Spacepaw Read Free

thieves and plunderers and no-goods from the Outlaw Valley! They’re outlaws —and they never signed any kind of treaty with anybody !”

Chapter 2
    Thing-or-Two’s shouted warning explained matters, but it came, if anything, a little late. By the time she had finished speaking, the leading outlaw was almost upon Bill, and Bill was already in motion.
    He dropped his luggage case and ducked desperately as the big Dilbian hands made a grab for him. They missed, and he spun about only to find himself running in the wrong direction. With whoops and yells the whole crew of outlaws was after him. Every way he turned, he found a towering, nine-foot figure barring his escape.
    Not that an immediate attempt to escape would do him any good at the moment, he realized almost at once. Bill’s first reaction had been that of any small animal being chased by larger ones—to duck and dodge and take advantage of his reflexes, which were faster simply because he was smaller. The Dilbian outlaws, being all nearly twice Bill’s size and several times his weight, were by that very fact slower and clumsier than he was. In fact, after the first leap to escape, he found himself evading their clutches with relative ease.
    But even as he realized he could do this, he saw the spot he was in. At first he had been dodging about only in order to find a clear space in which he could make a run for the forest. Now he realized that simply running away was no solution. The reflexes of the Dilbians might be slower than his, but their huge strides could cover the same amount of ground at double his speed. They could catch him in no time if he simply tried to outrun them in a straight-away chase.
    His only hope, he realized now, still dodging desperately about the farmyard, was to keep evading them in this small area until they began to grow winded, and then take his chances on outrunning them. If he could only keep this up, he thought—ducking under a flailing dark-furred arm as thick as a man’s thigh—for just a few minutes more …
    “Hold it!” the outlaw leader was shouting. “Don’t let him run you ragged. Circle him! Circle him! Herd him into a corner!”
    Bill’s hopes took a nose dive. He dodged and spun about, but without finding an opening. Already the outlaws were forming a semicircle, long arms extended sideways, that was herding him back against the front wall of the house. They were closing in, now …
    Bill made a feint toward the right end of the semicircle, and then made a dash toward the left end, with the wild thought of diving between the legs of the outlaw leader, standing at the corner of the house. But at the last second the outlaw stepped forward and whooped in the powerful voice Bill had come to recognize.
    “Got you, Shorty!”
    Bill braked to a frantic halt. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the rest of the semicircle closing rapidly on him. He looked back at the outlaw leader, standing crouched now and ready by the interlaced butt ends of the logs at the corner of the house. The leader spread his arms and reached forward—
    —And went suddenly flat on his face with a furry figure atop him, as a wild war cry split the air.
    “I’m a Muddy Noser and proud of it!” roared the still-drunken voice of Tin Ear, in triumph. “Run, Shorty!”
    But there was no place to which Bill could run. Other outlaws had rushed over to bar the escape route opened up by the fallen leader. Glancing wildly about, Bill looked up and saw that where the roof of the house joined the wall there was an opening leading to some dark interior, probably a loft or attic. The alternating ends of the logs in the front and side walls of the house were notched and interlocked together so that they stuck out like the tips of the fingers of two hands, interlaced at right angles to each other. They were as good as a ladder to someone Bill’s size. He had not won a climbing medal in Survival School, back on Earth, for nothing. He went up the log ends