claim the Crown as theirs and accuse him of trying to
steal it. And Dranigo and Salvadro--they seemed like good men, but
they might see this as the only way to get the Crown for
themselves.... He would have to settle the affair for himself, before
the men reached Long Valley town.

If he could do it here, it would save him and Brave the toil and
danger of climbing the Ice-Father. But could he? They had two rifles,
one an autoloader, and they had in all likelihood three negatron
pistols. After the single shot of the big rifle was fired, he had only
a knife and a hatchet and the spiked and pickaxed ice-staff, and
Brave. One of the thieves would kill him before he and Brave killed
all of them, and then the Crown would be lost. He dropped into sleep,
still thinking of what to do.

He climbed the mound of the ancient building again in the morning, and
looked long and carefully at the face of the Ice-Father. It would take
the thieves the whole day to reach that place where the two tongues of
the glacier split apart, the easiest spot to climb. They would not try
to climb that evening; Vahr, who knew the most about it, would be the
last to advise such a risk. He was sure that by going up at the
nearest point he could get to the top of the Ice-Father before dark,
and drag Brave up after him. It would be a fearful climb, and he would
have most of a day's journey after that to reach the head of the long
ravine up which the thieves would come, but when they came up, he
could be there waiting for them. He knew what the old rifle could do,
to an inch, and there were places where the thieves would be coming up
where he could stay out of blaster-range and pick them all off, even
with a single-loader.

He knew about negatron pistols, too. They shot little bullets of
energy; they were very fast, and did not drop, like a real bullet, so
that no judgment of range was needed. But the energy died quickly; the
negatrons lived only long enough to go five hundred paces and no more.
At eight hundred, he could hit a man easily. He almost felt himself
pitying Vahr Farg's son and his companions.

When he reached the tumble of rocks that had been dragged along with
and pushed out from the Ice-Father, he stopped and made up a
pack--sleeping robes, all his cartridges, as much pemmican as he could
carry, and the bag of trade-tokens. If the chase took him to Long
Valley Town, he would need money. He also coiled about his waist a
long rawhide climbi