"Long ago?" echoed Bill, somewhat suspiciously. He was waking up, automatically, remembering Dilbian verbal ploys. The unkind suspicion began to kindle in his mind that More Jam was protesting his weakness and age a bit too much to be truthful. He remembered the lightness and quickness with which the rotund Dilbian had spun about on his toes as Bill entered the room. If More Jam could still move that mass of flesh he called a body with that much speed and agility, he could hardly be quite as decrepit and ancient as he claimed.
Not only that, thought Bill, watching the native now through narrowed eyes, but Bill's experience on Dilbia so far had begun to breed in him a healthy tendency to take a large grain of salt with anything one of them claimed about himself.
"Tell me," Bill said now, becoming once more uncomfortably conscious of the iciness of the boards under his bare feet, "what did you want to see me about?"
More Jam sighed again—if possible, even more sadly than he had managed to sigh before.
"It's about that daughter of mine, Sweet Thing," he answered heavily. "The apple of my eye, and the burden of my declining years. But why don't you pull up a bench, Pick-and-Shovel, and we can go into this matter in detail?"
"Well—all right," said Bill. "But if you'll wait a moment or two, I'd like to get some clothes on."
"Clothes?" said More Jam, looking genuinely surprised. "Oh, those contraptions you Shorties cover yourselves up with. You and the Fatties. Never could understand that—but go ahead, don't mind me. I'll just wait here until you're ready."
"Thanks. Won't be a minute," said Bill gratefully.
He ducked back through the door and down the hall back into his bedroom, where he proceeded to get the rest of his clothing on. Now at least dressed and shod—he returned to the reception room where More Jam was waiting.
Before he had fully traversed the hall, and long before he had opened the door to the reception room, a booming of Dilbian voices informed him that More Jam was no longer alone. Even with this warning, however, he was not prepared for the sight that greeted his eyes as he stepped back into that room. Two more Dilbians had appeared. One of them was the Hill Bluffer. Another was a Dilbian with grayish-black, rather singed-looking hair on his forearms, who was fully as large as Bone Breaker. It was not, thought Bill as he stepped into the room without being noticed at all by the three natives, that any of them were larger than he might have expected. It was just that all three of them together seemed to fill the reception room well past the overcrowding point. Not only this, but the sound of their three voices, all talking at once, was deafening.
"There he is!" said the Hill Bluffer proudly, being the first to notice him. "Pick-and-Shovel, meet Flat Fingers—the blacksmith in the village here. The one I was telling you about."
"That him, hey?" boomed the blacksmith in a decidedly hoarse voice. He squinted down at Bill. "Why if I was to make him a regular blade, it'd be bigger than he was! And a shield—why if I was to make him a shield and it fell over on top of him, he'd plumb disappear!"
"You too, huh?" roared the Bluffer, making Bill's ears ring. "Didn't you ever hear about the Shorty that took the Streamside Terror? Didn't I tell you about him?"
"I heard. And you told me several times." Flat Fingers rubbed his bearlike nose thoughtfully. "Still and all, it stands to reason. I say a regulation sword and shield's too big for him. Who's the expert here, you or me? I've been shoeing horses and arming men and mending kettles for fifteen years, and what I say is, a regular blade and buckler's too big for him. And that's that!"
"All right!" shouted Bill quickly, before the Hill Bluffer could renew the argument. "I don't care what size my sword and shield are. It doesn't make any difference!"
"There!" boomed the Bluffer turning on the blacksmith. "I guess that shows you what these sissy fighting weapons of you Lowlanders are worth! Even a Shorty doesn't care what they're like, when he has to use them! I'd like to see some of you iron-carriers wander up into the mountains bare-handed some of these days and try your luck man-to-man in my district. Why, if I wasn't on official duty, more or less, with Pick-and-Shovel here—"
"Ahem!" More Jam interrupted at this point by clearing his throat delicately—delicately, that is, for a Dilbian. However, the sound effectively stopped the Bluffer and brought his eyes around toward the wide-bodied individual.
"Far be it from me to go sticking my oar into another fellow's argument," said More Jam sadly. "Particularly seeing as how I'm old and decrepit and fat, and have a weak stomach and I've long forgotten what it was like back in my wrestling days—"
"Come on now, More Jam," protested Flat Fingers. "We all know you aren't all that old and sickly."
