“If anyone is gunning for me,” he returned as well as he could without betraying his rising irritation, “it won’t do him any good after tomorrow morning. I’ve signed up as scout for a Survey expedition and am leaving town.”
Ransford gave a sigh of relief. “That’s usin’ your head, kid. Maybe this hothead got a skinful of tharman juice last night and when he sobers up he’ll have forgotten all about it. Which way you headed?”
“To the Peaks.”
The Peaks –” That echo came from Quade. Then the settler added in a language Storm had never thought to hear another speak again:
“Where do you ride, man of the Dineh?”
“I do not understand you,” Storm answered in galactic one-speech.
Quade shook his head, his blue eyes measuring Storm astutely.
“You are Terran,” he switched to the common tongue of the spaceways, “but also you are Navajo –”
“I am Terran – now a man of no planet,” Storm replied shortly. “I do not understand you.”
“I think that you do,” Quade countered, but there was no abruptness in that, only a kind of regret. “I overheard you saying that you had signed on as a scout with an expedition into the Peak country. That’s good land down there – look it over. My son has a holding in that district.” His eyes dropped to his hands, twisting his reins. “If you see him –” But Quade did not finish that sentence, ending with another suggestion altogether. “I’d like him to meet you – you are Terran and Navajo. Well, good luck, Storm. If you ever need anything, try my range.” His foot was already in the stirrup and he swung into the saddle, moving off before the Terran could answer – if he had wanted to.
“If you do see Logan,” Ransford broke the silence, “I hope he’s not in trouble up to his chin. That boy’s as hard to ride herd on as a pack of yoris! Pity – Quade’s the easiest man livin’ to rub along with – if you’re straight and doin’ your job right. But he and his own kid can’t be together more”n a week before fire’s bustin’ out all over the range! Nobody can understand why. Logan Quade’s crazy about huntin’, and he with the Norbies a lot. But the kid never did a crooked thing in his life and he’s as decent as his old man. They just can’t seem to live together. It’s a shame, “cause Quade is proud of the boy and wants his son for a partner. If you hear anything good about the kid, tell Quade when you come back – it’ll mean a lot to him – and he’s taken a big likin’ to you, too. Well, good luck, kid – sounds as if you’ve got yourself a good deal. Survey pays well and you can turn their write-off in for an import permit or somethin’ like.”
Storm was disturbed. He wanted none of the information Ransford had supplied. What did Quade’s personal affairs matter to him? In that second brief encounter with his chosen enemy he felt he had lost some advantage he needed badly as a bolster for the future. He had accepted Quade, the enemy, but this other Quade was infringing more and more on his carefully built-up image. He hurried about his preparations for the trip, thankful for the occupation.
Surra sat on his left, the meerkats snuffled, poked, and pried under and around his busy hands as Storm sorted, piled, and made up two packs of his personal belongings. One he must leave with Larkin, the other comprised the kit he would need on the trail. There remained now just one small bundle to explore.
He had left that roll to the last, doubly reluctant to slit the waterproof covering sewed about it on another world, keeping its contents intact for two years. Now Storm sat quietly, his hands resting palm down upon the package, his eyes closed, exploring old roads of memory – roads he had managed to avoid exploring at the Centre. As long as he did not cut the waxed cord, as long as he did not actually see what he was sure must be inside – just so long was he in a way free of the last acceptance of defeat – of acknowledging that there was never to be any return.
What did these men of another race here in camp – or those in the town – or those at the Centre who had watched him so narrowly for months – that Commander who had so reluctantly stamped his freedom papers – what did any of them know of the voices of the Old Ones and how they could come to a man?
How could they understand a man such as his grandfather – a Singer learned in ancient ways, following paths of belief these other races had never walked, who could see things not to be seen, hear things that no others could hear?
Between Storm and the clear beliefs of his grandfather – that grandfather who had surrendered him to schooling as a government ward only under force – there was a curtain of white man’s learning. Good and bad, he had had to accept the new in gulps, unable to pick and choose until he was old enough to realize that behind the outer façade of acceptance he could make his own selection. And by that time it was almost too late, he had strayed far from the source of his people’s inner strength. Twice after he had been taken away by the authorities, Storm had returned to his people, once as a boy, again as a youth before he left Terra on active service. But then always between him and Na-Ta-Hay’s teaching there had been the drift of new ways. Fiercely opposed to those, his grandfather had been almost hostile, grudging, when Storm had tried to recapture a little of the past for himself. Yet some of it had clung, for now there sang through his mind old words, older music, things half-remembered, which stirred him as the wind from the mountains whipped him outwardly, and his lips shaped words not to sound again on the world from which this bundle had been sent.
Slowly, Storm sawed through the tough cord. He must face this now. The outer wrappings peeled off, and Ho and Hing crowded in with their usual curiosity, intrigued by the strange new smells clinging to the contents.
For there were scents imprisoned here – he could not be imagining that. The tightly woven wool of the blanket rasped his fingers, he saw and yet did not want to see the stripes of its pattern, red, white, blue-black, serrated concentric designs interrupting them. And to its tightly creased folds clung the unmistakable aroma of the hogan – sheep smell, desert smell, dust and sand smell. Storm sucked it into his lungs, remembering.
He shook out the blanket, and metal gleamed up at him as he thought it might. Necklace – blue-green of turquoise and dull sheen of silver – ketoh bracelet, concha belt – all masterpieces of the smith’s art – the ceremonial jewellery of a Dineh warrior. Old, old pieces he had seen before, made by brown fingers, dust long before he had been born – the designs created by the artists of his race.
Seeing those, Storm knew he had been right in his surmise. Not only had Grandfather somehow known – but he had found it possible to forgive the grandson who had walked the alien way – or else he could not resist the last mute argument to influence that grandson! It might have been his own death that Na-Ta-Hay had foreseen – or perhaps the death of his world. But he had sent this legacy to his daughter’s son, striving to keep alive in the last of his own blood a little of the past he had protected so fiercely, fought so hard to hold intact against the push of time and the power of alien energy.
And now out of the night did there come a faint sound of a swinging chant? That song sung for the strengthening of a warrior?
“Step into the track of the Monster Slayer. Step into the moccasins of him whose lure is the extended bowstring, Step into the moccasins of him who lures the enemy to death.”
Storm did not put the contents of this last packet with the things to be left in Larkin’s care. He took up the jewellery, running his fingers across the cool substance of silver, the round boss of turquoise, slipping the necklace over his head where it lay cold against his breast under his shirt. The ketoh clasped his wrist. He rolled the concha belt into a coil to fit into his trail bag.
Then he got to his feet, the blanket folded into a narrow length resting on his shoulder. He had never worn a “chief blanket in all his life, yet its soft weight now had a warm and familiar feel, bringing with it the closeness of kinship – linking the forgotten hands that had woven it to Hosteen Storm, refugee on another world, lost to his people and his home.