The Right to Arm Bears by Gordon R. Dickson Page B

barred."
    John blinked. He looked past the postman's head at the puffs of white clouds. They had not moved. They were still there. So were the mountains. It must be something wrong with his ears.
    "Fighting him?" said John again, feeling like a man in a fast elevator which has just begun to descend.
    "A man's got his pride," said the Bluffer. "If you take Greasy Face back, his mug's spilt all over again." He leaned a little toward John. "That is, unless you whip him in a fair fight. Then there's no blood feud to it. You're just a better man than he is, that's all. But that's why I haven't been able to figure this. You aren't bad for a Shorty. You pulled a good trick with that beer on those drunks last night. You got guts."
    He looked searchingly at John.
    "But I mean—Hell, you can't fight the Terror. Anybody'd know that. I mean— Hell !" said the Bluffer, explosively finding his vocabulary insufficient to describe his overcharged feelings.
    John was wishing he could express to the postman how much he agreed with him.
    "So what," inquired the Bluffer, "are you going to do when I deliver you to Streamside?"
    John thought about it. He took a deep breath and blew it out again.
    "I don't know," he said, at last.
    "Well, not my problem," said the Bluffer, getting to his feet. "Go on around and climb on by the rock, there. Oh, by the way," he added as John followed this instruction. "Know who it was pitched you over the cliff last night?"
    "Who?" asked John. He had explained the evening adventures and his waking up to the Hill Bluffer over the morning beer; but the Bluffer had made no comment, then.
    "The Cobbly Queen. You on, back there?"
    "Yes. Who?" said John, remembering how the woodsman had winked at them while mentioning the same mythical character yesterday.
    "Boy," said the Bluffer, a little grimly, "Is She Built. The same little wagtail that sends postmen messages to make a five mile sidetrip to pick up special mail, while she's back at the inn monkeying with the mail he was carrying to start off with. I'd sure like," said the Bluffer, "to figure out how she could leave with enough head start to be there ahead of us, and still know that was where we were going."
    So, thought John, pricking up his ears at this information, did he.
    "Well, let's go."
    And the Hill Bluffer swung off again once more down the trail. Swinging and bouncing in the saddle on the Dilbian's broad back, John mulled over this new information that had just been supplied him. It occurred to him that it might be a wise idea, on all accounts to phone Joshua Guy back at Humrog, and let the ambassador know John had just uncovered the whole of his seamy little scheme.
    There was no doubt now that Joshua Guy, inadvertently or not, had got himself into a bad diplomatic situation with the Streamside Terror with his advice to the father of Boy Is She Built. It had been none of the human's business to begin with whom Boy Is She Built got paired off with. In fact, it was just this sort of monkeying in private alien affairs that had gotten humanity into hot water before. A human representative who goofed like that stood in a fair way of being chopped, himself, back home once the news got out, and provided it could be proved against him. Blunders like that had cost human lives before and might well again.
    It came home to John, suddenly, with a repetition of the elevator feeling he had experienced a little before, that one of the lives it might cost in this instance might well be his own.
    For if John met the Terror and got mashed, it might solve several things at once for Joshua Guy.
    In the first place, it would probably save Greasy Face, since the Terror would have no further reason for holding on to her after his shame had been washed out in John's blood; and Shaking Knees had given the successful warrior Boy Is She Built, after all, as he would be practically obligated to do so under Dilbian mores. That would get Joshua off the hot spot where the life of the