war with allies
who may turn their knives against our backs because they are slaves to a
machine the enemy controls."

The Tatar's long, slender-fingered hands opened and closed. "You are a
wise man, Apache, but sometimes more than wisdom alone is needed----"

"We are wise men, Shaman, let it rest there," Jil-Lee replied somberly.

Already the Apaches were on their way, putting two cliff ridges behind
them before they halted to examine and cover their wounds.

"We go." Nolan's chin lifted, indicating the southern route. "Here we
do not come again; there is too much witchcraft in this place."

Travis stirred, saw that Jil-Lee was frowning at him.

"Go--?" he repeated.

"Yes, younger brother? You would continue to run with these who are
governed by a machine?"

"No. Only, eyes are needed on this side of the mountains."

"Why?" This time Jil-Lee was plainly on the side of the conservatives.
"We have now seen this machine at work. It is fortunate that the Red is
dead. He will carry no tales of us back to his people as you feared.
Thus, if we remain south from now on, we are safe. And this fight
between Tatar and Red is none of ours. What do you seek here?"

"I must go again to the place of the towers," Travis answered with the
truth. But his friends were facing him with heavy disapproval--now a
full row of Deklays.

"Did you not tell us that you felt this strange thing during the night
we waited about the camp? What if you become one with these Tatars and
are also controlled by the machine? Then you, too, can be made into a
weapon against us--your clansmen!" Jil-Lee was almost openly hostile.

Sense was on his side. But in Travis was this other desire of which he
was becoming more conscious by the minute. There was a reason for those
towers, perhaps a reason important enough for him to discover and run
the risk of angering his own people.

"There may be this--" Nolan's voice was remote and cold, "you may
already be a piece of this thing, bound to the machines. If so, we do
not want you among us."

There it was--an open hostility with more power behind it than Deklay's
motiveless disapproval had carried. Travis was troubled. The family, the
clan--they were important. If he took the wrong step now and was
outlawed from that tight fortress, then as an Apache he would indeed be
a lost man. In the past of his people there had been renegades from the
tribe--men such as the infamous Apache Kid who had killed and ki