“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 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?”
“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 little 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 ... reconciliation. He calls himself Quanah Parker, in memory of his mother. Lately he talks about having her bones and his sister’s moved here, so they can rest beside his. Oh, I don’t blinker myself. We Indians have a steep, tough road to walk, and a lot of us will foil by the wayside. But Quanah’s gotten.us started.”
“And you brought him to that,” Tarrant said.
“Well, I worked against the prophets, I used what influence I had toward getting peace into the minds of the People. And you, from your side, kept your promise.”
Tarrant grinned crookedly. It had cost. You couldn’t simply buy politicians, you had to buy or push men who in their turn could strike deals with the grim incorruptibles. But Quanah did not go to jail or hang.
“I suspect you’re too modest,” Tarrant said. “Never mind. We’ve done our work. Maybe we’ve justified our long lives; I don’t know. So you’re ready to travel?”
Peregrino nodded. “I can’t do anything more here that others can’t whom I’ve helped train. And I have been on this reservation more than a quarter century. Quanah’s covered for me, kept me pretty much tucked in a corner, discouraged those who remember from talking to outsiders about me. But it isn’t like the prairie. Folks are wondering. If any real word leaked to the newspapers—ah, that worry’s at an end. I’ll leave him a letter, and my blessing.”
He looked out the window. It faced west. His hand lifted to his lips the brew of a people who themselves were once barbarians, southward raiding, northward retreating in war after war for their freedom. He said, “It’s time for me to start over.”
XV. Coming Together
1
Rain roared. It washed away heat and grime, turned the air into flying, stinging gray. When lightning flashed, the hue became brief mercury, while thunder trampled down noise of motors, horns, water spurting from wheels. One bolt stabbed the new Empire State Building, but dissolved in the steel web under the masonry. Though the hour was early afternoon, headlights glimmered on cars and buses. Even mid town, pedestrians became few, trudging hunched beneath umbrellas or dodging from marquee to awning. Taxis were not to be had.
Uptown, Laurace Macandal’s street lay altogether bare. Ordinarily it bore life enough, and after dark bustled and glittered. Several night clubs had sprung up among the neighborhood’s modest tenements, small shops, and this old mansion she had renovated. Hard times or no, white folks still came to Harlem for jazz, dance, comedy, a little freedom from care such as they told each other Negroes were born to. Just now, everybody was inside, waiting out the weather.
She glanced at a clock and beckoned to one of the maids. “Listen well, Gindy,” she said. “You haven’t been long in service, and something very important will happen today. I don’t want you making mistakes.”
“Yes, Mama-lo.” Awe shivered in the girl’s voice.
Laurace shook her head. “That, for instance. I have told you before, I am only ‘Mama-lo’ at holy times.”
“I, I’m sorry, ... ma’m.” Tears blurred sight of the woman who stood before the girl—a woman who looked young and yet somehow old as time; tall, slim, in a maroon dress of quiet elegance, a silver snake bracelet on her left wrist and at her throat a golden pendant whose intertwined circle and triangle surrounded a ruby; too dark to be called high yellow, but with narrow face, arched nose, hair straight and stiff. “I keeps forgettin’.”
Laurace smiled and reached to pat the maid’s hand. “Don’t be afraid, dear.” Her voice, which could be a trumpet, sang like a violin. “You’re young, with much to learn. Mainly I want you to understand that my visitor today is special. That’s why no men will be around except Joseph, and he’s to stay with the car. You will help in the kitchen. Don’t leave it. No, there is nothing wrong with the way you serve at table, and you’re prettier than
