Lacy sat equally quiet. He had had his reverses often before. "May I try to persuade Your Eminence otherwise, over the next few days or years?" he asked.

"You may not. I have too much else to occupy my mind, and too damnably little time left for it."

Richelieu's manner mildened. "Be at ease," he said with half a smile. "You shall depart freely.

Caution enjoins me to have you arrested and garroted within this hour. Either you are a charlatan and deserve it or a mortal danger and require it. However, I deem you a sensible man who will withdraw to his obscurity. And I am grateful to you for a fascinating glimpse of—what is best left alone. Could I have my wish, you would stay a while and we would talk at length. But that would be risky to me and unkind to you. So let us store this afternoon, not among our memories, but among our fantasies."

Lacy sat silent for a bit, until he drew breath and an-

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swered, "Your Eminence is generous. How can you tell I won't betray your trust and seek elsewhere?"

Richelieu chuckled. "Where else? You have called me unique. The queen of Sweden has a penchant for curious characters, true. She is still a minor, though, and when she does take power, well, everything I know about her makes me warn you most sincerely to stay away. You are already aware of the hazards in any other country that matters."

He bridged his fingers. "In all events," he continued, didactic, "your scheme was poor from the beginning, and my advice is that you abandon it forever. You have seen much history; but how much of it have you beenl I suspect that I, in my brief decades, have learned lessons in which your nose was never nibbed.

"Go home. Then, I strongly suggest, make provision for your children and disappear with your friend. Take up a new life, perhaps in the New World. Remove yourself, and me, from temptation, remembering what my temptation is. For you dream a fool's dream."

"Why?" Lacy croaked.

"Have you not guessed? Really, I am disappointed in you. Hope has triumphed over experience. Hark back. Remember how kings have kept wild animals in cages—and freaks at court. Oh, if I accepted you I might be honest in my intentions, and Mazarin might be after me; but what of young Louis XIV

when he comes to his majority? What of any king, any government? The exceptions are few and fleeting. Even if you immortals were a race of philosophers who also understood how to rule me—do you suppose those who do rule would or could share power with you? And you have admitted you are only extraordinary in your lifespans. What can you become but animals in the royal menagerie, endlessly watched by the secret police and disposed of if ever you become inconveniently articulate? No, keep your freedom, whatever it costs you.

"You begged me to think about your proposal. I tell you to go and think about my counsel."

The clock ticked, the wind blew, the river flowed.

From down in his throat, Lacy asked, "Is this Your Eminence's last word?"

"It is," Richelieu told him.

Lacy rose. "Best I leave."

Richelieu's lips contorted. "I do wish I had more time to give you," he said, "and myself."

Lacy approached. Richelieu extended his right hand. Lacy bowed and kissed it. Straightening, he said, "Your Eminence is as great a man as I have ever met."

"Then God have mercy on humankind," Richelieu replied.

"I shall never forget you."

"I will bear that in mind for as long as is granted me. Farewell, wanderer."

Lacy went to the door and knocked. A guard opened it. Richelieu signalled him to let the man by and close it again. Thereupon he sat with his thoughts. The sunlight lengthened. The kitten woke, scrambled down his robe, and frisked off in its own life.

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XII

The Last Medicine

OVER THE plain from the north the young men came a-gal-lop. The haste and rhythm of it were like the ripples that went through the grass beneath the wind. Sunflowers here and there swayed the same, lofty, petals as hot yellow as the light pouring across the world. Land and sky reached both unbounded, green seemed to meet blue but that was only at the edge of sight, distance went on and on farther than dreams could fly, A hawk rode the airflows, dipping and soaring, his wings twin flames. A flight of marshfowl lifted, so many that they darkened their quarter of heaven.

Children set to keep crows out of the fields were first to see the young men. The oldest boy among them ran back to the village, filled with importance; for Deathless had ordered that he be told of the return. Yet when the boy had passed inside the stockade and was among the houses, his courage faltered. Who was he to speak to the mightiest of all shamans? Dared he risk interrupting a spell or a vision? Women at their work saw him stand forlorn. One hailed him, "Oh6, Little Hare, what is in your heart?" But they were only women, the old men he glimpsed were only old men, and surely this was a thing of terrible power if Deathless cared so much about it.

The boy gulped and made for a certain house. Its dun sod loomed over him. When he came around its length to the front, the doorway gaped on a nightful cave where a single banked fire glimmered red. The families that shared it were elsewhere, doing their tasks or, if they had none, taking their ease down by the river. One did remain, the person for whom Little Hare had hoped, a man dressed in woman's

clothes, grinding corn. He looked up and asked in his mild way, "What do you wish, lad?"

Little Hare gulped. "The hunters come back," he said. "Will you go tell the shaman, Three Geese?"

The noise of stone against stone ceased. The berdache rose. "I will," he replied. Such as he had some power against the unseen, perhaps because the spirits made up to them for their lack of manliness. Besides, he was a son of Deathless. He dusted meal off his buckskin, uncoiled his braids, and departed at a dignified pace. Little Hare gusted relief before he started back to his duty. Eagerness tingled in him. What a brave sight the riders would be when they went by!

The shaman's house stood next to the medicine lodge at the middle of the village. It was smaller than the rest because it was only for him and his family. He was there just then with his wives.

Copperbright, mother of Three Geese, sat on the ground outside, watching over the two small daughters of Quail Wing while they played in the sun. Bent, half-blind, she was glad she could still help this much at her • great age. In the doorway, Rain At Evening, who had been born the same winter as the berdache, helped a daughter of her own, Dawn Mist, ornament a dress with dyed quills for the maiden's forthcoming marriage. She greeted the newcomer and, at his word, went inside to call her husband. Deathless came forth after a short while, still fastening his breechclout. Young Quail Wing peeped out from within, looking rumpled and happy.

"Ohe, father," said Three Geese with due respect but not the awe that was in the likes of Little Hare. After all, this man had dandled him when he was a baby, taught him to know the stars and how to set snares and everything else needful or delightful—and, when it grew clear that the youth was not going to become fully a man, never lessened his love but accepted the fact with the calm of one who had watched hundreds of lives blow past on the wind. "They have seen Running Wolf's party on the way back to us."

Deathless stood quiet for a bit. When he frowned, a single wrinkle spread on his face. Sweat made his skin gleam over the springy muscles tike dew upon rock; his hair was 210

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like the rock itself, polished obsidian. "Are they sure that is who it is?" he asked.

"Why, who else?" replied Three Geese, astonished.

"Enemies—"

"Raiders would not come so openly, in broad daylight. Father, you have heard about the Pariki and their ways."

"Oh, true, I have," the shaman muttered, as if he had forgotten and needed reminding. "Well, I must make haste now, for I want to speak to the hunters alone."

He went back into his house. Berdache and women exchanged looks where foreboding stirred.

Deathless had spoken against the buffalo hunt, but Running Wolf had gotten his band together and left too swiftly for any real talk about it. Since then Deathless had brooded, and sometimes taken elders aside, who afterward kept silence themselves. What did they fear?

Soon Deathless reappeared. He had donned a shirt with strong signs burnt into the leather. White swirls of paint marked his countenance; a cap made from the pelt of a white mink encircled his brows. In his left hand he bore a gourd rattle, in his right a wand topped with a raven's skull.

The rest stood aside, even the children gone silent. This was no longer the kindly, rather quiet husband and father they knew; this was he in whom a spirit dwelt, he who never grew old, he who during the ages had guided his folk and made them unlike any other.

The hush followed him as he walked among the dwellings. Not every eye watched with the ancient reverence. Especially hi the heads of boys, several smoldered.

Through the open gate of the stockade he passed, and through the patches of corn, beans, and squash outside. The village stood on a bluff overlooking a broad, shallow river and the cotton woods along the banks. Northward the ground sloped into gently rolling hugeness. Hereabouts short-grass prairie gave way to tall-grass plain. Shadows went mysterious over green waves. The hunters were now quite near. Earth drummed to hoofbeats.

When he recognized the man afoot, Running Wolf signalled halt and reined in. His mustang whinnied and curvetted before standing quiet. Leggings held close against ribs, the rider sat the beast as if he had grown from it or it from him. His dozen followers were nearly as skillful. Under the sun, men and horses alike blazed with hie. In some hands were lances, on some shoulders hung bows and quivers. A knife of the finest flint rested at each waist. Headbands bore patterns of lightning bolt, thunderbird, hornet. From Running Wolf's, feathers of eagle and jay thrust upward—did he think someday he would fly?

"Oh£, great one," he said reluctantly. "You honor us."

"How went the chase?" asked Deathless. , Running Wolf gestured backward at the pack animals. They bore hides, heads, haunches, humps, entrails, umbles, lavishness that strained against rawhide lashings. Already, as they rested, the grease and clotted blood were drawing flies. Exultance surged in his voice: "Never was such sport, never such slaughter! We left more than this behind for the coyotes. Today the people feast, no, they gorge."

"The spirits will punish wastefulness," Deathless warned.

Running Wolf squinted at him while retorting, "What, is Coyote not pleased that we feed his kind so well too? And the buffalo are as many as the blades of grass."

"A fire can blacken the land—"

"And with the first ram it springs green anew."

Breath hissed between teeth when the leader thus dared interrupt the shaman; but none of the band were really shocked. Two grinned. *

Deathless ignored the breach, save that his tone grew harder still: "When the buffalo come by, our men go forth to take of them. First they offer the proper dances and sacrifices. Afterward I explain our need to the ghosts of the quarry, that they be appeased. So it has always been, and we have prospered in peace. Ill must come from leaving the ancient, proven path. I win tell you what atonement you can make, and lead you in it."

"And shall we then return to waiting until a herd drifts within a day's walk of here? Shall we try to cut a few out and kill them without any man getting gored or trampled? Or if we are lucky, may we stampede the whole herd over a drop, and see most meat rot before we can eat it? If our fathers brought home little, it was because they could do no more, nor could the dogs draw much on their wretched tra-vois." Running Wolf's words came in spate, never hesitating. Clearly he had awaited this encounter sometime upon his return, and planned what he would say.

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"And if the new ways are unlucky," exclaimed Red Hawk, "why do the tribes that follow them flourish so mightily? Shall they take everything, and we pick the carrion bones?"

Running Wolf frowned at his follower and beckoned for silence. Deathless sighed. His response was almost gentle: "I foreknew you would speak like this. Therefore I sought you out where nobody else can hear. It is hard for a man to admit he has been wrong. Together we shall find how you can set things right and still keep your pride. Come with me to the medicine lodge, and we will seek a vision."

Running Wolf straightened, sheer against the sky. "Vision?" he cried. "I have had mine, old man, under the high stars after a day when we raced with the wind. I saw riches overflowing, deeds men will remember longer than you yourself have lived and will live, glory, wonder. New gods are in the land, fiery from the hands of the Creator, and— they ride on horses whose hoofs drum thunder and strike forth lightning. It is for you to make peace with them!"

Deathless lifted his wand and shook his rattle. Unease crossed faces. The mounts felt it and snorted, shied, stamped.

"I meant no offense, great one," Running Wolf said quickly. "You wish us to talk free of fear and boasting alike, no? Well, if I got too loud, I'm sorry," He tossed his head. "Nevertheless, the dream did come to me. I have told my comrades, and they believe."

The magical things sank earthward in the shaman's grasp. He stood for a little while unmoving, dark amidst the sunlight and grass, before he said low, "We must talk further and try to learn the meaning of what has happened."

"Indeed we must." Relief made Running Wolf's tone kindly. "Tomorrow. Come, great one, let me lend you this, my prize stallion, and I will walk while you ride into the village, and you will bless us there as you have always blessed the returning hunters."

"No." Deathless went from them.

They sat mute, troubled, until Running Wolf laughed. He sounded like his namesake in wooded eastern country. "The joy among our people will be blessing enough," he said. "And ah, for us the women, hotter than their fires!"

Most of them had to force an echo of his mirth. However, the act heartened them. He at the forefront, they struck heels to flanks and pounded whooping ahead. When they passed the shaman, they never glanced his way.

Upon his own entry, he found tumult. Folk seethed about the party, shouted, capered, exulted. Dogs clamored. The abundance was more than meat. It was fat, bone, horn, gut, sinew, all they needed to make nearly all they wanted. And this was the barest beginning. The hides would become coverings for tipis—those that were not traded eastward for poles—and then whole families could range as fax and as long as they wished, hunt, butcher, tan, preserve on the spot, before going on to the next kill and the next. . . .

"Not overnight," Running Wolf cautioned. Though he spoke weightily, his voice carried through the racket. "We have few horses yet. And first we must care for these that have served us." Victory rang: "But we shall soon have more. Every man of us shall have his herd."

Somebody howled, somebody else did likewise, and then the tribe was howling—his sign, his name, his leadership to be.

Deathless went around them. Few noticed him. Those looked away, abashed, before throwing themselves the more wildly back into jubilance.

The wives and youngest children of Deathless stood fast outside his house. There they could not see the crowd, but the cheers broke across them. Quail Wing's gaze kept drifting yonder, wistfully. She was hardly more than a girl. He halted, confronted them. Lips parted but nobody had words.

"You were good to wait here," he said at length. "Now you may as well go join the rest, help cook the food, share in the feast."

"And you?" asked Rain At Evening low.

"I have not forbidden it," he said bitterly. "How could I?"

"You counselled against the horses, you counselled against the hunt," quavered Copperbright. "What madness is in them, that they no longer heed you?"

"They will learn better," Rain At Evening avowed.

"I am thankful I shall soon be snug hi death." Copperbright reached a gnarled hand toward Deathless. "But you, poor darling, you must live through that lesson."

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Quail Wing regarded her children and shuddered a little.

"Go," said the man. "Have pleasure. Also, it will be wise. We must not let the folk feel divided.

That could well destroy them. I always strove to keep my people together."

Rain At Evening considered him. "However, you will stay away?" she asked.

"I will try to think what can be done," he answered, and went into the medicine lodge. They lingered a bit, troubled, before leaving. His unsureness, the defiance of him, struck at the heart of everything by which they had lived.

With its entrance toward sunrise, the lodge had at this time of day gone gloomy. Light from doorway and smoke-hole lost itself in shadows brimming the circle of floor and walls. Things magical were blurs, gleams, hunched lumps. Deathless laid buffalo chips in the firepit at the center. He worked with drill and tinder until flames licked small. After he had banked the fire, he put tobacco that traders bore from afar into his calumet, kindled it, breathed deep, let the sacred dizziness whirl him off toward meditation.

Insight escaped him. He was wanly glad when a form darkened the doorway. By then the sun was on the horizon he could not see. Light tinged with yellow the smoke that drifted thick and savory off cookfires. The din of celebration was at once loud and remote, only half real.

"Father?" came a shy whisper.

"Enter," said Deathless. "Be welcome."

Three Geese stooped, passed through, settled on the opposite side of the pit. His face was barely visible, webbed and gullied with encroaching age, full of the concern that a berdache need not be ashamed to show. "I hoped you would give me refuge here, father," he said.

