweet Thing had begun to move forward slowly. However, as she came to just beyond arm’s reach of the other young Dilbian female, she began to circle to her right. So it was that Perfectly Delightful, while still speaking, began to turn so as to face Sweet Thing. Gradually, they were beginning to circle each other like a couple of wrestlers, and after Perfectly Delightful had stopped talking, they continued to circle in silence for a number of seconds.
Bill, watching in fascination with his hands tied behind the tree trunk, was made suddenly aware of the fact that he was unable to get out of the way in case trouble should erupt. It was true that Perfectly Delightful, though tall for a female, would hardly have been able to raise the crown of her head above the point of the Hill Bluffer’s shoulder, and that Sweet Thing was a head and a half shorter than her opponent. Nonetheless, either one would have considerably outweighed and outmuscled any two good-sized professional human wrestlers, and they seemed to possess the same willingness as Dilbian males to get down to physical brass tacks when a question was in dispute. Added to this was the fact that the nails on their hands and feet were rather more like bear claws, and their teeth rather more like the teeth of grizzlies than those of humans. So that in sum, the situation was one that made Bill devoutly wish he was on the other side of the tree to which he was tied.
The two had been circling for some little time, shoulders hunched, heads outthrust, arms half flexed at the elbow, when Perfectly Delightful broke the tense silence with a musical laugh.
“So you think this is funny?” inquired Sweet Thing lightly, but without at all pausing in her movement, or relaxing her attitude.
“Oh this? Not necessarily,” replied Perfectly Delightful merrily—but equally without pausing or relaxing. “It just crossed my mind what a stubby little thing you are, and I imagined how you must look through the Bone Breaker’s eyes.”
“Oh, I don’t think he finds me so stubby,” replied Sweet Thing conversationally. “Maybe you won’t find me so stubby either.” And she laughed merrily in her turn.
They continued to circle, now almost within arm’s reach of each other.
“But, really,” protested Perfectly Delightful. “To be stubby is bad enough, but can you imagine what you’ll look like with an ear torn off, too?”
For the first time, Bill became uncomfortably aware of how much taller and heavier Perfectly Delightful was than Sweet Thing. Up until now, he had been concerned with himself mainly as an anchored spectator of what might happen. Now, suddenly, his imagination galloped ahead a lit
tle further and began to consider what should happen if Perfectly Delightful should end up the victor in any combat that should occur.
“But I plan to keep my ears, both of them,” Sweet Thing was saying sweetly. “I expect to have both my ears for many years after today—pardon me, I meant to say, after you have lost your teeth. You know, I’ve often heard my father and other men talking about how funny a woman looks with her teeth knocked out.”
“Oh, you have, have you!” retorted Perfectly Delightful shortly. Evidently, in the contest between the two to see who should lose her temper first, Perfectly Delightful was beginning to crack. “If you get close enough to my teeth to try knocking them out, you’ll wish you hadn’t!”
Meanwhile, in a cold sweat, Bill was struggling for the first time and seriously to see if he could not wriggle his hands loose from the rather thick rope that seemed to be tying them together. He had been tied rather tightly, but he now discovered the thickness of the rope was such in comparison with the size of his wrists that it might be possible for him to slide his right hand free. Evidently, the smallness of the human wrist compared to the Hemnoid one was something that Mula-ay had not taken into account. He managed to get his right hand halfway out through its bonds—but there it stuck.
Agonizedly, he looked back at the center of the dell, where the two were still circling each other and trading insults. The tempers of both were sparking now and sarcasm had given way to direct, untranslatable Dilbian epithets.
“Snig!” Perfectly Delightful was hissing at Sweet Thing.
“Pilf!” Sweet Thing was snarling back at Perfectly Delightful.
Suddenly, far off in the woods, came the sound of possible rescue, falling sweetly upon Bill’s ears. It was the stentorian shout of a male Dilbian. It was more than that. It was the voice of the Hill Bluffer, shouting.
“Pick-and-Shovel! Pick-and-Shovel—where are you?”
“Here!” roared back Bill, with all the volume his chest and throat could muster. “Here! This way! I’m over here!”
“I hear you!” floated back the shout of the Bluffer. “Keep yelling, Pick-and-Shovel, and I’ll get there in a moment! Just keep shouting!”
Bill opened his mouth to do so. But before he had the chance to make a sound, his shouting to the Bluffer had become as impossible as it was unnecessary as a source of sound to guide the postman to him.
The period of insults between Sweet Thing and Perfectly Delightful had come to an end. With a sound like that of an old-fashioned Western movie brawl between at least half-a-dozen homesteaders and as many cattlemen, Sweet Thing and Perfectly Delightful had closed in battle in the center of the clearing.
Chapter 12
Bill shrank back against his tree. There was little else he could do but make himself as small as possible and watch the action. The action, however, turned out to be wonderful to behold.
Not at first. At first, all Bill saw was a rolling tangle of furry bodies, arms and legs,glinting claws and flashing teeth, rolling this way and that on the ground—and occasionally threatening to roll in his direction. But then the whole tangle rolled over the bank of a little stream runningthrough the clearing and splashed into the water; at which point it immediately separated into two individuals. But the battle was not ended. Sweet Thing and Perfectly Delightful wasted no time climbing out onto the bank and joining in combat again.
Only this time there was a difference. Apparently, the first time around, Sweet Thing had been too worked up to use whatever knowledge she had about fighting. Now, cooled off by her dip in the stream, she proceeded to demonstrate that she knew more than enough to compensate for the difference between her size and the size of Perfectly Delightful. Before Bill’s astonished gaze, Sweet Thing proceeded to demonstrate something very like a judo chop to the lower ribs, a forearm smash to Perfectly Delightful’s jaw, a knee in the stomach, and finally a shoulder throw that flipped Perfectly Delightful completely over in the air and brought her down flat with an earth-shaking thud on her back in the grass.
