e him down. However, if he could
patch up some kind of truce between his people and the outlaws, the
Apaches would have only the Reds from the settlement to watch. Too many
times in Terran past had war on two fronts been disastrous.

"I come--carrying this--and not pulled by your ropes." He held up his
bow in an exaggerated gesture so that Hulagur could understand.

Coiling the lariat, the Mongol looked from the Apache bow to Travis.
Slowly, and with obvious reluctance, he nodded agreement.

At Hulagur's call the lancer rode up to the waiting Apache, stretched
out a booted foot in the heavy stirrup, and held down a hand to bring
Travis up behind him riding double. Kaydessa mounted in the same fashion
behind her brother.

Travis looked at the coyotes. Together the animals stood in the door to
the tower valley, and neither made any move to follow as the horses
trotted off. He beckoned with his hand and called to them.

Heads up, they continued to watch him go in company with the Mongols.
Then without any reply to his coaxing, they melted back into the mists.
For a moment Travis was tempted to slide down and run the risk of taking
a lance point between the shoulders as he followed Naginlta and
Nalik'ideyu into retreat. He was startled, jarred by the new awareness
of how much he had come to depend on the animals. Ordinarily, Travis Fox
was not one to be governed by the wishes of a _mba'a_, intelligent and
un-animallike as it might be. This was an affair of men, and coyotes had
no part in it!

Half an hour later Travis sat in the outlaw camp. There were fifteen
Mongols in sight, a half dozen women and two children adding to the
count. On a hillock near their yurts, the round brush-and-hide
shelters--not too different from the wickiups of Travis' own people--was
a crude drum, a hide stretched taut over a hollowed section of log. And
next to that stood a man wearing a tall pointed cap, a red robe, and a
girdle from which swung a fringe of small bones, tiny animal skulls, and
polished bits of stone and carved wood.

It was this man's efforts which sent the boom-boom sounding at intervals
over the landscape. Was this a signal--part of a ritual? Travis was not
certain, though he guessed that the drummer was either medicine man or
shaman, and so of some power in this company. Such men were credited
with the ability to prophesy and also endowed with mediumship between
man and spirit in the old days of the great Hordes.

Th