"From what?" asked Deathless. "Has anyone abused you?"

"No, no. Everybody is gleeful." Three Geese winced. "That is what hurts. Even the old men seem to have cast their doubts from them."

"Save for you."

"And perhaps a few others. How should I know? More of the women are with us in their hearts, but the men sweep them along. And it is a mighty gain that Running Wolf and his followers have made."

"He promises unboundedly much in the future."

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Three Geese grunted an affirmative.

"Why do you not share these hopes?" Deathless asked.

"You are my father, who was always kind to me," said the berdache. "I fear there will be scant kindness in the morrow that Running Wolf brings."

"From what we know about the tribes who have gone the way of the horse, that is so."

"I have heard men say—when I happened to be in earshot of man-talk—that some are forced to it."

"True. They are thrust from their ancient homes, the eastern woodlands, out onto the prairie, by invaders from farther east. They say those invaders bear horrible weapons that shoot lightning.

They get them from pale-skinned foreigners such as we hear rumors of. But others, like the Pariki, have freely taken to the horse, and spill out of the west, out of the mountains yonder.

"They did not have to. We do not have to. I have spoken with travelers, traders, whoever bears news from outside. North of us the Ankara, Hidatsa, and Mandan still live in olden wise. They remain strong, well-off, content. I would have us do the same."

"I have talked with two or three of those young men who brought horses despite your^counsel, father," said Three Geese. "One of them went forth with Running Wolf, first to practice, later on this buffalo hunt. They say—he says— they intend no disrespect, no overthrow of anything. They only want for us whatever is good in the new ways."

"I know. I also know you cannot pick and choose. Change is a medicine bundle. You must refuse it altogether, or take the whole thing."

Sorrow thinned the voice of Three Geese: "Father, I do not question your wisdom, but I have heard some who do. They wonder if you can understand change, you who live outside of time."

Deathless smiled sadly through the dusk. "Strange, my son, strange that only now, when you near the end of your days, do we truly confide in each other." He drew breath. "Well, I seldom speak of my youth. It was so long ago that it seems a half-forgotten dream. But as a boy I listened to my grandfather tell about the drought of many years that at last made our people trek eastward from the uplands, to find a better home here. We were still learning how to be 216

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plainsfolk when I became a man. I had no idea then of what I was. No, I expected to grow old and lie down to rest in the earth like everyone else. When, slowly, we came to see that this was not happening—what more soulshaking change than that can you imagine? Since it was clear the gods had singled me out, I must seek the shaman, have him teach me, change from man to disciple, finally from housefather to shaman myself. And the years flew by faster and faster. I saw girls born whom I wed when they were grown and buried when they had died, along with the children, the children. I saw more tribes pour onto the plains, and war begin among them. Do you know it was only hi your mother's girlhood that we decided we must build a stockade? True, a certain awe of me has helped keep enemies off, but—Running Wolf has had a vision of new gods."

He laughed wearily. "Yes, my son, I have known change. I have felt time rush by tike a river hi flood, bearing the wreckage of hopes downstream out of sight. Now do you understand why I have tried to bulwark my people against it?"

"They must heed you," Three Geese groaned. "Make a medicine that will open their eyes and unstop their ears."

"Who can make a medicine against time?"

"If anyone can, father, that one is you." The berdache hugged himself and shivered, though the air was still mild. "This is a good life we have, a gentle life. Save it for us!"

"I will try," said Deathless. "Leave me alone with the spirits." He held out his arms. "But first come and let me embrace you, my son,"

The old cold body trembled against the firm warm flesh, then Three Geese said farewell and departed.

Deathless sat unmoving as embers faded and night welled up out of the earth. Noise continued, drum-throb, chants, feet stamping around an extravagant fire. It grew louder when the doorway brightened again. A full moon had risen. That gray went black as the moon climbed higher, though the ground outside remained hoar. At last the merrymaking dwindled until silence laid its robe over the whole village.

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abide with the ancient unforced harmonies. On a few heaped skins, one atop him, he slept.

Stars fared across heaven. Dew glittered in deepening chill. The very coyotes had quieted. Only the river murmured, along the banks, under the cottonwoods, around the sandbars, on and on in retreat from the sinking moon.

Slowly, eastern stars dimmed as their part of the sky turned pale.

The hoofs that ueared scarcely broke the stillness. Riders dismounted, left their animals in care of chosen companions, approached on foot.

They meant to steal the horses hobbled outside the stockade. A boy'on watch saw them and sped for the gate. He screamed his warning till a warrior overtook him, A lancethrust cast him to hands and knees. Little Hare gobbled around the blood that welled into his mouth. He threshed about till he fell in a heap that looked very small. War cries ripped the dawn.

"Out!" roared Running Wolf before his house. "It's an attack! Save the horses!"

He was the first to dash forth into the open, but men swarmed after him, mostly naked, clutching whatever weapons they had snatched. The strangers sprang at them. Alien words yowled. Arrows whirred. Men screamed when struck, less in pain than in fury. Running Wolf bore a tomahawk. He sought the thick of the foe and hewed, snarled, a tornado.

Bewildered, the villagers nevertheless outnumbered the raiders. The Pariki leader yelled commands.

His men rallied to him, where he shook his lance on high. In a body, they beat the defenders aside and poured through the opened gate.

Dawnlight strengthened. Like prairie dogs, women, children, old folk fled back into houses. The Pariki laughed and pursued them.

Running Wolf lost time getting his dismayed fighters together. Meanwhile the Pariki made their quick captures—a woman or child seized, hauled outside, or fine pelts grabbed, a buffalo robe, a shirt with colorful quillwork— and regathered in the lane that went straight to the gateway.

One warrior found a beautiful young woman with an

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aging one and a crone in the smallest of the houses, next to a round lodge. She wailed and clawed at his eyes. He pinned her wrists at her back and forced her along, regardless of struggles or of the others who sought to hinder him. A man bounded from the lodge. He was unarmed apart from a wand and a rattle. When he shook them, the warrior hooted and swung tomahawk at him. The man must dodge back. The raider and his prey joined the rest of the war band.

Running Wolf's men milled in the entrance. At their backs, those Pariki who had kept the horses arrived at a gallop, with the free beasts on strings. The villagers scattered. The forayers seized manes, got on with a single leap, dragged booty or captives up after them. The men who had already been riding helped injured comrades mount and collected three or four dead.

Running Wolf bayed, egged his people on. Their arrows were spent, but enough of them finally came at his heels that the foe made no further try for their herd. Instead the Pariki rode west,

.bearing their prizes. Dazed with horror, the villagers did not give chase.

The sun rose. Blood glowed brilliant.

Deathless sought the battle place. Folk were getting busy there. Some mutilated two corpses the enemy had not recovered, so that the ghosts must forever drift in the dark; these persons wished aloud for live prisoners to torture to death. Others tended their own slain. Three Geese was among those who worked on the wounded. His hands eased anguish; his low voice helped men bite back any cries. Deathless joined him. The healing arts were part of a shaman's lore.

"Father," said the berdache, "I think we need you more to make medicine against fresh misfortune."

"I know not if any power to do that is left in me," Deathless replied.

Three Geese pushed a shaft deeper into a shoulder, until the barbed head came out the rear and he could pull the entire thing free. Blood welled, flies buzzed. He packed the hole with grass. "I am ashamed that I was not in the fight," he mumbled.

"You are long past your youth, and fighting was never for you," Deathless said. "Buf I— Well, this took me by sur-THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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prise; and I have forgotten whatever I once knew about combat."

Running Wolf stalked around, tallying the harm that had been done. He overheard. "None of us knew anything," he snapped. "We shall do better next time."

Three Geese bit his lip. Deathless went impassive.

Afterward he did undertake his duties as the shaman. With his disciple, who yesterday had never come near him, he led rites for the lost, cast spells for the clean mending of wounds, made offerings to the spirits. An elder mustered courage to ask why he did not seek omens. "The future has become too strange," he answered, and left the man standing appalled. By eventide he could take a short span to console Quail Wing's children for the taking of their mother, before he again went alone into the medicine lodge.

Next morning the people buried the dead. Later they would dance in their honor. First, though, the hale men gathered at a place which had known happier meetings. Running Wolf had demanded it—no council of elders calmly finding their way toward agreement, but every man who could walk—and none cared to gainsay him.

They assembled before a knoll near the bluff edge. Standing on it, a man could look south to the broad brown river and its trees, the only trees*anywhere in sight; east to the stockade, the fields clustered about it, gravemounds both raw and time-worn; elsewhere across grass that billowed and shimmered, green and white, under a shrill wind. Clouds flew past, trailing shadows through a sunlight gone harsh. Thunderheads loomed blue-black in the west. From here the works of man seemed no more than anthills, devoid of life. Nothing but the horses moved yonder. They chafed at their hobbles, eager to be off and away.

Running Wolf mounted the knoll and raised an arm. "Hear me, my brothers," he called. Wrapped in a buffalo robe, he seemed even taller than he was. He had gashed his cheeks for mourning and painted black bars across his face for vengefulness. The wind fluttered the plumes in his headband.

"We know what we have suffered," he told the eyes and the souls that sought him. "Now we must think why it happened and how we shall keep it from ever happening again.

"I say to you, the answers are simple. We have few

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horses. We have hardly any men who are good hunters upon them, and we have no skilled warriors at all. We are poor and alone, huddled within our miserable walls, living off our meager crops.

Meanwhile other tribes ride forth to garner the wealth of the plains. Meat-fed, they grow strong.

They can feed many mouths, therefore they breed many sons, who in turn become horseman hunters.

They have the time and the mettle to learn war. Their tribes may be strewn widely, but proud brotherhoods and sisterhoods, oath-societies, bind them together. Is it then any wonder that they make booty of us?"

His glance fell hard on Deathless, who stood in the front row under the hillock. The shaman's gaze responded, unwavering but blank. "For years they stayed their hand," Running Wolf said. "They knew we had one among us who was full of spirit power. Nonetheless, at last a band of young men resolved to make a raid. I think some among them had had visions. Visions come readily to him who rides day after day across empty space and camps night after night beneath star-crowded skies.

They may have urged each other on. I daresay they simply wanted our horses. The fight became as bloody as it did because we ourselves had no idea of how to wage it. This too we must learn.

"But what the Pariki have found, and soon every plains ranger will know, is that we have lost whatever defense was ours. What new medicine have we?"

He folded his amis. "I ask you, Deathless, great one, what new medicine you can make," he said.

Slowly, he stepped aside.

Indrawn breath whispered among the men, beneath the damp chill that streaked from the stonnclouds.

They stared at the shaman. He stood still an instant. Thereafter he climbed the knoll and confronted Running Wolf. He had not adorned himself in any way, merely donned buckskins. Against the other man, he seemed drab, the life in him faded.

Yet he spoke steadily: "Let me ask you first, you who take leadership from your elders, let me ask you and let you tell us what you would have the people do."

"I did tell you!" Running Wolf declared. "We must get more horses. We can breed them, boy them, catch them wild, and, yes, steal them ourselves. We must go win our THE, BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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share of the riches on the plains. We must become skilled in the arts of war. We must find allies, enroll in societies, take our rightful place among folk who speak Lakotan tongues. And all this we must begin upon at once, else it will be too late."

"Thus is your beginning," said Deathless quietly. "The end is that you will forsake your home and the graves of your ancestors. You will have no dwellings save your tipis, but be wanderers upon the earth, like the buffalo, the coyote, and the wind."

"That may be," replied Running Wolf with the same lev-elness. "What is bad about it?"

A gasp went from most listeners; but several young men nodded, like horses tossing their heads.

"Show respect," quavered an aged grandson of the shaman. "He is still the Deathless one."

"He is that," acknowledged Running Wolf. "I have spoken what was in my heart. If it be mistaken, tell us. Then tell us what we should do, what we should become, instead."

He alone heard the answer. The rest divined it, and some wrestled with terror while others grew thoughtful and yet others shivered as if in sight of prey.

"I cannot."

Deathless turned from Running Wolf, toward the gathering. His voice loudened, though each word fell stone-heavy. "I have no further business here. I have no more medicine. Before any of you were born, rumors came to. me of these new creatures, horses, and of strange men who had crossed great waters with lightnings at their command. In time the horses reached our country, and that which I feared began to happen. Today it is done. What will come of it, nobody can foretell. All that I knew has crumbled between my fingers.

"Whether you must change or not—and it may well be that you must, for you lack the numbers to keep a settlement defended—you will change, my people. You want it, enough of you to draw the rest along. I no longer can. Time has overtaken me."

He raised his hand. "Therefore, with my blessing, let me go."

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It was Running Wolf who cried, "Go? Surely not! You have always been ours."

Deathless smiled the least bit. "If I have learned anything in my lifetimes of years," he said,

"it is that there is no 'always.'"

"But where would you go? How?"

"My disciple can carry out what is needful, until he wins stronger medicine from warrior tribes.

My grown sons will see to the welfare of my two old wives and my small children. As for myself—I think I will fare alone in search of renewal, or else of death and an end of striving."

Into their silence, he finished: "I served you as well as I was able. Now let me depart."

He walked down the knoll and away from them. Never did he look back.

XIII

Follow the Drinking Gourd

A THUNDERSTORM flamed and boomed during the night. By morning the sky was clear, everything asparkle, but the fields were too wet for work. That didn't matter. Crops were coming along fine, alfalfa so deep a green you could nearly hear the color and corn sure to be knee-high by the Fourth of July. Matthew Edmonds decided that after chores and breakfast he'd fix up his plow. The colter needed sharpening and there was a crack in the whippletree. If he reinforced it, he could get yet another season's use out of it before prudence called for replacement. Then Jane had a long list of tinkerings around the house for him.

When he closed the kitchen door, he stopped and drew a breath on the top step. The air was cool and damp, rich with smells of soil, animals, growth.^Dn his right the sun had just cleared the woods behind the bam; the rooster weathervane there threw the light back aloft into a blue that had no end. The yard was muddy, but puddles shone like mirrors. He let his eyes run left, across silo, pigsty, chickenhouse, over his acres that rolled away beyond them bearing the earth's abundance. Could he, could any man ever make any real return for the blessings of the Lord? .

Something flickered at the edge of sight. He turned his head fully left. You could see the county road from here, about a hundred yards off along the west edge of the property. On the other side lay Jesse Lyndon's land, but his bouse was to the north, hidden from this by its own patch of woods. The Edmonds' drive was also screened from sight, :lined with apple trees whose fruit was starting to swell among pale-bright leaves. Out from between them ran a woman.

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Chief, the half-collie, was helping ten-year-old Jacob take the cows to pasture. That was just as well. The woman acted scared when Frankie bounded forth barking at her, and he was only a fox terrier. At least, she shied from him and made fending motions. She kept on running, though. No, she staggered, worn out, close to dropping. All she had on was a thin dress that had once been yellow, halfway down her shins. A shift, would the ladies call it? Ragged, filthy, and drenched, it clung to a skin from under which the flesh had melted away. That skin was the shade of weak coffee.

