Time Traders by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton [Norton, Andre ]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0-671-31952-3
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 2000-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

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.

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