Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

“I believe you,” said Bill honestly. And he did.

“There he is now,” said the Bluffer, nodding over Bill’s head at the courier ship. “Must have circled around to look at that flying box of yours.”

Bill turned. Sure enough, there was Bone Breaker, towering amidst the other Dilbians examining the ship. As Bill watched, the former outlaw chief turned and ambled in Bill’s direction.

“Well,” said the Bluffer’s voice, “guess I’ll be throwing my feet. See you again, maybe, sometime, Pick-and-Shovel.”

Bill turned back to the postman.

“I hope so,” said Bill.

“Right. So long,” replied the Hill Bluffer. He turned and went—his abrupt farewell being quite in accordance with Dilbian lack of ceremony over both meetings and partings. Bill stared after the tall, striding figure for a moment. Being human, himself, he would have liked to have made a little more out of the process of saying good-bye, particularly since he had come to have a strong feeling of friendship for the Bluffer. But the other was already dwindling in the distance and a moment later he disappeared among the trees not far from where the solitary figure of Mula- ay was standing.

“Well, Pick-and-Shovel!” said a different, deep, bass voice, and looking around, Bill saw that Bone Breaker was indeed upon him. “I heard you were asking around about me since you got back on your feet. So I told the wife I’d step over and see what you had on your mind before you took off.”

“The wife?” echoed Bill. “Sweet Thing?”

“Who else?” replied Bone Breaker, patting his stomach gently in a manner vaguely resembling More Jam’s favorite gesture. “Yes, I’m an innkeeper now, Pick-and-Shovel, and I guess the old gang in the valley’s just about broken up. Most of them came to the village with me, and the rest lit out for parts unknown. But what were you asking for me, about?”

“Just a little idle curiosity about something,” said Bill, approaching the subject obliquely in the best Dilbian manner. “So you gave up outlawing after all and settled down, did you?”

“What else could I do?” sighed Bone Breaker sadly, “after the way you licked me in a fair fight the way you did, Pick-and-Shovel? Not that I miss the old days too much, though. There’s been some compensations.”

“There have?” asked Bill.

“Why, sure there have,” said Bone Breaker. “There’s that little wife of mine, for one—what a prize she is, Pick-and-Shovel.” Bone Breaker lowered the volume of his kettledrum bass voice confidentially, “Not only is she the best cook around, but she can lick any other two females, hands-down. She may not be the best-looking female in the region—”

“She isn’t?” said Bill, considerably surprised. It was true Perfectly Delightful had called Sweet Thing stubby and little, but Bill had put this down more to jealousy than fact. His human eyes of course were no judge of Dilbian beauty, but he had taken it for granted that Bone Breaker, being the locality’s most eligible bachelor, would naturally take an interest only in the better-looking of the available females.

“I wouldn’t admit this to any other man,” said Bone Breaker, still confidentially, “but you’re a Shorty, so of course you don’t count—my little wife isn’t exactly the world’s best-looking. No. But what’s the good of getting someone with a figure like Perfectly Delightful’s, for instance, if you’ve got to take the rest of her along with it? No, Sweet Thing’s the wife for me, on all counts—to say nothing of getting a daddy-in-law like More Jam, thrown in. That old boy’s smart , Pick-and-Shovel—”

Bone Breaker’s nose twitched in the Dilbian equivalent of a wink.

“—As I guess you know,” he went on. “Between him and me, I suppose we can get most of the people in Muddy Nose to agree to just about anything we want. So, you can see I’m pretty well off, in spite of the fact my outlawing days are over. I guess that was what you wanted to know, come to think of it, wasn’t it, Pick-and-Shovel?”

“Why, I guess that was part of it, anyway,” said Bill slowly.

He and Bone Breaker were eyeing each other like fencers. What Bone Breaker had said was, indeed, only part of what Bill wanted to get the ex-outlaw chief to say. In total, the admission Bill wanted was necessary ammunition for a certain private and entirely non-Dilbian hassle toward which he was eagerly pointing.

He was going to make someone pay for what had been done to him. To do that, he needed Bone Breaker to admit certain things. Bone Breaker knew that Bill knew that these things were true. But the big Dilbian was not necessarily going to admit them, just for that reason.

That was not the Dilbian way, Bill had learned. Even though, in a sense, Bone Breaker owed Bill the admission and that was why he was here. The necessary words would be forthcoming only if Bill was clever enough to trap Bone Breaker into a position between them and an outright lie.

“Yes, I guess that was part of it,” Bill went on, cautiously. “I did wonder how you were making out. After all, it’s a pretty free and easy life, being an outlaw—going out and taking whatever you wanted when you wanted it. It must be pretty dull after that, just being an innkeeper.”

“Well now, it is, at times,” said Bone Breaker easily. “I won’t try to deny it.”

“Of course,” said Bill thoughtfully. “More Jam managed to settle down to it, all right, in his time.”

“That’s true,” said Bone Breaker, nodding. “I imagine he had a pretty high old life for a while there, when he was younger.”

“I’d guess so,” said Bill. “And that’s what got me wondering—about More Jam, now that I stop to think of it. There must have come some sort of time when he made a decision. Somewhere along the way, he must have said to himself something like—‘ Well, it’s been fun and all that, but sooner or later I’ll be getting along in years; and it’d be nice to quit while I was ahead .’—Do you suppose he might have thought something like that?”

“Well, of course I don’t know,” said Bone Breaker, “but I’d guess he might well have, Pick-and-Shovel.”

“I mean,” said Bill, “he might have thought what it would be like if he just kept on going until he started to slow down and some young buck came along and took him some day in a regular, fair, man-to-man tussle out in the daylight where everybody could see. Then, all of a sudden, the fun and reputation would be gone and he wouldn’t have anything to show for it.”

“I guess he might,” said Bone Breaker.

“He might even have thought,” said Bill, “how smart it would be to settle down and get married to Sweet Thing’s mother and become an innkeeper ahead of time. Only, of course it must have been a problem for him, because he couldn’t quit just like that, without an excuse. People would have figured he’d lost his nerve. Luckily, about that time, his stomach must have started going delicate on him, and that solved the problem for him. He didn’t have any choice but to marry Sweet Thing’s mother to make sure he had her to cook for him—and of course that meant he had to take up innkeeping and give up wrestling, and all. Of course, I don’t know it happened that way. It just seems to me it might have.”

“Well, that’s pretty surprising, Pick-and-Shovel,” rumbled Bone Breaker, “as a matter of fact, that’s just what did happen with More Jam.”

“You don’t say?” said Bill. “Now, that’s interesting—my hitting the nail on the head just like that. But, of course, much of it isn’t hard to figure out, because almost any man with a terrific reputation as a fighter would have trouble quitting. Wouldn’t you say that?”