Edmonds sprang down the steps and broke into a run himself. "You, Frankie, quiet!" he hollered.

"Shut up!" The little dog skipped aside, wagged his tail, and lolled his tongue.

Man and woman met near the corncrib, stopped, stared at each other. She looked young, maybe twenty, in spite of what hardship had done to her. Feed her up and she'd be slender and tall instead of skinny. Her face was different from the usual, narrow, nose curved and not very wide, lips hardly fuller than on some whites, big eyes with beautiful long lashes. Hair, cut short, wasn't really kinky; it would bush out if ever she let it grow. Edmonds thought with a pang how a slaveowner must have forced her mother or her grandmother.

The wind went raw in her throat. She tried to straighten, but a shiver took hold of her. "Peace,"

Edmonds said. "Thee is with friends."

She stared. He was a big sandy man, wearing clothes darker than most and a hat that was flat of crown, broad of brim. After a moment she gasped, "Yo' Massa Edmonds?"

He nodded. "Yes." His voice stayed easy. "And thee, I think, is a fugitive."

She half lifted her hands. "Please, sub, please, dey's aftuh me, right behin' me!"

"Then come." He took her arm and led her across the yard to the kitchen door.

The room beyond was large and sunny, clean-scrubbed but still full of sweet odors. Jane Edmonds was spooning oatmeal into Nellie, not quite one, while four-year-old William stood on a stool and manfully pumped water into a kettle fresh off the stove. Its earlier load steamed in a dish-pan. Everybody stopped when Father and the Negress appeared.

"This girl needs shelter, and quickly," Edmonds told his wife.

Herself fine-boned, hair peeping red from beneath a scarf, she dropped the spoon and clutched fist between fingers. "Oh, dear, we haven't any real hiding place ready." Decision: "Well, the attic must serve. Nothing in the basement to hide behind. Maybe the old trunk, if they search our house—"

The Negress leaned against the counter. She didn't pant or shake now, but wildness still dwelt in her eyes. "Go with Jane," Edmonds told her. "Do what she says. We'll take care of thee."

A brown hand snaked out. The big butcher knife almost flew from the rack into its grasp. "Dey ain'

gon' take me live!" she yelled.

"Put that down," Jane said, shocked.

"Child, child, thee must not be violent," Edmonds added. "Trust in the Lord."

The girl crouched back, blade bright in front of her. "Ah don' wanna hurt nobody," she answered, raspy-voiced, "but dey fin' me, Ah kill manse'f 'fo' dey take me back, an' fust Ah kill one o' dem if'm de Lawd he'p me."

Tears stood forth in Jane's eyes. "What have they done, to drive thee to this?"

Edmonds cocked his head. "Frankie's barking again. Don't wait, let her keep the knife, just get her out of sight. I'll go talk to them."

Since his boots were muddy, he went straight out and around the corner of the house to the front porch on the west side. The drive branched off where the apple trees ended, an arm leading south.

Edmonds hushed the dog and placed himself on the step before the screen door, arms folded. When the two men saw him, they cantered that way and drew rein.

Their horses were splashed but fairly fresh. At each saddle was sheathed a shotgun, at each belt hung a revolver. One rider was burly and blond, one gaunt and dark. "Good day, friends," Edmonds greeted them. "What can I do for ye?"

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"We're after a runaway nigger woman," said the blond man, "You seen her?"

"How does thee suppose I should know?" Edmonds replied. "Ohio is a free state. Any person of color passing by should be as free as thee or me."

Hie dark man spat. "How many like that you got around here? They're all runaways, and you damn well know it, Quaker."

"I do not, friend," said Edmonds with a smile. "Why, I could name thee George at the feed store, Caesar in the blacksmith shop, Mandy who keeps house for the Abshires—"

"Stop stallin' us," snapped the blond man. "Listen, this mornin' early we seen her ourselves, way off. She ducked into some woods and shook us, but this here's jest about the only way she could come, and we've found barefoot tracks in the road."

"And up your drive!" crowed his companion,

Edmonds shrugged. "It's getting to be summer. Children leave off their shoes whenever we let them."

The blond man narrowed his eyes. "All right, sub," he murmured. "If you're so innocent, you won't mind us lookin' through your place, will you?"

"She could'a snuck in without you knowin'," suggested the other. He forced a smile. "You wouldn't like that, you with a wife and kids, I'll bet. We'll jest make sure for you."

"Yen, you wouldn't break the law," said the first. "You'll co-op-erate, sure. C'mon, Alien."

He moved to dismount. Edmonds raised a thick, hard hand. "Wait, friend," he called softly. "I am sorry, but I cannot invite either of ye in."

"Huh?" grunted the blond man.

Alien snickered. "He's skeered o' what his wife'll do if we track up her floor, Gabe. Don't you worry, sun, we'll wipe our feet real good."

Edmonds shook his head. "It grieves me, friends, but neither of ye is welcome. Please go."

"Then you are harborin' the nigger!" Gabe exploded.

"I did not say that, friend. I simply do not wish to talk further with ye. Please get off my land." ,

"Listen, you. Helpin* a runaway, that's a federal crime.

Could cost you a thousand dollars or six months in jail. Law says you got to help us."

"An iniquitous ordinance, as wrong as President Pierce's designs on Cuba, plain contrary to God's commandments."

Alien drew his pistol. "I'll give you a commandment," he snarled. "Stand aside."

Edmonds didn't stir. "The Constitution grants my family and me the right to be secure in our home," he told them with the same calm.

"By God—" The weapon lifted. "You wanna get shot?"

"That would be a pity. Thee would hang, thee knows."

Gabe gestured. "Put that away, Alien." He straightened in the saddle. "Aw right, Mr. Niggerlover.

Tam't far to town. I'm goin' right in there and git me a warrant and a deppity sheriff. Alien, you watch and see nobody sneaks out o' here while I'm gone." He squinted back at Edmonds. "Or you wanna be reasonable? Your last chance, boy."

"Unless the Lord show me otherwise," Edmonds said, "I believe I am the reasonable man here and ye, friends, are terribly mistaken."

"Aw right! About time we started makin' some examples. Watch close, Alien." Gabe wheeled his horse and struck spurs to flanks. In a shower of mud, he galloped away. Frankie's barking sounded thia against the hoofbeats.

"Now, friend, kindly remove thyself," Edmonds said to Alien.

The slavecatcher grinned. "Oh, I think I'll jest ride around, this fine mornin'. Won't hurt nothin', won't poke in nowheres."

"Thee will nevertheless be trespassing."

"I don't think the jedge'll call it that, you a lawbreaker and all."

"Friend, we in this family have always done our humble best to observe the law."

"Yeah, yeah." Alien unlimbered his shotgun and laid it across his saddlebow. He clucked to the horse and jogged off, around the yard, on patrol.

Edmonds went back inside. Jane was on hands and knees, | cleaning tracks off her floors. She rose and stood quietly "while her husband told her what had happened. "What shall we do?" she asked.

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"I must think," he answered. "Surely the Lord will provide." His gaze sought William. "My son, thee is happy, because thee is too young to know about evil. However, thee can help us. Pray keep silent, unless thee needs something for thyself, and then speak only to thy mother. Say no word to anybody else till I tell thee. Can thee do that?"

"Yes, father," piped the boy, delighted by the responsibility.

Edmonds chuckled. "At thy age, it won't be so easy. Later I'll tell thee a story about another boy named William. He became famous for keeping still. To this day they call him William the Silent.

But thee'd better hold thyself aside. Thee may go play with thy toys."

The lad pattered off. Jane wrung her hands. "Matthew, must we endanger the children?"

Edmonds took both her hands in his. "A deal more dangerous it'd be to let wickedness go unresisted. . . . Well, thee see to Nellie. I'd better catch Jacob on his way back. And we all have our work to do."

His older-son, tanned and towheaded, came into sight from behind the barn as the man stepped out again. Edmonds walked unhurriedly to meet him. Alien saw from a distance and rode toward them. The big dog, Chief, sensed trouble and growled.

Edmonds quieted him. "Jacob," he said, "go clean up."

"Of course, father," replied the boy, surprised.

"But don't head for school. Wait in the house. I think I'll have an errand for thee."

The blue eyes widened, went to the approaching stranger, back to the parent, kindled with understanding. "Yes, sir!" Jacob scampered from them.

Alien halted. "What you been talkin1 about?" he demanded.

"Can't a man speak to his son any more in these United States?" The smallest bit of harshness touched Edmonds' tone. "I almost wish my religion would let me kick thee off my grounds.

Meanwhile, at least leave us alone in our business. // doesn't hurt, anybody."

In spite of his weapons, Alien looked uneasy. Edmonds stood bear-powerful. "I got my livin' to make, same as you," the slavecatcher mumbled.

"Plenty of honest jobs around. Where is thee from?"

"Kentucky. Where else? Gabe Yancy and me, we been trackin' that coon for days."

"Then the poor creature must be half dead from hunger and weariness. The Ohio's a wide river. Thee does not think she could swim across, does thee?"

"I dunno how, but them niggers got their ways. Some-body'd seen her yestiddy on t' other bank, like she meant to cross. So we ferried over this mornin', and sure 'nough, found somebody else who'd sported what had to be her. And then we seen her ourselves, till she went into the woods. If only we'd'a had a dawg or two—"

"Brave men, chasing unarmed women like animals."

The rider leaned forward. "Listen," he said, "she ain't jest any old runaway off a plantation.

They's somethin' queer about her, somethin' real wrong. That's how come Mr. Montgomery was fixin'

to sell her south. He wants her back for more'n the money she's worth." He wet his lips. "And don't you forget, if she gits away, you got a thousand dollars owin' to him, 'sides the fine and jail."

"That's if they can prove I had anything to do with her escape."

Anger flashed: "You won't lie your way out o' this."

"Lying is against the principles of the Society of Friends. Now kindly let me get on with my work."

"So you don't lie to nobody, huh? You ready to swear you ain't hidin' any nigger?"

"Swearing is against our religion too. We don't lie, that's all. It doesn't mean we have to make conversation." Edmonds turned his back and walked off. Alien didn't pursue him, but after a minute took up his rounds again.

In the dimness of the wagon shed, Edmonds began to repair his plow. His mind wasn't really on it.

At last he nodded to "himself and returned to the house. Alien's look followed his every step.

Inside, he asked Jane, "How's our guest?"

"I took some food up to her," she said. "Starved, she is. This is the first station she's found."

"She struck off entirely on her own?"

"Well, naturally she'd heard about the Underground Railroad, but only that it exists. She lived on roots, grubs, a few times a meal in a slave cabin. Swam the river last night during the storm, with a piece of driftwood to keep her afloat."

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"If ever anybody earned freedom, she has. How did she find us?"

"Came on a Negro man and asked. From what she told me, I think it must have been Tommy Bradford."

Edmonds frowned. "I'd better speak to Tommy. He's a steady fellow, but we'll have to be more careful in future. . . . Well, we're pretty new in this traffic. Our first passenger."

"Too soon," she said fearfully. "We should have waited till thee had the hidey-hole dug and furnished."

"This duty can't wait, dear."

"No, but— What shall we do? Those dreadful anti-Abolitionists in the neighborhood—they would be glad to see us ruined—"

"Speak no evil of people. Jesse Lyndon is misguided, but he's not a bad man at heart. He'll come to the light eventually. Meanwhile, I have a notion." Edmonds raised his voice. "Jacob!"

The boy entered the plainly, comfortably furnished parlor. "Yes, father?" Excitement danced in his tone, his whole being.

Looming over him, Edmonds laid a hand on his shoulder. "Listen carefully, son. I have an errand for thee. We have a guest today. For reasons that thee doesn't need to know, she's staying in the attic. Her dress isn't fit to be seen in. It was ail she had, but we will provide her decent clothes. I want thee to take the foul old garment elsewhere and get rid of it. Can thee do that?"

"Uh, y-yes, sure, but—"

"I told thee to listen close. Thee may go barefoot, which I know thee enjoys, and carry a basket.

Pick up some dead-wood for kindling on thy way home, eh? Keep the dress down in the basket. We don't want anybody offended. There is no hurry. Go across the road to the Lyndons' woods. Do not gather sticks there, of course; that would be stealing. Saunter about, take pleasure in God's beautiful creation. When thee is by thyself, put on a black kerchief thy mother will give thee to cover thy hair from the sun. It's pretty muddy. Thee would do well to roll up thy sleeves and trousers, and pull the dress over'them. A smock to keep thine own clothes clean, understand? Just the same, I suppose thee'll get thy head and arms and legs mired up.

Downright black, even. Well, I remember how I liked that when I was a kid." Edmonds laughed. "Till I came back and my mother saw me! But this is a holiday for thee, so that such carelessness will be allowable." He paused. "If perchance thee pass near the Lyndon house, so they spy thee, don't linger. Don't give them a good look, but run past quickly. They'd be scandalized to know young Jacob Edmonds was dressed and mucked like that. Dash back into the woods and bury the dress somewhere. Then circle back to our land and collect that kindling. Thee may take several hours all told." He squeezed the shoulder and smiled. "How's that sound, hm?"

His son had strained breathless at his words. Eagerness blazed: "Yes, sir! Wonderful! I can do it!"

Jane touched her man's arm. "Matthew, dear, he's only a child," she protested.

Jacob reddened. Edmonds raised a palm. "There should be no danger to him if he's as smart as I think he is. And thee," he said sternly to the face below his, "remember Jesus doesn't like bragging. Tomorrow I'll give thee a note to the schoolmaster, that I needed thy help here today.

That's all that either of us has to tell anybody, ever. Got me?"

Jacob stood very straight. "Yes, sir, I do."

"Good. I'd better get back to work. Have fun." Edmonds stroked his wife's cheek, softly and briefly, before he went out.

As he crossed the yard, Alien rode over and exclaimed, "What you been doin'?"

"Minding my own business," Edmonds said. "We have a farm to run, if thee has not heard." He went on into the shed and took up his task again.

It was near midday and he was growing hungry—Jacob doubtless wolfing the sandwiches Jane would have made— when the dogs barked and Alien whooped. Edmonds strolled into the warm sunlight.

Alongside Gabe rode a man with curly brown hair and troubled youthful face. The three of them brought their horses to meet the farmer.

"Good day, friend Peter," said Edmonds cheerily.

"Hi." Deputy Sheriff Frayne bit the greeting off. He struggled a few seconds before he could go on. "Matt, I'm

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sorry, but this man's gone to Judge Abshire and got a search warrant for your place."

"That was not very neighborly of the judge, I must say."

"He's got to uphold the law, Matt. I do too."

Edmonds nodded. "Everybody should, when it is at all possible."

"Well, uh, they claim you're hiding a fugitive slave. That's a federal offense, Matt. I don't like it, but it's the law of the land."

