Ryan took a chance and stood, empty-handed. “We’re friends. Anyone speak American?”
There was no answer from the cowering natives.
“The men who were shooting at you are all dead,” Ryan called. “Danger’s gone.”
“You friends them?”
The voice was harsh and guttural, the accent difficult to understand. But it was definitely a kind of American.
“No. We chilled them to save you. Can we come down and talk to you?”
One of the natives stood, holding a bullet wound in his left forearm. “Come down kill?”
Ryan shook his head. “Course not, you stupe,” he muttered under his breath, then he raised his voice. “No. We have killed your enemies. We will not kill you or hurt you.”
“Come,” the man said, beckoning to Ryan with his good hand. The other natives also stood, a woman running clumsily across the clearing and throwing herself onto one of the bodies of her people, weeping loudly.
“Let’s go, friends,” Ryan said.
THE NATIVE INDIANS WERE, understandably, still on the ragged edge of panic, all of them trembling and almost all of them gray with shock.
They were obviously the same tribe as the others that the companions had seen earlier, with the same oiled hair, tattoos and heavy golden earrings.
Mildred tore a strip off the sleeve of one of the dead slavers and offered to bandage the arm of the wounded native. But he backed away, shaking his head.
“I mean to help you,” she said briskly. “Now just stand still and I’ll bandage it. Clean wound. Looks like it was a musket ball, and it’s gone clean on through.”
Jak had paused on the hillside to reload his Python and was the last of the group to walk into the clearing, picking his way past the puddles of blood.
His appearance had a startling effect.
The leader of the group, who’d been hurriedly backing away from Mildred, dropped to his knees, mouth open, then fell facedown in the grass.
Each of the others, as they saw the teenager, followed suit and prostrated themselves.
“What fuck they do?” Jak said crossly. “Stupes!”
The Indians were chanting, repeating a single word over and over again, but it was in a foreign tongue and made no sense at all to Ryan. He turned to J.B., who’d just finished reloading the 20-round Uzi. “How do we stop them? I don’t want to stay here for long, just in case Bivar and his men heard the firefight and come running to see what’s happened.”
“Try,” Jak said, stepping forward and stamping his foot, gaining the attention of the natives. He gestured to them with his hand. “Get up. Now.”
They all stared at him, hesitating.
“Try again,” Krysty suggested.
“Get up,” the teenager repeated, lifting a hand to flick a few strands of the snow-white hair from over his red eyes. “Come on. Get up, now.”
Slowly, not looking at Ryan or the others, the natives rose to their feet.
“What is this?” Ryan asked. “You all understand me, and you can speak American. What is it about Jak?” He pointed to the young man. “Why’s he special?”
The wounded man, blood still trickling from his fingers, muttered something, repeating it at Ryan’s insistence. “He is like a god in old stories. Back in oldest times, before time of black skies and air that choked.”
“A god!” Dean exclaimed, gurgling with laughter. “That’s a hot pipe, Jak. Can you make miracles like gods do? Turn water into whiskey?”
“Shut up,” Ryan snapped. “You might think it’s funny, son, but these people don’t.”
“I suspect that it must be the color of our young friend’s hair,” Doc offered.
Mildred nodded. “If these people have roots back to the Aztecs or Mayas or Incas, then there could easily be some myth of a stranger with hair like dazzling snow and eyes like rubies, come to lead them to a better world. That kind of thing. It’s a common thread in legends of many civilizations.”
“Cargo cults of the Pacific,” Doc said runically. “There are peoples on obscure islands who once, in wartime, had airplanes bring supplies and the specious trappings of civilization. Then wars ended and the planes went away. These poor superstitious natives built model planes of branches to try to lure the real thing back and give them prosperity once more.”