Cat and Mouse Page 5
the tangle of lesser monsters sortedthemselves out and a wave of stingers came boiling out at him.
Ed dropped the flashlight, gave two mighty pumps of the bug gun, andjumped clear of the entrance. For a moment, the den mouth boiled withstingers, hissing and bucking in agony. Ed sprayed them heavily again,snatched up his rifle, and ran, looking back over his shoulder. Thestingers showed no inclination to follow, though, the tobacco juiceseemed to be keeping them well occupied for the moment.
Halfway home, Ed had to stop and rest for a moment while he took a spellof shuddering and gagging as a sudden picture of the slimy gullet cameinto his mind, with Ed Brown laying where the rabbit had been, meltingdown into a stinking soup of bones and gobbets of flesh.
When he got to the hole, his arrangement of tin cans, traps, and tobaccojuice no longer looked nearly as secure as it had. He got his ax and cuttwo stout posts, framing the hole; built a stout slab door and hung itfrom them. Then he drove stakes close together at the threshold, to foilany attempts to dig under, and trimmed a sill tight to the door.
His feeling in this matter, as it happened, was sound.
The Harn was beginning to develop a pretty strong dislike for Ed Brown.Three of its stinging units were dead, and most of the rest were in poorshape, thanks to the tobacco spray. It had got a little whiff of thestuff itself, not enough to do any serious damage ordinarily, but rightnow, so close to swarming time--
Ed was going to have to go.
So far, in this world, the Harn had needed only the three basic types ofmobile units. There were other standard types, however, for dealing withmore complicated situations. As it happened, a couple of carrier embryoswere at just about the right stage. With a little forcing, they could bebrought on in not too long a time. Meanwhile, the Harn would do what itcould with the material available.
When Ed came through the next day to set his snares, the Harn wasprepared to test his snakeproof pants. They held, which wasdisconcerting to the Harn, but it was a hard creature to convince, oncethoroughly aroused. Ed was not too sure of how well the pants wouldstand up to persistent assault himself. After the third ambush, he tookto spraying suspicious looking spots with tobacco juice. He shot twomore stingers in this way, but it slowed him up quite a bit. It took himall day to make four sets.
In the next three days he made a dozen sets and caught two carriers.Then, the fourth day, as he adjusted a snare, a seeming root suddenlycame to life and slashed at his hand. He was wearing gloves to keep hisscent from the snares, and the fang caught the glove and just grazed theball of his left thumb. The hatchet he had been using to cut a togglewas lying by his knee. He snatched it up and chopped the stinger beforeit could strike again, then yanked off the glove and looked at his hand.A thin scratch, beaded with drops of blood, showed on the flesh.Unhesitatingly, he drew the razor edge of the hatchet across it, suckedand spat, sucked and spat again and again. Then he started for home.
He barely made it. By the time he got to the hole, he was a very sickman. He latched the door, stumbled into the cabin and fell on the bed.
It was several days before he was able to be about again, his hand stillpartly paralyzed.
During that time, the situation changed. The Harn took the offensive.
Ed's first notice of this was a rhythmic crashing outside the cabin. Hemanaged to crawl to where he could see the gate he had built to blockthe hole into the other world. It was shaking from repeated batteringsfrom the other side. Dragging his rifle with his good hand, he scrabbleddown to where he could see through the chinks in the slab door. Two ofthe carrier units were there, taking turns slamming their full weightagainst it. He had built that gate skookum, but not to take somethinglike that.
He noted carefully where they were hitting it, then backed off twentyfeet and laid the .450 across a log. He let them hit the door twice moreto get the timing before he loosed off a shot, at the moment of impact.The battering stopped abruptly, and through the chinks he could see abulk piled against the gate.
For a while there was no more action. Then, after a few tentative buttsat the door, the battering started again. This time, Ed wasn't so lucky.The battering stopped when he fired, but he got an impression that thecarrier ran off. He thought he might have hit it, but not mortally.
In an hour or so the Harn was back, and it kept coming back. Ed began toworry about his ammunition, which was not unlimited. Ordinarily, two orthree boxes lasted him through the winter. He got his .30-06, for whichhe had a sugar sack full of military ammunition. The light full-patchstuff did not have the discouraging effect of the .450, though, and hehad to shoot a lot oftener.
