Chapter 4

Sweet Thing's nose disappeared. The door slammed shut again. Bill stared at it, with his head swimming. If there was one thing he had absolutely no intention of doing, it was challenging the head man, or whatever, of outlaws like those from whom he had run and hidden in Tin Ear's farmyard earlier in the day.

"Well, so you see," said the Hill Bluffer behind him heavily. Bill turned to look at the postman and the Bluffer nodded at the closed door. "Crazy as a spring storm. And with a father who thinks more of his belly than he does of his daughter, or she wouldn't be able to get away with these wild, Shorty ideas—"

He broke off, glancing at Bill apologetically.

"—No offense to you, of course, Pick-and-Shovel," he rumbled. "As for Sweet Thing's ideas—"

"Wait a minute," interrupted Bill hastily. "Can't the village get together and help someone like Tin Ear—"

"Well, now, that's an idea for you!" said the Hill Bluffer indignantly. "Sure, if a neighbor yells for help, you might run over and give him a hand—when you hear him yell. But put yourself and all of your family into blood-feud for someone who's no kin at all? Well, a man'd be crazy to do that. After all, these are pretty honorable outlaws. Bone Breaker sees to that. They take their outlaw-tax out of what the Muddy Nosers can spare—they don't go taking what the local people have to have to stay alive. If they did that, then I suppose the Muddy Nosers would get together in blood-feud, if they had to declare themselves a clan, temporarily to do that. We've got to get going to make that valley before the gates are closed." He turned his massive, furry shoulders to Bill and squatted down. "Climb on, Pick-and-Shovel."

Bill hesitated only a second, and then climbed into the saddle on the postman's back. Listening to Sweet Thing, he had come to the conclusion that whatever he did, he could not avoid at least going to the valley and talking to the outlaw chief. But he certainly had no intention of challenging Bone Breaker, no matter what Sweet Thing thought. What he could and would do, would be to spin out negotiations until Greenleaf got back, which would certainly be within four or five days at most.

"—Of course," said the Bluffer, unexpectedly breaking the silence as the trees closed about them, "naturally, that's why the Tricky Teacher hasn't been having much success getting these Lowlanders to use all these tools and things you Shorties have brought in."

Bill, by this time, was beginning to get used to the unexpectedness of Dilbian conversation. It required only a little thought on his part to realize that the Bluffer was continuing the conversation begun inside the Residency after Sweet Thing's departure.

"What's why?" Bill asked, therefore, interested.

"Why, the fact there's no point in these farmers learning all sorts of new tricks so they can grow more food," answered the Bluffer. "The outlaws just take anything extra, anyway. The more extra food they raised, the more extra outlaws they'd just be supporting."

"How far is it to the valley?" Bill asked.

"Just a step or two," answered the Bluffer economically.

However, a step or two by the Bluffer's standards seemed to be somewhat more of a distance than the term implied to human ears. For better than half an hour, the Bluffer strode rapidly into rougher and rougher country. The Dilbian sun was close to the tops of the hills and peaks ahead of them, when the Bluffer at last made an abrupt turn and plunged downward into what looked like an ordinary ravine, but which suddenly opened up around a corner to reveal, ahead and below them down a narrow ravine, a parklike, green valley, walled in all other directions by near-vertical cliffs of bare stone from fifty to a hundred feet in height. Softly green-carpeted with the local grass, the valley glowed in the late afternoon sun, the black log walls of a cluster of buildings at its far end soaking up the late light.

That light fell also on a literal wall made of logs about thirty feet high, some fifty yards ahead down the path. This wall was pierced by a heavy wooden door, now ajar but flanked by two Dilbians wearing not only the straplike harness and swords Bill had seen on those at Tin Ear's farm, but with heavy, square, wooden shields hanging from their left shoulders, as well. Sweet Thing's words about challenging Bone Breaker came uncomfortably back into Bill's mind.

The Hill Bluffer, however, had evidently come here with no sense of caution. As he approached the two at the gate, he bellowed at the two outlaws on watch.

"All right, out of the way! We've got business with Bone Breaker!"

The guards, however, made no move to step aside. Their nine-foot heights and a combined weight of probably over three-quarters of a ton, continued to bar the entrance. The Bluffer necessarily came to a halt before them.

"Step aside, I say!" he shouted.

"Says who?" demanded the taller of the guards.

"Says me!" roared the Bluffer. "Don't pretend you don't know who I am. The official postman's got right of entry to any town, village or camp! So clear out of my way and let us through!"

"You aren't being a postman now," retorted the Dilbian who had spoken before. "Right now you're nothing but a plain, ordinary mountain man, wanting into private property. Did anybody send for you?"

