lik, one who talks
with spirits.... Hulagur, who is son to a chief ... and Kaydessa, who is
daughter to a chief. They are of the horse people of the north." He made
the introduction carefully in English.

Then he turned to the Tatars. "Buck, Deklay, Nolan, Manulito, Tsoay," he
named them all, "these stand to listen, and to speak for the Apaches."

But sometime later when the two parties sat facing each other, he
wondered whether a common decision could come from the clansmen on his
side of that irregular circle. Deklay's expression was closed; he had
even edged a short way back, as if he had no desire to approach the
strangers. And Travis read into every line of Deklay's body his distrust
and antagonism.

He himself began to speak, retelling his adventures since they had
followed Kaydessa's trail, sketching in the situation at the
Tatar-Mongol settlement as he had learned it from her and from Menlik.
He was careful to speak in English so that the Tatars could hear all he
was reporting to his own kind. And the Apaches listened blank-faced,
though Tsoay must already have reported much of this. When Travis was
done it was Deklay who asked a question:

"What have we to do with these people?"

"There is this--" Travis chose his words carefully, thinking of what
might move a warrior still conditioned to riding with the raiders of a
hundred years earlier, "the Pinda-lick-o-yi (whom we call 'Reds,') are
never willing to live side by side with any who are not of their mind.
And they have weapons such as make our bow cords bits of rotten string,
our knives slivers of rust. They do not kill; they enslave. And when
they discover that we live, then they will come against us--"

Deklay's lips moved in a wolf grin. "This is a large land, and we know
how to use it. The Pinda-lick-o-yi will not find us--"

"With their eyes maybe not," Travis replied. "With their machines--that
is another matter."

"Machines!" Deklay spat. "Always these machines.... Is that all you can
talk about? It would seem that you are bewitched by these machines,
which we have not seen--none of us!"

"It was a machine which brought you here," Buck observed. "Go you back
and look upon the spaceship and remember, Deklay. The knowledge of the
Pinda-lick-o-yi is greater than ours when it deals with metal and wire
and things which can be made with both. Machines brought us along the
road of the stars, and there is no tracker in the clan who could hope to
do t