"Oh hell, well, take the prize", he laughed. "You hear that, Thun-derbucket? I'm offering up my poor winnings to our newcomer".
"Don't you always get thrown out after half an hour anyway, Riffraff?" Thunderbird called back. "But duly noted".
"Give me a ride in your whirlybird sometime, eh?" Rafferty said.
"Gladly", Valentine replied. "Interested in flight?"
"No. I want to take a crap over downtown Seattle from a whizzing great height".
"Spoken like a patriot", one of the losing Bears commented.
* * *
Valentine, with a routine established, felt the days fly by while tension mounted at the warren. Late one afternoon he watched an Action Group set out at the next full moon. Various hidden, revetment-shielded doors opened and belched men and machinery from the depths of the caverns. Armored cars led a long line of pickup trucks towing oversized horse trailers behind, followed by a few military trucks hauling light artillery.
Valentine watched, leaning on the empty mount of a machine-gun nest high on the ridgeline. He'd volunteered to go, but Thunderbird had declined. "It'll be a tough one. We want to start you out on something easier. Besides, I'm setting up something for you and your whirlybird".
So he had to watch.
"Make the poor dumb bastards die for their country!" a legless Bear who manned a communications relay shouted as they passed. His voice boomed over the sound of the engines.
A long arm and hand reached out from the cave mouth and patted him on the back. Long, scraggly hair dripped from it like Spanish moss.
A captive? The Lifeweaver?
Valentine hopped down the shaft leading up to the machine-gun nest, ignoring the iron rungs, and hurried down to the "Gathering Deck", as the extensive level at the valley floor was called. He took a wrong turn, and had to retrace his steps, and arrived at the right cave mouth only as the legless Bear wheeled himself back into the communication center at the cave mouth.
"Excuse me". Valentine fumbled the man's name. He turned and read the man's name tag. "Pop-Tart?"
"Yeeeees?" he said, holding a headset to his ear.
"I was above and saw someone pat you on the shoulder. Funny-looking arm".
"That's the old hairy-ass himself. Came up to see the guys off".
"I've just never met him".
"How'd you rate that uniform?"
"Import from Southern Command".
He put down the headset and looked at the gauges on the master radio relay. "Hairy-ass is the only one we got left. Our others disappeared after the big raid up Interstate Pass in 'sixty-one, where I earned these wheels. He lurks under a blanket of Bears ever since".
One Lifeweaver left. And from the sound of it, even he's not all there.
"Still like to meet him".
"Talk it over with T-bird when he gets back", Pop-Tart advised.
"Hey, Pops", an assistant called from the radio.
" 'Scuse me", Pop-Tart said.
Valentine went down to the reading room to await the Action Group's return.
* * *
They came back, almost unscarred. They'd lost one Bear to a booby trap, and another to "overexertion" (Valentine had once heard a story in Arkansas about a Bear dropping dead as he and his teammates worked themselves into a battle frenzy over a Bearfire) and still more suffered wounds and contusions Bear metabolisms would soon overcome. Valentine watched them eat before they even cleaned up.