They will come ...
tracking. I did not reach the inner mountains in time."

There was a despairing note in that which cut through to Travis, who
found that he, too, was searching the sky, not knowing what he looked
for or what kind of menace it promised, only that it was real danger.

6

"The night comes," Tsoay spoke slowly in English. "Do these you fear
hunt in the dark?"

She shook her head to free her forehead from a coil of braid, pulled
loose in her struggle with Travis.

"They do not need eyes or such noses as those four-footed hunters of
yours. They have a machine to track--"

"Then what purpose is this brush pile of yours?" Travis raised his chin
at the disturbed hiding place.

"They do not constantly use the machine, and one can hope. But at night
they can ride on its beam. We are not far enough into the hills to lose
them. Bahatur went lame, and so I was slowed...."

"And what lies in these mountains that those you fear dare not invade
them?" Travis continued.

"I do not know, save if one can climb far enough inside, one is safe
from pursuit."

"I ask it again: Who are you?" The Apache leaned forward, his face in
the fast-fading light now only inches away from hers. She did not shrink
from his close scrutiny but met him eye to eye. This was a woman of
proud independence, truly a chief's daughter, Travis decided.

"I am of the People of the Blue Wolf. We were brought across the star
lanes to make this world safe for ... for ... the...." She hesitated,
and now there was a shade of puzzlement on her face. "There is a
reason--a dream. No, there is the dream and there is reality. I am
Kaydessa of the Golden Horde, but sometimes I remember other
things--like this speech of strange words I am mouthing now----"

"The Golden Horde!" Travis knew now. The embroidery, Sons of the Blue
Wolf, all fitted into a special pattern. But what a pattern! Scythian
art, the ornament that the warriors of Genghis Khan bore so proudly.
Tatars, Mongols--the barbarians who had swept from the fastness of the
steppes to change the course of history, not only in Asia but across the
plains of middle Europe. The men of the Emperor Khans who had ridden
behind the yak-tailed standards of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan,
Tamerlane--!

"The Golden Horde," Travis repeated once again. "That lies far back in
the history of another world, Wolf Daughter."

She stared at him, a queer, lost expression on her dust-grimed face.

"I k