In the near distance the green of the orange groves mocked us from
below, and great patches that were groves of leafless nut trees, and
there were sandy patches toward the south that were vineyards waiting
for the hot suns of April and May before they, too, broke into
riotous, tantalizing green. And from this garden spot of plenty a
curling trail wound up the mountainside to the very level where we
sat gazing down upon this last stronghold of our foes.
When the ancients built that trail it must have been wide and
beautiful indeed, but in the centuries that elapsed man and the
elements have sadly defaced it. The rains have washed it away in
places, and the Kalkars have made great gashes in it to deter us,
their enemies, from invading their sole remaining lands and driving
them into the sea; and upon their side of the gashes they had built
forts where they keep warriors always. It is so upon every pass that
leads down into their country. And well for them that they do so
guard themselves!
Since fell my great ancestor, Julian 9th, in the year 2122, at the
end of the first uprising against the Kalkars, we have been driving
them slowly back across the world. That was more than three hundred
years ago. For a hundred years they have held us here, a day's ride
from the ocean. Just how far it is we do not know; but in 2408 my
grandfather, Julian 18th, rode alone almost to the sea.
He had won back nearly to safety when he was discovered and
pursued almost to the tents of his people. There was a battle, and
the Kalkars who had dared invade our country were destroyed, but
Julian 18th died of his wounds without being able to tell more than
that a wondrously rich country lay between us and the sea, which was
not more than a day's ride distant. A day's ride, for us, might be
anything under a hundred miles.
We are desert people. Our herds range a vast territory where feed
is scarce, that we may be always near the goal that our ancestors set
for us three centuries ago-the shore of the western sea into which it
is our destiny to drive the remnants of our former oppressors.
In the forests and mountains of Arizona there is rich pasture, but
it is far from the land of the Kalkars where the last of the tribe of
Or-tis make their last stand, and so we prefer to live in the desert
near our foes, driving our herds great distances to pasture when the
need arises, rather than to settle down in a comparative land of
plenty, resigning the age old struggle, the ancient feud between the
house of Julian and the house of Or-tis.
A light breeze moves the black mane of the bright bay stallion
beneath me. It moves my own black mane where it falls loose below the
buckskin thong that encircles my head and keeps it from my eyes. It
moves the dangling ends of the Great Chief's blanket strapped behind
any saddle.
