The trapper agreed they were.
Hunt with us? the sim asked.
Too slow, not keep up Martin rubbed his jaw. He could not disagree with thank him at length he signed, Give me noise-stick.
Quick had expected something of the sort. you not work -stick, he signed. To make sure he was not lying, he had surreptitiously removed the flints from his guns when the females were carrying on. He did not sign why.
Martin took the pistol away from him. The sim knew what the trigger was for, but only a click rewarded him when he pul ed it. He tried the rifle, with the same result.
Growling in frustration, he shoved them back at Quick and stalked away.
The trapper made sure the sim was not looking before he restored the flints to their places;
The next morning, most of the hunting party set of early, as they usually did. Martin hung back. He walked a and down examining the windbreak, plainly trying decide whether it was time to turn it into firewood. Of Caesar and two members of his clique also stayed behind. As far as Quick could see, they were not doit anything in particular. He practiced his walking, limping along leaning his right side on his rifle and carrying his pistol in his left. The morning was humid, so his leg hurt more than usual. When Martin turned away from the windbreak and spotted the other males still in the clearing, he shouting angrily at them. Go! Hunt!
he signed, his gestures quick and peremptory. He was still wearing the makeshift belly Quick had made for him from a bootlace. He yanked free the dagger, waved it in the air. Quick expected Caesar and his Followers to go meekly at their way, as they always had before. They did not. Maybe they had planned it among themselves, maybe they simply noticed they were three to Martin's one. They held their ground and yelled back. Instantly pandemonium fil ed the clearing Several males ran to Martin and added their yells to his. Almost as, many, though, backed Caesar and his two comrades. Quick stood off to one side and wished his hands were free so he could cover his ears. Sol, he thought, would have favored Martin, but she was already off in the woods.
The two groups of sims, still shrieking, drew closer ton each other.
Caesar, perhaps given courage by the males at his back, did not shrink as Martin approached. Instead he decided to confront Martin, windmil ing his arms and yelling as loudly as his opponent. The encounter was at a level too basic for either of them to bother with signs; their responses were what counted now.
Just the same, the quarrel might have ended peaceably, or with no more than pushes and shoves. Most incidents among sims did. But when Martin reached out to push him away, he stil had the sharp steel dagger in his fisted a dripping line ran down the other sims chest.
caesar shrieked again, a cry full of pain, surprise, and Martin might have finished him at that moment, but had stared for an instant, as much taken aback as his foe, at the blood running through Caesar's hair. An instant was all Marrtin got. Fast as a striking snake, Caesar bent down, grabbed a branch, and slammed it into the dominant male's side then he sprang for Martin. They fel together, biting gouging and kicking.
Quick had not thought the din could get louder and he was wrong.
The sims gathered in a tight knot about the two battling males.
They were all screaming at the top of their lungs, and beginning to struggle with one of Caesar's supporting males also had a knife. He had a female aside, almost pitching her into the fire, anded over the two main combatants. He slashed at one of them, presumably Martin. An anguished bellow arose, loud enough to be heard through the chaos all around.
Qulick limped forward. That Martin had to fight for his rank was one thing, that he should be beset by two at once thing else again. The male was raising an arm to bring down the dagger again. The trapper shifted his weight to his left foot; that leg would have to bear most of fire a moment.
He used the stock of his rifle to knock the knife out of the sims hand, then hit him in the temple with that second blow might have fel ed a man, but sims had thicker skulls and thicker muscles over them. The male, shook his head, spat blood. He grabbed Quick by the shoulders and threw him to the ground. A lumberjack might have matched it, but the sim was half foot shorter than Quick.
The trapper landed heavily; the rifle came out of his hand and bounced away. Pain flared in his ribs and in his bad leg. That's what you get for sticking your nose in, he thought blurrily. But the male was not done with him. the sim seized his rifle, lifted it high, and stamped toward him plainly intending to beat him to death.
Quick still held on to his pistol. He cocked it with desperate haste and fired. He aimed for the sims chest. The bal took the male in the bel y instead.
The noise of the shot shocked the sims into moment, silence.
Nothing else, perhaps, could have distracted the so effectively from their own quarrels. Leaning up on his elbow, Quick saw one of the two males around whom l bigger squabble had revolved also sitting up, pushing at the inert body of his foe. Martin had won the fight; blood was still flowing from a score of Caesar's wounds. Yet by the way he moved, the victor was also badly hurt.
Quick spared him hardly a glance, though. The traps horrified attention, and that of all the sims in the clearing, was drawn to the male he had shot. Quick had heard tales of the agony of gutshot men.
Now he saw it first hand The sim rolled and thrashed, hands clutched to the h above and to one side of its navel. Blood trickled between fingers.
Soon more came from its anus. When it emptied bladder a moment later, that discharge too was red. The sim shrieked and wailed.
Several females came running from the woods; the gunshot drew those who had not heard the sound of fight. Sol was the last of them; her bulging belly made her move slowly. Quick was glad to see her, and even glad she had not been in the clearing before.
He struggled to his feet. His right leg groaned but he did not scream; he had not rebroken it. He picked up his rifle a hobbled over toward Martin. When Sol came up to help him as she had so many times before, he grateful y let her take some of his weight. The other sims, their eyes Stil on the awful spectacle of the male he had shot, stepped out of the way. None of them signed to him. None of them seemed to want to have anything to do with him.
Pain twisted Martin's face. His hairy hide was scraped in a dozen places to show raw, bleeding flesh. Caesar had bitten half of one ear away. Martin was holding his ribs with one hand, and had the other at the back of his left heel. When the trapper saw that, and saw how the sims left calf bunched but his foot was limp, he had a sinking feeling that made him forget his bruises.
Against all odds, he had recovered from his own crippling injury, at least enough to walk about. Martin never would, not when he was hamstrung.
Martin took his hands from his wounds, signed Fix leg? eyes were ful of desperate appeal. They held Quick's seeing how Martin's thoughts paralleled his own only Henry Quick feel worse. Behind the trapper, the male he had shot screamed on, unceasing and dreadful. Not fix, he had to sign.
Sol stared at him in amazement. Fix, she signed firmly. sticks.
Sticks fix your leg, sticks fix his leg.
Not fix, the trapper repeated miserably. His leg not hurt way. How could he explain that the splints only held pieces of his shattered leg together while the bone mended, but that you could splint a cut tendon from now till doomsday and it would never mend? He could not, not with limited hand-talk Sol knew.
And if he could, she would not have believed him. Sticks, Sol signed, and stepped away from him to get a couple.
At least she was doing something constructive. The rest of the sims in the clearing wandered about dazed, like men and women who had been through a train wreck. Quick could see why. In the space of a few minutes, the band had meet disaster. Two prime males were dead (even if one would go on making horrid noises for hours). The dominant male was at best crippled; at worst, if his wounds went , he would join Caesar and his fol ower.