“Well,” said One Punch, “how about it, Postman? Law-Twister? Shall we get on down to the harness shop and you and Iron Bender can set up the details? Quite a few folks been dropping in the last few hours to see the two of you tangle. Don’t think any of them ever saw a Shorty in action before. Know I never did myself. Should be real interesting.”
He and the Hill Bluffer had already turned and begun to stroll down the village.
“Interesting’s not the word for it,” the Bluffer responded. “Seen it twice, myself, and I can tell you it’s a sight to behold…”
He continued along, chatting cheerfully while Mal rode along helplessly on Dilbian-back, his head spinning. The log buildings got closer and closer.
“Wait—” Mal said desperately, as they entered the street running down the center of the cluster of log structures. The Bluffer and One Punch both stopped. One Punch turned to gaze up at him.
“Wait?” One Punch said. “What for?”
“I—I can’t,” stammered Mal, frantically searching for an excuse, and going on talking meanwhile with the first words that came to his lips. “That is, I’ve got my own laws to think of. Shorty laws. Responsibilities. I can’t just go representing these other Shorty orphans just like that. I have to be… uh, briefed.”
“Briefed?” The Bluffer’s tongue struggled with pronunciation of the human word Mal had used.
“Yes—uh, that means I have to be given authority—like Gentle Maiden had to choose Iron Bender as her protector,” said Mal. “These Shorty orphans have to agree to choose me as their law-twister. It’s one of the Shorty freedoms—freedom to not be defended by a law-twister without your consent. With so much at stake here—I mean, not just what might happen to me, or Iron Bender, but what might happen to Clan Water Gap laws or Shorty laws—I need to consult with my clients, I mean those other Shorties I’m working for, before I enter into any—er—discussion with Gentle Maiden’s protector.”
Mal stopped speaking and waited, his heart hammering away. There was a moment of deep silence from both the Bluffer and One Punch. Then One Punch spoke to the taller Dilbian.
“Have to admit you’re right, Postman,” One Punch said, admiringly. “He sure can twist. You understand all that he was talking about, there?”
“Why, of course,” said the Bluffer. “After all, I’ve had a lot to do with these Shorties. He was saying that this isn’t just any little old hole-and-corner tangle between him and Iron Bender—this is a high-class hassle to decide the law; and it’s got to be done right. No offense, One Punch, but you, having been in the habit of getting right down to business on the spur of the moment all those years, might not have stopped to think just how important it is not to rush matters in an important case like this.”
“No offense taken, Postman,” said One Punch, easily. “Though I must say maybe it’s lucky you didn’t know me in my younger, less full-of-wisdom days. Because it seems to me we were both maybe about to rush the Law-Twister a mite.”
“Well, now,” said the Bluffer. “Leaving aside that business of my luck and all that about not knowing you when you were younger, I guess I had to admit perhaps I was a little on the rushing side, myself. Anyway, Law-Twister’s straightened us both out. So, what’s the next thing you want to do, Law-Twister?”
“Well…” said Mal. He was still thinking desperately. “This being a matter that concerns the laws governing the whole Water Gap Clan, as well as Shorty laws and the stone of Mighty Grappler, we probably ought to get everyone together. I mean we ought to talk it over. It might well turn out to be this is something that ought to be settled not by a fight but in—”
Mal had not expected the Dilbians to have a word for it; but he was wrong. His hypnotraining threw the proper Dilbian sounds up for his tongue to utter.
“—court,” he wound up.
“Court? Can’t have a court, Law-Twister,” put in the Bluffer, reprovingly. “Can’t have a Clan court without a Grandfather to decide things.”
“Too bad, in a way,” said One Punch with a sigh. “We’d all like to see a real Law-Twister Shorty at work in a real court situation, twisting and slickering around from one argument to the next. But, just as the Bluffer says, Twister, we’ve got no Grandfather yet. Won’t have until the next Clan meeting.”
“When’s that?” asked Mal, hastily.
“Couple of weeks,” said One Punch. “Be glad to wait around a couple of weeks far as all of us here’re concerned; but those Shorty orphans of Gentle Maiden’s are getting pretty hungry and even a mite thirsty. Seems they won’t eat anything she gives them; and they even don’t seem to like to drink the well water, much. Gentle figures they won’t settle down until they get it straight that they’re adopted and not going home again. So she wants you and Iron Bender to settle it right now—and, of course, since she’s a member of the Clan, the Clan backs her up on that.”
“Won’t eat or drink? Where are they?” asked Mal.
“At Gentle’s house,” said One Punch. “She’s got them locked up there so they can’t run back to that box they came down in and fly away back into the sky. Real motherly instincts in that girl, if I do say so myself who’s her real grandpa. That, and looks, too. Can’t understand why no young buck’s snapped her up before this—”
“You understand, all right, One Punch,” interrupted an incredibly deep bass voice; and there shouldered through the crowd a darkly brown-haired Dilbian, taller than any of the crowd around him. The speaker was shorter by half a head than the Hill Bluffer—the postman seemed to have the advantage in height on every other native Mal had seen—but this newcomer towered over everyone else and he was a walking mass of muscle, easily outweighing the Bluffer.
“You understand, all right,” he repeated, stopping before the Bluffer and Mal. “Folks’d laugh their heads off at any man who’d offer to take a girl as tough-minded as Gentle, to wife—that is, unless he had to. Then, maybe he’d find it was worth it. But do it on his own? Pride’s pride… Hello there, Postman. This is the Law-Twister Shorty?”
“It’s him,” said the Bluffer.
“Why he’s no bigger’n those other little Shorties,” said the deep-voiced Dilbian, peering over the Bluffer’s shoulder at Mal.
“You go thinking size is all there is to a Shorty, you’re going to be surprised,” said the Bluffer. “Along with the Streamside Terror and Bone Breaker, as I recollect. Twister, this here’s Gentle’s protector and the Clan Water Gap harnessmaker, Iron Bender.”
“Uh—pleased to meet you,” said Mal.
“Pleased to meet you, Law-Twister,” rumbled Iron Bender. “That is, I’m pleased now; and I hope I go on being pleased. I’m a plain, simple man, Law-Twister. A good day’s work, a good night’s sleep, four good meals a day, and I’m satisfied. You wouldn’t find me mixed up in fancy doings like this by choice. I’d have nothing to do with this if Gentle hadn’t named me her protector. But right’s right. She did; and I am, like it or not.”
“I know how you feel,” said Mal, hastily. “I was actually going someplace else when the Shorties here had me come see about this situation. I hadn’t planned on it at all.”
“Well, well,” said Iron Bender, deeply, “you, too, eh?”
He sighed heavily.
“That’s the way things go, nowdays, though,” he said. “A plain simple man can’t hardly do a day’s work in peace without some maiden or someone coming to him for protection. So they got you, too, eh? Well, well—life’s life, and a man can’t do much about it. You’re not a bad little Shorty at all. I’m going to be real sorry to tear your head off—which of course I’m going to do, since I figure I probably could have done the same to Bone Breaker or the Streamside Terror, if it’d ever happened to come to that. Not that I’m a boastful man; but true’s true.”