"Nice of you to say so, Flat Fingers," quavered More Jam, "but the truth is with this weak stomach of mine, that can't hardly eat anything but a little jam and bread or something like that—though I do try to force down some regular meat and other things just to keep myself alive—I'm lucky if I can leave the house. But it's true—" He looked sidelong at the Hill Bluffer, "that once I'd have taken on any mountain man, bare-handed."
"No one's putting
you
down, More Jam," rumbled the Hill Bluffer. "
You
never used to tangle with a lot of sharpened iron about you!"
"True, true," sighed More Jam. "And true it is, that our younger generation has kind of gotten away from the old way of doing things. Just like it's true that I never had anything in the way of a weapon about me—that time I happened to be up in the mountains and ran into One Man."
He pronounced this name with a peculiar emphasis, and Bill saw both the blacksmith and the Hill Bluffer stiffen to attention. The Hill Bluffer stared at him.
"
You
tangled with One Man?" the Bluffer said, almost in a tone of awe. "Why, nobody ever went up against One Man alone. Nobody!" He glanced aside at Bill. "There never has been anybody like One Man, Pick-and-Shovel," he explained. "He's a mountain man like myself, and he's called One Man because in spite of being an orphan, with no kin to help, he once held feud with a whole clan, just by himself—and won!"
The Hill Bluffer turned back to More Jam almost accusingly.
"You
never
tangled with One Man!" he repeated.
More Jam sighed regretfully.
"No, as a matter of fact, I never did, the way things worked out," he rumbled thoughtfully. "I'd heard of him, up there in the mountains, of course. Just as he'd heard of me, down here in the Lowlands. Then one time we just happened to run into each other in the foothills back a ways from here, and we got a look at each other for the first time."
More Jam paused, to sigh again. Flat Fingers and the Hill Bluffer were staring at him.
"Well, go on, More Jam!" boomed Flat Fingers, after a moment of stillness. "You met him you say—and you didn't tangle?"
"Well, no, as it happened. We didn't," said More Jam; and his eyes swung about to catch and hold the eyes of Bill with a particular intensity. "It's quite a little story—and as a matter of fact, that's what brought me up here this morning to talk to Pick-and-Shovel. I got to remembering that story, and it began preying on my mind—the strange things that could happen to keep a couple of bucks from tangling, in spite of all their being primed and hardly able to wait to do it!"
"You mean—?" the Bluffer stared down at More Jam. "In spite of both of you being in the same place and eager to go, something happened to keep the fight from coming off?"
"Well, yes. In fact a couple of things happened . . ." said More Jam, rubbing his nose thoughtfully. "The place One Man and I happened to run into each other was a place called Shale River Ford—"
"I know it. Good day's walk from here," said the Bluffer promptly.
"Yes, I guess you would know it, Postman," said More Jam. "Well, there was a sort of celebration of some kind going on when we both landed there at the same time—I forget what it was. But the minute the folk there saw One Man and I had run into each other, at last, they asked us to put off our little bout until the next day. So they could get word out to all their friends and kin to come watch. Well, now, we couldn't be so impolite as to say no—but what am I thinking about?"
More Jam broke off suddenly in mid-sentence, his gaze returning to Flat Fingers and the Bluffer.
"Here I am yarning away like the old dodder-head I am," said More Jam, "never thinking you two men must have come over here to talk some kind of important business with Pick-and-Shovel. Well, I won't hold you up a moment longer. You go right ahead with your business and I'll hold my story for another day."
"No business. That is, nothing that can't wait," broke in the blacksmith hastily. "Go on with the story. I never heard it before."
"Well, maybe I've got a duty to let everyone know about what happened, at that," said More Jam thoughtfully. "Though, as I say, I just wandered down here to tell it to Pick-and-Shovel, and actually it's more for him than for telling back up in the mountains anyway. I was just saying . . . where was I?"
"The Shale River Forders had asked you and One Man to hold off the fight until the next day," prompted the Hill Bluffer.
"Oh, yes . . . well, as I said earlier, it was really a couple of things that happened to keep us from tangling." More Jam's eyes drifted around to hold Bill's strangely once more. "One to each of us, you might say. You see, as long as we had to wait until the next day, there was no reason we shouldn't have a party the night before. So the Shale River Ford people got a rousing time going. Well, after a bit, One Man and I went for a walk outside, so we could have a chance to hear each other talk. You know how it is when you meet somebody in the same line of business, so to speak . . ."
