Spacepaw (24 page)

“Oh, there you are, Pick-and-Shovel,” said the blacksmith. “What do you think—shouldn’t the skids be longer, there, under the back of the shield?”

Bill examined the structure. It looked to his human eye to be nearly as tall, wide, and heavy as the actual stockade fence of the outlaws themselves. Only the brute muscles of the Dilbians could entertain the thought of using such a thing, let alone transporting it through the several miles of woods that separated the village from the valley entrance. It was evidently designed to be moved on three pointed logs which served as its base and would operate as skids or runners on which the weight of the shield would bear, as it would push toward the wall. The shield was set just behind the points of these logs, sloping backward, and was heavily braced, towering to perhaps fifteen feet above the logs at its upper edge. Bill smiled agreeably at the sight of it, and nodded his head vigorously.

“That’s just fine, Flat Fingers,” he said. “The men pushing it certainly ought to be safe behind that, as they go up to the wall. Yes, it’ll be good protection, that shield. There’s nothing like being
safe,
when you attack a bunch like those outlaws.”

“Well, it’ll get us in close all right,” said the blacksmith, though he frowned a little at Bill’s second repetition on the word “safe.” “Then once we’re close, we’ll dig under and tear into them.”

“That’s the spirit!” said Bill enthusiastically. “Guard yourself as much as possible until you get inside, and then tear into them. Don’t be disappointed if it takes a little while to dig under the wall. Better to be safe than sorry, I always say.”

By this time the rest of the Dilbians working on the shield had abandoned their jobs and clustered around. Like Flat Fingers, they were all frowning now.

“Oh, we won’t be disappointed, Pick-and-Shovel,” rumbled Flat Fingers grimly. “We’ve been waiting to tangle with those outlaws too long to cool down, just because we have to do a little digging to get at them.”

“Good, good!” said Bill strongly. “I know you are. But it doesn’t do any harm to play safe, does it?”

“What do you mean
‘play safe’?”
exploded the village blacksmith. “What’s all this about, ‘playing safe’ you keep talking about. We’re going in there to tangle with those outlaws, the sooner the better!”

“Of course you are!” replied Bill hastily. He saw the Bluffer’s face approach and peer interestedly down at him over the left shoulder of the blacksmith. Bill went on. “There’s just no point in getting any more men hurt than have to be. That’s why I suggested this way of getting into the valley. After all, it’s the safest way, even if it does take a longer time than some other ways.”

“What other ways?” roared Flat Fingers. “You mean to say there’s other ways—quicker ways? Ways you didn’t tell us about because you thought we were worried about keeping
safe?”

“There’s lots of other ways, of course,” said Bill. “But after all, as I understand it, man for man those outlaws are a lot tougher than you are—”

“Who says so?” roared one of the Dilbians who had been working on the shield. He was holding an ax which he flourished in Bill’s direction in a way that made Bill’s throat go dry. Suddenly there was bedlam, all of the village males shouting at Bill. Flat Fingers bellowed them all back into silence, then turned ominously back to face Bill.

“Now, you listen to me, Pick-and-Shovel!” said Flat Fingers. “We’re all Muddy Nosers, here—the sort of men here who’d tear that wall down with our bare hands, if we thought it could be done that way! Are you trying to start trouble— or something?”

“Why, no—of course not!” said Bill hastily. “Why, I’ll be glad to tell you of quicker ways to get in through the gates in that stockade. As I say, there’s lots of them—”

“What’s the quickest?” demanded Flat Fingers.

“The quickest?” echoed Bill. “Well, the quickest would b£ to use a tree trunk.”

The assemblage of Dilbians stared at him blankly. It was hard for Bill to believe that their minds did not spring immediately from his suggestion of using a tree trunk to the idea of using it as a battering ram against the gates. The concept was so obvious to him that it was hard to see how it could not be obvious to these Dilbians.

