John felt too comfortable to be disturbed by the postman’s grousing. He had put his foot down for the first time, when the group he had run into had brought him back to the inn, and insisted on a couple of hours sleep in ordinary fashion. He had gotten them, in the peace of the inn dormitory. When he had woken up, he had decided as well to quit worrying about possible allergies and have something more than paste and pill concentrates to eat.
He had stuffed himself, accordingly. Dilbian bread, he discovered was coarse and full of uncompletely milled kernels, the cheese was sour and the meat tough, with a sour taste to it. It tasted delicious, and he just wished he had been able to hold a bit more. No allergic reactions had showed up so far; and now, with a full stomach, he drowsed on the back of the Dilbian postman, all but falling asleep in the saddle. As he drowsed, he wondered dreamily about his escape from Tark-ay. It all seemed almost too good to be true.
They were descending now into a country of lower altitudes, although they were still far above the central plains of this particular Dilbian continent. The central plains, being warmer in the summer than the Dilbians liked, were only sparsely settled. They regarded them as lush, unhealthy places where a man from the uplands lost his moral fiber quickly and fell into unnamed vices. Black sheep from the respectable communities of the clans often ended up down there, where the living was easy and no questions asked about a man’s past.
So, the higher Hollows area was regarded as lowlands, in the ordinary sense by the mountain-living Dilbians. And in fact, John noticed that the countryside here did look a lot different. A new type of tree, something like a birch, was now to be seen among the hitherto unbroken ranks of sprucelike coniferoids of the uplands. And fern and brush began to put in an appearance.
All this could have been quite interesting to John if he had not been half-asleep; and if he had not had other things swimming about in the back of his mind, specifically, that apparently unavoidable meeting with the Streamside Terror, to which events and the Hill Bluffer seemed to be rushing him in spite of himself.
He felt like someone who has been caught in an avalanche, and now was riding it down the mountainside—for the moment on top of the moving mass, but with an inevitable cliff edge looming ahead. What the blazes was he to do, he wondered dully out of his half-awake state, when he found himself suddenly shoved, barehanded against the Terror? Doubtless with an impenetrable ring of Dilbian spectators hemming them both in, as well.
And for what? Why? Everybody from Joshua on through Gulark-ay seemed to have a different explanation of the reasons for the combat taking place. Everybody’s patsy, that’s what I am, thought John gloomily and dozed off again. Time went by.
He awoke suddenly. The Hill Bluffer had stopped unexpectedly, with a startled grunt. John sat up and looked around with the uncertainty of a man still fogged by sleep.
They were out of the woods. They had emerged into a small valley in which a cluster of buildings stood in the brown color of their peeled, and naturally weathered logs, haphazardly about a stream that ran the valley’s length. Beyond the village, or whatever it was, there was a sort of natural amphitheater made by a curved indentation in the far rock wall of the valley. Past this, the path curved on through an opening in the valley wall and into the further forest.
However, it was not this pleasant little village scene that caught John’s attention as he came fully awake.
It was a group of five brawny Dilbians who stood squarely athwart the path before himself and the Bluffer.
Armed with axes.
The Hill Bluffer had not said a word from the moment of John’s awakening. Now he exploded. In his outrage he was almost incoherent.
“You—you—” he stuttered, roaringly. “You got the almighty nerve—you got the guts—! You dare stop the mail? Who do you think—just who is it thinks he’s got the right—”
“Clan Hollows in full meeting, that’s who,” said the middle axman, a Dilbian almost as tall as the Bluffer, himself. “Come on with us.”
The Bluffer took two steps backwards and hunched his shoulders. John felt himself lifted on the swell of the postman’s big back muscles.
“Let’s just see you take us!” snarled the postman. He sounded slightly berserk. Up on his back, John swallowed automatically looking at the Dilbian axes. John was in rather the same position as someone with a drunken or excitable friend who is in the process of getting them both into a fight. Harnessed to the Bluffer the way he was, there was no way he could quickly get down and loose in the case of trouble; and just at the moment the Bluffer did not seem to be thinking of taking time out to put his mail in a safe place before committing suicide.
“Hey!” said John, tapping the Bluffer on the shoulder. He might as well have tapped one of the Dilbian mountains in a like manner, for all the attention he attracted.
“Spread out, boys,” said the head axman, hefting his forty-pound tool-weapon. The line began to extend at either end and curve in to flank the Bluffer. “Postman, officially in the name of Clan Hollows, I’m bidding you to immediate meeting. The grandfathers are waiting for you there, postman. And that Shorty you got with you.”
The Hill Bluffer ground his teeth together. Seated just back of the Dilbian’s mandible hinges the way John was, it made an awesome sound.
“He’s mine.” The postman sounded like he was talking through clenched jaws. “Until delivered! Come try to take him, you hollow-scuttling, thieving low-land loopers, you Clan Hollows sons of—”
The axmen were beginning to snarl and look red-eyed in turn. Desperate times, thought John, call for desperate measures.
He leaned forward, got the Bluffer’s right ear firmly in his teeth. And bit.
“Yii!” roared the Bluffer—and spun about, almost snapping John’s head off at the neck. “Who did that—? Oh! What’re you trying to pull, Half-Pint.” He tried to twist his neck around and look John in the face.
“That’s right,” said John. “Get in a fight! Get the government mail damaged! Back on my Shorty world they’ve got better postmen than that.”
“They can’t do this to me,” rumbled the Bluffer, but his voice had noticeably dropped in volume.
“Sure,” said John. “Your honor. But duty comes before honor. How about me? It’s as much against my honor to let these axmen take me in. There’s nothing I’d like better,” said John, smiling falsely, “than to get down from your back here and help you take these Hollows unmentionables to pieces. But do I think of myself? No. I—”
“Listen at him,” said one of the axmen. “Help take us to pieces! Hor, hor.”
“You think that’s funny, do you!” flared the Bluffer afresh, spinning to face the tickled axman. “You just remember this is the Shorty chasing down the Terror. How’d you like to tangle with the Terror, yourself, hairy-legs?”
“Huh!” said the other, losing his good humor suddenly, and hefting his ax. However, he did throw a second look over the Bluffer’s shoulder at John and stood where he was.
“All right, men,” said the leader of the axmen. “Enough of this chit-chat! When I give the word—”
“Cut it! Cut it!” boomed the Bluffer. “We’ll go with you. Half-Pint’s right. Lucky for you.”
“Huh!” said the axman who had laughed before. But as they all fell into a sort of hollow square with the Bluffer and John in the middle, he stayed well to the rear. Together they marched down into the valley and toward the amphitheater at the far end.