“Friends forever, my brother!” laughed Tuan. “And comrades again, it may come to pass, for who can read the dark and hidden face of future time!”
They sundered their paths, then, Tuan and his outlaws wheeling about and lifting their weapons in the air, raising a mighty shout, a salute to Brant and his party.
“Hai-yah!” they thundered, and then, in a storm of fine dust, whirled into the desert and were gone from sight among the sloping, shifting dunes.
Brant and his friends sat their saddles, watching them out of sight.
Will Harbin made a wry grimace. To Brant he observed:
“For a bandit-chief, a wild outlaw, that fellow has the heart of a prince. And with more courtesy and honor than I have observed very often in princes …”
“Where do you plan to go now, Doc?” asked Brant, as they left the cave mouth behind and moved at an easy path northward along the base of the cliffs.
“Might as well get back to the trade city of Dakhshan, I guess,” said Harbin. “The CA has a commo station there, and I can report to my department that I am alive and well. They’ll send a skimmer to pick me up and take me back to Syrtis Port. How about yourself, Jim?”
“No reason why Zuarra and I shouldn’t take the long road back to Sun Lake City,” said the younger man with a shrug. “The trouble I ran away from has got to have blown over by now, and if the colonials don’t like the idea of one of their own marrying a native woman, well, hell, we’ll strike off to some place like Dakhshan, where our two races somehow manage to live together side by side without fighting. And I’ve had enough excitement to last me quite a while … I’d like to settle down like ordinary people, and maybe raise some kids.”
Zuarra demurely dropped her eyes, smiling in her heart.
And they rode on into the morning, side by side.