Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

“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 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 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.

“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.