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He spoke a word or two in hot protest against that mishap, knowing it would keep him from the trail. Kaydessa must be covered all the way back across the pass, not only to be shepherded away from her people and toward the plains where she could be picked up by a Red patrol, but also to keep her from danger. And he had planned from the first to be one of those shepherds.
The thing which pervaded the ship did not attack sharply, rather it seeped into his mind and body as if he drew in poison with every breath, sent it racing along his veins with every beat of a laboring heart. Yet he could not put any name to his feelings, except an awful, weakening fear which weighted him heavier with every step he took. Kaydessa screamed.
Kaydessa shook her head, some of the panic again shadowing her eyes. "Then we'll just go on " his chin lifted to the wastelands before them "try to keep out of their reach." And away from the pass to the south, he told himself silently.
A Pinda-lick-o-yi such as Tom Jeffords, who rode into Cochise's camp and sat in the midst of his sworn enemies for a parley, won the friendship of the very chief he had been fighting. Kaydessa had more influence with her captors than she could dream of holding. Now it was time for Travis to play his part. He caught the girl's shoulder and pushed her before him toward the wreck.
Three towers, another stretch of open pavement, and then the mist lifted to show them a second carved doorway not two hundred yards ahead. The boom-boom seemed to pull Kaydessa, and Travis could do nothing but trail her, the coyotes now trotting beside him. They burst through a last wide band of mist into a wilderness of tall grass and shrubs.
In its lee they would have protection from any sighting from below. Panting, he made it, lowering the girl into the guarded cup of space, and waited. She moaned again, lifted one hand to her head. Her eyes were half open, and still he could not be sure whether they focused on him and her surroundings intelligently or not. "Kaydessa!"
At Hulagur's call the lancer rode up to the waiting Apache, stretched out a booted foot in the heavy stirrup, and held down a hand to bring Travis up behind him riding double. Kaydessa mounted in the same fashion behind her brother. Travis looked at the coyotes. Together the animals stood in the door to the tower valley, and neither made any move to follow as the horses trotted off.
Deliberately he slowed, his native caution now in control, so that he was walking as he passed through the gateway into the swirling mists which alternately exposed and veiled the towers. There was no change in the scene from the time he had come there with Kaydessa.
"You know these Reds better than we," Travis counterattacked. "How would you bait it, Son of the Blue Wolf?" "You say Kaydessa is leading the Reds south; we have but your word for that," Menlik replied. "Though how it would profit you to lie on such a matter " He shrugged. "If you do speak the truth, then the 'copter will circle about the foothills where they entered."
Then, without any formal farewell, he strode off, the others fast on his heels. "He is your chief, that one?" Kaydessa asked, pointing after Buck. "He is one having a large voice in council," Travis replied. He set about building up the cooking fire, bringing out the body of a split-horn calf which had been left them. Menlik sat on his heels by the pool, dipping up drinking water with his hand.
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