The Right to Arm Bears (7 page)

The Hill Bluffer had been waiting the several seconds it took John to think this out. Now, he opened his large mouth again, and put a further aspect of the matter out for John's consideration.

"You know," said the Bluffer. "You can't get Greasy Face back from the Terror without fighting him?"

The words went in John's ears and knocked the problem of Joshua clear back out of sight.

"
Fighting
him??" he echoed.

"Yes," said the Bluffer. "Man-to-man. No weapons. No holds barred."

John blinked. He looked past the postman's head at the puffs of white clouds. They had not moved. They were still there. So were the mountains. It must be something wrong with his ears.

"Fighting him?" said John again, feeling like a man in a fast elevator which has just begun to descend.

"A man's got his pride," said the Bluffer. "If you take Greasy Face back, his mug's spilt all over again." He leaned a little toward John. "That is, unless you whip him in a fair fight. Then there's no blood feud to it. You're just a better man than he is, that's all. But that's why I haven't been able to figure this. You aren't bad for a Shorty. You pulled a good trick with that beer on those drunks last night. You got guts."

He looked searchingly at John.

"But I mean—Hell, you can't fight the Terror. Anybody'd know that. I mean—
Hell
!" said the Bluffer, explosively finding his vocabulary insufficient to describe his overcharged feelings.

John was wishing he could express to the postman how much he agreed with him.

"So what," inquired the Bluffer, "are you going to do when I deliver you to Streamside?"

John thought about it. He took a deep breath and blew it out again.

"I don't know," he said, at last.

"Well, not my problem," said the Bluffer, getting to his feet. "Go on around and climb on by the rock, there. Oh, by the way," he added as John followed this instruction. "Know who it was pitched you over the cliff last night?"

"Who?" asked John. He had explained the evening adventures and his waking up to the Hill Bluffer over the morning beer; but the Bluffer had made no comment, then.

"The Cobbly Queen. You on, back there?"

"Yes. Who?" said John, remembering how the woodsman had winked at them while mentioning the same mythical character yesterday.

"Boy," said the Bluffer, a little grimly, "Is She Built. The same little wagtail that sends postmen messages to make a five mile sidetrip to pick up special mail, while she's back at the inn monkeying with the mail he was carrying to start off with. I'd sure like," said the Bluffer, "to figure out how she could leave with enough head start to be there ahead of us, and still know that was where we were going."

So, thought John, pricking up his ears at this information, did he.

"Well, let's go."

And the Hill Bluffer swung off again once more down the trail. Swinging and bouncing in the saddle on the Dilbian's broad back, John mulled over this new information that had just been supplied him. It occurred to him that it might be a wise idea, on all accounts to phone Joshua Guy back at Humrog, and let the ambassador know John had just uncovered the whole of his seamy little scheme.

There was no doubt now that Joshua Guy, inadvertently or not, had got himself into a bad diplomatic situation with the Streamside Terror with his advice to the father of Boy Is She Built. It had been none of the human's business to begin with whom Boy Is She Built got paired off with. In fact, it was just this sort of monkeying in private alien affairs that had gotten humanity into hot water before. A human representative who goofed like that stood in a fair way of being chopped, himself, back home once the news got out, and provided it could be proved against him. Blunders like that had cost human lives before and might well again.

It came home to John, suddenly, with a repetition of the elevator feeling he had experienced a little before, that one of the lives it might cost in this instance might well be his own.

For if John met the Terror and got mashed, it might solve several things at once for Joshua Guy.

In the first place, it would probably save Greasy Face, since the Terror would have no further reason for holding on to her after his shame had been washed out in John's blood; and Shaking Knees had given the successful warrior Boy Is She Built, after all, as he would be practically obligated to do so under Dilbian mores. That would get Joshua off the hot spot where the life of the female human sociologist was concerned. Also, it would dispose of the only one, John again, who knew what Joshua had been up to and could bring human charges against him. Moreover, it would allow him to sidetrack any blame in the affair by pinning it on John's mismanagement of matters after John had left Humrog.