Another thing, he wasn't getting any rest, which was bad in his alreadyweakened condition. Every time he dozed off the battering would startagain, and he would have to wake up and snap a few shots through thedoor. He held pretty much on one spot, not wanting to shoot the door topieces, but the Harn noticed this, and started hitting the door in otherplaces.
The second day of the attack, the door came down. It had been prettyshaky for some time, and Ed had got the cabin ready for a siege, fillingbutter kegs with water and nailing up the windows. As the Harn pouredthrough, he shot several and then broke for the cabin. A carrier ran athim full tilt, bent on bowling him over. Once off his feet, he wouldhave been easy meat for one of the stingers. He sidestepped, swung hisshotgun up in one hand--he had kept it handy for the close fighting--andblew the carrier's spine in half. He had to kick it aside to slam thecabin door.
For a few minutes, then, things were pretty hectic. Ed went from one toanother of the loopholes he had cut, blasting first with the shotgun asthe Harn crowded around, then using the .30 as they grew more cautious.
* * * * *
After the first rush, it was obvious to the Harn that the cabin wasgoing to be a tough nut to crack. On the other hand, there was no rushabout it either. Necessarily, it had let its hunting go the past severaldays while it concentrated on Ed. It was pretty hungry, and it was inrich pickings now--Ed had always kept from disturbing game close to thecabin, partly because he liked to see it around, and partly because hehad an idea that some day he might be in a fix where he couldn't travelvery well, and would want meat close to hand. The Harn felt no suchcompunctions. The stinging units spread through the woods, and shortly asteady procession of loaded carriers began to stream back through thehole. Ed picked off the first few, but then the Harn found it couldroute them up the river trail in such a way that he got only a glimpseas they flashed through the hole. After that he did not hit very many.
Ed stopped shooting. He was getting short on ammunition for the .30 now,too. He counted up. There were eighteen rounds for the .450, half a boxof 220 grain soft point for the .30 plus about the same amount ofmilitary stuff, and a handful of shotgun shells. Of course, there wasstill the .30 Luger with a couple of boxes, and the .22; but they werenot much account for this kind of work.
He looked at the cabin door. It was stout, built of hewed three-inchslabs, but it wouldn't last forever against the kind of beating the gatehad got. Even if it did, he was going to run out of water eventually.
Ed thought about that for a while, sitting at the table staring at thelittle pile of cartridges. He was going to be run out of here sooner orlater, he might as well pick his own time, and now seemed about as goodas any, while the Harn was busy exploring and hunting.
He sighed and got up to rummage around the cabin. The snakeproof pantshad done real good, but he did not trust them entirely. There was somesheet iron laid over the ceiling joists, which he had brought up to makenew stoves for his line camps. He got this down and cut it into smallpieces. Around the edges he drilled a number of small holes. Then he gotout his mending gear and began sewing the plates, in an overlappingpattern, to the legs of the snakeproof pants and to an old pair ofmoccasins. When he finished, he was pretty well armored as far as hiscrotch. It was an awkward outfit to move around in, but as long as hewas able to stay on his feet, he figured he would be reasonably secur
efrom the stingers. As for the bigger ones, he would just have to dependon seeing them first, and the .450.
Next, he needed some gasoline. The fuel cache was under a big spruce,about twenty yards from the door. He made the round of his loopholes.There were no Harn in sight, they were apparently ignoring him for now.He slipped out the door, closing it securely behind him, and started forthe cache.
As he stepped out, a stinger came from under the sill log and lashed athis foot. He killed it with the ax beside the door, saving a cartridge,and went on, walking fairly fast but planting his feet carefully, alittle awkward in his armor. He picked up a five-gallon can of gas, aquart of motor oil, and the twenty feet of garden hose he used forsiphoning gas down the bank to the boat. On the way back, anotherstinger hit him. He kicked it aside, not wanting to set down his load,and it came at him again and again. Just outside the door, he finallycaught it under a heel and methodically trampled it to death. Then hesnatched open the door, tossed the stuff inside, and pulled it quicklyshut