The Nyo-Ilcha leader reined in and raised a hand when his horse’s nose was about five feet from that of Simmons’s mount; he was a thirtyish man with a rat-trap mouth shadowed by the lion’s-head helmet he wore—it was complete with teeth, and with turquoises for eyes—and white bars painted horizontally across his scarred, sinewy arms. Kolo rode right behind the Scout; the Nyo-Ilcha glared at him, and he sneered back. Botha was on the right hand and Tom on the left, picked for their impressive size. They all carried their rifles in the crook of their left arms—not really as a threat, more as a matter of etiquette.
The two leaders began talking in a fast-rising, slow-falling language accompanied by many gestures. The chief’s face went slack with surprise for a moment when Simmons made a swooping hand motion in front of his nose—imitating an elephant’s trunk, Tom realized—and pointed behind himself to the south, toward the toppled oak tree.
The chief said something in reply and placed both thumbs near his upper lip, drawing them out in a swooping curve.
“Ahi,” Simmons replied, throwing his right hand out in an extravagant wave with the palm curved back.
“Kwanaeami!” the chief said, and reined his horse around.
Simmons blew out his cheeks in a relieved gust. “I told him they could have the elephant, and the ivory too,” he said. “It ought to keep them sweet for a while; that’s six thousand pounds of usable meat, as much as they can carry, and the ivory will be worth a fair bit of trade goods. Not to mention all that tough leather, and the fat. They don’t hunt elephant much themselves, although there are a few in the desert and a fair number down the Colorado.”
“Why not?” Tom asked curiously.
Simmons snorted. “Would you, if all you had was a spear or those single-shot guns made out of pieces of water pipe?
“We’re reasonably safe with this bunch now,” he went on as they trotted off to join the others. “They accepted our gift—it’s bad luck among the Many Tongues to eat your own kill, so swapping is something friends do for each other. Fear of retaliation aside, it’s unlikely these will try anything sneaky, at least while we’re still on this side of the mountains.” He gestured toward the San Gabriels to the north. “Over there, it’d be a different matter.”
The dozen women with the Nyo-Ilcha hunting party were all driving carts, two-horse vehicles with a pair of spoked wheels seven feet high, their sides festooned with water bags and nets full of gear, and hoops over the tops covered in hide. They looked at the dead elephant, unharnessed and hobbled their horses, and went to work with knives and hatchets. A few of the younger ones set to putting up stick-and-thong racks to dry the meat, and began to gather wood for smoking fires—the downed oak tree provided plenty of both. The women wore their hair in a simpler fashion than the men, cut square across the eyes and long behind, and they wore nothing but kilts or aprons of rabbit fur or trade cloth; their faces were painted in vertical stripes, and they had lines of tattoos running down from their lower lips over their chins. A few of them spat in the direction of the distant party of New Virginians.
“Good thing you speak their language,” Tom observed.
“I don’t, really—we were talking trade pidgin, with sign language. From what I’ve read of FirstSide anthropology, a lot of customs like sign language drifted west in the centuries between the time Columbus didn’t arrive and the time we did—more than in FirstSide history.”
At Simmons’s suggestion, they pitched camp about a mile away from the nomads—too far for a rush, but close enough to remind them of the source of their current good fortune. The routine of setting up the tents and hobbling the horses went quickly; dinner was antelope, some kind with a fawn hide, a white belly and horns that curled up in pointed spirals. Kolo had brought it down with his bow; luckily eight people were enough to eat most of it at a sitting—fresh meat didn’t keep in this weather.
Tom finished his bowl of stewed antelope with beans and chilies and dried vegetables; it wasn’t bad, for trail food. He’d just mopped the enameled bowl with a biscuit when Tully ghosted in out of the night with his goggles pushed up on his forehead.
“Company, Kemosabe,” he said.
They all stood, weapons inconspicuously ready. It was the leader of the Nyo-Ilcha, alone and holding his open hands up as a sign that he came in peace. Kolo followed behind him, signaling that nobody was following, then faded out into the darkness beyond the circle of light to make sure that nobody did later.
Simmons moved forward, making an open-hand gesture with his right hand. The Indian extended his, which surprised the Scout, who took it nonetheless.
“Hamose kwa’ahot,” the Nyo-Ilcha leader said. “Or, in English, Good Star.”
“Ah… you speak English?” Simmons said.
“Heap good English,” Good Star said dryly. “Me smart Injun. I spent three years at the mission school in Antelope Valley—what you Deathwalkers call Antelope Valley—off and on, when I was younger. One of Dad’s better ideas.”
He spoke fluently, though with a thick guttural accent. “And I trade there now and then. I’m kohata—chief—of the Nyo-Ilcha.”
Simmons muttered beneath his breath: Tom thought it sounded something like, I’m going to kill Dirk Brodie. Then he went on aloud: “Jim Simmons, Frontier Scout.”
Good Star came and squatted by the fire. “I’ve heard of you,” he said. “Spare some of that coffee? And a cigarette would go down nice.”
Tom bit down on a bubble of laughter at the expression on the Scout’s face and poured the Indian leader a cup from the blue-enameled iron pot sitting on the edge of the fire. Someone else produced a cigarette; he lit it from a splinter, and smoke drifted out from beneath the fangs of his lion-head helmet. As if that had reminded him, Good Star took it off and set it on the dirt beside him, before pouring sugar into the coffee and taking a sip.
“Ahhhh,” he said, sighing. “You know, coffee and decent tobacco are about the only good things you Deathwalkers brought here. Well, guns and horses, too. And booze, of course, and chocolate and steel knives.”
“And the aqueducts and roads,” Tully muttered under his breath; Tom didn’t think anyone else heard him. “But besides that, not much.”
Simmons produced a bottle of brandy from his saddlebags and added a dollop to their guest’s coffee cup. Then he cleared his throat.
“Why didn’t you speak English this afternoon? Instead of wasting both our time with trade pidgin and sign language.”
Good Star’s glittering dark eyes swept around the circle by the fire; Tom thought he caught a sardonic glint under the tattoos and the stink.
“Didn’t have any reason to make things easy for you then,” he said. “It’s always better when the other guy doesn’t know how much you know.”
His glance lingered on Adrienne’s hands, where she sat on her saddle holding another of the tin cups; the firelight flickered on the circlet of gold and platinum on her left thumb.
“For example, that you know what a Thirty Families ring looks like.” He took another puff on the cigarette. “Sorta out of place on a humble squaw like you were acting, hey? Thanks for the elephant, by the way. Especially the ivory. The goddamned Akaka, Othi-I and Kapata are getting too many guns for comfort, and we Nyo-Ilcha need to buy more powder.”
Adrienne sipped from her own cup. “We’d heard something about that, Good Star,” she said smoothly. “And about a man named Swift Lance.”