Science fiction; Space and time -- Fiction; Time travel -- Fiction
This was rough, broken country and the tired, limping horse seemed to
have picked the easiest way through it, without any hindrance from the
man with him. Travis spotted a soft patch of ground with a deep-set
impression. This time there had been no attempt at erasure; the boot
track was plain. The rider had dismounted and was leading the horse--yet
he was moving swiftly.
They followed the tracks around the bend of a shallow cut and found
Nalik'ideyu waiting for them. Between her forefeet was a bundle still
covered with smears of soft earth, and behind her were drag marks from a
hole under the overhang of a bush. The coyote had plainly just
disinterred her find. Travis squatted down to examine it, using his eyes
before his hands.
It was a bag made of hide, probably the hide of one of the split horns
by its color and the scraps of long hair which had been left in a
simple decorative fringe along the bottom. The sides had been laced
together neatly by someone used to working in leather, the closing flap
lashed down tightly with braided thong loops.
As the Apache leaned closer to it he could smell a mixture of odors--the
hide itself, horse, wood smoke, and other scents--strange to him. He
undid the fastenings and pulled out the contents.
There was a shirt, with long full sleeves, of a gray wool undyed from
the sheep. Then a very bulky short jacket which, after fingering it
doubtfully, Travis decided was made of felt. It was elaborately
decorated with highly colorful embroidery, and there was no mistaking
the design--a heavy antlered Terran deer in mortal combat with what
might be a puma. It was bordered with a geometric pattern of beautiful,
oddly familiar work. Travis smoothed it flat over his knee and tried to
remember where he had seen its like before ... a book! An illustration
in a book! But which book, when? Not recently, and it was not a pattern
known to his own people.
Twisted into the interior of the jacket was a silklike scarf, clear,
light blue--the blue of Terra's cloudless skies on certain days, so
different from the yellow shield now hanging above them. A small case of
leather, with silhouetted designs cut from hide and affixed to it,
designs as intricate and complex as the embroidery on the jacket--art of
a high standard. In the case a knife and spoon, the bowl and blade of
dull metal, the handles of horn carved with horse heads, the tiny
wide-open eyes set with glittering stones.
Personal possessions dear to the owner, so that when they must be
abandoned for flight they were hidden with some hope of recovery. Travis
slowly repacked them, trying to fold the garments into their original
creases. He was still puzzled by those designs.
"Who?" Tsoay touched the edge of the jacket with one finger, his
admiration for it plain to read.
"I don't know. But it is of our own world."
"That is a deer, though the horns are wrong," Tsoay agreed. "And the
puma is very well done. The one who made this knows animals well."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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