Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

“So I guess you really were down in outlaw territory last night, were you, Pick-and-Shovel?” said the blacksmith. “How did you do it?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Bill. The crowd around the shed had quieted down, and Bill realized that something more than an ordinary relating of the night’s activities was expected. This was not a time for modesty. Modesty, in fact, was not considered highly among the Dilbians—except as a cloak for secretive boasting. The Dilbians were like good fishermen, who made it a rule always to exaggerate the size, weight, and number of their catch.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “You all know how that valley is. High cliffs all the way around it, the only entrance blocked up by the stockade. And the gates in the middle of the stockade barred shut at sundown. You wouldn’t think a fly could get into that valley. But I did. But I’m not boasting about it. You know why?”

He waited for somebody to ask him why. The blacksmith obliged.

“Why, Pick-and-Shovel?” asked Flat Fingers.

“Because it was easy for a Shorty like me,” Bill said, keeping in mind the reaction to his climb shown by the Hill Bluffer on the way back to the village. “Even if it would be hard for a real man, the fact that it was easy for me makes it something that I don’t need to feel particularly proud about. You asked me how I got into the valley? I’ll tell you in just two or three words how I got into that valley. I climbed down one of the cliffs until I was on the valley floor. And when I was ready to leave again, I climbed back up that cliff!”

There was a moment’s absolute silence and then a gratifying mutter of incredulity from the audience. Bill interrupted it with an upheld hand.

“No, no—” he said. “As I say, I’m not particularly proud of it. Well, then, you may say—I could be a little puffed up over having walked into that outlaw camp all alone, with nobody to help me in case I was discovered. How many of you would like to do that, especially after dark?”

Bill paused for an answer. But no volunteers from the audience spoke up to say that they would have enjoyed such an excursion.

“But again,” went on Bill, after a moment, “I can’t take any credit for that either.”

There was a hum of amazement at this new statement that abruptly suggested to Bill the rather ludicrous picture of the bass droning of a swarm of enormous bumblebees. He waited for it to die down before he continued.

“No, I can’t feel very proud about that,” he said. “Because I really wasn’t worried about going in among those outlaws all by myself to get this gong handle you see hanging there. You see, I knew that if I ran into any of them, I could handle him with no trouble at all.”

“What if you ran into a whole bunch of them?” demanded a voice from the crowd. “How about that, Pick-and-Shovel?”

“That didn’t bother me either,” replied Bill. “I could’ve handled any number I might’ve run into.” There was a slight stir in the ranks of the crowd directly before him, and he saw the incredibly rotund form of More Jam unobtrusively squeezing into the front rank. “We Shorties know these things. That’s why I’m not afraid to face Bone Breaker in a duel. That’s why, in spite of the fact that we’re so much smaller than real men and Fatties, we Shorties don’t have to take a back seat to anybody. It’s because of what we know. And it was because of what I knew that it didn’t bother me to go into that valley and bring that gong handle out.”

Bill stopped. The crowd around the shed, he could now see from his superior position on top of the barrel, was as large or larger than it had been the day before when he had lifted weights with the blacksmith. They were all staring at him in fascinated interest. He let them stare, waiting for the question that one of them must ask if he was to go on. Finally, it was More Jam in the front rank who put it to him.

“That sounds might interesting, Pick-and-Shovel,” said More Jam mildly. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind telling us what it is you Shorties know that makes so much difference in handling outlaws? Because,” went on More Jam, looking back over his shoulder briefly at his fellow villagers for a moment, and then turning back to Bill, “I don’t ’spose most of the real active men around here would like to admit it, but an old fat, decrepit man like myself doesn’t mind letting it out. We haven’t been able to handle those outlaws, when you get right down to it. They come in a gang all at once upon some single farmer, and there’s not much one man can do against a crowd. We never know when they’re coming, and by the time we get together to go after them, they’re back safe in their valley. So we’ve just about given up trying to handle them. But you say, Pick-and-Shovel, that there is a way? Maybe you’d like to tell us what that way is?”

“Well,” answered Bill, “as you know, we Shorties have an agreement with the Fatties not to go talking out of turn about things back on our home world. If the Fatties don’t talk out of turn we don’t—and vice versa. So that kind of stops me from telling you plain out what I know.”

“You mean, Pick-and-Shovel,” More Jam’s voice held a strangely silky note that rang a sharp warning bell in the back of Bill’s head, “you know something that would help us, here in this village, and you’re refusing to tell us what it is?”

“Sorry,” said Bill. A low mutter of annoyance began in the crowd, and deepened toward anger. Bill hurried hastily on. “I’ve given my word not to—just like all the Shorties and Fatties that come here to know you people. But,”—Bill paused, took a deep breath, mentally kicked the Human-Hemnoid Non-Interference Treaty out of the window, and borrowed a page from Anita’s book, as he had observed her in Outlaw Valley through the crack in the hide curtain—“let me tell you all a story about my grandfather.”

“It all began because of a story there used to be among us Shorties—” Bill had barely gotten the first words out, when he was interrupted.

“I’ll just bet it did!” cried someone in the front of the crowd—and looking down, Bill saw several females standing in a group there, together. He recognized the speaker as Thing-or-Two, flanked by the tall form of Perfectly Delightful. “And it’s another story you’re going to be telling us all now, we can bet on that too. It’s a shame, that’s what it is—an absolute shame, the way the men of this village stand around and let the wool be pulled over their eyes by Shorties like you, with no regard for customs and manners and traditions! Why don’t some of you speak up and tell this Shorty what he can do with his stories?”

“You shut up!” snapped a new female voice. Looking, Bill saw that Sweet Thing had appeared beside More Jam and was now looking around his enormous stomach at the older Dilbian female, like a rat terrier growling around the edge of a half-opened door at an intruder. “You just can’t wait to get me out of the Inn, so you and Tin Ear can move in on Daddy. Well, I’m not leaving! You let Pick-and-Shovel talk—”

“Did you hear her!” shrieked Thing-or-Two, turning to the crowd. “Did you hear what she said to me— me , a woman old enough to be her mother! This is what things have come to! It’s a good thing I’m not her mother, I’d—”

“You’d what?” demanded Sweet Thing belligerently, starting around her father toward the older woman. More Jam interposed a heavy arm.

“Now, now, daughter,” he rumbled peaceably. “Manners, manners…”

Still growling, but complying, Sweet Thing allowed herself to be pushed back to the opposite side of More Jam.

“At the same time,” went on More Jam, lifting his voice over that of Thing-or-Two, as she began to speak again, “as I remember it, Pick-and-Shovel was about to tell us something. And I guess I’m probably speaking for most of us when I say that, since he did something pretty interesting in going down into Outlaw Valley to get that gong handle, we ought to at least listen to what he has to say now. Besides, it sounds kind of interesting.”