"There is another Law, Peter. Jesus Christ spoke it hi Nazareth. 'The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath set me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.""

"No more o* your preachin', Quaker!" Gabe shouted. He was tired, sweaty, on edge after so much faring to and fro. "Deppity, do your duty."

"Search as thee will, thee will never find a slave on this land," Edmonds declared.

Frayne stared. "You swear to that?"

"Thee knows I can't give an oath, Peter." Edmonds stood silent for a spell. Then, in a rush: "But it'd bother my wife and frighten our little ones, having ye ransack the house. So I'll confess. I did see a Negro woman today."

"You <ftJ?"-Alleri yelled. "And didn't tell us right off? Why, you son of a bitch—"

"That'll do, fellow!" Frayne rapped. "Any more and I'll run you in for abuse, threat, and menace."

He turned to Edmonds. "Can you describe what you saw?"

"She was wearing a ragged yellow dress, badly stained, and it was clear she was traveling north.

Before ye spend valuable time here, why not ask the people in that direction?"

Frayne scowled. "Um, yeah," he said reluctantly, "the Lyndons are about a mile off, and they . . .

don't like Abolitionists."

"They ,might have1 seen something too," Edmonds reminded him. "They wouldn't keep it from thee."

"The tracks we followed—" Alien began.

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ing, yonder, ye can come back and search us. But I warn ye, it'll take hours, as many possible hiding places as a big farm has got, and meanwhile a fugitive who was not here would get clean away."

Frayne stared hard at him. Gabe opened his mouth. "He's right," the deputy said. "Let's go."

"I dunno—" Gabe muttered.

"You want my help or not? I been hauled from my business hi town for this. I'm not about to lose another half a day watching you bumble around if it's needless."

"You go ask," Gabe told Alien. "My turn to guard this place."

"I'll come along," Frayne said, and rode off with the warrant in his pocket.

Jane appeared on the kitchen steps. "Dinner!" she hailed.

"I regret we cannot invite thee to share our table," Edmonds said to Gabe. "A matter of principle.

However, we'll send food out."

The slavecatcher shook his head, furiously, and swatted at a fly. "To hell with you," he grated, and trotted to a vantage point.

Edmonds took his time washing up. He had barely finished saying grace when the dpgs barked once more. Glancing out a window, he and Jane saw the deputy ride back into the yard and over to Gabe.

After they had talked a minute, Gabe spurred his horse and disappeared between the apple trees.

Soon he came back to sight on the road, northbound in a hurry.

Edmonds went onto the steps. "Will thee come eat with us, friend Peter?" he called.

The deputy rode to him. "Thanks, but, uh, I'd better get on back," he replied. "Another time, or you folks come in to Molly and me, hey? Maybe next week?"

"I thank thee. We'll be in touch. Did the Lyndons have news?"

"Yeah, Jesse told as how he glimpsed what's got to be her. We've seen the last of those two boys for a while, I guess." Frayne hesitated. "I never thought you'd give out information like that."

"I really didn't want my house invaded."

"N-no, but still—" Frayne rubbed his chin. "You said no-body'd ever find a slave on your land."

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"I did."

"Then I s'pose you haven't joined the Railroad after all. There was some rumors."

"It's better not to listen to gossip."

"Yeah. And better not wonder too much." Frayne laughed. "I'm off. Give your missus my best." He turned serious. "If you did ever tell a lie—if you ever do—I'm sure it's in a rightful cause, Matt. I'm sure God will forgive you."

"Thee is kind, but thus far falsehoods haven't been necessary. Not but what I don't have plenty of other sins to answer for. Good day, friend, and give thy Molly our love."

The deputy tipped his hat and departed. When he was out of earshot, Edmonds stated, "There are no slaves. It's against Christ's teaching that human beings should be property."

He went back in. Jane and William cast him expectant looks. Nellie gurgled. He smiled as widely as a mouth could stretch. "They are gone," he said. "They took the bait. Let us give thanks to the Lord."

"Mr. Frayne?" asked his wife.

"He's gone home."

"Good. I mean, he'd be welcome, but now we can bring Flora down to eat with us."

"Oh, is that her name? Well, certainly. I should have thought of that myself."

Jane left the kitchen, set the ladder against a wall, climbed it, opened the trapdoor, murmured.

In a short while she returned with Flora at her heels. The colored girl walked warily, eyes darting to and fro. A gown of the wife's rustled about her ankles. The knife quivered in her hand.

"Thee can surely put that from thee now," Edmonds told her. "We're safe."

"We really is?" Her gaze searched his. She laid the knife on the counter.

"Thee should never have taken it up, thee knows," Edmonds said.

A measure of strength had risen in the worn body. Pride rang: "Ah wasn' goin' back there nohow.

Ah'd die fust. Hope Ah'd kill fust."

"'Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'" Edmonds shook his head sadly. "I THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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dread His punishment of this sinful land when it comes." He stepped forward and took the swart hands in his. "But let's not talk of such things. On second thought, we should eat right away and give thanks later, when we can feel properly joyful."

"What then, massa?"

"Why, Jane and I will see to it thee get a hot bath. Later thee'd better sleep. We can't risk keeping thee here. The hunters might be back tomorrow. As soon as it's dark, tbee and I'll be off to the next station. Have no fears, Flora. Thee ought to reach Canada in another month or less."

"Yo's mighty good, massa," she breathed. Tears trembled on her lashes.

"We try our best here to do what the Lord wants, as well as we can understand it. And by the way, Fm nobody's master. Now for pity's sake, let's eat before the food gets cold."

Shyly, Flora took Jacob's chair. "Ah don' need much, thank yo', ma—suh an* ma'm. The lady done gimme some-thin' awready."

"Well, but we've a plenty of meat to get onto those bones of thine," answered Jane, and heaped her plate for her— pork roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, squash, beans, pickles, cornbread, butter, jam, tumbler on the side full of milk that had sat in the cool of the spnnghouse.

Edmonds kept up a drumfire of talk. "Here's somebody who hasn't heard my jokes and stories a score of times," he said, and finally coaxed a few slight laughs from his guest.

After pie and coffee the grownups left William in charge of Nellie and retired to the parlor.

Edmonds opened the family Bible and read aloud while they stood: "—And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land and unto a good land and a forge, unto a land overflowing with milk and honey—"

Flora shivered. The tears ran free down her cheeks. "Let mail people go," she whispered. Jane hugged her and cried too.

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first time today he felt unsure of himself. He cleared his throat. "Flora," he said, "thee needs rest before nightfall, but maybe thee would sleep better for having told us something about thyself. Thee doesn't have to. It's just, well, here we are, if thee would like to talk to friends."

"'Tain't much to tell, suh, an' some of it's too awful."

"Do sit," Jane urged. "Never mind me. My father is a doctor and I'm a farm wife. I don't flinch easy."

They took chairs. "Did thee have far to go?" Edmonds asked.

Flora nodded. "'Deed Ah did, suh. Don' know how many miles, but Ah counted de days an' nights.

Sebenteen o' dem. Often thought Ah was gonna die. Didn' min' dat too much, long's dey didn' catch me. Dey was gonna sell me down de ribber."

Jane laid a hand over hers. "They were? What on earth for? What were you doing there? I mean, your duties—"

"Housemaid, ma'm. Nuss to Massa Mon'gom'ry's chillun, like Ah was to hisself when he little."

"What? But—"

"'Twasn' too bad. But dey sell me, Ah knowed Ah'd be a field nan' ag'in, or wuss. B'sides, Ah'd been thinkin* 'bout freedom a long time. We heahs things an' passes dem on to each othah, us black folks."

"Wait a minute," Edmonds broke in. "Did thee say thee was a—a mammy to thy master when he was a child? But thee can't be that old."

As Flora answered, he thought that already she bore herself like one free and, yes, proud. Maybe too proud. "Oh, Ah is, suh. Dat's wny dey was fixin' to sell me. Wasn' no thin' Ah did wrong. But yeah by yeah, Ah saw how Massa an' Missus was watchin' me mo' an' mo' strange, same as ever'body else. Den when she died—well, Ah knowed he couldn' stan' habbin' me dere no mo'. Could yo' of?"

Both the Edmondses sat silent.

"Happened befo'," Flora went on after a minute during which the grandfather clock had seemed to tick as loud as doom. "Dat's how come Ah knows what it's tike bein' a field ban*. Not jes'

watchin* an* feelin' sorry fo' dem. No, Ah been dere. When dat ol' Massa sol' me to Massa Mon'gom'ry's father, he didn' say nothin' 'bout man age

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den. So Ah Jiggered dere was man chance." She stopped, swallowed, looked at the carpet. "Better not tell yo' how Ah got'm to notice me an' git me trained fo' de big house."

Edmonds felt his cheeks go fiery. Jane patted the hand beneath hers and murmured, "Thee needn't tell, dear. What choice has a slave ever had?"

"None, ma'm, an' dat's a fack. Ah was 'bout fo'teen de fust time Ah was sol', away from mah father an' mother, an' dat man an' bofe his sons—" Flora's glance touched the Bible on its stand. "Well, we s'pose fo'gibe, ain't we? Po' young Marse Brett, he done get killed in de waw. Ah saw his pappy when de wuhd come, an' would'a felt sorry fo' him 'cep' Ah was too tired fum wuhk."

A chill went along Edmonds' backbone. "What war?"

"De Rebolution, it was. Yay, eben us slabes heard 'bout dat."

"But then thee— Flora, no, it can't be! That would make thee . . . about a hundred years old."

Again she nodded. "Ah buried mah men, mah real men, an' Ah buried chillun, when dey wasn' sol' off fum me, an'—" Suddenly her firmness broke. She reached out toward him. "It's been too long!"

"Were you born in Africa?" Jane asked low.

Flora fought for calmness. *"No, ma'm, in a slabe cabin. But mah dad, he was stolen away fum dere.

Used to tell us young'uns 'bout it, de tribe, de foe-rest—said he was part Ay-rab, an'—" She stiffened. "He daid. Dey all daid, and nebba free, nebba free. Ah swo' to mahse'f Ah was gonna be, in deir names Ah was. So Ah followed de Drinkin' Gourd an'—an' heah Ah is." She buried her face in her hands and wept.

"We must be patient," Jane said across the bowed head. "She's overwrought."

"Yes, what she's been through, I suppose that would drive anybody kind of crazy," Edmonds agreed.

"Take her away, dear. Give her that bath. Put her to bed. Sit with her till she sleeps."

"Of course." They went their separate ways.

Though Jacob came home jubilantly, supper was quiet. His parents had decided to leave Flora resting as long as possible. Jane would pack a basket of food for the next stage of the journey.

Once she said, "Matthew, I wonder

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what she meant by following the Drinking Gourd. Does thee know?"

"Yes, I've heard," he answered. "It's the Big Dipper. The one constellation nobody can mistake.

They have a song about it, the slaves, I believe."

And he wondered what other songs went secretly through the land, and what songs might awaken in the future. Battle hymns? No, please, God, of Thy mercy, no. Withhold Thy wrath that we have so richly earned. Lead us to Thy light.

As dusk fell, he and Jacob rolled forth the buggy and harnessed Si to it. "Can I come along, father?" the boy asked.

"No," Edmonds said. "I'll be gone till nearly sunrise. Thee has school tomorrow after chores." He rumpled the bright head. "Be patient. Man's work will come on thee quite soon enough." After a moment: "Thee made a fine start today. I can only hope the Lord won't later want far more."

Well, but Heaven waited, the reward that has no bounds. Poor half-mad Flora. What if somebody really did have to live on and on tike that, in bondage or hunted or—whatever menial thing she could become in Canada? Edmonds shuddered. God willing, as she met friendship along the Underground Railroad, she ought to recover her wits.

A lantern glowed. Jane brought the fugitive out and helped her into the buggy. Edmonds mounted to the driver's seat. "Good night, my dear," he said, and gently touched whip to horse. Wheels creaked down the drive and onto the road. The air was still fairly warm, though a touch of oncoming cold went through it. The sky ranged from purple in the west to velvety black in the east. Stars were blinking forth. The Big Dipper stood huge. Presently Edmonds made out the Little Dipper and Polaris in it, that guided north toward freedom.

XIV

Men of Peace

1

THE RANCH house was small, a one-room sod cabin, but the more defensible for that. Its two windows had heavy inside shutters and each wall a pair of loopholes. Picket stakes surrounded it, six deep. Men built like this in the west Texas cattle country—such of them as weren't dead or fled.

"Lord, but I wish we'd cleared out in time," Tom Lang-ford said. "You and the kids, at least."

"Hush, now," replied his wife. "You couldn't run the spread without me, and if we gave up we'd lose everything we've worked for." She leaned across the table, over the firearms and ammunition that covered it, to pat his arm. A sunbeam through a hole on the east side struck through the gloom within and made living bronze of her hair. "All we got to do is hold out till Bob brings help. Unless the redskins quit first."

Langford kept himself from wondering whether the va-quero had gotten clean away. If the Comanches had spied him and sent pursuit with remounts, he must already lie ^scalped. No telling. Though you could see a long ways around here, by day, the war band had appeared at dawn, when folks were just getting started on the chores, and arrived faster than you might believe. Of the hands, only Ed Lee, Bill Davis, and Carlos Padilla had made it to the bouse .with the family, and not before a bullet smashed Ed's left arm.

Susie bad set and bandaged that limb as best she was able after the warriors recoiled from gunfire and withdrew out of "sight. At the moment Ed had Nancy Langford on his lap.

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The three-year-old clung hard to him, terrified. Bill kept watch at the north end, Carlos at the south, while Jim flitted between east and west in the pride and eagerness of his own seven years.

A sharpness of powder still hung in the air, and some smoke seemed to have drifted in from the barn as well. The Indians had torched it, the only wooden building on the place. The roar of its burning reached the defenders faintly, like a noise in a nightmare.

"They're comin' back!" Jim shrilled.

Langford grabbed a Winchester off the table and sprang to the west wall. Behind him he heard Lee say, "Bill, you help the missus reload. Carlos, you be with Tom. Jim, you go 'round and tell me where I'm needed." The voice was ragged with pain but the man could work a Colt.

Langford peered through his loophole. Sunlight brightened the bare ground outside. Dust puffed and swirled ruddy from the hoofs of oncoming mustangs. He got a brown body in his sights, but then the pony veered and the rider vanished, except for one leg. Indian trick, hang yourself down the other side. But a Comanche without a horse was only half himself. Langford's rifle cracked and nudged his shoulder. The mustang reared, screamed, went over, kicked. The warrior had thrown himself clear. He was lost in the dust and rampage. Langford realized he had pretty much wasted that shot, and picked his next target with care. The bullets had to last.

Riders would never take this house. They'd learned as much, first time. They galloped around and around, whooping, firing. One toppled, another, another. I didn't get them, Langford knew. Carlos did. A real marksman, him. Brave, too. Could likely have gotten away from where he was when they showed up, but stuck with us. Well, I never did hold with looking down on a man just because he's Mexican.

