“Yes.” It was a very simple answer, but when his eyes met Ashe’s, Ross knew that it would serve better than any solemn oath.
Galactic Derelict
1
Hot—it sure was stacking up to be a hot one today.
He’d better check on the spring in the brakes before the sun really boiled up the country ahead. That was the only water in this whole frying pan of baking rock—or was it?
Travis Fox hitched forward in his saddle. He studied the pinkish yellow of the desert strip between him and that distant line of green juniper against the buff of sagebrush which marked the cuts of the brakes. This was a barren land, forbidding to anyone unused to its harshness.
It was also a land frozen into one color-streaked mold of unchanging rock and earth. In that it was probably now rare upon the rider’s planet. Elsewhere around the world deserts had been flooded with sea water purified of salt. Ordered farms beat ancient sand dunes into dim memories. Mankind was fast breaking free of the whims of weather or climate. Yet here the free desert remained unaltered because the nation within which it lay could afford to leave land undeveloped.
Someday this, too, would be swept away, taking with it the heritage of such as Travis Fox. For five hundred years, or maybe a thousand now—no one could rightly say when the first Apaches had come questing into this territory—they had dominated these canyons and sand wastes, valleys and mesas. His tough, desert-born breed could travel, fight, and live off bleakness no other race dared face without supplies from outside. His ancestors had waged war for almost four centuries across this country. And now the survivors wrested a living from the region with the same determination.
That spring in the brakes . . . Travis’ brown fingers began to count off seasons in taps on his saddle horn. Nineteen . . . twenty . . . This was the twentieth year after the last big dry, and if Chato was right, that meant the water which should be there was due to fail. And the old man had already been correct in his prediction of an unusually arid summer this year.
If Travis rode straight there and found the spring dry, he’d lose most of the day. And time was precious. They had to move the breeding stock to a sure water supply. On the other hand, if he cut back into the Canyon of the Hohokam on a hunch and was wrong—then his brother Whelan would have every right to call him a fool. Whelan stubbornly refused to follow the Old Ones’ knowledge. And in that his brother was himself a fool.
Travis laughed softly. The White-eyes—deliberately he used the old warrior’s term for a traditional enemy, saying it aloud, “Pinda-lick-o-yi”—the White-eyes didn’t know everything. And a few of them were willing to admit it once in a while.
Then he laughed again, this time at himself and his own thoughts. Scratch the rancher—and the Apache was right under the surface of his sun-dried hide. But there was a bitter note in that second laugh. Travis booted his pinto into a lope with more force than was necessary. He didn’t care to follow the trail of those particular thoughts. He’d make for the place of the Hohokam and he’d be Apache for today. Nothing would spoil that as his other dreams had been spoiled.
Whelan thought that if an Apache lived like the White-eyes, and set aside all the old things, then he would prosper like the White-eyes. To Whelan there was nothing good in the past. Even to consider the Old Ones, what they did and why they did it, was a foolish waste of time. Travis bit again on disappointment, to find it as fresh and bad-tasting as it had been a year earlier.
The pinto threaded a way between boulders along a dried stream bed. Odd that a land now so arid could carry so many signs of past water. There were miles of irrigation ditches used by the Old Ones, marking off sun-baked pans of open land which had not known the touch of moisture for centuries. Travis urged his mount up a sharp slope and headed west, feeling the heat bore into his back through the faded shirt fabric.
He doubted if Whelan knew the Canyon of the Hohokam. That was one of the things from the old days, a story preserved by such as Chato. And there were now two kinds of Apache—Chato and Whelan. Chato denied the existence of the White-eyes, living his own life behind a shutter which he dropped between him and the outside world of the whites. And Whelan denied the existence of the Apache, striving to be all white.
Once Travis had seen a third way, that of blending the white man’s learning with Apache lore. He thought he had discovered those who agreed with him. But it had all gone, as quickly as a drop of water poured upon a rock would vanish here. Now he tended to agree with Chato. Knowing that, Chato had freely given him information Whelan did not have, about Whelan’s own range land.
Chato’s father—again Travis counted, fingertip against saddle horn—why, Chato’s father would be a hundred and twenty years old if he were alive today! And his grandfather had been born in the Hohokam’s valley while his family were hiding from the U.S. Cavalry.
Chato had guided Travis to the lost canyon when he was so small he could barely grip a horse’s barrel with his short legs. And he had returned there again and again through the years. The houses of the Hohokam had intrigued him, and the spring there never failed. There were piñons with nuts to be gathered in season, and some stunted fruit trees still yielding a measure of fruit. Once it had been a garden; now it was a hidden oasis.
Travis was working his way into the maze of canyons which held the forgotten trail of the Old Ones when he heard an unfamiliar hum. Instinctively he drew rein, knowing that he was concealed by the shadow of a cliff, and glanced skyward.
” ‘Copter!” he said aloud in sheer surprise. The ageless desert country had claimed him so thoroughly during the past few hours that sighting a modern mode of travel came as a shock.
Could it be Whelan, checking up on him? Travis’ mouth tightened. But when he had left the ranch house at sunup, Bill Redhorse, Chato’s grandson, had been tinkering with the engine of the ranch bus. Anyway, Whelan couldn’t waste fuel on desert coasting. With the big war scare on again, rationing had tightened up and a man kept his ‘copter for emergencies, using horses again for daily work.
The war scare . . . Travis thought about it as he watched the strange machine out of sight. Ever since he could remember there had been snapping and snarling in the news. Little scrimmages bursting out, smoldering, talk and more talk. Then, some months back, something odd had happened in Europe—a big blast set off in the north. Though the Russians had clamped down their tight screen of secrecy, rumor said that some kind of new bomb had gone wrong. All this might be leading up to an out-and-out break between East and West.
The government must believe that. They’d tightened up regulations all along the line and slapped on additional fuel rationing. Tension filled the air and whispers of trouble to come.
Out here it was easy enough to shove all that stuff out of one’s mind. The desert silenced the bickering of men. These cliffs had stood the same before the brown-skinned men of his race had trickled down from the north. They would probably be standing when the White-eyes blasted both white and brown men out of it again.
The sight of the ‘copter had triggered memories Travis did not like. He continued to wonder, as the machine disappeared in the direction he himself was following, what its mission was here.
He did not sight it again, so it must not be carrying a local rancher. If the pilot had been hunting strays, he would circle. Prospectors? But there had been no news of a government expedition, and no one else had been permitted to prospect for years.
Travis located the entrance of the hidden canyon and studied the ground as he rode. There was no sign that anyone had passed that way for a long time. He clicked his tongue and the horse quickened pace. They had gone about two miles along that snaking path when Travis brought his mount to a halt.
A puff of breeze tickling his nose had warned him. This was no desert wind laden with heat and grit, for it carried the scent of juniper and pine. The pinto nickered and mouthed its bit—water ahead. But the land before them was not empty of men.