Well, Rufus, you did have fifteen hundred years, and you enjoyed just about every day of them. You wenched and fought and sang and gorged and swilled and adventured, you were a hard worker when we needed work done and a better yet man to have at my back when we needed that and in your rough gruff style a pretty good husband and father whenever we settled down a while. T could have done without your stupid practical jokes, and by ourselves for any length of time your conversation got so boring it was physically painful, and if you saved my life now and then, I staked my own as often to pull you out of some scrape you’d blundered into, and—and a lot of gusto went out of my world tonight, Rufus. A lot of love.
False dawn chilled the east. Quanah and Peregrino were dim in sight until they reached the cabin and halted. Tarrant rose. The guards glided deferentially aside. From the ground the Langfords stared dull-eyed, wrung dry, their children uneasily asleep.
Tarrant stood waiting.
“It is decided,” said Quanah. The deep voice rolled like hoofs over the plains. Breath blew ghost-white in the cold. “Let all men know that the Nennernuh are generous. They will heed my wishes in this matter. You, the trader, and his sons may go home. You may take these captives along. They are in exchange for your comrade. He brought his death on himself, but since he was a guest, let that be his price, because the Nermernuh set high their honor. Nor shall his body be harmed, but we will give him decent burial, so that his spirit may find its way to the afterworld. I have spoken.”
A shudder passed below Tarrant’s skin. He had more than half awaited worse than this. Somehow he kept it hidden and said, “I thank you much, senor, and I will tell my people that the soul of Quanah is large.” He believed he meant it.
For an instant the chief let his stateliness drop. “Thank Peregrino. He persuaded me. Begone before sunrise.”
He beckoned to the guards. They followed him toward the Comanche camp.
A mortal might have crumbled to pieces as the pressure came off, cackled and gibbered and swooned. An immortal had more reserves, more bounce. Nonetheless Tarrant’s words trembled. “How did you do it, Peregrino?”
“I pushed your argument as far as it would go.” Again the Indian took time to build and weigh each English sentence. “He wasn’t unwilling to take it. He isn’t a fiend, you know; he’s fighting for the life of his people. But he must convince them also. I had to … call in all my chips, call on the spirits, finally tell him that either he released you or I left him. He does value my advice as well as … my medicine. After that it wasn’t hard to get him to release this family too. I will help him convince the warriors that was a good idea.”
“He was right when he told me to thank you,” Tarrant said. “I will for as many centuries as I’ve got left.”
Peregrine’s smile was as bleak as the eastern light. “You need not. I had my reasons and I want my price.”
Tarrant swallowed. “What is it?”
The tone mildened. “I admit I did have to save you. Maybe you and I are the only immortals in the world, now. We must join together sometime. But meanwhile—”
Peregrino reached out and caught Tarrant’s arm. “Meanwhile, here are my people,” throbbed from him. “I wasn’t born to them, but they are almost the last of us who were born to this land and are still free. They won’t be much longer. Soon they will be broken.” Even as Tyre and Carthage were, Galtia and Britannia, Rome and Byzantium, Al-bigensians and Hussites, Basques and Irish, Quebec and the Confederacy. “I told you yesterday out on the prairie, I have to stay with them to the end, reason with them, help them find a new faith and hope. Else they’ll dash themselves to pieces, like buffalo over a cliff. So I will be working among them for peace.