It was nearly dawn when Retief gave the whistled signal he had agreed on with Potter, then rose and walked into the camp circle. Swazey stood up. "There you are," he said. "We been wonderin' whether to go out after you."
Lemuel came forward, one eye black to the cheekbone. He held out a raw-boned hand. "Sorry I jumped you, stranger. Tell you the truth, I thought you was some kind of stool-pigeon from the CDT."
Bert came up behind Lemuel. "How do you know he ain't, Lemuel?" he said. "Maybe he—"
Lemuel floored Bert with a backward sweep of his arm. "Next cotton-picker says some embassy Johnny can cool me gets worse'n that."
"Tell me," said Retief. "How are you boys fixed for wine?"
"Wine? Mister, we been livin' on stump water for a year now. 'Dobe's fatal to the kind of bacteria it takes to ferment likker."
"Try this." Retief handed over a sqat jug. Swazey drew the cork, sniffed, drank and passed it to Lemuel.
"Mister, where'd you get that?"
"The Flap-jacks make it. Here's another question for you: Would you concede a share in this planet to the Flap-jacks in return for a peace guarantee?"
At the end of a half hour of heated debate Lemuel turned to Retief. "We'll make any reasonable deal," he said. "I guess they got as much right here as we have. I think we'd agree to a fifty-fifty split. That'd give about a hundred and fifty oases to each side."
"What would you say to keeping all the oases and giving them ............