The complete lack of feeling in his tone infuriated me. "You
cold-blooded bastard! I happen to be a good part Indian myself."
He eyed me without expression but with a chill glitter to his eyes.
"Aye. I ain't forgettin' thet," he said, and spat.
I took a slow breath and waited until I could trust my voice. "I'm
going out there," I said quietly. "Cover me with your gun. But don't
use it _unless_ it's the only thing left to do. I don't want that
trigger pulled until the last possible second. They may grab me, they
may even knock me around a little. That I can take. But don't try to
interfere until there's no other way out. Is that clear?"
"Aye."
I turned away from him. All I had to do now was step out from behind
that tree and walk across the open ground. Each of my feet suddenly
weighed a ton. Two steps into that clearing and the funeral could be
Monday. Instinctively my hand crawled toward the .38 automatic hidden
in my coveralls. It never got that far. Suicide was so final.
Wetzel's firm young mouth held an almost invisible sneer. Deliberately
I took out a cigarette, lighted it with an airy gesture and a match,
dragged deeply on it twice and threw it away. I said, "Lay off that
gun like I told you," and walked slowly out into the clearing.
* * * * *
It got a rise out of them, all right. They were on their feet, arrows
notched, before I had traveled three feet. I never even hesitated.
Once I had gone this far, the bluff had to be carried all the way out.
I kept my spine stiff, my head erect, my hands conspicuously empty at
my sides. If my nerves were jumping I was the only one who knew about
it.
It caught them just a shade off-balance, which was all I had hoped
for. The one-sidedness of six drawn bows against one unimpressive and
unarmed man eventually registered and the flint tips wavered, then
turned aside.
The tallest of the braves--a lean number the color of an old
penny--tossed his bow aside and deliberately stepped squarely in my
path. There was an insolent arrogance in every line of his body--a
body that topped my six feet a full three inches.
I said, "Hi-yo, Silver," and put my hip into his naked belly and
grabbed his arm and threw him over my shoulder. He hit face first two
yards away and plowed up a furrow of grass, flopped around a little,
then lay still.
Nobody else moved, except me. I started for the spaceship again, not
hurrying and not crawling, head still up, spine still stiff, eyes
straight ahead. Feet slithered in the grass behind me and the sound
made the skin between my shoulder blades twitch like an aching tooth.
Every instinct that had anything to do with self-preservation was
fighting to make me turn around.
That was when the robots moved. They seemed to come alive at the same
instant, metal clanged on metal as they strode stiffly down the ramp
to meet me. Violence hung over them as it hangs over a Patton tank.
Every step toward them was like pulling my foot out of quicksand. Only
twelve kinds of a cretin would have gone on when faced with anything
like this. I went on. I couldn't do anything else. Once you show an
Indian a molecule of cowardice, you're twelve lines on the obituary
page.
The space between us was down to a narrow ribbon of grass by this
time. Four--three more steps and I would _have_ to stop. Nobody could
push aside a couple of tons of animated steel. Metal arms were lifting
slowly, preparing to close on me. Inside me a silent voice screamed a
prayer for Wetzel to pull that trigger and pump a bullet into one of
those round, staring, faceted eyes....
The robots seemed to go dead. They hung there motionless, arms lifted,
each with a massive foot caught in midstride.
What had stopped them at the last possible second I had no way of
telling. All I did know was a sudden release of tension that left me
with just enough strength to keep my feet moving.