Spacepaw Read Free Page A

like a squirrel.
    A second later he had dived into the dark, loftlike area to which the opening he had seen gave entrance. For a moment he simply lay there, panting, on what seemed to be a rough bed of poles, which was probably a roof to the room or rooms below. Then, as he began to breathe easily once more, he squirmed about, crawled back to the entrance, and looked down and out.
    Tin Ear was slumbering or unconscious on the ground at the spot where he had jumped the outlaw leader. The leader himself was on his feet with the other outlaws clustered around the corner of the house, and one of their number was trying to climb the sixteen or eighteen feet up the same ladder of log ends Bill had used.
    However, the log ends were too small for the big feet and hands of the Dilbians. The climber was finding fairly good support for his toes, but he was able to hang on to the log ends higher up only by his fingertips. His attention was all on those fingertips, and Bill had a sudden inspiration. Leaning out and reaching down the short couple of feet that separated the climber’s head from the entrance, he put his hand on the top of the hard, furry skull and shoved outward with all his strength.
    The head went back, and the climber’s fingertips lost their precarious grip. There was a yell and a thud, and the climber landed on his back in the farmyard dirt. Roaring with rage, he scrambled to his feet as if he would climb again, but checked himself at the foot of the log corner, and dropped his upreaching arms.
    “It’s no use!” he growled, turning away toward the outlaw leader. “There’s nothing you can really get a grip on. You see what he did to me?”
    “Go get some fire from the stove inside,” said the outlaw leader, struck by a happy thought. “We’ll burn him out of there!”
    “No, you don’t!” trumpeted the voice of Thing-or-Two in the background. “Paying outlaw-tax is one thing, ‘but you’re not burning down our house! You try it and you’ll see how fast I get to Outlaw Valley and tell Bone Breaker on you! You just try!”
    Her words stopped a concerted move toward the front door of the house. The outlaws muttered among themselves, occasionally glancing up to the opening from which Bill was looking down. Finally, the leader looked up at Bill’s observing face.
    “All right, Shorty!” he said, sternly. “You come down out of there!”
    Bill laughed grimly.
    “What’s so funny?” glowered the outlaw leader.
    Bill had a sudden, desperate inspiration. His hypnoed information had just reminded him of a double fact. One, that preserving face—in the human, Oriental sense—meant a great deal to the Dilbians, since an individual Dilbian had no more status in the community than his wit or his muscles could earn for him. Two, that in Dilbian conversation the more outrageous statement you could get away with, the more face-destroying points you were able to score on an opponent. Maybe he could bluff his way out of this situation by making it so humiliating for the outlaws that they would go off and leave him alone.
    “You are!” he retorted. “Why’d you think I stuck around here instead of running off? Laugh? Why, I could hardly keep from splitting my sides, watching all of you falling all over yourselves trying to catch me. Why should I come down and stop the fun?”
    The outlaws stared at him. The leader scowled.
    “Fun?” growled the leader. “Are you trying to tell us you did all that running around for fun?”
    “Why, sure,” said Bill, laughing again, just to drive the fact home, “you didn’t think I was scared of you, did you?”
    They blinked at him.
    “What do you mean?” growled the leader. “You weren’t scared?”
    “Scared? Who? Me?” said Bill heartily, leaning a little farther out of his hole to talk. “We Shorties aren’t scared of anything on two legs or four. Or anything else!”
    “Oh? Then how come you don’t come down from that hole now?” demanded one of the