Red Lightning stood where I had left him before the door. A company of Kash Guard, evidently returning from the battle, were engaged with my little band that was slowly falling back toward the headquarters building. There was no time to be lost if Juana was to escape. I lifted her to Red Lightning’s back from where she stooped and threw her dear arms about my neck, covering my lips with kisses.
“Come back to me soon,” she begged, “I need you so—and it will not be long before there will be another to need you too.”
I pressed her close to my breast. “And if I do not come back,” I said, “take this and give it to my son to guard as his fathers before him have,” and I placed The Flag in her hands.
The bullets were singing around us and I made her go, watching her as the noble horse raced swiftly across the parade and disappeared among the ruins to the west. Then I turned to the fighting to find but ten men left to me. Orrin Colby was dead and Dennis Corrigan. Jim was left and nine others. We fought as best we could; but we were cornered now, for other guards were streaming onto the parade from other directions and our ammunition was expended.
They rushed us then—twenty to one—and though we did the best we could, they overwhelmed us. Lucky Jim was killed instantly; but I was only stunned by a blow upon the head.
That night they tried me before a court-martial and tortured me in an effort to make me divulge the names of my accomplices; but there were none left alive that I knew of, even had I wished to betray them. As it was, I just refused to speak. I never spoke again after bidding Juana goodbye, other than the few words of encouragement that passed between those of us who remained fighting to the last.
Early the next morning I was led forth to The Butcher.
I recall every detail up to the moment the knife touched my throat—there was a slight stinging sensation followed instantly by—oblivion.
It was broad daylight when he finished—so quickly had the night sped—and I could see by the light from the east window of the room where we sat that his face looked drawn and pinched and that even then he was suffering the sorrows and disappointments of the bitter, hopeless life he had just described.
I rose to retire. “That is all?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, “that is all of that incarnation.”
“But you recall another?” I insisted. He only smiled as I was closing the door.
Part III
The Red Hawk
Being the Story of Julian 20th
I
The Desert Clans
The January sun beat hotly down upon me as I reined Red Lightning in upon the summit of a barren hill and looked down upon the rich land of plenty that stretched away below me as far as the eye could see toward the mighty sea that lay a day’s ride, perhaps, to the westward—the sea that none of us had ever looked upon—the sea that had become as fabulous as a legend of the ancients during the almost four hundred years since the Moon Men had swept down upon us and overwhelmed the Earth in their mad and bloody carnival of revolution.
In the near distance the green of the orange groves mocked us from below, and great patches that were groves of leafless nut trees, and there were sandy patches toward the south that were vineyards waiting for the hot suns of April and May before they, too, broke into riotous, tantalizing green. And from this garden spot of plenty a curling trail wound up the mountainside to the very level where we sat gazing fiercely down upon this last stronghold of our foes. When the ancients built that trail it must have been wide and beautiful indeed, but in the centuries that have elapsed man and the elements have sadly defaced it. The rains have washed it away in places and the Kalkars have made great gashes in it to deter us, their enemies, from invading their sole remaining lands and driving them into the sea; and upon their side of the gashes they have built forts where they keep warriors always. And well for them that they do. It is so upon every pass that leads down into their country.
Since fell my great ancestor, Julian 9th, in the year 2122, at the end of the first uprising against the Kalkars, we have been driving them slowly back across the world. That was over three hundred years ago. For a hundred years they have held us here, a day’s ride from the ocean. Just how far it is we do not know; but in 2408 my grandfather, Julian 18th, rode alone almost to the sea. He had won back almost to safety when he was discovered and pursued almost to the tents of his people. There was a battle, and the Kalkars who had dared invade our country were destroyed, but Julian 18th died of his wounds without being able to tell more than that a wondrous rich country lay between us and the sea, which was not more than a day’s ride distant. A day’s ride, for us, might be anything under a hundred miles.
We are desert people. Our herds range a vast territory where feed is scarce that
