Science fiction; Short stories; Time travel -- Fiction
The hairy apelike savage crouching in bloody death behind the tree was
indeed clad in flapping, red-dyed garments of skin. His skin, however,
was as white beneath its matted covering of black hair as Orth's own.
Yet the other had called the savage a redskin.
As Orth watched the tall young giant stamped his foot down on the
fallen warrior's middle, shook the long chestnut hair out of his
handsome brown face, and opening his mouth let out a prolonged hideous
screech. As he did so his fists hammered drumlike on his distended
chest.
From the distance a hideous snarling and trumpeting answered the
ear-splitting sound. The man grinned at Orth and nodded toward the
forest. He stepped down and held up two fingers.
"Vello," he said, continuing to make the V sign that first saw birth in
the Second World War. "Me, I am Dun Horgan. Horgan of the wilderness.
Those are my friends you hear, the hairy apes of Afri County."
Orth held out his hand. "Shake," he said, "Horgan. I'm named Orth. I
hail from Meadville in Pennsylvania."
"Pennsylvania over that way," and Horgan pointed, "but no village that
name. Maybe small?"
Orth nodded. "Small," he agreed wryly. After three million years he
wondered that the states retained their original names.
Horgan reached down to jerk an intricately woven necklace of hair,
from which depended a crudely carved locket of bone, from the fallen
savage's neck.
"Scalp locket is worth fifteen bits bounty," he said offering it to
Orth. "It is yours."
Orth shook his head. "No, you keep it. I'll trade it for some food and
a bed." He eyed the other thoughtfully.
"And some information too," he added.
* * * * *
Over a well cooked slab of venison and a plate of corn bread, washed
down by a muddy brown brew that Horgan served hot and sweetened, they
talked. Corn likker the frontiersman called the steaming tasteless
fluid when Orth mistakenly named it coffee.
And when they had finished his host produced squares of a fine brown
paper which he deftly filled, one-handed, with shredded greenish
tobacco, and presented the fat cigar-sized bundles to Orth. He shrugged
at the Earthman's refusal, eyeing with amusement the slender whiteness
of Orth's own cigarettes.
"Shipped from France maybe," he suggested, "or China?"
Orth handed over the pack. Horgan studied the markings that showed they
were manufactured in Kentucky. He shook his head.
"Don't reckon you'll be getting no more," he said. "General Lee ain't
been licked yet, and until Washington and Pershing break through to the
South...." He lifted his big arms in a half-shrug of doubt.
"What's all this about Lee and Pershing? Some sort of Civil War over
again? Or is this continent being invaded?"
Horgan eyed the Earthman curiously. "Maybe I'll have to tell you what
year it is," he said dryly, "and who's Boss of the States now. You're
powerful ignorant, Orth."
"Go ahead," invited Orth. "My memory's fuzzy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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