2
"You'd better pull yourself together, Howard."
"I'm all right, John."
"Well, you'd better not drink any more of that stuff."
"I'm okay, I tell you. I'm not drunk, I can't get drunk: I've tried. Right now I haven't even a little buzz on."
"Listen, Howard, use your head. Lord knows I'm glad to have you stay around here as long as you like, but don't you think you ought to see your father?"
"My father? Good God, I'd forgotten about him! I am a louse, John. A dirty louse. The dirtiest louse that ever—"
"Here, none of that, my boy. Now drink this; it'll clear your head. And get your suit on.
"Lloyd! Hey, Lloyd! Fetch Sir Howard's armor. No, you idiot, I don't care if you haven't finished shining it. Get it!"
Sir Howard spoke hesitantly; he wasn't sure how his father would take his proposal. He wasn't sure himself it was quite the right thing to do. But the old man's reaction surprised him. "Yes," he said in his tired voice, "I think that's a good idea. Get away from here for a few months. When I'm gone you'll be duke, now, and you won't have many chances to go gallivanting. So you ought to make the most of what you have. And you've never seen much of the country except between here and New York. Travel's broadening, they say. Don't worry about me; I have enough to do to keep two men busy.
"I'll ask just one thing, and that is that you don't go joining up in any more of these local wars. It's you I've always worried about, not Frank, and I don't want any more of that. I don't care how good the pay is. I know you're a mercenary young rascal; I like that, because I don't have to worry about your bankrupting the duchy. But if you really want to make money, you can try your hand at running the Poughkeepsie Shoe Co. when you get back."
Thus it came about that Sir Howard again found himself riding north, and to his own mild surprise doing some heavy thinking. Luckily the hoppers hadn't made much red tape about the travel permit. But he knew they'd keep an eye on him. Even though he hadn't done anything, he'd be on their suspicious list because of his brother. He'd have to be careful.
Jogging along, you had plenty of time to think. He knew he had the reputation of being simply a large, energetic, and rather empty-headed young man with a taste for action. It was time he put something in that head, if only because of the prospect of inheriting the duchy.
He felt that something must be wrong with his picture of the world. In it the burning of people for scientific research was just. But he didn't feel that Frank's death had been just. In it, whatever the hoppers said was right, because God had set them over Man. It was right that he, Howard van Slyck, should salute the hoppers. Didn't the commoners have to salute him in return? That made it fair all around. He was bound to obey the hoppers; the commoners were bound to obey him. It was all explained to you in school. The hoppers likewise were under obligation to God to command him, and he the commoners. Again, perfectly fair.
Only there must be something wrong with it. He couldn't see any flaw in the reasoning he'd been taught; it all fitted together like a suit of Chrysler super-heavy silico-manganese steel plate. But there must be a flaw somewhere. If he traveled, and kept his eyes open, and asked questions, maybe he could find it. Perhaps somebody had a book that would shed light on the question. The only books he'd come across were either fairy tales about the daring deeds of dauntless knights, which bored him, or simple texts on how to run a savings bank or assemble a cream separator.
He might even learn to associate with commoners and find out how they looked at things. Sir Howard was not, considering his background, especially class conscious; the commoners were all right, and some were even good fellows, if you didn't let them get too familiar or think they were as good as you. What he had in mind was, for one of his class, a radical departure from the norm.
He squirmed in his lobster shell and wished he could scratch through the plate. Damn, he must have picked up some bugs at Poughkeepsie Manor, free of vermin though it was normally kept. That was the hoppers' fault.
It began to rain; one of those vigorous York State spring rains that might last an hour or a week. Sir Howard got out his poncho and put his head through the slit in the middle. He didn't worry about his plate, because it had been well vaselined. But the rain, which was coming down really hard, was a nuisance. With his visor up it spattered against his face; and with it down, he had to wipe the lucite constantly to see where he was going. Below the poncho, the water worked into his leg joints and made his legs feel cold and clammy. Paul Jones didn't like it, either; he plodded along with his head drooping, breaking into periodic trots only with reluctance.
Sir Howard was not in the best of humors when, an hour later, the rain slackened to a misty drizzle through which the far shore of the Hudson could barely be made out. He was approaching the Rip van Winkle Bridge when somebody on a horse in front of him yelled "Hey!"
Sir Howard thought he wanted more room. But the strange rider sat where he was and shouted: "Thought I'd skip the country, didn'tcha? Well, I been laying for you, and now you're gonna get yours!"
