Spacepaw by Gordon R. Dickson Page A

of bucks from tangling, in spite of all their being primed and hardly able to wait to do it!”

Chapter 9
    “You mean—?” the Bluffer stared down at More Jam. “In spite of both of you being in the same place and eager to go, something happened to keep the fight from coming off?”
    “Well, yes. In fact a couple of things happened …” said More Jam, rubbing his nose thoughtfully. “The place One Man and I happened to run into each other was a place called Shale River Ford—”
    “I know it. Good day’s walk from here,” said the Bluffer promptly.
    “Yes, I guess you would know it, Postman,” said More Jam. “Well, there was a sort of celebration of some kind going on when we both landed there at the same time—I forget what it was. But the minute the folk there saw One Man and I had run into each other, at last, they asked us to put off our little bout until the next day. So they could get word out to all their friends and kin to come watch. Well, now, we couldn’t be so impolite as to say no—but what am I thinking about?”
    More Jam broke off suddenly in mid-sentence, his gaze returning to Flat Fingers and the Bluffer.
    “Here I am yarning away like the old dodder-head I am,” said More Jam, “never thinking you two men must have come over here to talk some kind of important business with Pick-and-Shovel. Well, I won’t hold you up a moment longer. You go right ahead with your business and I’ll hold my story for another day.”
    “No business. That is, nothing that can’t wait,” broke in the blacksmith hastily. “Go on with the story. I never heard it before.”
    “Well, maybe I’ve got a duty to let everyone know about what happened, at that,” said More Jam thoughtfully. “Though, as I say, I just wandered down here to tell it to Pick-and-Shovel, and actually it’s more for him than for telling back up in the mountains anyway. I was just saying … where was I?”
    “The Shale River Forders had asked you and One Man to hold off the fight until the next day,” prompted the Hill Bluffer.
    “Oh, yes … well, as I said earlier, it was really a couple of things that happened to keep us from tangling.” More Jam’s eyes drifted around to hold Bill’s strangely once more. “One to each of us, you might say. You see, as long as we had to wait until the next day, there was no reason we shouldn’t have a party the night before. So the Shale River Ford people got a rousing time going. Well, after a bit, One Man and I went for a walk outside, so we could have a chance to hear each other talk. You know how it is when you meet somebody in the same line of business, so to speak …”
    More Jam glanced at Flat Fingers and the Hill Bluffer. The blacksmith and postman nodded with the seriousness of dedicated professionals, each in their own lines of business.
    “Happened, we had quite a talk,” continued More Jam. “I might say we even got to know each other pretty well. We finally split up and headed for a good night’s rest, each of us looking forward to the fight the next morning, of course.”
    “Of course,” rumbled Flat Fingers.
    “But then it happened,” said More Jam. He gazed sadly at the Bluffer and at Flat Fingers, and then, unaccountably, his eyes wandered slowly back again to meet the eyes of Bill.
    “It?” demanded the Bluffer.
    “Would you believe it,” demanded More Jam, staring at Bill, “after I’d left One Man—it was a pitch-black night out, of course—on the way back to the Inn, I bumped into someone who told me that my maternal grandmother had just died back down here at Muddy Nose?”
    “Your grandmother?” began Flat Fingers, wrinkling his nose in puzzlement. “But I thought—”
    “Well, of course,” went on More Jam smoothly, ignoring the blacksmith and keeping his gaze on Bill, “no ordinary person would ever have thought of trying to get from where I was all the way back to Muddy Nose to pay my last respects to my grandmother, and still make