"Comin' on foot, over here!" Jim cried.

Yes, of course, the mounted braves provided covering fire, distraction, for those who snaked amongst the pickets. Langford allowed himself a glance backward. Bill Davis had left the table to join Ed Lee on the north. The black cowhand wasn't the best with a gun in these United States, but his targets were close, slowed down by the barrier, scornful of death. He blasted away. Susie brought him a reloaded

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rifle, took his emptied weapon back, fetched Ed a fresh pistol. The screams, hoofquake, shooting went on and on, world without end. You weren't scared, no time for that, but at the back of your head you wondered if there had ever been anything else or ever would be.

Suddenly it was over. The wild men gathered up their dead and wounded and pulled off again.

In the silence that followed, the clock sounded nearly as loud as—a hammer nailing down a coffin lid. It was a big old grandfather clock, the single treasure from her parents' home that Susie had wanted carted out here. The dial glimmered through a blue haze. Langford squinted eyes which the powder smoke stung and whistled softly. Just about ten minutes since the attack began. No more, dear God?

Nancy had crawled into a corner. She huddled hugging herself. Her mother went to give whatever comfort she could.

THE WIND across the high plains still bore much winter in it. This range wasn't as bleak as the Llano Estacado, over which the travelers had come, but the spring rains had not started in earnest and only a bjeath of green touched endless sere grass. Trees—willow or cottonwood clumped by whatever streams ran through these miles, the occasional lonesome oak—reached bare limbs into a bleached sky. Game was plentiful, though. It wasn't buffalo, except for white bones, the work of white hunters; buffalo were fast getting scarce. However, pronghorn, peccary, jackrabbit ran everywhere, with wolves and cougars to prey on them, while elk, bear, and cougar haunted the canyons. Jack Tarrant's party hadn't seen any cattle since well before they left New Mexico. Twice they passed abandoned ranches. The red terror woke to all its old fury while the states were at each other's throats, and the Army had a lot of quelling yet to do, seven years after Appomattox.

Sunlight dazzled eastward vision. At first Tarrant couldn't see what Francisco Herrera Carillo pointed at. "Hwno," the trader said. "No proviene de ningun campamento." He was ;a pale-brown man with sharp features; even on the trail he kept his chin shaven, mustache trimmed, clothes neat, as if

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to remind the world that among his forefathers were Con-quistadores.

Tarrant looked a bit like him, given aquiline nose and large, slightly oblique eyes. After a moment he too made out the stain rising athwart heaven. "Not from a camp, when it's visible from below the horizon," he agreed slowly in the same Spanish. "What, then? A grass ike?"

"No, that would be wider spread. A building. I think we have found your Indians."

Burly and redbearded, hook newly strapped on to stick out of his right sleeve, Rufus Bullen stumped over to join them. "Christ!" he growled. Two missing front teeth made his English slightly slurred. If others than Tarrant noticed the new growth that had begun to push stubs through the gums, they had said nothing about it. "You mean they've set fire to a ranch?"

"What else?" Herrera replied coolly, holding to his own language. "I have not been hi these parts for some time, but if I remember right and have my bearings, that is the Lang-ford property. Or was."

"What'ie we waiting for? We can't let 'em—" Rufus broke off. His shoulders sagged. "Inutilis est,"

he mumbled.

"We will probably arrive too late, and can certainly do nothing against a war band," Tarrant reminded him, also in Latin.

Herrera shrugged. He had grown used to the Yanquis dropping into that lingo. (He recognized an occasional word from the Mass, but no more, especially since they spoke it differently from the priests.) This quest of theirs was mad anyway. "You wish to speak with the Comanches, no?" he observed. "You can hardly do that if you fight them. Come, let us eat and be on our way. If we're lucky, they will not have moved on before we get there."

His sons Miguel and Pedro, young but trailwise, had wakened at dawn and gotten busy. A coffeepot steamed and two pans sizzled on a grill above a fire of buffalo chips—an abundance of which remained—and mesquite. As hard as. the seekers pushed, without time off to hunt, no bacon was left except fat for cooking, but they kept plenty of corn meal to make tortillas and two days ago the father had had the good luck to knock down a peccary. It had been quite a ways off. Every Comanchero was necessarily a crack shot.

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The travelers ate fast, cleaned camp gear, obeyed nature, left soap and razors till later, hit the saddle and set off. Herrera varied the pace between trot and canter, now and then a walk. The two whom he guided had learned to heed him. Easy though it seemed, this sparing of horseflesh covered many miles a day. Besides, the remuda amounted to just a pair of ponies each and three pack mules.

The sun climbed, the wind sank. Warmth crept into the air and drew sweet sweat odors from the mounts. Hoofs thudded, leather creaked. The tall dry grass rustled aside. For a while the smoke rose higher, but presently it thinned, blew apart, faded away. Wings as black wheeled where it had been. "You can usually tell a Comanche camp from afar," Herrera remarked. "The vultures wait for the leavings."

It was hard to tell whether Rufus flushed. Hats failed to keep skin like his from reddening and chapping. His voice did grate: "Dead bodies?" That was in Spanish, which he could speak after a fashion.

"Or bones and entrails," Herrera replied. "They have always been hunters, you know, when they are not at war." A minute went by. "Your buffalo killers destroy their livelihood."

"Sometimes I think you like them," Tarrant murmured.

"I have dealt with them since I was Pedro's age, as did my fathers before me," Herrera said. "One comes to a little understanding, whether one will or no."

Tarrant nodded. Comancheros had been trading out of Santa Fe for a century, since de Anza fought the tribes to a standstill and made a peace that endured because he had gained then' respect. It was a peace with the New Mexicans alone. Spaniards elsewhere, any other Europeans, the Mexicans who ruled later, the Americans—Texan, Confederate, Yankee—who despoiled the Mexicans, those remained fair game; and indeed by now there had been such bloodshed and cruelty on both sides that truce between Comanches and Texans was no more thinkable than it was between Comanches and Apaches.

Tarrant forced his mind back to his horse. He and Rufus had gotten fairly good at riding range style; but damn it, what they really were was seamen. Why couldn't their 244

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search have led them into the South Pacific, or along the shores of Asia, or anywhere but this unbounded emptiness?

Well, the search might be near an end. No matter how often he had thought it before, that coursed through his blood and shivered up his spine. O Hiram, Psammetk, Pytheas, Althea, A t hen ais-Aliyat, Armand Cardinal Richelieu, Benjamin Franklin, how far has the River borne me from you! And all the lesser ones, beyond counting, down in dust, wholly forgotten save for whatever might glimmer in him, a comrade of decades or a drinking companion in a tavern, a wife and the children she bore him or a woman chance-met for a single night—

Herrera's shout slammed him back into the day: "/Alto!" and a rush of alien gutturals. Rufus dropped left hand to pistol. Tarrant gestured him from it. The boys brought the pack animals to a stop. Their eyes darted around, they were new to this and nervous. Despite his earlier times between jaws ready to snap shut, Tarrant's flesh prickled.

Two men had come around a brush-grown hillock where they must have been on watch. Their scurry-looking mustangs closed the distance in a few pulsebeats. They checked the gallop with invisible touch of knees and twitch of hackamore; seated merely on blankets, they seemed parts of the beasts, centaurs. Their own frames were stocky, bandylegged, swarthy, clad in breechclouts, leggings, and moccasins. Midnight hair hung in twin braids past broad faces painted in the red and black of death. Leather sunshades had been left behind and the war bonnet of the northern plains was unknown here. One man had stuck a few feathers into a headband. The other bore a great shaggy cap or helmet from which sprang buffalo horns. He carried a Henry repeating rifle. A bandolier of cartridges crossed his chest. His companion nocked an arrow to a short bow. Archers were rare of late, or so Tarrant had heard. Maybe this warrior was poor, maybe he preferred the ancestral weapon. No matter.-That barbed iron head could punch through ribs to the heart, and more shafts waited in their quiver.

Herrera talked on. Buffalo Horns grunted. The bowman slacked his string. Herrera turned in the saddle to regard his employers. "The fight is not ended," he told them, "but the Kwerhar-rehnuh will receive us. Chief Quanah himself is here." Moisture glistened on his face. He had gone a bit THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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pale around the nostrils. In English he added, for many Co-manches knew some Spanish: "Be ver-ree careful. Sey 'ave much anger. Sey can easy kill a w'ite man."

THE RANCH buildings had already been visible. As he drew closer, they seemed to Tarrant, if anything, more small and lonesome in the middle of immensity. He recognized what must be the owners' home, a bunkhouse, and three lesser outbuildings. Sod, they were little damaged. A barn was smoldering ashes and charred fragments; the family had doubtless spent a lot of money and hope on getting the lumber hauled to them. A couple of wagons had been pushed into the flames. A chicken coop had been emptied and smashed. Hoofs had trampled saplings that were to have grown into shelter against sun and wind.

The Indians were camped where a windmill stood skeletal by the cattle trough for which it pumped water. That put them out of rifleshot from the house and, probably, sight through loopholes. About thirty tipis lifted their gaudily decorated buffalo hide cones across what had been a pasture. At a fire near the middle* women in buckskin gowns prepared captured, butchered steers for eating.

They were rather few. The braves numbered maybe a hundred. They loafed about, napped, shot dice, cleaned firearms or whetted knives. Some sat grim in front of lodgings from within which sounded keening; they mourned kinsmen slain. A few, mounted, kept an eye on the many horses that grazed in the distance. They were as tough as their masters, those mustangs that could keep going on winter's grass.

When the newcomers caught the notice of the camp, excitement kindled. Most people ran to crowd around and jabber. The stoic reserve of Indians was a myth, unless they were in pain or dying.

Then a warrior's pride was that not the most prolonged and agonizing torture his captors or their women could think of would make him cry aloud. It was an ill thing to fall into such hands.

Buffalo Horns shouted and pushed his pony through the ruck. Herrera called greetings to men he knew. The smiles and waves that he got in return made Tarrant feel easier. If 246

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they took due care, bis party ought to outlive this day. After at!, to these folk hospitality was sacred.

Close by the windmill was a dpi whereon were painted signs that Herrera whispered were powerful. A man too dignified to leave it for curiosity's sake stood outside, arms folded. The travelers drew rein. Tarrant realized that he looked on Quanah, half-white war chief of the Kwerhar-rehnuh. The name of that band meant "Antelopes"—an American misnomer for the pronghorn, like "buffalo" for bison or "corn" for maize; and curious it seemed for the lords of the Staked Plains, the fiercest of all those Co-manches whom the United States had yet to conquer.

Save for lightning-like bands of yellow and ocher, he wore simply loincloth and moccasins, with a Bowie knife sheathed on a belt, xet there could be no mistaking him. From his mother's race he took straight nose and a height that towered, thickly muscled, over his followers. However, he was even darker than most of them. His regard of the strangers was lion-calm.

Herrera greeted him deferentially in the tongue of the Nermerauh, the People. Quanah nodded.

"Bienvenidos," he rumbled forth, and continued in accented but fluent Spanish. "Dismount and come in."

Tarrant felt relieved. In Santa Fe he had learned some of the Plains Indian sign language, but used it haltingly; and Herrera had told him that few Comanches were adept in it anyway. The trader had said Quanah might or might not condescend to speak Spanish with Americans. He had a certain grasp of English too, though he would scarcely handicap himself with it when he didn't have to.

"Muchas gracias, senor," Tarrant said, to establish that he was the head of this band. He wondered whether he should have used the honorific "Don Quanah."

Herrera left the remuda in charge of bis sons and accompanied Tarrant and Rufus into the tipi behind the chief. Its outfit was sparse, little more than bedrolls; this was a war band. The light within fell gentle after the glare outside, the air smelled of leather and smoke. The men settled cross-legged in a circle. Two wives left, posting themselves at the entrance in case of a task for them.

Quanah was not about to smoke any peace pipe, but Herrera had said it would be okay to offer cigarettes. Tarrant

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did while introducing himself and his friend. Deftly left-handed, Rufus took a matchbox from his pocket, extracted and struck a stick, lighted the tobacco. To have such a formidable-seeming man serve them honored both the principals.

"We have come a weary way in the wish of finding you," Tarrant added. "We thought the Antelopes would be on their home grounds, but you had already left, so we must ask anyone we met, and the earth itself, where you were gone."

"Then you are not here to trade," said Quanah in Her-rera's direction.

"Sr. Tarrant engaged me in Santa Fe to bring him to you, when he had learned I would be able to,"

the trader answered. "I did pack along some rifles and ammunition. One will be a gift to you. As for the rest, well, surely you have taken many cattle."

Rufus sucked in a sharp breath. It was notorious that New Mexican ranchers wanted stock and would buy without questions. Comancheros got small detachments of Indians to drive herds they had lifted out of Texas to that market, in exchange for arms. Tarrant laid a hand on the redhead's knee and muttered in Latin, against the outrage he saw, "Stay quiet. You knew this." *

"Make your camp with us," Quanah invited. "I expect we will be here until tomorrow morning."

Hope quivered in Rufus' tone: "Uh, you will spare them in yonder house?"

Quanah scowled. "No. They have cost us comrades. The enemy shall never boast that any defied us and lived." He shrugged. "Besides, we have need of a short rest, as hard as we have fared—the better to fight the soldiers afterward."

Yes, Tarrant understood, this was not really a plundering expedition, it was a campaign in a war.

His inquiries had informed him of a Kiowa medicine man, Owl Prophet, who called for a great united thrust that would forever drive the white man from the plains; and last year such horror erupted that Washington's attempts at peace came to an end. In fall Ranald Mackenzie took the black troopers of his Fourth Cavalry into these parts, against the Antelopes. Quanah led a retreat that was a running, fight, brilliantly waged—Mackenzie himself received an arrow wound—high 248

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up onto the Llano Estacado until whiter forced the Americans to withdraw. Now he was returning.

The stern gaze shifted to Tarrant. "What do you want with us?"

"I too bear gifts, senor." Clothing, blankets, jewelry, liquor. Despite his remoteness from this conflict, Tarrant could not bring himself to convey weapons; nor would Rufus have stood for it.

"My friend and I are from a distant land—California, by the western waters, which I'm sure you have heard of." In haste, because that territory belonged to the foe: "We have no quarrel with anyone here. The races are not foredoomed to blood feud." A risk that he deemed he should take:

"Your mother was of our people. Before setting forth, I learned what I could about her. If you have any questions, I will try to answer them."

Stillness fell. The hubbub outside seemed faint, distant. Herrera looked uneasy. Quanah sat expressionless, smoking. Time passed before the chief said, heavily: "The Te-janos stole her and my small sister from us. My father, Peta Nawkonee the war chief, mourned for her until at last he took a wound hi battle that got inflamed and killed him. I have heard that she and the girl are dead."

