Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

“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 minutes 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.

“Guess he just happened to, Pick-and-Shovel,” said the Bluffer.

“I see,” said Bill again. There were a number of questions that were coming to his mind right now that he would like to have answered by Sweet Thing and the Bluffer—particularly by the Bluffer. But he remembered that he had unfinished business back at the village.

“Better let me get back up in that saddle,” he said to the Bluffer now. “I’m a good three hours overdue at the forge.”

The Bluffer stared at him in consternation, as did Sweet Thing. There was a moment of silence.

“Why, Pick-and-Shovel,” said the Bluffer, finally, “you can’t go back there now!”

Bill stared up at him.

“Why not?”

“Why? Well, because you—just can’t!” said the Bluffer in a shocked tone of voice. “Why, they’d laugh you out of town if you showed up now, Pick-and-Shovel. Here you went and set up a weight-lifting contest, and then you didn’t show up for it when the time came.”

“But it wasn’t my fault I wasn’t there,” said Bill. Tersely, he told them about being hit on the head and brought into the woods and tied up by the Hemnoid. However, to his surprise, when he finished, the long looks on the faces of Sweet Thing and the Bluffer did not lift. The Bluffer shook his head slowly.

“I might’ve figured it was something like that,” said the Bluffer heavily. “But it doesn’t make any difference, Pick-and-Shovel. No doubt you had a good reason for not being there on time—but the point is you didn’t show up. How’re folks to be sure you didn’t just duck out of it and make this whole story up as an excuse? I believe you, because I know something about the kind of guts you Shorties’ve got. But these Muddy Nosers aren’t going to believe you. They’ll figure you probably knew you couldn’t outlift Flat Fingers, so you just didn’t show up.”

“Well, I’ll outlift him now,” said Bill.

But the Bluffer still shook his head.

“You don’t understand, Pick-and-Shovel,” he said. “Flat Fingers isn’t going to stick his neck out by agreeing to lift weights with you again. He did once and you ducked out—all right, I know it wasn’t your fault. But he’s going to be thinking—suppose he agrees to lift again, and you duck out a second time, or fall down and play sick, or something? If it happens twice in a row that you get out of it, people are going to start laughing at him for letting himself be fooled that way.”

The Bluffer shook his head.

“No, I wouldn’t go back to the village right now if I were you, Pick-and-Shovel,” he said. “What you and I better figure on doing is camping out here in the woods for a few days. I’ll go in and get your sword and shield made by the blacksmith—that’s business, he won’t mind making those. Then, when you’ve got these weapon things of yours, you can go and have the duel with Bone Breaker, and after you win that maybe they’ll let you back in Muddy Nose Village without falling over and rolling way down the street, laughing, every time they see you.”

“So,” observed Bill grimly. “Barrel Belly managed to get me in bad with the villagers, after all, did he? Your rescuing me didn’t help at all, then, did it?”

Both the postman and Sweet Thing looked uncomfortable. Sweet Thing, however, was quick to recover.

“Well, why don’t you think of something, then?” she demanded. “You Shorties are all supposed to be so tricky and sneaky! Tricky Teacher was supposed to be so smart at thinking up things and getting around people; but where is he when She needs him? Not here, that’s where he is! Instead, you’re here, Pick-and-Shovel. So why don’t you think up something? I know why! It’s because you’re a male Shorty. She’d think of something, if She were here. I know She would. She —”

The continued emphatic repetition of the word “She” was doing little to improve Bill’s temper which had already been worn rather threadbare by events. The single thought that was in his mind at the moment was that palm trees would be flourishing on the Weddell pack ice of Antarctica, back on Earth, before he would let any combination of events keep him out of Muddy Nose Village. He interrupted Sweet Thing roughly.