The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

Deklay were to be classed together—or had been when he was last in the rancheria. On Buck’s stairway from the past, both had halted more than halfway down. Nolan was a quiet man who seldom spoke, and whose opinion Travis could not foretell. Tsoay would back Buck.
    Probably such a divided party was the best Travis could have hoped to gather. A delegation composed entirely of those who were ready to leave the past of the Redax—a collection of Bucks and Jil-Lees—was outside the bounds of possibility. But Travis was none too happy to have Deklay in on this.
    Travis dismounted, letting the pony push forward by himself to dip nose into the pool.
    “This is,” Travis pointed politely with his chin—“Menlik, one who talks with spirits.… Hulagur, who is son to a chief…and Kaydessa, who is daughter to a chief. They are of the horse people of the north.” He made the introduction carefully in English.
    Then he turned to the Tatars. “Buck, Deklay, Nolan, Manulito, Tsoay,” he named them all, “these stand to listen, and to speak for the Apaches.”
    But sometime later when the two parties sat facing each other, he wondered whether a common decision could come from the clansmen on his side of that irregular circle. Deklay’s expression was closed; he had even edged a short way back, as if he had no desire to approach the strangers. And Travis read into every line of Deklay’s body his distrust and antagonism.
    He himself began to speak, retelling his adventures since they had followed Kaydessa’s trail, sketching in the situation at the Tatar-Mongol settlement as he had learned it from her and from Menlik. He was careful to speak in English so that the Tatars could hear all he was reporting to his own kind. And the Apaches listened blank-faced, though Tsoay must already have reported much of this. When Travis was done it was Deklay who asked a question:
    “What have we to do with these people?”
    “There is this—” Travis chose his words carefully, thinking of what might move a warrior still conditioned to riding with the raiders of a hundred years earlier, “the Pinda-lick-o-yi (whom we call ‘Reds,’) are never willing to live side by side with any who are not of their mind. And they have weapons such as make our bow cords bits of rotten string, our knives slivers of rust. They do not kill; they enslave. And when they discover that we live, then they will come against us—”
    Deklay’s lips moved in a wolf grin. “This is a large land, and we know how to use it. The Pinda-lick-o-yi will not find us—”
    “With their eyes maybe not,” Travis replied. “With their machines—that is another matter.”
    “Machines!” Deklay spat. “Always these machines…Is that all you can talk about? It would seem that you are bewitched by these machines, which we have not seen—none of us!”
    “It was a machine which brought you here,” Buck observed. “Go you back and look upon the spaceship and remember, Deklay. The knowledge of the Pinda-lick-o-yi is greater than ours when it deals with metal and wire and things which can be made with both. Machines brought us along the road of the stars, and there is no tracker in the clan who could hope to do the same. But now I have this to ask: Does our brother have a plan?”
    “Those who are Reds,” Travis answered slowly, “they do not number many. But more may later come from our own world. Have you heard of such arriving?” he asked Menlik.
    “Not so, but we are not told much. We live apart and no one of us goes to the ship unless he is summoned. For they have weapons to guard them, or long since they would have been dead. It is not proper for a man to eat from the pot, ride in the wind, sleep easy under the same sky with him who has slain his brother.”
    “They have then killed among your people?”
    “They have killed,” Menlik returned briefly.
    Kaydessa stirred and muttered a word or two to her brother. Hulagur’s head came up, and he exploded into violent speech.
    “What does he say?” Deklay demanded.
    The girl replied: “He speaks of our father who aided in the escape of three and so afterward was slain by the leader as a lesson to us—since he was our ‘white beard,’ the Khan.”
    “We have taken the oath in blood—under the Wolf Head Standard—that they will also die,” Menlik added. “But first we must shake them out of their ship-shell.”
    “That is the problem,” Travis elaborated for the benefit of his