"Your sister died eight years ago," Tarrant replied low. "Your mother soon followed her. She too was sick with grief 'and longing. Now they rest at peace, Quanah."

The tale had been easy enough to obtain, a sensation remembered to this day. In 1836 an Indian band attacked Parker's Fort, a settlement in the Brazos valley. They slew five men and mutilated them as was Indian wont, preferably before death. They gang-raped Granny Parker after a lance pinned her to the ground. Two of the several other women they violated were left with injuries almost as bad. Two more women they carried away, together with three children. Among these was nine-year-old Cynthia Anne Parker.

The women and boys were eventually ransomed back. Though this was by no means the first time the Comanches took females for slaves, the tale of just what those two suffered came to stand for hundreds; and the Texas Rangers rode with vengeance in their hearts.

Cynthia Anne fared better. Capriciously adopted, raised as a girl of the Nennernuh, she forgot English, forgot well-nigh everything of her early childhood, became an Antelope and presently a mother. By all accounts, hers was a happy marriage; Peta Nawkonee loved his wife and wanted no woman after he lost her. That was in 1860, when Sul Ross led a Ranger expedition in retaliation for a raid and fell . upon the Comanche camp. Its men were off hunting. The Texans shot what women and children fled too slowly, and a Mexican slave whom Ross believed to be the chief himself. Barely in time, a man saw, through dirt and dung-grease, that the hair of one squaw was golden.

The Parker clan and the state of Texas did everything they could for her. It was no use. She was Naduah, who only yearned back to the prairie and the People. Repeated _ attempts to escape finally forced her kinfolk to keep a guard on her. When disease robbed her of her daughter, she howled, tore and slashed her own flesh, sank into silence and starved herself to death.

Out on the plains, her younger son perished as wretchedly. Sickness dwelt always among the Indians, tuberculosis, arthritis, worms, ophthalmia, the smallpox that Europeans brought, a litany of ills without end. But her older son flourished, gathered a war band, became headman of the Antelopes. He refused to sign the Medicine Lodge treaty that would put the tribeson a reservation.

Instead, he carried terror along the frontier. He was Quanah.

"Have you seen their graves?" he asked levelly.

"I have not," Tarrant said, "but if you wish, I can visit and tell them of your love."

Quanah smoked for a while longer. At least he didn't outright call the white man a liar. Finally:

"Why have you sought me?"

Tarrant's pulse quickened. "It is not you, chief, great though your fame be. Word has come to me of somebody in your following. If I have heard aright, he hails from the north and has traveled widely and long. Yes, very long, longer than anybody knows, though he never seems to grow old. His must be a strange power. On your home grounds, uh, Nermernuh who stayed behind told us that he came along on this faring. My desire is to speak with him."

"Why?" demanded Quanah. The bluntness, unlike an Indian, betokened tension below the iron surface.

"I believe he will be glad to talk with me."

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Rufus puffed hard on his cigarette. Laid across his lap, the hook trembled.

Quanah raised his voice to the squaws. One of them left. Quanah returned his look to Tarrant. "I have sent for Dertsahnawyeh. Peregrine." —the Spanish for the Co-manche name: Wanderer.

"Do you hope he will teach you his medicine?" he went on.

"I have come to find out what it is."

"I do not think he could tell you, if he were willing, which I do not think he would be."

Herrera peered at Tarrant. "You only told me you wanted to find out what might lie behind those rumors," the trader said. "It is dangerous to meddle in warriors' affairs."

"Yes, I call myself a scientist," Tarrant snapped. To Quanah: "That is a man who seeks for whatever truth lies hidden behind things. How do the sun and the stars shine? How did the earth and life come to be? What really happened in the past?"

"I know," replied the chief. "Thus you whites have found ways to do and make many terrible things, and the railroad runs where the buffalo grazed." Pause. "Well, I suppose Dertsahnawyeh can take care of himself." Starkly: "As for me, I must think how to capture yonder house."

There was nothing more to say.

The tipi entrance darkened. A man trod in. While clad like the rest, he bore no war paint. Nor was he a native of these lands, but tali, slender, lighter-hued. When he saw who sat with Quanah he spoke gently in English. "What do you want of me?"

THEY WALKED over the prairie, Tarrant, Peregrino, Rufus trailing a step or two behind. Light spilled out of vastness, a measure of warmth lifted from soil. Dry grass rattled. Camp and buildings soon vanished among the tall tawny stalks. Smokes continued in sight, rising straight and slow toward the vultures.

Revelation was strangely subdued. Or perhaps it wasn't strange. They had waited so long. Tarrant and Rufus had felt hope grow into near certainty while they quested. Peregrino had nurtured an inner peace to which any surprise was like a passing breath of air. Thus he endured his loneliness, until he outlived it.

"I was born almost three thousand years ago," Tarrant said. "My friend is about half as old."

"I never counted time until lately," said Peregrino. They might as well use that name, out of the many he had had. "Then I guessed five or six hundred years."

"Before Columbus— What changes you've seen!"

Peregrino smiled as a man might at a graveside. "You more. Have you come on any like us, besides Mr. Bullen?"

"Not quite. A woman once, but she disappeared. We've no idea whether she's still alive. Otherwise, you're my first since him. Did you ever?"

"No. I tried but gave up. For all I knew, I was solo. How did you get on my trail?"

"That's kind of a story."

"We got plenty time."

"Well—" Tarrant drew a tobacco pouch from his pants and, from his shirt, the briar pipe it would have been unwise to smoke before Quanah. "I'll start with Rufus and me arriving in California in

'49. You've heard about the Gold Rush? We got rich off it. Not as miners, as merchants."

"You did, Hanno," said the Van at his heel. "I tagged along."

"And damn useful you've been, hi more tight spots than I can list," Tarrant declared. "Eventually I dropped from sight for a few years, then showed up in San Francisco under my present alias and bought a ship. I've always favored the sea. By now I own several; the firm's done right well."

Having loaded his pipe, he laid fire to it. "Whenever I could afford to, I've hired men to look for signs of immortals," he proceeded. "Naturally, I don't teS them that's what they're after. By and large, those of our kind who survive must do it by staying obscure. These days I'm an eccentric millionaire interested in lineages. My agents figure me for an ex-Mormon. They're supposed to locate—oh, individuals who seem much tike others that dropped from sight earlier, and are apt to appear carrying a pretty fair grubstake—that sort of thing. What with railroads and steamships, I can at last spread my net across the world. Of course, it's not that big yet, and the mesh is awfully coarse,

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which may be why it's caught nothing except a few that turned out false."

"Until today," said Peregrino.

Tarrant nodded. "A scout of mine, exploring around Santa Fe, caught rumors about a medicine man among the Comanches, who didn't really belong to them—the description sounded like a Sioux or a Pawnee or what'ever—but he'd gained a good deal of authority and . . . he'd been heard of elsewhere, earlier, several different times and places. Not that any civilized person had pieced this together. Who'd take the fancies of savages seriously? Uh, pardon me, no offense. You know how whites think. My agent didn't suppose it was worth pursuing. He noted it in a couple of sentences in his report just to show me how industrious he was.

"That was last year. I decided to follow it up myself. Lucked out and found two aged people, an Indian and a Mexican, who remembered— Well, it seemed, if he existed, he'd joined Quanah. I hoped to find the Comanches in winter quarters, but as was, we had to track them." Tarrant laid a hand briefly on Peregrine's shoulder. "And here we are, my brother."

Peregrino halted. Tarrant did. For a space they looked into each other's eyes. Rufus stood aside, bemused. At last Tarrant formed a wry grin and murmured, "You're wondering whether I'm a liar, aren't you?"

"How do you know I speak truth?" the Indian replied as low.

"Tactful fellow, you. Well, in the course of time I've cached evidence, as well as getaway gold, here and there. Come with me and I'll show you enough of it. Or you can simply watch me for twenty or thirty years. I'll provide for you. Meanwhile, why else on earth should I spin you a yarn like this?"

Peregrino nodded. "I believe you. But how do you know I'm not out to swindle you?"

"You couldn't have foreseen my arrival, and you did leave many years' worth of trail. Not on purpose. No white who didn't know what to look for would ever have suspected. The tribes—what do they make of you, anyway?"

"That depends." Peregrine's gaze went over miles where grass waved above buffalo skulls, on beyond the horizon.

When he spoke slowly, often stopping to form a sentence before he uttered it, his English became a language other than what he had been using. "Each lives in its own world, you know; and those worlds are changing so fast.

"At first I was a medicine man among my birth-people. But they took to the horse and everything that went with that. I left them and drifted for—winter after winter, summer after summer. I was trying to find what it meant, all that I lived through. Sometimes I settled down a while, but it always hurt too much, seeing what was happening. I even tried the whites. At a mission I got baptized, learned Spanish and English, reading and writing. Afterward I went deep into Mexican and Anglo country both. I have been a market hunter, trapper, carpenter, wrangler, gardener. I talked with everybody who would talk with me and read every printed word that came my way. But that was no good either. I never belonged there.

"Meanwhile tribe after tribe got wiped out—by sickness, by war—or broken and herded onto a reservation. Then if the whites decided they wanted that land too, out the redskins went. I saw the Cherokees at the end of their Trail of Tears—"

The quiet, almost matter-of-fact voice died away. Rufus cleared his throat. "Well, that's how the world is," he grated. "/ seen Saxons, vikings, Crusaders, Turks, wars o* religion, witches burned—" Louder: "I seen what Injuns do when they get the upper hand."

Tarrant frowned him to silence and asked Peregrino, "What brought you here?"

The other sighed. "I finally thought—oh, I was slow about it—this life of mine that went on and on and on, with nothing to show for it but graves—it must have some purpose, some use. And maybe that was just in the long experience, and being ageless would make folks listen to me. Maybe I could help my people, my whole race, before they went under, help them save something for a new beginning.

"About thirty years ago, I came back to them. The Southwest was where free tribes were likely to hang on the longest. The Nermernuh—you do know 'Comanche' is from Spanish, don't you?—they had driven out the Apaches; they had fought the Kiowas as equals and made allies of them; for three hundred years they had stood off the Span-254

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ish, the French, the Mexicans, the Texans, and carried war to the enemy in his home country. Now the Americans aim to crush them once for all. They've earned better than that. Haven't they?"

"What are you doing?" Tarrant's question seemed to hover like the dark wings overhead.

"To tell the truth, I was among the Kiowas first," Per-egrino said. "They are more open in their minds than the Nermernuh, also about long life. Comanches believe a real man dies young, in battle or the hunt, while he is strong. They don't trust their old ones and treat them bad. Not like my birth-people, so long ago. ... I let my ... my reputation grow with time. It helped that I know some things to do for the wounded and the sick. I never set myself up as a prophet. Those crazy preachers have been the death of thousands, and the end is not yet. No, I just went around from band to band, and they came to think I was holy. I did whatever I could for them in the way of healing or advice. Always I counselled peace. Finally—it's a long story—I joined up with Quanah, because he was becoming the last great chief. Everything will turn on him."

"Peace, did you say?"

"And whatever we can save for our children. The Comanches have nothing left from their ancestors, nothing they can truly believe in. That eats them out from the inside. It leaves them wide open for the likes of Owl Prophet. I found a new faith among the Kiowas and I'm bringing it to the Nermernuh. Do you know the peyote cactus? It opens a way, it quiets the heart—"

Peregrino stopped. A tiny laugh fluttered in his throat. "Well, I don't mean to sound like a missionary."

"I'll be glad to listen later," said Tarrant, while he thought: I have seen so many gods come and go, what's one more? "Also to any ideas you may have about making peace. I told you I have money.

And I've always made a point of getting wires in my hands. You savvy? Certain politicians owe me favors. I can buy others. We'll work out a plan, you and I. But first we've got to get you away from here, back to San Francisco with us, before you take a bullet in your brain. Why the hell did you come along with these raiders anyway?"

"I said I have to make them listen to me," Peregrino explained wearily. "It's uphill work. They're suspicious of old men to start with, and when their world is falling to pieces around them they're afraid of magic as strange as mine and— They've got to understand I'm not unmanly, I am on their side. I can't leave them now."

"Wait a minute!" Rufus barked.

They stared at him. He stood foursquare, legs planted wide apart, hat pushed back from roughened red face. The hook that had pierced foemen looked suddenly frail under this heaven. "Wait a minute," stumbled from him. "Boss, what're you thinking? The first thing we got to do is save those ranchers."

Tarrant moistened his lips before it dragged out of him: "We can't. We're two against a hundred or worse. Unless—" He cast a glance at Peregrino.

The Indian shook his head. "In this the People would not heed me," he told them, dull-voiced. "I would only lose what standing I have."

"I mean, can we ransom that family? Comanches often sell prisoners back, I've heard. I've brought trade goods along, besides what was intended for presents. And Herrera ought to turn his stock over to me if I promise him payment in gold." *

Peregrino grew thoughtful. "Well, maybe."

"That's giving those devils the stuff to kill more whites," Rufus protested.

Bitterness sharpened Peregrine's tone. "You were telling as how this sort of thing is nothing new on earth."

"But, but the barbarians in Europe, they were white. Even the Turks— Oh, you don't mind. You ride with these animals—"

"That'll do, Rufus," Tarrant clipped. "Remember why we've come. Saving a few who'll be dead anyway inside a century is not our business. I'll see if I can, but Peregrino here is our real kinsman.

So pipe down."

His comrade whirled about and stalked off.

Tarrant watched him go. "He'll get over it," he said. "Short-tempered and not very bright, but he's been loyal to me since-before the fall of Rome."

"Why does he care about . . . dayflies?" the medicine man wondered.

Tarrant's pipe had gone out. He rekindled it and stared

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into the smoke as it lost itself beneath the sky. "Immortals get influenced by their surroundings, too," he said. "We've mostly lived in the New World these past two hundred years, Rufus and I.

First Canada, when it was French, but then we moved to the English colonies. More freedom, more opportunity, if you were English yourself, as of course we claimed to be. Later we were Americans; same thing.

"It affected him more than me. I owned slaves now and then, and shares in a couple of plantations, but didn't think much about it either way. I'd always taken slavery for granted, and it was a misfortune that could happen to anybody, regardless of race. When the War Between the States ended it and a great deal else, to me that was simply another spin in history's wheel. As a shipowner in San Francisco I didn't need slaves.

"But Rufus, he's a primitive soul. He wants something to cling to—which is what immortals never can have, right? He's gone through a dozen Christian faiths. Last time he got converted was at a Baptist revival, and. a lot of it still clings to him. Both before and after the war he took seriously what he kept hearing about the white race's right and duty to lord it over the colored."

Tarrant chuckled unmerrily. "Besides, he's been without a woman since we left Santa Fe. It was a terrible disappointment to him when he found on the Staked Plains that Co-manche women don't free-and-easy receive outsiders like they do, or used to do, farther north. There must be a white woman or two in yonder cabin. He doesn't imagine he lusts after them himself—oh, he wouldn't dream of anything except being respectful and gallant and getting adoring looks—but the thought of redskin after redskin on them seems to be more than he can bear."