From his costume the man was obviously a foreigner. His legs were incased in some sort of leather trousers with a wide flap on each leg. "What the hell do you mean?" answered the knight.
"You know what I mean, you yellow-bellied bastitch. You gonna fight like a man, or do I have to take your breeches down and paddle you?"
Sir Howard was too cold and wet and bebugged to carry on this lunatic argument, especially as he could see the town of Catskill—where there would be fires and whiskey—across the river. "Okay, foreigner, you asked for it. Have at you, base-born!" The lance came out of its boot and was lowered to horizontal. The gelding's hoofs thundered on the asphalt.
The stranger had thrown his sheepskin jacket into the ditch, revealing a shirt of chain, and sent his wide-brimmed hut scaling after it, showing a steel skullcap. Sir Howard, slamming down his visor, wondered what form of attack he was going to use; he hadn't drawn the curved saber that clunked from his saddle. With that light horse he'd probably try to dodge the lance point at the last minute—
The light horse dodged; the knight swung his lance; the dodge had been a feint and the foreigner was safely past his point on his left side. Sir Howard had a fleeting glimpse of a long loop of rope whirling about the man's head, and then something caught him around the neck. The world whirled, and the asphalt came up and hit him with a terrific clatter.
To get up in full armor, you had to be on your stomach und work your knees up under you. He rolled over and started to scramble up—and was jerked headlong. The stranger had twisted his rope around a projection on his saddle. The horse kept the rope taut; every time the knight got to his knees it took a step or two and pulled him down again. When he was down he couldn't see what was happening. Something caught his sword arm before he had a chance to get his weapon out. Rolling, he saw that the stranger had thrown another noose around his arm. And down this second rope loops came snaking to bind his other arm, his legs, his neck, until he was trussed like a fawn.
"Now," said the foreigner, coming toward him with a hunting knife in his hand, "let's see how you get into one of these stovepipe suits—" He pushed the visor up and gasped. "Sa-a-ay, you ain't the guy at all!"
"What guy?" snarled Sir Howard.
"The guy what ducked me in the horse trough. Big guy named Baker, over in Catskill. Your suit's like his, and you ride the same kind of critter. I thought sure it was him; I couldn't see your face with the helmet on in this bad light. It's all a mistake; I'm sure sorry as all hell, mister. You won't be mad if I let you up, will you?"
Sir Howard conceded that he wouldn't be mad; the fact was that with his anger at his ignominious overthrow by this wild foreigner's unfair fighting methods he had mixed a grudging admiration for the man's skill and a great curiosity as to how it had been accomplished.
The stranger was a lean person with straw-colored hair, some years older than Sir Howard. As he undid the rope he explained: "My name's Haas; Lyman Haas. I come from out Wyoming way; you know, the Far West. Most folks around here never heard of Wyoming. I was having a quiet drink in Catskill last night at Lukas's Bar and Grill, and this here Baker comes up and picks an argument. I'm a peaceable man, but they's some things I don't like. Anyway, when it came to the punch, this Baker and two of his friends jump me, and they ducked me in the horse trough, like I told you. I see now why I mistook you for him: you had your trade-mark covered up under that poncho. His is a fox's head. This'll be a lesson to me never to kill nobody again before I'm sure who he is. I hope I didn't dent your nice suit on the pavement."
"That's all right. A few dents more or less won't matter to this old suit. It's partly my fault, too. I should have thought of the poncho."
Haas was staring at the Van Slyck trade-mark and moving his lips. "Give . . . 'em . . . the . . . works," he read slowly. "What's it mean?"
"That's an expression they used a long time ago, meaning 'Hit them with all you've got,' or something like that. Say, Mr. Haas, I'd like to get somewhere where I can dry out. And I wouldn't mind a drink. Can you recommend a place in Catskill?"
"Sure; I know a good place. And a drink wouldn't hurt either of us."
"Fine, I've also got to buy some insect powder. And when that's been attended to, perhaps we can do something about your Mr. Baker."
The next morning the good citizens of Catskill were astonished to see the person of Squire Baker, naked and painted in an obscene manner, dangling by his wrists and ankles from a lamppost near the main intersection. As he was quite high up and had been efficiently gagged, he was not noticed until broad daylight. Baker never lived the incident down; a few months later he left Catskill and shipped on a schooner in the chicle-and-banana trade to Central America.