“You take a log,” explained Bill. “You trim off all the branches, except for a few that you leave along its length for handholds. Then you get as many men to pick up the log all as the same time as you can. Then, holding the log, they ran at the gates in the stockade end-on.”

To his surprise, the Dilbians continued to stare at Bill, after he had stopped speaking, with blank or puzzled looks.

“And what’ll that do, Pick-and-Shovel?” asked Flat Fingers finally.

“Stop and think,” answered Bill, “and you can imagine it for yourself. Suppose we had a bunch of men pick up one of those logs over there”—he pointed to the pile of loose logs on which he had climbed the day before to hang the block and pulley from the rafter—“and ran that log at you, end-on, as hard as they could. What do you think the end of that log would do to you—or to anything else that it hit?”

For a long moment, it seemed that Flat Fingers still did not understand. Then, very slowly, his expression began to change. His eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped, his nostrils spread—and without warning he let out a war whoop that seemed to split Bill’s eardrums—and leave
him
slightly deaf for several seconds.

At that, it was probably just as well that he did not have the full sense of his hearing in the moments that followed. Because, in a second Flat Fingers was explaining it to the rest of the villagers, and inside of two minutes the area was bedlam again. Villagers whooped, hollered, roared with laughter, and pounded each other on the back as they described the principle behind the use of a tree trunk as a battering ram.

“Let’s go!” trumpeted Flat Fingers, making himself heard over the rest of the din. “We don’t need to take a log to them. We can chop one down when we get there!”

Take off, they did. Bill, staring after them in a sort of deafened wonder, was in danger of being left behind as they streamed off from the village into the woods at a pace that his shorter human legs could not match. But, abruptly, he felt himself snatched up and sailed through the air to land with a thud in the saddle on the Hill Bluffer’s back.

“Hang on, Pick-and-Shovel!” the postman shouted, infected himself by the general excitement. “We’ll be up with the ones in the lead in two minutes.”

Chapter 23

Having said this, the Bluffer proceeded to increase Bill’s steadily growing respect for him by proving himself almost as good as his word. In his ride on the Bluffer before, Bill had somehow come to assume that the pace at which they traveled was pretty close to the practical limit for the Dilbian beneath him, considering the burden he was bearing on his back. In short, Bill had not experienced the Hill Bluffer’s running before. But now the postman set out to stretch his legs—and the result from Bill’s point of view was awesome. The landscape whizzed by at something between twenty-five and thirty-five miles an hour. And the jolting threatened to shake Bill out of the saddle within the first fifty yards.

Luckily for him, however, once the Bluffer had caught up with the leaders of the group, he dropped back to a rapid walking pace, which was a good deal easier on his rider.

Bill unlocked his legs and arms from the straps and sat up. He looked back over his shoulder. The whole village seemed to be streaming after them. The citizens of Muddy Nose were on the march at last against the outlaws.

In the front strode the biggest and best males of the community, literally tramping out a path through the brush, and chopping down small trees that impeded their way. They detoured only around the larger trunks. Behind them came the younger members of the community and the village women, flanked on both sides and followed by a rear guard of lesser and older Dilbian males. Then Flat Fingers began to sing, and the others took it up until the whole party was joining in.

The subject matter of the song—or chant—was nothing remarkable. It seemed to deal with an individual who had a perfect mania for throwing other individuals and things down his well. But it seemed to please its singers vastly.
 

Souse-Nose’s wife’s old uncle 

He liked his grub real well.

One day he came to visit,

And said, “I’ll stay a spell.”

“Oh, no you won’t!” said Souse-Nose

And he threw him down the well!
 

—Threw him down the well!

Now wasn’t that a sight?

He threw him down the well so far

That he was out of sight!
 

Souse-Nose’s wife saw him do this

And she let out a yell.

“What do you mean by doing that?

I love my uncle well!’’

“Then go with him!” said Souse-Nose

And he threw her down the well!
 

—Threw her down the well
…
etc.

