The torturing headache that was the result of being stun rayed provided a fierce rhythm over and under Storm’s eyes. And his eyes hurt in the bargain when he forced them open. But a feeling of urgency carried over from the past and the Terran fought for control over mind and body. His tentative struggles informed him that he had been staked out on the ground and that every pull he gave to his bonds heightened the pounding in his head.
The time was early evening, Storm judged, as he squinted at the daylight between half-closed lids, and he could hear the coming and going, the inconsequential talk of riders in camp around him. In spite of his sick dizziness the Terran concentrated on picking up what information he could from their conversations.
Piece by piece, half-heard sentences built an ugly picture indeed. Some of what Logan had feared had already come to pass. Dumaroy’s main herd had been raided and the trail of the stolen beasts led straight to the Shosonna river bank camp, which the aroused riders had attacked in retaliation. Luckily the Norbies had fled in time and there had been no killing, though when the riders pursued them, two men had been badly wounded by arrows.
Dumaroy was now awaiting reinforcements, determined to track down the Shosonna back in the hills and teach them a drastic lesson. He had sent out a call to rally all able-bodied settlers as there were signs that the retreating Shosonna band had crossed fresh Nitra trails and the original posse feared a uniting of the two native clans against the settlers’ expedition.
Let there once be a real battle between Norbie and settler and Xik plans would be well on the way to complete realization. The holdout outlaws could continue to needle both sides without loss of either secrecy or any of their own numbers. That is, it might have worked that way had not Storm reached the settlers. But surely once he had a chance to tell his story Dumaroy would have to reconsider, to wait for the Peace Officers. Bister – somehow Coll Bister had an important part. Storm was as certain, as if he had seen him do it, that Bister had rayed him before he could give his information. What sort of a tale had the other concocted while the Terran lay unconscious to explain that raying without warning, to supply a valid reason for keeping the other prisoner?
That Storm was friendly toward the natives was not strong enough. Too many of the settlers felt the same way. As a Terran he could be suspected of mental instability – had Bister played that angle? It was a hard one to refute. Everyone had heard the rumours out of the Centre and Bister had travelled with him from the Port to the Crossing – Nobody here he could appeal to –
Since the Terran could not raise his head more than an inch or so his range of vision was necessarily quite limited and those men he sighted were all strangers. Dort Lancin had a range in the Peak area, and if the settlers came in at the summons to back Dumaroy, he should arrive sooner or later. Dort Lancin was a staunch supporter of the pro-Norbie party and he could speak for Storm. But the Terran fumed inwardly over the waste of time.
Bister – that was Bister approaching now. On impulse Storm closed his eyes. A sharp tug on the rope about his ankles sent a quiver of pure agony through his head and he had difficulty in remaining still. Then followed a similar jerk at the wrists extended above his head. Scuff of boots on the ground – a grunt. Storm dared to peek. Bister was standing, his attention distracted by the sound of galloping horses.
Storm watched the settler as one fighting man measures another – an enemy – during a momentary truce. The fellow was a puzzle. He nourished hatred for Storm, had disliked the Terran from the first, for no reason Storm could fathom. If Bister were true to type, he would have been only too eager to mix it up physically. Yet Storm had mastered him without difficulty at their first embroilment and thereafter Bister had tried to get others to do his fighting for him – almost as if his impressive body, his cover of trail bully, was only the outer husk of a very different personality.
A suspicion, wild and unfounded, crossed Storm’s muzzy mind as he groggily pursued that line of reasoning. Perhaps it was well that the party of horsemen whirled by just then to distract his captor for the Terran gasped. There were those stories Storm had heard in the last weeks of the war when the desperate enemy had emptied out their full bag of tricks and weapons, stories he had heard in greater detail later during the dreary months at the Centre when men had sweated out rehabilitation. An aper!
If Bister were one of these fabulous apers – an Xik reconstructed by surgery and every available form of psycho-training to pass as a Confed man – that would explain a lot. He would in fact be the most dangerous ‘man” Storm had ever faced. For by all accounts an aper gathered under one changed skin as many – or more – varied talents as a Commando Beast Master, and was trained to use every one of his weird gifts.
But those tales had been dismissed as the wildest of barracks rumours. Storm had heard them repeatedly denied, been assured by psycho-medics and intelligence men that such a thing was virtually impossible. Of course, those authorities had hedged with the “virtually”.
As if this thought were not startling enough, Storm discovered another frightening thing. Bister had not been just inspecting the captive’s bonds a moment ago, he had been loosening them! Bister wanted the Terran free, only Storm was also sure that Bister wanted him dead. The fellow had not dared to betray himself by using any weapon more lethal than a stun rod at their encounter at the Shosonna village. But it would be very easy to knife or otherwise fatally dispose of an escaping prisoner.
So – here was one prisoner who would not escape, even when encouraged. Storm was so lost in that line of reasoning that he was not at first aware of the loud argument not too far away, not until he heard one name mentioned that drove the problem of Bister momentarily to the back of his mind.
“– Brad Quade, and he’s breathin’ out rocket fumes all the way up river! You’d better take it easy, Dumaroy – he’s got a Peace Officer with him and if you go off half set and start a Norbie dust-up you’ll have to answer to Galwadi for it! I’m not goin’ to head into those hills “till Quade gets here –”
“You can lick dust off Brad Quade’s boots if you want to, Jaffe. No man here’s goin’ to stop you. Only we aren’t goin’ to have the Basin tell us here at the Peaks not to protect our own property and go along nursin’ these thievin’ goats! Every one of you saw that trail. It led right to that village and then off again into the mountains. Me, I’ve lost my last herd to the goats! And I’ll tell that flat to any Peace Officer. As for Brad Quade – if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll keep his nose out of our affairs. So that kid of his is missin’? Well, I’ll lay you five credits right on the line that Logan’s been ambushed by goats and his right hand’s curin’ right now in some Nitra Thunder House! I’m sayin’ right now that we’re ridin’ on come sunup. And anybody here who don’t want to do that can clear out now –”
There was a muttering and a few raised voices. Storm, straining to listen, gathered that Dumaroy’s private army was not so keen on Norbie chasing as their leader wished.
“All right! All right!” The settler’s bull roar deadened the other’s clamour once more. “You can just get your horses, all of you, and clear out of here. You, Jaffe, an” Hyke, and Palasco – Only don’t you come whinin’ to me when you’re cleaned out, and there’re goat tracks all over your ranges. You just go and talky-talk it out with Brad Quade and let him point his fingers at the goats to give ‘em back!”
“And I’m tellin’ you back, Dumaroy, that you’ll pull the Peaks into a big mess and we’ll all be in trouble. You better wait and hear what Quade and the Peace Officer have to say. They’ll be here in the mornin’ –”