“Tactful fellow, you. Well, in the course of time I’ve cached evidence, as well as getaway gold, here and there. Come with me and I’ll show you enough of it. Or you can simply watch me for twenty or thirty years. I’ll provide for you. Meanwhile, why else on earth should I spin you a yarn like this?”
Peregrino nodded. “I believe you. But how do you know I’m not out to swindle you?”
“You couldn’t have foreseen my arrival, and you did leave many years’ worth of trail. Not on purpose. No white who didn’t know what to look for would ever have suspected. The tribes—what do they make of you, anyway?”
“That depends.” Peregrine’s gaze went over miles where grass waved above buffalo skulls, on beyond the horizon.
When he spoke slowly, often stopping to form a sentence before he uttered it, his English became a language other than what he had been using. “Each lives in its own world, you know; and those worlds are changing so fast.
“At first I was a medicine man among my birth-people. But they took to the horse and everything that went with that. I left them and drifted for—winter after winter, summer after summer. I was trying to find what it meant, all that I lived through. Sometimes I settled down a while, but it always hurt too much, seeing what was happening. I even tried the whites. At a mission I got baptized, learned Spanish and English, reading and writing. Afterward I went deep into Mexican and Anglo country both. I have been a market hunter, trapper, carpenter, wrangler, gardener. I talked with everybody who would talk with me and read every printed word that came my way. But that was no good either. I never belonged there.
“Meanwhile tribe after tribe got wiped out—by sickness, by war—or broken and herded onto a reservation. Then if the whites decided they wanted that land too, out the redskins went. I saw the Cherokees at the end of their Trail of Tears—”
The quiet, almost matter-of-fact voice died away. Rufus cleared his throat. “Well, that’s how the world is,” he grated. “/ seen Saxons, vikings, Crusaders, Turks, wars of religion, witches burned—“ Louder: “I seen what Injuns do when they get the upper hand.”
Tarrant frowned him to silence and asked Peregrino, “What brought you here?”
The other sighed. “I finally thought—oh, I was slow about it—this life of mine that went on and on and on, with nothing to show for it but graves—it must have some purpose, some use. And maybe that was just in the long experience, and being ageless would make folks listen to me. Maybe I could help my people, my whole race, before they went under, help them save something for a new beginning.
“About thirty years ago, I came back to them. The Southwest was where free tribes were likely to hang on the longest. The Nermernuh—you do know ‘Comanche’ is from Spanish, don’t you?—they had driven out the Apaches; they had fought the Kiowas as equals and made allies of them; for three hundred years they had stood off the Spanish, the French, the Mexicans, the Texans, and carried war to the enemy in his home country. Now the Americans aim to crush them once for all. They’ve earned better than that. Haven’t they?”
“What are you doing?” Tarrant’s question seemed to hover like the dark wings overhead.
“To tell the truth, I was among the Kiowas first,” Per-egrino said. “They are more open in their minds than the Nermernuh, also about long life. Comanches believe a real man dies young, in battle or the hunt, while he is strong. They don’t trust their old ones and treat them bad. Not like my birth-people, so long ago. … I let my … my reputation grow with time. It helped that I know some things to do for the wounded and the sick. I never set myself up as a prophet. Those crazy preachers have been the death of thousands, and the end is not yet. No, I just went around from band to band, and they came to think I was holy. I did whatever I could for them in the way of healing or advice. Always I counselled peace. Finally—it’s a long story—I joined up with Quanah, because he was becoming the last great chief. Everything will turn on him.”