And the Hill Bluffer was carrying John inexorably to the destination Joshua had planned for him. There was no hope of turning the Dilbian postman.

There was, however, one thing John could do. He could call Joshua on the wrist phone and make it clear that unless Joshua somehow pulled him and Greasy Face out of this, John would spread word among the Dilbians about what was going on. After that, it would be merely a matter of time before the news leaked past Joshua and back to authorities on Earth. A good bluff might get Joshua out here to mend things on the double. After all, if he could stop things now, there would be no capital crime such as would be involved if the Terror killed John or Greasy Face. Joshua would be a fool not to stop things.

Cooled by a sudden rush of relief, John lifted his wrist to his lips. It was then that he noticed something.

The long gouge in his left forearm ran right down under where the strap to his wrist phone had gone around his wrist. And, wherever the wrist phone was now, John, at least, no longer had it.

There are times when the imagination simply gives up. It happened that way with John about this time. It was, he knew, a temporary thing—or he hoped it was—which possibly a good night's sleep or a bit of unexpected luck, or some such thing, could snap him out of. But for the moment, the intellectual, hard-working part of his brain had hung up a notice "Out—Back later" and gone off for a nap.

He simply could not think constructively. Whenever he tried to figure out a way out of his present situation, he came back around to the fact that the Hill Bluffer, whether John liked it or not, was taking him—and nothing could stop the process—directly to the Streamside Terror, who—and nothing could stop that, either—would pick John up and effectively kill him. It was written. Kismet. Give up.

John did. In the end, he slumped in the saddle and dozed.

A sudden stopping on the part of the Hill Bluffer woke John with a start. He sat up and looked around him.

At first he saw nothing but a gorge with vertical sides of light, salmon-colored granite and a thread of a river away down at its base. Then he realized that he was looking over the edge of a ledge that the Bluffer was standing on and he readjusted the angle of his view.

Having done this, he saw that the ledge was actually almost as large as the widening of the road had been at Brittle Rock Inn, only they were standing at the very edge of it. At this edge was one end of a suspension bridge that swooped breathtakingly across the open space of the gorge to a landing on a smaller ledge on the far side. Its further end was anchored high on the face of the rock wall behind the further ledge, where the trail took up again.

At this end there was a small log hut, outside which the Hill Bluffer was now in conversation with a hefty-looking, middle-aged Dilbian.

"Saw him turn off at the fork myself!" this Dilbian was bellowing. "You questioning the word of a public official? Want me to swear on my winch-cable? Eh?" He laid a heavy, pawlike hand on the great drum on which the cables of the bridge were wound, crank-driven through a series of carved wooden gears by a polished wooden handle.

"I was just asking!" roared the Bluffer. "A man can ask, can't he?"

"If he asks politely, all right," said the evident bridgekeeper, stubbornly. "I said I seen him turn off at the fork on this side and go over the bridge there." He pointed along this side of the gorge and John saw where, on this side the trail did split, one way following along the near cliff face, and the other crossing the bridge disappearing through a cleft in the rock. "He headed toward the high country and Ice Dog Glacier."

"All right. All right, I believe you!" said the Bluffer. He turned toward the bridge.

"Hey," said the bridgekeeper. "Your toll."

"Toll!"

The Bluffer spun about in outrage.

"Me? A government postman? Toll?"

"Well," grumbled the other, "after doubting my word like that, I'd think you'd want—"

"Toll!" snorted the Bluffer, in contempt, and turning about, marched off over the bridge without waiting for the bridgekeeper to finish.

"Are we going someplace different?" asked John, as they left the far end of the bridge, and headed into the cleft in the rock.

"Streamside's headed for glacier country," muttered the Bluffer. "Or maybe he plans to double over the mountains the other way at Halfway House, and end up in the Free Forest. Anyway we got to shake a leg to catch him, if that's it.
Toll!
"

He snorted again and put on speed.

Their new road took them steeply up and away from the territory of rivers and deep gorges. After half an hour's climb they began to emerge into an area of wide, stony slopes across which a high-altitude wind blew with the sort of coolness that did not permit sleeping in the saddle.

