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, 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 of 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 Spanish, 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.”