"He may have to," Peregrine said.

"Yes, he may." Tarrant grimaced. "I must admit I don't relish it, nor the idea of ransoming them with guns. I'm not quite as case-hardened as ... I must behave."

"I think nothing will happen for hours."

"Good. I have to give Quanah my presents, go through any formalities—you'll advise me, won't you?—but not right away, hm? Let's walk on. We've a lot of talking to do, you and me. Three thousand years* worth."

WARRIORS GATHERED around. Now they were still, in wildcat dignity, for this was a ceremonial occasion. The westering sun cast gleams over obsidian hair and mahogany skin; on the eastern side it lit flames in eyes.

Between the ranks, before his tipi, Quanah received Tar-rant's gifts. He made a speech in his father's language, lengthy and doubtless full of imagery in his fathers' wise. Standing by the visitor, Peregrino said in English when it was done: "He thanks you, he calls you friend, and tomorrow morning you will pick out of his horses whichever you like best. That is generous for a man on the warpath:"

"I know," Tarrant said. To Quanah, in Spanish: "My thanks to you, great chief. May I ask a favor, in the name of the friendship you so kindly give us?"

Herrera, in the front row though well back, started, tautened, and squinted. Tarrant hadn't stopped by him upon returning, but had collected his presents and gone straight here. Word flew quickly about, and when he saw the braves assemble, Herrera came for politeness and wariness.

"You may ask," said Quanah, impassive.

"I wish to buy free those folks you hold trapped. They are useless to you. Why should you spend more time and men on them? We will take them away with us. In exchange we will pay a good price."

A stir went through the Comanches, a rustle, a buzz. Those who understood whispered to those who had not. Hands tightened on hafts, here and there on a firearm.

A man near the chief uttered a string of harsh words. He was gaunt, scarred, more deeply lined in the face than was common even for aged Indians. Others near him muttered as if in agreement.

Quanah lifted a hand for attention and told Tarrant, "Wahaawmaw says we have our fallen to avenge."

"They fell, uh, honorably."

"He means all our fallen, through all the years and lifetimes, deathtimes we have suffered."

"I didn't think you people—thought that way."

"Wahaawmaw was a boy in that camp where the Tejanos took Quanah's mother," Peregrino related. "He found

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cover and escaped, but they shot down his own mother, brother, two little sisters. A while back he lost his wife and a small son; the soldiers were using a howitzer. The same has happened, different places, to many who are here."

"I'm sorry," Tarrant said to any who would listen. "But those people yonder had nothing to do with that, and— well, I carry plenty of fine things like those I've given your chief. Wouldn't you rather have them than a few stinking scalps?"

Wahaawmaw claimed the right to speak. He went on for minutes, snarling, hissing, flinging up his hands and crying aloud to heaven. Anger answered in a surf-noise. When he was done and had folded his arms, Peregrino scarcely needed to translate: "He calk this an insult. Shall the Ner-mernuh sell their victory for blankets and booze? They'll take more loot than they can carry off the Tejanos, and the scalps as well."

He had warned Tarrant to expect this kind of outcome. Therefore Tarrant looked straight at Quanah and said, "I can make a better offer. We have rifles with us, boxes full of cartridges, things you need as you need horses if you are to wage war. How much, for those poor lives?"

Herrera took a step forward. "No, wait," he called.

Quanah forestalled him. "Are these in your baggage? If so, good. If not, you are too late. Your companion has already agreed to trade his for cattle."

Tarrant stood moveless. Wahaawmaw, who must have gotten the gist, crowed at him. "I could have told you," Herrera said through the rising crowd-noise.

Quanah brought that down while Peregrino breathed in Tarrant's ear, "I will see whether I can talk them into changing the deal. Keep your hopes on a tight rein, though."

He launched into oratory. His fellows responded likewise. For the most part they spoke soberly.

The effort always was to reach a consensus. They had no government. Civil chiefs were little more than judges, mediators, and even war chiefs only commanded in battle. Quanah waited out the debate. Toward the end, Herrera had something to say. Soon after that, Quanah pronounced what he took to be the verdict, and assent passed among his followers like an ebb-tide THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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wave. The sun stood low. Wahaawmaw cast Tarrant a triumphant glare.

Sadness dulled Peregrino's English. "You have guessed, no? It did not work. They have not gotten much blood yet, and are thirsty for it. Wahaawmaw claimed it would be bad luck to give quarter, and quite a few were ready to believe that. They can spare the half a dozen to round up this ranch's herd and bring it to New Mexico. They enjoy that trip. And the Comanchero told them he is not a man to pull out of a bargain once it's been struck. That made them extra touchy about their own honor. Also . . . Quanah didn't argue either way, but they know he has an idea for taking the house that he would like to try, and they are curious what it may be." He stood silent for part of a minute. "I did my best. I really did."

"Of course," Tarrant answered. "Thanks."

"I want you to know I don't like what will happen, either. Let's ride off and not come back till morning, you and me— Rufus if he wants."

Tarrant shook his head. "I've a notion I'd better stay around. Don't worry. I've seen enough sacks in the past."

"I suppose you have," said Peregrino.

The meeting broke up. Tarrant gave Quanah his respects and walked among knots of warriors, whose looks on him ranged from sullen to gleeful, toward Herrera's camp. It was several yards from the nearest tipi. The New Mexican found men to talk with and thus delayed himself.

His sons had a fire started. They were busy with preparations for supper, before the quick prairie dark should fall. Long sunbeams trailed through smoke. Bedrolls waited. Rufus sat idle, hunched, a bottle in his single fist.. He looked up when Tarrant approached and asked, needlessly once he had seen, "What happened?"

"No dice." Tarrant lowered himself to the trampled grass and reached out. "I'll take a swig of that whiskey. Not much, and you'd better watch it closer." Its bite went beneficent down his gullet. "I've failed altogether. Peregrino won't leave the Comanches, and they won't take ransom."

Curtly he described the situation.

"That son of a bitch," Rufus breathed.

"Who? Quanah? He may be enemy, but he's honest."

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"No, Herrera. He could have—"

The trader glided into view. "Did I hear my name?" he asked.

"Yeah." Rufus lurched to his feet, bottle in hand. He stayed with English, except for, "Vipera es.

You snake. You greaser. You could'a—could'a—sold Hanno—sold the boss those guns an'—"

Herrera's right hand moved toward his Colt. His sons edged left and right, not yet drawing their knives. "I could not change a bargain that had been made," he said. Spanish was too soft a language to convey the full coldness. "Not unless they agreed, and they refused. That would have hurt my reputation, damaged my business."

"Sure, you breed, you're always ready for sellin' white men, white women, sellin' 'em for—for money. Blood money." Rufus spat at Herrera's feet.

"We will not speak of blood," said the trader most quietly. "/ know who my father was. And I saw him weep when the Yanquis robbed our country from us. Now I must step aside for them in the streets of Santa Fe. The priest tells me I should not hate them, but need I care what becomes of them?"

Rufus groaned. His hook slashed. Herrera slipped back in time. The pistol sprang forth. Tarrant jumped to his feet and caught Rufus by the arms before the redbeard could try to draw. Slowly, the boys sheathed their blades.

"Behave yourself," Tarrant panted. "Sit down."

"Not with these!" Rufus coughed in Latin. He shook free of the grasp on him. "And you, Hanno.

Can't you remember? Like that woman we saved, way back when hi Russia. And that was just a single man, and he wouldn't have cut her belly open afterward, or given her to the females with their knives and torches—" He stumbled off, away from everybody, still gripping the bottle.

Looks followed him for a little. Then Tarrant said to Herrera, "Let him be. Hell get his wits back. Thanks for your patience," with less than total sincerity.

6

TWICE DURING the afternoon, Tom Langford ventured outside. When he saw the encampment, he stepped quickly in again and rebarred the door. Toward evening he said, "I s'pect they'll try a night attack. Why else would they hang around this long? Maybe again at dawn, but could be any time. We'll just have to keep alert. If we stand 'em off then, they ought to up and go. Injuns don't know how to lay a siege."

Bill Davis laughed softly and richly. "We ain't wuth it," he opined.

"Los vecinos vendrdn indudablemente a ayudarnos—- 'Elp weell come," Carlos Padilla ventured.

"I dunno how fast, if ever," Langford sighed. "S'posin' Bob got through, the neighbors are scattered pretty thin these days. Maybe a cavalry troop is somewhere close enough."

"We are in the hands of God," Susie declared. She smiled at her husband. "Yours too, dear, and strong hands they are."

Ed Lee tossed and muttered on the Langfords' bed. His injury had lit a fever in him. The children were more than ready for sleep.

First there was supper, cold beans, bread, the last milk. They had no firewood to speak of, and little water. Langford asked his wife to say grace. Nobody minded when Carlos crossed himself.

Afterward the men one by one and bashfully went behind a sort of curtain Susie had rigged in a corner to hide the bucket all muSt share. Langford had emptied it whenever he stepped out. He hoped nobody more would have any real business there till the Indians were gone. That would be kind of nasty, in these close quarters with a woman and a girl. The privy was sod, it ought to be around yet. If not, well, they'd have the tall grass for walls, the freedom of these acres for which he had saved and toiled and now fought.

Dusk thickened to night. A single candle burned on the table amidst the guns. The Langfords and the hale men stood watches, two peering out loopholes taken in turn while two caught naps, on the floor or alongside poor Ed. Stars crowded what they glimpsed of sky. The ground was gray-black vague. A waning sliver of moon would be scant help when it rose shortly before the sun. Meanwhile the cold and the stillness gnawed away.

Once the wife whispered from her side of the room, "Tom?"

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light he couldn't see dirt, exhaustion, hollowed cheeks and black-rimmed eyes. She was the girl of his courting days, from whose front porch he'd walk home on the rainbow.

"Tom, if—if they do get in and you have the chance—" She must take a breath. "Would you shoot me—first?"

"Christ, no!" he choked, and could taste the horror.

"Please. I'd bless you."

"You might live, honey. They do sell prisoners to our people."

She stared at the floor, then quickly, remembering her duty, out a loophole. "I wouldn't want to live. Not after—"

"Do you s'pose I'd ever turn my back on you? Reckon you don't know me as well as I thought."

"No, but you— I'd be without you on earth. Why not together in Heaven, at once?"

He knew the redskins wouldn't spare his life. Unless he was lucky, he wouldn't be a man when he died. Not that knives and fire, or being staked out under the sun with his eyelids cut off, would leave him in shape to think much about that. "Well, you might still manage to get the kids through."

Again her head drooped. "Yes. I'm sorry. I clean forgot. Yes, I was bein' selfish."

"Aw, don't you fret, sweetheart," he said as cheerfully as he was able. "Nothin' bad's goin' to happen.'Next week our biggest worry will be how we can keep from braggjn' too loud."

"Thank you, darlin'." She turned her attention outward.

The night wore on. They had divided it into four watches, then all to be afoot in advance of dawn, when attack was likeliest. About three in the morning by the grandfather clock, the Langfords finished their second trick, roused the hands, and stretched themselves out, he on the floor, she beside Ed. Should the hurt man stir from the heavy sleep into which he had dropped, she'd know it and see to whatever need was his. The other men would shoot better, the more well rested they were.

A shotgun blast kicked Langford awake.

Bill thudded against the wall and fell. The lead had sleeted across the cabin and taken him in the back. By candlelight and monstrous flickery shadows the blood that gushed from him shone blacker than his skin.

Carlos crouched on the north side, rifle aimed and

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useless. Two broad muzzles thrust in by the west loopholes. One smoked. It withdrew. Instantly another took its place. Meanwhile the second roared.

Langford jumped to the bedside and Susie. Sick understanding billowed through him. Hostiles, just three or four, had crawled under cover of night, slowly, often stopping, shadows in the gloom, till they were among the stakes and under the eaves. When they shoved their guns through, maybe they hoped they'd fire straight into an eye.

No matter. Shooting blind, wedging the barrels to and fro, they made defense impossible.

Whoops lifted, nearer and nearer. Thunder beat on the door. No tomahawks, Langford knew; that was a regular woodcutting ax, probably his. Panels splintered. A gust blew out the candle. Langford fired and fired, but he couldn't see anything for sure. The hammer clicked on emptiness. Where the hell were the loaded guns? Susie screamed. Maybe he should have saved a bullet for her. Too late.

The door was down and the dark full of warriors.

THE RACKET brought Tarrant iwd the Herreras from their bedrolls, hands to weapons. Tumult went murky among the tipis. "El ataque," the trader said beneath yowls and shots.

"What're they doing?" Tarrant grated: "Another frontal assault, in the dead of night? Crazy."

"I do not know," Herrera said. The noise rose rapidly to crescendo. He bared teeth, a dim flash under the stars. "Victory. They are taking the house." Tarrant bent to put on his boots. "Where do you go? Stay here. You could too easily get killed."

"I've got to see if I can do anything."

"You cannot. Myself, I stay, not out of fear but because I do not want to see what comes next."

Tarrant's pain lashed: "You told me you don't care."

"Not much," Herrera admitted. "But it would be evil to gloat, nor have I the heart for it. No, my sons and I will pray for them." He plucked the other man's sleeve. You slept fully clad in such a place as this. "Do stay. You, somehow, I like."

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"I'll be careful," Tarrant promised, and loped off.

He skirted the Comanche camp. More and more torches came to life there, flared, bobbed, streamed sparks on their hasty way. Sight of them dimmed the stars that hi their uncountable thousands gleamed frost-bright across black. Nevertheless he had light enough to turn the soil gray for him.

Where the devil was Rufus? Probably snoring out on the prairie alongside the empty bottle. Just as well. No matter how self-controlled, a white man took a risk, showing himself to red men in blood-rut.

So why did he, Hanno, Lugo, Cadoc, Jacques Lacy, William Sawyer, Jack Tarrant, a hundred different aliases, behave like this? He knew he couldn't save the ranchers, and didn't mean to try. They must perish as star-many had perished before them and would in the future, over and over, world without end. History chewed them up and spat them out and soon most rotted forgotten, might as well never have been. Maybe the Christians were right and mankind was like that, maybe it was simply in the nature of things.

His intention was practical. He hadn't survived this long by hiding from the terrible. Rather, he kept alert, aware, so he'd know which way to jump when the sword swung. Tonight he'd observe from the fringes. If an impulse arose to wipe out his party too, he could talk it down, .given help from Peregrine and maybe even Quanah, before it got out of control. In the morning he'd start back toward Santa Fe.

The chief stood huge near the cabin, a long-helved ax on his shoulder. Torchlight guttered across painted face and body, horned headdress; it was as if he flickered in and out of hell. The braves were mostly less clear, blobs of night that swarmed, pranced, screeched, waved their brands like battle flags. Squaws capered with them, knives or sharpened sticks hi hand. The doorway gaped hollow.