It was past noon when they came around a bend in the slope three hours later and approached another inn. This one, situated to take advantage of what little natural shelter there was in this exposed area, was built almost exclusively of stone and earth. They stopped for a midday break, and John got down to stretch his legs gratefully. His brain was still refusing to make itself useful by coming up with any plan to frustrate the ambassador; but the cool, keen winds had blown John into physical wakefulness, so much so that he realized he was tired of the saddle. If it had not been clearly an impractical notion, John would have liked to forego riding and walk for a while.

But there was no hope of that. If John should try to make it on foot, the Bluffer would be over the horizon and out of sight inside of half an hour. That is, unless he held his pace down to that of his human companion. And, numb-minded as he was at the moment, John had to smile at the thought of the explosive and impatient Bluffer's reaction, if he was asked to do that.

So, John made the best of it by taking a stroll around the stone inn of Halfway House to take the kinks out of his leg muscles. When he approached the front door of it again, he found the Bluffer on the point of explosion. The cause of this was not John, or anything he had done, but the other visitors at the Halfway House.

They were laughing at the Bluffer.

There were half a dozen of them just outside the door of the House, headed by a relatively short and chunky Dilbian carrying a sort of alpenstock.

"Hor! Hor!" the short Dilbian was bellowing.

"You want to make something out of it?" the Bluffer was roaring.

"What is it?" asked John. Nobody even heard him, of course.

"Fixed you right!" chortled the short Dilbian.

"Fixed me . . . ! I'll show who fixed me!" The Bluffer shook both fists high over his head. It was an awesome sight. "Swore to me as a public official, he did. Said he'd seen the Terror take the fork this way with his own two eyes!"

"He did! Sure he did!" put in somebody else. "Tell him, Snowshoe!"

"Why," said the chunky Dilbian, "he saw the Terror take the right fork, all right. But after that he closed his eyes for a bit there, just like she'd arranged."

"She?" bellowed the Bluffer. "Boy Is She Built?"

"Why, who else, postman? The Terror was waiting for her to catch up with him there.

" `That long-legged postman's right behind me,' she says.

" `Don't, now,' she says. `You can't fight the government mail,' she says. `I got a better idea.' And she fixed it up with old Winchrope to close his eyes while they come back out of one fork and took the other to the Hollows with the female Shorty they had along." The chunky Dilbian named Snowshoes stopped to laugh again. "Passing by myself at the time. Saw the whole thing. Laugh! Thought I'd split a gut!"

The Bluffer bellowed to the mountain sky. His eyes fell on John and he snatched John up like the package John was officially supposed to be.

The next thing they knew, they were fifteen yards back along the trail they had just come, and gaining speed.

"Hey!" said John. "At least let me get in the saddle."

"What? Oh!" snarled the Bluffer. He checked and waited a few impatient seconds, while John crawled over his shoulder into the saddle. Then he took off again.

Two hours later they were back at the wrong end of the bridge. The word wrong was, thought John, used advisedly. For the bridge was now out of their reach.

What had been done was simple enough. Their end of the bridge had its cables fastened to the sheer cliff face some twenty feet back and another twenty feet above their heads. What had been done was to tighten these cables by means of the winch to which they were attached at their other end. The sag of the span had straightened out, lifting the bridge up and out of their reach.

The Hill Bluffer bellowed across the gap. His first forty words were a description of Winchrope's person and morals, his last four an order to put the bridge back down where he and John could reach it, and cross.

There was no answer at the far end. The windlass to which the cables were attached showed no inclination to comply with the order by itself and no one emerged from the bridgekeeper's hut.

"What's happened?" asked John.

"He's in there!" raged the Bluffer. "That bridge isn't supposed to be cranked up until night—and then only to keep people from sneaking across and not paying their toll. He's in there, all right. He just won't come out and let it down, because he knows what I'll do to him the minute I get over there." He thundered across the gorge again. "Get out here and let down this unmentionable, indescribable bridge, so I can get over it at you and tear your head off!"