More Jam glanced at Flat Fingers and the Hill Bluffer. The blacksmith and postman nodded with the seriousness of dedicated professionals, each in their own lines of business.
"Happened, we had quite a talk," continued More Jam. "I might say we even got to know each other pretty well. We finally split up and headed for a good night's rest, each of us looking forward to the fight the next morning, of course."
"Of course," rumbled Flat Fingers.
"But then it happened," said More Jam. He gazed sadly at the Bluffer and at Flat Fingers, and then, unaccountably, his eyes wandered slowly back again to meet the eyes of Bill.
"It?" demanded the Bluffer.
"Would you believe it," demanded More Jam, staring at Bill, "after I'd left One Man—it was a pitch-black night out, of course—on the way back to the Inn, I bumped into someone who told me that my maternal grandmother had just died back down here at Muddy Nose?"
"You grandmother?" began Flat Fingers, wrinkling his nose in puzzlement. "But I thought—"
"Well, of course," went on More Jam smoothly, ignoring the blacksmith and keeping his gaze on Bill, "no ordinary person would ever have thought of trying to get from where I was all the way back to Muddy Nose to pay my last respects to my grandmother, and still make the trip back again in time for the fight the next day. No ordinary person, as I say. But in those days I was in pretty good shape, what with one thing and another. And I didn't hesitate for a minute. I just took off."
"But your grandmother—" Flat Fingers was attempting again, when More Jam smoothly interrupted him once more.
"—Wasn't dead at all as it turned out, of course," said More Jam, his eyes still fixed on Bill's. "As folks around here know, she lived to be a hundred and ten. It was just some kind of a rumor that this stranger had picked up and passed on. And of course, it was so dark out when he told me that I didn't know what he looked like. So I was never able to find him again."
"Good thing for him I bet!" muttered Flat Fingers. "So you went all the way home and didn't get back in time for the fight? Was that it, More Jam?"
"Not exactly," said More Jam. "As I say, I was in pretty good shape in those days. I turned right around when I found out the truth, and headed back toward the foothills. And I made it back, too. I got back to Shale River Ford just as dawn was breaking. But you know, when I hit the door of the Inn, I sort of collapsed. I just fell down and passed out. It was plain for one and all to see that after a round trip like that, I was in no condition to fight."
"True enough," said the Hill Bluffer, with an expert traveler's judiciousness.
"So that's why you didn't fight One Man?" interposed Flat Fingers.
"Well . . . yes, and no," said More Jam mildly. "You see a funny thing had happened to him, too—I found out after I woke up. Just as One Man was heading back to the Inn, himself, the night before, after talking to me—I told you how dark it was out—"
"You told us," put in Flat Fingers.
"Well, dark out as it was," said More Jam, "One Man didn't see this hole in the ground. And he stepped right into it and twisted his ankle. Broke it, I think, although it was kind of hard to tell; his legs were so muscley. Of course," added More Jam, deprecatingly, with a glance at Flat Fingers and the Bluffer, "nobody was about to call One Man a liar if he said he thought his ankle was broken."
"Ha!" snorted the Bluffer. "That's right enough!"
"And, of course," added More Jam mildly, "nobody would think of doubting
my
word that I'd actually had somebody come up to me in the dark who I couldn't see, and tell me a false rumor about my grandmother being dead."
"I'd like to see them try it!" growled Flat Fingers. "That'd be something to see!"
"So, one way and another," wound up More Jam, his gaze returning to Bill, "neither One Man nor I was fit to have that fight after all. And the way it worked out, we never did meet again. Though I hear he's still alive, up there in the mountains."
"He sure is," said the Hill Bluffer. "Says he's all worn out now and decrepit! Him—decrepit!" The Bluffer snorted again, disbelievingly.
"You shouldn't jump to conclusions though, Postman," put in More Jam, almost primly. "You young men in the prime of life, you don't know what it's like when your bones start creaking and groaning. Why, some people might even look at me and think I might have as much as a shadow of my own old strength left. But I tell you, if it wasn't for my daughter's cooking—and my stomach's so delicate nowadays I can't handle anything else—I'd have been dead long ago. You may not believe One Man's being cut down by age, but an old hulk like me knows better."