Well, I could not make him understand this query. He did not seem to be able to visualize the distant future in the slightest degree. There had always been the tubes, and so far as he knew, there always would be the tubes.
I gave it up, and privately decided that I would make him and Dy-veece, and some of the other males, learn the rudiments of archery, whether they liked it or not.
We tramped on, and the Fearful Forest depressed us with its grim dark trees and lack of sunlight, until at last we spoke no more to each other, but traveled as silently as the two great dogwolves. And so it was that we came upon Halfspoor where he sat in a glade feeding on the body of a jackal-rat, and did not warn him of our coming until we stood face to face with him across some twenty paces of the rotting carpet of vegetation.
Halfspoor gazed at us, and we, paralyzed, gazed upon Halfspoor; and he gave a grunt and a bellow, and leaping to his hind feet he came charging down at us.
I sent one arrow into his chest before I turned to dash back down the trail. I had it in mind to get amongst the trees before I fought, for here there was nowhere to dodge, and dodging was my only defense against the giant brute. Dy-lee was fumbling at his side, and the dogwolves were leaping toward the knifetooth bear. I shouted to Dy-lee to seek cover, though I knew he would not understand the words. I saw a man in pelts of black and white moving furtively from the path some hundred feet behind us, and I knew that a guardian had been following us eastward. Then something took me across the shoulder blades with a slap like a tree falling, and I was hurled six times my own length into a patch of stabbing briers.
Even as I hit I was scrambling sideways, intent on reaching the other side of the nearest tree; a hundred thorns were ripping my flesh, and my back felt as though it were half broken. My ears were throbbing, I supposed from the jolt of Halfspoor's blow. I tore myself out of the briers, leaped with a pounce like a cave cat's across an open space and took up a position of belligerent waiting behind a lichen-wrapped trunk.
Halfspoor, had he followed me up at once, could have slashed me apart before ever I got out of the clutch of the thorn bushes. He had stopped, however, on the spot where he had slapped me, and was hovering over Dy-lee making angry swipes at him. I thought for a moment that Dy-lee was dead or unconscious, for he was huddled down in a dark mass at the bear's feet. The dogwolves were harrying Halfspoor, one snapping at his legs, the other leaping to get at his throat. I made a grab over my shoulder and discovered that the quiver was empty. My arrows had been scattered on the ground when I flew into the briers.
As the bear was not even looking my way, I ran into the open to get a shaft or two. I would have attacked him with my hatchet, but since the vital spots of his skull and neck were a good twelve feet off the ground, it would have been a futile and stupid gesture.
An arrow discovered, I drew back the cord and sank another shaft in the bear's massive chest. Even as I shot I realized that something was singular indeed. Although Halfspoor towered over Dy-lee, who crouched unprotected on the earth, and though the bruin was cuffing in his direction, yet the blows were missing Dy-lee by several feet at the least. All that the bear need do was take one step forward on those gigantic pads and bend his back a trifle ... and there would be no more Dy-lee. But that step and that bend he did not seem able to accomplish! Like a fox caught in a trap, he swayed and screamed his fury, but did not touch my friend Dy-lee.