After disposing of his wife’s uncle and his wife, Souse-Nose rapidly threw down the well, according to the song, a number of other relatives, some neighbors he didn’t like, a hammer that had dropped on his toe the week before, the family cooking pot (because it was empty)—and then proceeded to start throwing down the well various individuals among the marching villagers themselves, as the singers began to pick on each other.

It was all apparently hilariously funny to the Dilbians—but at the same time, Bill felt a slight shiver run down his back. The song was a humorous song, but it was also a grimly humorous one, and the tone in which it was sung was very nearly more grim than it was humorous. In fact, for all the comedy in the words, Bill realized that what he was listening to was the Dilbian equivalent of a war song. The villagers were working themselves up emotionally for combat with the outlaws. For the first time, Bill began to feel some misgivings about the forces he had set in motion. Leaning forward, he spoke into the Hill Bluffer’s right ear.

“Bluffer—” he said. “Bluffer, listen to me for amoment, will you. I’d like to ask you something—”

But he might as well have been speaking to some ten-foot-high boulder rumbling at the head of an avalanche. The Bluffer was roaring out the song about Souse-Nose with the rest, completely carried away by it.

Bill sat back in the saddle, abruptly prey to a new fear. If the Bluffer was beyond his control—how about Flat Fingers and the rest of the villagers? The rolling chant of the voices around him was hypnotic—even Bill himself felt his breath coming quicker and the blood pounding in his ears.

He was still fighting for self-control, when the Bluffer beneath him, with the other leaders of the village party, rounded the turn into the narrow ravine that led down to the entrance to the valley, and stopped.

Before them, the gates in the stockade were already shut and barred, and the heads of outlaws, as well as the upper rims of shields were showing over the points at the upper end of the upright logs which made up the stockade. There was nothing surprising in finding the valley prepared in this way.

Singing and marching as they had been, the villagers undoubtedly had been heard a good half-mile or more off. Now, a few furry arms swung in the air above the stockade, and a few good-sized stones sailed toward the front rank of the villagers—but fell short. In reply, the villagers crowded into the narrow entrance of the valley and began to sing about outlaws being thrown down the well. The outlaws shouted back insults and challenges, but the solid chorus of the villagers overwhelmed them. 

…
Throw you down the well so far,

That you are out of sight
… 

—chanted the villagers.

Meanwhile, Flat Fingers had ceased singing and was rapidly issuing orders. A team of axmen had already headed off into the woods nearby, and the sound of chopping could occasionally be heard in the moments of relative silence between the singing of the villagers and the insults hurled by the outlaws. Shortly, there was the crash of falling timber— followed by a male-voiced cheer that drowned out even the singing.

Then the sound of chopping began again. Shortly, the team returned, carrying at least thirty feet of tree trunk two feet in diameter. Here and there along the trunk, they had left the stubs of branches for handholds. But most of those carrying the logs simply had one large hairy arm wrapped around it, as they grinned savagely at each other and at the outlaws.

The Bluffer squatted down and let Bill slip off his back. Bill started to approach Flat Fingers—but at this moment there was a sudden crashing sound from the forest behind them, as if a second tree falling and everybody turned around. A moment later, a second party came trotting up, carrying a second trunk stripped down to little stubs of branches for handholds.

“No you don’t!” roared Flat Fingers, waving them back.

“One at a time! Here, lay that other pole up against the side of the cut, and give us some room.”

The blacksmith’s huge finger indicated the vertical rock wall that formed one side of the narrow entrance to the valley. Reluctantly, the second batch of Dilbians leaned their log up against this and fell back.

“All right, the rest of you!” shouted the Bluffer to the rest of them standing around. “Here we go! Ready with those rocks!”

Bill had noticed these others arming themselves with rocks— and in some cases, the very ones that had been thrown at them from behind the stockade. Now, looking again, he saw that almost everyone who was not on the battering-ram crew had at least two or three of these missiles in his or her hands.