Gorgol objected. “You bird totem warrior – Krotag’s people bird totem – you hunt Krotag’s land – no one say no –”
Far within Storm a feeling stirred faintly, some emotion, frozen on that day when he had returned from a hazardous three months of duty behind the enemy lines to discover that he was a homeless man. He moved restlessly on the saddle pad and Rain snorted nervously, as if the stallion, too, had felt that painful tug. The Terran’s face, beneath his mask, was set in passionless endurance as he fought against that feeble response to Gorgol’s impulsive offer.
“You’re pullin’ it late –” Bister’s dust-hoarsened voice rasped not only on Storm’s ears but on his awakened nerves. “Sure got you a big bunch this time. The goat here lead you to where he had ‘em all salted away nice and neat?”
That new aliveness in Storm rose in answer to the prod of antagonism. He did not like Bister, but he no longer accepted that passively as just another unpleasant fact of his present existence. There might be cause for him to do something positive to counter the other’s needling. The Terran did not know that over the edge of the scarf his eyes, usually better controlled, now gave him away. Coll Bister was more alert to small points than he seemed.
The settler pulled his own scarf away from his mouth and spat. “Maybe you don’t believe these goats have brains enough to plan it all out – eh?”
Storm was more interested in the idle swing of Bister’s right hand. A quirt dragged from the man’s thick wrist, a quirt with an extra-long length of a doubled yoris-hide lash.
“We wouldn’t have found as many horses as we have if Krotag’s men weren’t nosing them out for us.” Storm’s position on the riding pad looked lazy, his hands were well away from the weapons at his belt. But he sensed, with a good moment’s grace in which to act, what was coming, as if he had sucked that knowledge out of the air along with the grit and dust.
That dangling right arm rose as the last straggler of the stray bunch trotted by. It could be that Bister was aiming to snap his quirt at the tired yearling. But Storm did not believe that. A sudden pressure of knee sent Rain forward so that the yoris-hide strap did not strike Gorgol’s bare thigh, but landed in a stinging slap on Storm’s own better protected leg.
Bister had not been prepared for that, nor for what happened next. Storm’s well-timed retaliation sent the bigger man to the ground – the arm that had wielded the quirt temporarily numb to the elbow. With an inarticulate roar of rage Bister struggled to his feet only to go down again, sent sprawling by a Commando blow delivered by the edge of Storm’s open hand. The Terran had thought out his strategy in advance.
To his surprise Bister did not get up to rush him again. Instead when the big man did rise to his feet he stood still, his chest heaving, his face flushed, but making no move to continue the fight.
“We’re not through –” he spat. “I’ve heard about you, Storm. You Commandos can kill a man with your bare hands. All right. Wait until we get to the Crossin’ and let’s see you stand up to a stun meetin’! I’m not done with you – nor with those goat pals of yours neither!”
Storm was bewildered enough to be shaken out of some of his self-confident complacency. Bister’s restraint now did not fit into the type of character he appeared to be. Neither, Storm was certain, was it a case of the Arzoran rider being just all bluster and no bite. Looking down at that flushed face, into the dark eyes raised to his, Storm wondered if he had completely misread Coll Bister. The man was not in the least afraid, he was confident – and he hated! So why had he refused to continue to fight now? The Terran watched the other swing up into the saddle. He would allow Bister to call the next move in the game – until he learned more about the stakes.
“Remember –” Bister’s fingers were busy with his face scarf, ready to jerk the mask up over his square jaw once again – “we aren’t through –”
Storm shrugged. Bister doubtless could bear watching, but there was no advantage to be gained from allowing the other to think so.
“Ride your side of the trail,” he returned shortly, “and I’ll ride mine, Bister. I’m not out to rope trouble.”
The other cantered off and Storm turned to find Gorgol watching that retreat. The Norbie drew level with the Terran once more and his eyes held an unmistakable note of inquiry as he signed:
“He challenged but he did not fight – why?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Storm said and then made more halting finger-talk. “I know not. But he does not like Norbies –” He thought it best to give a warning that might save the boy future trouble with the trail bully.
“So do we know. He thinks we steal horses – hide and then find them for Larkin. Maybe that good trick for Nitra – for wild men of the Peaks. Not for Krotag’s men. We make bargain with Larkin – we keep bargain.”
“Somebody hid those horses, made yoris come to stampede,” Storm observed.
“That true. Maybe outlaws. Many outlaws in mountains. Not Norbies, but raid on Norbie land. Norbie fight – kill!”
Gorgol sent his horse on after the disappearing bunch of strays and Storm followed at a slower pace. The Terran had his own motive for coming to Arzor, for riding into this Basin country. He certainly did not want to become involved in others’ quarrels. Larkin’s stampede had just happened and Storm could do no less than help the trader out, but he was not going to pursue his trouble with Bister, or get pulled into any fight between the settlers and the Norbies.
The threatened rain broke upon them with a wild drumming of thunder that evening. After its first fury it turned into a steady, drenching downpour. And from then on Larkin’s riders had little time to think of anything except the troubles of the trail.
Surra crawled under a tarp on the wagon to join the meerkats, growling her stubborn refusal for any venture into the wet, and even Baku sought shelter. This steady fall of moisture was beyond the team’s past experience and they resented it, a state of mind Storm came to share as, ankle deep in mud, he helped to fill the softer spots of the trail with branches and grass, or rode into the swirling waters of a river to rope and guide loose horses along a line of stakes the Norbies had set up to mark a questionable ford.
By the end of the second day of rain the Terran was sure they could not have advanced a mile without the aid of the native scouts. The mud did not seem to tire the Norbies’ wiry, range-bred horses, though it constantly entrapped the off-world stock. The natives did not display any weariness either as they dashed about ready with a dragrope or an armload of brush to fill in a bad mudhole.
But on the third day it began to clear, and word was passed that two more days’ travel should bring them into the auction town – news they all greeted with relief.
4
The soil had absorbed water like a sponge. Now the heavy heat of the sun drew out in return luxuriant foliage such as Storm would not have guessed this waste could produce. The horses had to be restrained from grazing lest they founder. And the Terran also needed to keep close watch on Ho and King who relished digging in the easily excavated earth. It was almost impossible to believe that after six more weeks of such plenty this country would again be close to desert.
“Pretty, eh?” Dort set his mount to climb a small hillock, joining Storm. The yellow-green ground blanket ahead was patterned with drifts of white, golden, and scarlet flowers. “But wait a month or so and” – he snapped his fingers – “all dried and gone. Just sand and rocks, some of the thorn bushes, and the rest a lot of nothing. Fastest changing country you ever saw!”