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The unknown might have been driven by fear, but he held to a good pace and headed intelligently for just the kind of country which would serve him best. If Travis could only remember where he had seen the like of that embroidery! It had a meaning which might be important now.... Tsoay slipped behind a wind-gnarled tree and disappeared. Travis stooped under a line of bush limbs.
Its short legs could cover ground at an amazing speed, and it had the bold impudence of a creature with few natural enemies. This was its usual cry. Tsoay's hand waved Travis on to where the younger man had taken position behind the bleached trunk of a fallen tree. "He hides," Tsoay whispered. "Against trouble from above." Travis added his own observation. "But not us, I think."
It was an hour after dawn when Tsoay signaled that the enemy was coming, and shortly after, they heard the thud of ponies' hoofs. The first Tatar plodded into view, and by the stance of his body in the saddle, Travis knew the Red had him under full control. Two, then three Tatars passed between the teeth of the Apache trap.
Only one coming on foot could tell them from the natural crags of the hills." Travis relaxed. Time still granted them a margin of grace. He glanced up to see Nolan smiling faintly. "This maiden, she is a kin to the puma of the mountains," he announced. "She has marked Tsoay with her claws until he looks like the ear-clipped yearling fresh from the branding chute " "She is not hurt?"
Travis wondered if there was any native animal which could serve man in place of the horse. "Do we go down?" Tsoay asked. From this point Travis could sight no break far out on the amber plain, no sign of any building or any disturbance of its smooth emptiness. Yet it drew him. "We go," he decided.
But in this light such weapons were practically useless unless the enemy moved into the path of the moon. "What is it?" Kaydessa asked in a half whisper. "Something waits for us ahead." Before he could stop her, she set her fingers to her lips and gave a piercing whistle. There was answering movement in the shadow. Travis shot at that, his arrow followed instantly by one from Tsoay.
Beside him the girl stirred, raising her head. Travis glanced at her and then watched with attention. She was looking straight ahead, her eyes as fixed as if she were in a trance. Now she inched forward from the mountain wall, wriggling out of its shelter. "What ?" Tsoay had awakened again. But Travis was already moving. He pushed on, rushing up to stand beside her, shoulder to shoulder.
"Horse dung and fresh!" "There was one horse, unshod but ridden. It came here from the plains and it had been ridden hard, going lame. There was a rest here, maybe shortly after dawn." Travis sorted out what they had learned by a careful examination of the ground. Nalik'ideyu and Naginlta, Tsoay, watched and listened as if the coyotes as well as the boy could understand every word.
"The horse herd ... to the west." Nolan evaluated the scene with the eyes of an experienced raider. "Tsoay, Deklay, you take the horses!" They nodded, and began the long crawl which would take them two miles or more from the party to stampede the horses. To the Mongols in those domelike yurts horses were wealth, life itself.
Before them lay an abrupt descent to what appeared to be open plains country cloaked in a dusky amber Travis now knew was the thick grass found in the southern valleys. Tsoay pointed with his chin. "Wide land good for horses, cattle, ranches...." But all those lay far beyond the black space surrounding them.
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