“A kind of tent that Amerinds used to live in—or so Sitting Bull tells me. Personally, I doubt that anyone ever slept in anything like that. It looks much too inefficient, and it certainly doesn’t afford any protection against your enemies.” He shrugged. “Still, it’s hardly worth arguing the point; I’ve got better things to do than go around researching aborigines.”

He turned off the ignition.

“What now?” asked Virtue.

“Now we get out and walk,” he continued, opening his door as she followed suit.

“Why? We’re still almost half a mile away.”

“Because Sitting Bull likes his supplicants to approach on foot. I can’t really say that I blame him; there are a goodly number of ways to rig some pretty powerful weaponry to a motor vehicle, and he does have more than his fair share of enemies.” He paused. “Besides, this way he gets to show off.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Virtue.

“If the last time I came here was at all typical, we’ll pick up some company along the way and march into his camp under armed guard. I imagine it makes him feel as if he’s in control of the situation.”

As if on cue, four aliens stepped out from behind trees and bushes. Or rather, three—tall, bald, emaciated blue beings, each carrying a multitude of weapons—stepped out; the fourth, which resembled a shaggy yellow caterpillar, merely slithered. All four aliens wore war paint and headbands. The Swagman thought they looked absolutely ludicrous, but Virtue found them interesting enough to capture with a miniaturized holographic camera that she had built into her belt buckle.

Finally one of the blue aliens, who identified himself as Cochise, pointed a sonic rifle at them. They stood motionless while the caterpillar literally sniffed out their weapons, appropriated the Swagman’s two concealed pistols, and turned them over to another of the blue aliens. Finally Cochise jerked his head in the direction of the camp, and the two humans began walking toward it once again.

When they arrived, Cochise ushered them to the site of a campfire that had died sometime during the night, told them to sit down, and left them in the care of another blue alien.

“Anything out of the ordinary yet?” whispered Virtue.

“Just standard operating procedure so far,” said the Swagman reassuringly.

Then the flaps of a nearby teepee were thrust apart, and Sitting Bull stepped out as Virtue surreptitiously activated her belt-buckle camera and a hidden recording device.

The first thing she noticed about him was the gold feathers. Initially she thought they were part of his costume, like the huge ceremonial headdress he wore, but she quickly saw that they were part and parcel of Sitting Bull himself.