Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

“So, I just wanted to mention that perhaps the time has come for you and me to join forces and see about settling the hash of these outlaws once and for all,” said Bill. “When I first landed in this community, I was given to understand that you might not be too interested in following a Shorty that wanted to do away with the community menace up in Outlaw Valley. I can understand that—you didn’t know anything about me. But now, though I do say it myself who shouldn’t—you’ve seen me have this little competition here with your village blacksmith, who’s as good a man as they come—”

Bill paused to wave in Flat Fingers’ direction, and Flat Fingers scowled from right to left—that being the male Dilbian way of taking a bow when referred to on public occasion.

“At any rate, I thought that maybe now we might get together and start to make some plans about cleaning out the outlaws…” For the first time, Bill began to be conscious of a good-natured, but rather obvious, lack of response from the crowd before him. In fact, from his elevated position on top of the logs, he now saw some of the outer members of his audience beginning to turn away and amble off.

“Believe me,” he said, raising his voice and speaking as earnestly and forcefully as he could, “Muddy Nose Village can’t get better and richer and stronger until those outlaws are settled. So what I thought was that we might get together a town meeting…”

The crowd, however, was visibly breaking up. Individually and in small groups they began to scatter, turning their backs on Bill and drifting off into the body of the village. Bill continued to talk on, almost desperately. But it was plainly a losing cause. Very shortly, his audience was down to its hard core. That is to say—Sweet Thing, More Jam, the Hill Bluffer, and Flat Fingers. Feeling foolish, Bill stopped talking and climbed down from the pile.

“I guess I don’t convince people very well,” he said in honest bewilderment to those who remained.

“Don’t say that!” said Flat Fingers strongly. “You convinced me , Pick-and-Shovel! And I’m as good as any three other men in the village, any day—” He checked himself, looking apologetically at Sweet Thing’s male parent. “—men my own age, that is.”

“Why thanks, Blacksmith,” said More Jam with a heavy sigh. “Nice of you not to include me—though of course I’m only a shadow of my former self.” He turned his head to Bill, however, and his voice became serious. “In fact, you’ve got a friend in me too, Pick-and-Shovel—just as I told you yesterday. But that doesn’t change things. If you figured this village to fall in line behind you in a feud with the outlaws, you should’ve known better.”

“You sure should have!” interrupted the Bluffer emphatically. “Why I could’ve told you, Pick-and-Shovel, you’d never get anywhere impressing these people by being tricky. They know Shorties can be sneaky as all get out. The Tricky Teacher proved that. What they want to see if what you can do in the muscle-and-guts department. What you’ve got to do is just what you’re set up to do—and that’s tangle with Bone Breaker. Lay him out! Then these people will back you against the outlaws.”

“I’ll get started right away on that blade and buckler, Pick-and-Shovel,” put in Flat Fingers. “Let’s see if I can find something around here that’s particularly good blade material.”

“Guts-and-muscle department…” muttered Bill thoughtfully, echoing the Bluffer’s words. That was certainly the department in which everyone seemed to be eager to have him operate—including whoever or whatever was responsible for his being in this place and situation in the first place.

It was hardly to be considered that Mula- ay had been telling the truth, this morning in the woods, when he had claimed Bill had been deliberately put on the spot by human authorities simply to save face in the case of the Muddy Nose Project. On the other hand, some of the things the Hemnoid had said had chimed uncomfortably well with some of the things Anita had said when he spoke to her in Outlaw Valley.

Either Anita had been as badly misled about the true situation here as Bill had, or… It occurred to Bill that the cards might be stacked more heavily against him than he had thought, even when he had sat thinking in front of the communications console after his unsuccessful attempt to contact Greentree or anyone else off-planet. There seemed to be no way out of his duel with Bone Breaker unless he could figure out who or what had put him in this situation, and what the true aims and motives of everyone concerned were.

In any case, Anita was going to have to provide him with some answers. That meant he must talk to her again, which meant another penetration of Outlaw Valley, which could hardly be done in the broad light of day…

“Muscle-and-guts department?” he repeated again, looking up at the Bluffer. “I suppose it would take a little muscle—and guts too—to get in and out of that Outlaw Valley after it’s been shut up for the night?”

The Bluffer stared back at him in astonishment. Sweet Thing and More Jam also stared. Some little distance away the blacksmith raised his head in astonishment.

“Are you crazy, Pick-and-Shovel?” demanded Flat Fingers. “The gate to that valley is locked and barred the minute the sun goes down and there are two armed men on guard until it’s opened up at dawn. Nobody goes in and out of that valley after the sun’s gone down!”

“I do,” said Bill grimly. “I think I’ll just drop in there tonight; and I’ll bring back that piece of metal outside the outlaw’s dining hall they use as a gong, to prove I’ve been there!”

“Will we get there before dark?” Bill asked.

“Before dark?” The Bluffer, striding beneath Bill, squinted through the trees at the descending sun now, gleaming redly through black-looking trunks and branches, close to setting. “Well, it’ll be dark down in the valley. But up on top of the cliffs there’ll be some daylight, still. And it’s the north clifftop you want, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” said Bill. “If it’s still light there, that’s all I’ll need.”

“All you need, is it?” muttered the Bluffer. “Mind telling a man how you’re going to get into that valley, anyway?”

“I’ll show you when we get there,” said Bill.

In fact, while he was fairly confident that he would make it, one way or another, Bill himself would not know for sure until he actually got to the top of the cliff and made some measurements. There was a hundred feet of soft, quarter-inch climbing rope wound around his waist under his shirt, and with the help of the programmed lathe he had produced some homemade pitons, snap rings, and a light metal hammer with an opposed pick end. These latter items were in a knapsack on his back.

As the postman had predicted, when they reached the north wall overlooking Outlaw Valley, the sunset was only falling on the buildings of the valley floor below them. The Bluffer stopped and let Bill down, but with a strong air of skepticism.

“What’re you going to do, Pick-and-Shovel,” the Postman asked. “ Fly down into that valley?”

“Not exactly,” said Bill. He had produced a jackknife from his pocket and opened it. Now, while the Bluffer watched with unconcealed curiosity, Bill found and cut off a couple of small tree branches with y-shaped ends. The branching ends he trimmed down to vee’s; and stuck the long end of the branches in the ground, one in front of the other, with the vee’s in line, pointing out across the valley.

Bill then found and cut another straight stick, long enough to lie in the two vee’s, so that it lay like an arrow pointing across at the top of the opposite valley wall. Digging into his knapsack, he came up with one of his homemade pitons, looking like a heavy nail with one end sharpened and the opposite end bent into a loop. He tied one end of a length of string to the loop and the other end to the center of the stick resting in the forks of the two stakes he had driven into the earth. Then he adjusted the stakes until the piton hung straight up and down and in line with the two stakes, over a point midway between them.