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.
“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 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.
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.