It was at this point that the Hill Bluffer burst out of the surrounding bushes and accidentally ran directly into Sweet Thing.
Sweet Thing, either blinded by rage, or perhaps confusing the Bluffer with some ally of Perfectly Delightful’s, threw her arms around the postman and attempted to execute the same shoulder throw with him. This time though, the results were not so satisfactory. Sweet Thing was trained and willing enough, but in the Hill Bluffer she had taken hold of an opponent even longer-limbed than Bone Breaker himself. She was in somewhat the same position, it occurred to Bill, as a five-foot woman attempting to throw down a man six and a half feet tall. The theory was excellent, but the practice ran into problems involving the weight and length of the intended victim.
Sweet Thing did manage to get one of the Bluffer’s long legs off the ground and toppled him off balance. However, one of the Bluffer’s equally long arms propped him off the ground, keeping him from falling even while she still had him in only a half-thrown position and a second later the postman had—more or less gently—pried her arms loose from their grip upon him, and was holding her by the biceps, out at the length of his own arms and facing away from him.
This should have settled matters, since Sweet Thing was no longer in a position to do any damage with teeth, nails, arms, or legs. But so intense was her fighting fury by this time that she literally ran off the ground into the air in her efforts to get loose, and the Bluffer was forced to trip her, get her down on the ground, and sit on her, pinning her arms so that she could not reach back and grab him.
Bill continued to look on, awed. Sweet Thing, no longer able to make effective use of any of her other natural weapons, had fallen back upon her tongue. She was busy telling the Bluffer what she would do to him the moment he turned her loose. It was a question that also interested Bill. It was all very well for the Bluffer to have Sweet Thing immobilized as she was at the moment. But sooner or later he would have to let her up—and what would happen then?
“… My father … Bone Breaker … limb from limb …” Sweet Thing was informing the lanky postman. Bill did not see how the Upland Dilbian could possibly get out of his present awkward situation with life and limb intact. But he was about to learn that Dilbian emotional responses were somewhat adaptable in these circumstances. The Bluffer waited patiently until Sweet Thing paused for breath, and then said, apparently, exactly the right thing.
“I’ve really got to ask you to forgive me for interrupting that beautiful fight of yours,” he observed genially. “Where’d a girl like you learn to tangle like that?”
There was a long moment of silence from Sweet Thing. Then she spoke.
“More Jam,” she said in a much calmer and obviously pleased voice. “Don’t you remember? My father was champion Lowland wrestler.”
“Why, of course,” said the Bluffer, letting her up, “that explains it.”
Sweet Thing bounced hastily to her feet “Where is she?” Her face fell. “Oh, she got away.”
Bill, also looked around the clearing. It was a fact. Perfectly Delightful had disappeared.
“Oh well,” said Sweet Thing philosophically. “She’ll be around. I can catch her anytime I want to.”
She and the Hill Bluffer both turned to look at Bill.
“How about untying me?” demanded Bill.
“Why, sure,” said the Bluffer. He walked around behind the tree to which Bill was anchored, and began untying the ropes binding his wrists together.
Bill endured, without really feeling, the rather bruising and painful business that the Hill Bluffer’s big fingers made of clumsily jerking loose the knots that tied Bill’s hands. His mind was busy, and once he was on his feet, he had a question for both of the two Dilbians facing him.
“How did you happen to find me?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t know how he did,” said Sweet Thing, sniffing slightly, “but Thing-or-Two and Perfectly Delightful had been looking too pleased for words all day long
, so I knew something was going on. When they and Grandpa Squeaky ducked off into the woods instead of joining everybody else up at the forge, I just followed them. I lost them in the woods for a few minutes, but I just poked around—and here they were, with you.”
“So that’s what it was,” said the Hill Bluffer, looking down at her admiringly. “Your old dad, More Jam, came rolling up to me when I was waiting at the forge.”
“ ‘Word in your ear, Postman,’ he said to me, and led me off behind a shed. ‘Haven’t seen that daughter of mine around any place, have you?’ he asked me.
“ ‘No,’ I said, ‘Why should I?’
“ ‘Because it’s all a little peculiar, that’s all,’ said More Jam, sort of thoughtful. ‘I just saw Perfectly Delightful and Thing-or-Two, with Grandpa Squeaky, sliding off into the brush a few moments ago, and that daughter of mine right behind them. Naturally, I didn’t pay much attention, except that it was just about time for me to have a little, hot something to settle this delicate stomach of mine, and Sweet Thing might not be around to fix it for me—’ and he patted his stomach, the way he does. ‘It sure is peculiar, particularly when you figure that Pick-and-Shovel ought to have shown up at the blacksmith’s by this time.’
“Well,” said the Bluffer, looking meaningfully at Bill, “it’d been on my mind, too, that it was high time you were showing up at the forge. So I asked him where he’d seen all this going on—and in what direction Sweet Thing and the others had taken off. Then I went down to the Residency and looked for you. But you weren’t there. So I just took off in the woods the way I’d been told everybody else’d gone, and after a while I figured it wouldn’t do any harm to sort of yell your name a bit and see if you answered. Well,” wound up the Bluffer, “you did. And here I am.”
“I see,” said Bill. “I wonder how it was More Jam just happened to be watching, to see what he did?”
Sweet Thing and the Hill Bluffer stared back down at Bill with noses wrinkled in every evidence of puzzlement.
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