They kept clear a space in front of it. Three dead men sprawled at the threshold, dragged forth.

The Anglo's left arm was splinted; someone had cut his throat before stopping to think about sport. Rib ends stuck out of a hole torn in the Negro's back. A third seemed Mexican, though he was so slashed and pulped it was hard to be sure; he had gone down fighting.

Lucky bastards. Two squaws held fast a small boy and a smaller girl who screamed, blind with fear.

A tall Anglo sat

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slumped. Blood matted his hair and dripped onto clothes and earth. He was stunned. Two warriors locked the arms of a young woman who writhed, kicked, cursed them and called on her God.

A man bounded from the ruck. A torch swung near him for a moment and Tarrant recognized Wahaawmaw.

He had slung his rifle to free his hands. The right gripped a knife. He laughed aloud, caught the collar of the woman's dress in his left, slashed downward. The cloth parted. Whiteness gleamed, and a sudden string of blood-beads. Her captors forced her down on her back. Wahaawmaw fumbled at his breechclout. The man prisoner stirred, croaked, struggled to regain his feet. A brave gave him a gun butt in the stomach and he sagged, retching.

A grizzly bear growl resounded. From around the cabin stormed Rufus. His Colt was drawn. He swept his hook back and forth. Two Indians stumbled aside, faces gashed open. He reached the woman. The men who pinned her sprang up. He shot one through the forehead. He hooked an eye from the other, who recoiled shrieking. His boot smashed into Wahaawmaw's groin. That warrior tumbled, to squirm by the white man. He sought to choke down agony, but it jerked past his tips.

Flambeau flare made Rufus'-obeard its own hue. He stood with his legs on either side of the woman, hunched forward, swaying a little, flaming drunk but the Colt rock-steady before him. "Aw right,"

he boomed, "you filthy swine, first o' you makes a move, 111 plug him. She's gonna go free, an'—"

Wahaawmaw straightened on the ground and rolled over. Rufus didn't see. There was too much else for him to watch. "Look out!" Tarrant heard himself yell. The Indian bowls drowned his voice.

Wahaawmaw unslung his rifle. Prone, be fired.

Rufus lurched back. The pistol fell. Wahaawmaw shot again. Rufus crumpled. His weight sank onto the woman and held her fast.

Wild, Tarrant shoved men aside. He sprang into the clear space and went on his knees beside Rufus.

"O sodalis, amice perennis—" Blood bubbled from the mouth and into the red beard. Rufus gasped.

For an instant it seemed he grinned, but Tarrant couldn't really know in the shifty 266

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torchlight or even by the light of the stars. He clasped the big body to him and felt life ebb away.

Only then did he hear what a silence had fallen. He looked aloft. Quanah stood above him, the ax held out tike a roof or a buffalo-hide shield. Had he roared his folk into quietude? They were a massive blur, well back from him and the dead, the wounded, the captive. Here and there a blaze briefly picked out a face or made eyeballs glisten.

Tarrant hauled Rufus off the woman. She stirred, stared, mewed. "Easy," be murmured. She got to hands and knees, made her way thus to the man. Squaws had let go of the children, who were already at his side. He'd regained consciousness. At least, he could sit straight and lay his arms around them all.

The warriors Rufus injured had joined the crowd, except for the slain one and Wahaawmaw. He had risen but leaned on his rifle, shakily, holding himself where the pain was.

Tarrant got up too. Quanah lowered his ax. The pair of them regarded each other.

"Bad is this," said the chief at last. "Very bad."

A skipper from Phoenicia learned how to snatch at every chance, no matter how thin a shred. "Yes,"

Tarrant answered. "A man of yours has killed a guest of yours."

"He, your man, broke murdering into our midst."

"He had a right to speak, to be heard hi your council. When your Nermernuh would bar his way and likely attack him, he acted in self-defense. He was under your protection, Quanah. At worst, you could have had him seized from behind, as many men as you command. I think you would have done that if you had gotten the chance, for everyone calls you a man of honor. But this creature shot him first."

Wahaawmaw groaned outrage. Tarrant didn't know how much he had understood. The argument was weak, almost ridiculous. Quanah could dismiss it out of hand. And yet—

Peregrine stepped forth. He overtopped the chief by a couple of inches. He carried a medicine bundle and a wand on which hung three buffalo tails, things he must have brought from his tipi. A hiss and mumble went through the crowd. Torches wavered. Dertsahnawyeh, the undying one, had power to raise awe in the fiercest heart.

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"Stay where you are, Jack Tarrant," he said quietly, "while Quanah and I go talk."

The chief nodded. He spoke certain commands. Wahaawmaw snarled but hobbled obediently off to lose himself in the throng. Several warriors came rifles in hand to keep guard on the whites. Quanah and Peregrino departed into the night.

Tarrant went over to the prisoners and hunkered down. "Listen," he said low, "we may be able to get you free. Keep still, don't make any fuss. This band's had a shock that cooled them down some, but don't do anything to remind them they meant to destroy you."

"I got you," the man answered, clearly if not quite firmly yet. "Whatever happens, we owe you our prayers, you and your partner."

"He came like a knight of King Arthur," the woman whispered.

He came tike a goddamned drunken idiot, Tarrant thought. I could have headed him off if I'd known.

I would have. Oh, Rufus, old buddy, you always hated to be alone, and now you are, forever.

The man offered his hand. "Tom Langford," he said. "My wife Susan. Nancy. Jimmy, uh, James." For out of grime and drying tears and the start of a bruise, the boy had cast his father a reproachful look. Tarrant wanted to hoot laughter.

He choked it down, shook hands, gave his name, and finished, "We'd better not talk more. Besides, the Indians expect me to see to my dead."

Rufus lay about ten feet from the Langfords. It might have been ten thousand miles. Tarrant couldn't wash him, but he straightened the body, closed the eyes, bound up the jaw with a bandanna. He drew his pocket knife and cut himself in the face and along bared arms and chest.

Blood welled and dripped, nothing serious but it impressed the watchers. This was their way of mourning, not the white man's. Surely therefore the dead was mightily important, to be avenged with cannon and saber unless his friends were appeased. At the same time, the friend who was here did not wail over him, and that too was eerie. By ones and twos 268

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and threes, the Nermernuh melted off toward the comfort of their camp.

Well, Rufus, you did have fifteen hundred years, and you enjoyed just about every day of them. You wenched and fought and sang and gorged and swilled and adventured, you were a hard worker when we needed work done and a better yet man to have at my back when we needed that and in your rough gruff style a pretty good husband and father whenever we settled down a while. T could have done without your stupid practical jokes, and by ourselves for any length of time your conversation got so boring it was physically painful, and if you saved my life now and then, I staked my own as often to pull you out of some scrape you'd blundered into, and—and a lot of gusto went out of my world tonight, Rufus. A lot of love.

False dawn chilled the east. Quanah and Peregrino were dim in sight until they reached the cabin and halted. Tarrant rose. The guards glided deferentially aside. From the ground the Langfords stared dull-eyed, wrung dry, their children uneasily asleep.

Tarrant stood waiting.

"It is decided," said Quanah. The deep voice rolled like hoofs over the plains. Breath blew ghost-white in the cold. "Let all men know that the Nennernuh are generous. They will heed my wishes in this matter. You, the trader, and his sons may go home. You may take these captives along. They are in exchange for your comrade. He brought his death on himself, but since he was a guest, let that be his price, because the Nermernuh set high their honor. Nor shall his body be harmed, but we will give him decent burial, so that his spirit may find its way to the afterworld. I have spoken."

A shudder passed below Tarrant's skin. He had more than half awaited worse than this. Somehow he kept it hidden and said, "I thank you much, senor, and I will tell my people that the soul of Quanah is large." He believed he meant it.

For an instant the chief let his stateliness drop. "Thank Peregrino. He persuaded me. Begone before sunrise."

He beckoned to the guards. They followed him toward the Comanche camp.

A mortal might have crumbled to pieces as the pressure

came off, cackled and gibbered and swooned. An immortal had more reserves, more bounce.

Nonetheless Tarrant's words trembled. "How did you do it, Peregrino?"

"I pushed your argument as far as it would go." Again the Indian took time to build and weigh each English sentence. "He wasn't unwilling to take it. He isn't a fiend, you know; he's fighting for the life of his people. But he must convince them also. I had to ... call in all my chips, call on the spirits, finally tell him that either he released you or I left him. He does value my advice as well as ... my medicine. After that it wasn't hard to get him to release this family too. I will help him convince the warriors that was a good idea."

"He was right when he told me to thank you," Tarrant said. "I will for as many centuries as I've got left."

Peregrine's smile was as bleak as the eastern light. "You need not. I had my reasons and I want my price."

Tarrant swallowed. "What is it?"

The tone mildened. "I admit I did have to save you. Maybe you and I are the only immortals in the world, now. We must join together sometime. But meanwhile—"

Peregrino reached out and caught Tarrant's arm. "Meanwhile, here are my people," throbbed from him. "I wasn't born to them, but they are almost the last of us who were born to this land and are still free. They won't be much longer. Soon they will be broken." Even as Tyre and Carthage were, Galtia and Britannia, Rome and Byzantium, Al-bigensians and Hussites, Basques and Irish, Quebec and the Confederacy. "I told you yesterday out on the prairie, I have to stay with them to the end, reason with them, help them find a new faith and hope. Else they'll dash themselves to pieces, like buffalo over a cliff. So I will be working among them for peace.

"I want you to do the same. As I told Quanah, letting these few go can earn us a little good will.

More will die, horribly, but here is a talking point for you. You claim you are rich and have the ear of powerful men. All right, my price for these lives is that you work on your side for peace, a peace that my people can live with."

"Ill try my best," said Tarrant. He truly meant that. If nothing else, the day would come when Peregrino held him to account.

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They clasped hands. The Indian strode off. False dawn died away and he was quickly into the shadows.

"Follow me," Tarrant called to the Langfords. "We have to hit the trail at once."

What sum of years had Rufus bought for these four? Two hundred, maybe?

8

IN FAR Western eyes, the Wichita Mountains were hardly more than hills; but they rose steeply, treeless, yet under the spring rains turning deeply green and starred with wild-flowers. In its valley among them a big house and its outbuildings reigned over many acres of cropland, pasture, cattle, and horses, horses.

Grass shone wet after a shower and clouds drifted white when a hired carriage left the main road for the drive to the homestead. A farmhand on a pony, who had been inspecting fences, saw it and rode to inquire. Mr. Parker wasn't here, he said. The driver, who was likewise an Indian, explained that his passenger's business was actually with Mr. Peregrino. Startled, the worker gave directions and stared after the vehicle. It was almost as strange to him as the autos that occasionally stuttered by.

A side track brought it to a frame cabin surrounded by flowerbeds, kitchen garden in back. On the porch a man clad in dungarees and sandals sat reading. He wore his hair in braids but was too tall and slender to be a Comanche. As the carriage approached he laid his book aside, sprang down the steps, and stood waiting.

It stopped. A white man climbed out. His clothes bespoke prosperity only if you looked closely at material and tailoring. For a moment he and the dweller were still. Then they ran to grip hands and look into each other's eyes.

"At last," Peregrine said, not quite evenly. "Bienvenido, amigo."

"I'm sorry to have been this long about coming," Tarrant answered. "It happened I was in the Orient on business when your letter reached San Francisco. After I got home, I thought a telegram might draw too much notice. You'd written to me years ago, when I sent you my_ address, that just THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS

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that bit of mail set tongues wagging. So I simply caught the first train east."

"It's all right. Come in, come in." With long practice behind it the English flowed easily, colloquially. "If your driver wants, he can go on to the big house. They'll take care of him. He can cart us to town—how about day after tomorrow? I've things of my own to see to, including stuff I'd like shipped after me. If that's okay with you."

"Of course, Peregrino. Damn near anything you may want is." Having spoken to the other man, Tarrant took a Gladstone bag from the carriage and accompanied his host inside.

The cabin held four rooms, neat, clean, sunny, austerely furnished except for a substantial number of books, a gramophone, a collection of mostly classical records, and, in the bedchamber, certain articles of religion. "You'll sleep here," Peregrino said. "I'll roll up in the back yard. No, not a peep out of you. You're my guest. Besides, it'll be kind of like old days. I often do it anyway, in fact."

Tarrant glanced around. "You live alone, then?"

"Yes. It seemed wrong to me, getting married and having kids when I knew that in the end I'd fake something and desert them. Life among the free tribes was different. How about you?"

Tarrant's mouth pinched together. "My latest wife died last year, young. Consumption. We tried a desert climate, everything, but— Well, we had no children, and this identity has been around nearly as long as is safe. I'm making ready for a change."

They settled themselves in the front room on wooden chairs. Above Peregrine's head a chromolithograph gazed from its frame at Tarrant, a Rembrandt self-portrait. Bad though the copy was, mortal sorrow lingered in those eyes. From his bag Tarrant had taken a bottle of Scotch.

Illegally, he filled both glasses his host had fetched, He also offered Havana cigars. Mere creature comforts are still comforts.

"How've you been doing otherwise?" Peregrino inquired.

"Busy," Tarrant said. "Not sure how rich I am—I'd have to go through the books of several aliases—but it's a heap, and bigger every day. One thing I want you for, besides yourself, is to help me think what's most worth spending it on. How about you?"

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"Peaceful, on the whole. I cultivate my patch of land, make things in my woodworking shop, counsel my congregation—native church, so I'm not really like a white minister—and teach in a school. I'll be sorry to leave that. Oh, and I read a lot, trying to learn about your world."

"And I suppose you're Quanah's advisor."

"Well, yes. But look, don't think I'm the power behind bis sad tittle throne or anything like that. He's done it all himself. He's a remarkable man. Among whites he'd have been a, a Lincoln or Napoleon. The most I can claim credit for is making some things possible, or at least easier, for him. He went ahead and did them."

Tarrant nodded, remembering— The grand alliance of Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, Quanah its paramount chief. The bloody repulse at Adobe Walls, the year of warfare and manhunt that followed, and the last starvelings, led by Quanah, going onto the reservation in 1875. The good intentions of an Indian agent three years afterward, when he arranged for the Comanches to ride out under military escort on a final buffalo hunt, and no buffalo remained. And yet, and yet—

"Where is be now?" Tarrant asked.

"In Washington," Peregrino said. Receiving a look of surprise: "He goes there fairly often. He is our spokesman, for all our tribes. And, well, too bad about Mr. McKinley, but that did put Theodore Roosevelt in the White House. He and Quanah know each other, they're Mends."

He smoked for a while in silence. The ageless are seldom hurried. At length he went on: "Among us Quanah's more than a rather wealthy former. He's a headman and judge, he holds us together. The whites don't like the peyote nor his clutch of wives, but they put up with it because he doesn't just keep us going, by doing so he keeps their consciences at ease. Not that he's any sobersides.

A genial sort, apt to tell stories or use language that'd make a sailor blush. But he is . . .