"Send for us?" the Bluffer's voice rose to a roar of rage, and Bill could feel the big back and shoulder muscle of the Dilbian bunching ominously under him. "This is the Pick-and-Shovel Shorty who's here to tangle with Bone Breaker if necessary!"

"Him? Tangle with Bone Breaker?" the guard who had been talking burst into guffaws. "Hor, hor, hor!" His companion joined in.

"So you think that's funny!" snarled the Bluffer. "There were a few of you valley reivers at Tin Ear's farm earlier today who got made to look pretty silly. And lucky for them, that was all that happened—" The Bluffer's voice took on an ominous tone. "Remember it was a Shorty just like him that took the Streamside Terror!"

Startlingly enough to Bill, this reminder seemed to take the wind out of the sails of the two guards' merriment. Apparently, if Bill found it impossible to believe that a Shorty could outfight a Dilbian, these two did not think so. Their laughter died and they cast uneasy glances over the Bluffer's shoulder at Bill.

"Huh!" said the talkative one, with a feeble effort at a sneer. "The Streamside Terror. An Uplander!"

Bill felt the saddle heave beneath him as the Bluffer took a deep breath. But before that breath could emerge in words, the talkative guard abruptly stood aside.

"Well, who cares?" he growled. "Let's let 'em go in, Three Fingers. Bone Breaker will take care of them, all right!"

"High time!" snarled the Bluffer. But without staying to argue anymore, he set himself in motion through the gate, and a second later was striding forward over the lush slope of grass toward the log buildings in the distance, all these things now reddened by the setting sun.

As they drew closer, Bill saw that there was considerable difference in the size of some of the buildings. In fact, the whole conglomeration looked rather like a skiing chalet, with a number of guest cottages scattered around behind it. The main building, a long one-story structure, stood squarely athwart their path, the big double doors of its principal entrance thrown wide open to reveal a perfectly black, unlighted interior. As the Bluffer approached the building Bill could smell the odor of roasting meat, as well as several other unidentifiable vegetable odors. Evidently it was the hour of the evening meal, which Bill's hypnoed information told him was served about this time of day among the Dilbians. Once inside, the Bluffer stepped out of line with the open doorway, and stopped abruptly; evidently to let his eyes adjust to the inner dark.

Bill's eyes were also adjusting. Gradually, out of the gloom, there took shape a long narrow chamber with bare rafters overhead, and a large stone fireplace filled with crackling logs in spite of the warmth of the closing day, set in the end wall to their right. There was a small, square table with four stools set before the fireplace, just as there were other long tables flanked by benches stretching away from it down the length of the hall. But what drew Bill's eyes like a magnet to the table with four stools in front of the fireplace was not the tall Dilbian with coal-black fur sitting on one of the stools, talking, but his partner in conversation, sitting across from him.

This other was not a Dilbian. Swathed in dark, shimmering cloth, his rotund body was scarcely half a head shorter than that of the Dilbian. Standing, Bill guessed that he could be scarcely less than eight feet tall, a foot or so below the average height of a male Dilbian. His face, like his body, bulged in creases of what appeared to be fat. But Bill knew that they were nothing of the kind. Seated, talking to the black-furred Dilbian was a member of that alien race which was most strongly in competition with the humans for influence with the natives on worlds like Dilbia, and for living space in general between the stars.

The being to whom the black-furred Dilbian was speaking was a Hemnoid, and his apparent fat was the result of the powerful muscles required by a race which had evolved on a world with half again the gravity of Earth.

Abruptly and belatedly, the meaning of Sweet Thing's obscure reference to taking the advice of Fatties became clear to Bill. A cold feeling like a cramp made itself felt at the pit of his stomach.

It was Bone Breaker, apparently, who had been taking the advice of Fatties—or of this one Fatty in particular. Unexpectedly, Bill found himself facing a Hemnoid in exactly the sort of ticklish interracial situation that the Human-Hemnoid treaty of noninterference in native Dilbian affairs had been signed to prevent. Too late now, he realized that he had intruded on the type of incident that should be dealt with by no human below the rank of a Resident in the Diplomat Service. Let alone a trainee-assistant in mechanical engineering who was like a fish out of water in being assigned to an agricultural project. And let alone a trainee-assistant who had been unable to contact his superiors by off-planet communications, and who was operating totally without authority and on his own initiative.

"Turn around!" Bill hissed frantically in the Hill Bluffer's ear. "I've got to get out of here!"

"Out? What for?" said the Bluffer, surprised. "Anyway, it's too late now."

"Too late—?"

Bill never finished echoing the Bluffer's words.

From just outside the door behind him there came a sound like that of a large, untuned, metal gong being struck. A voice shouted:

"Sun's down! Close the gates."

There was only a second or two of pause, and then floating back from the far distance of the valley entrance with a clarity that only the lung-power of a Dilbian could provide with such pressure, came the answering cry:

"The gates are closed!"