Peace in an Age of Metal and Men Read Free Page A

tactile feeling in the hand, but it never hurt, no matter how hard it got hit.
    That morning, the arm throbbed with dull pain. It had a low battery, which was not surprising, given that I hadn’t charged it in a month. The low-battery warning presented as a dull, irritating ache in my elbow.
    It was still dark. Why was I awake so early? Sure, pain made it hard to get a decent night’s sleep, but why was I sitting up looking around at my dark room?
    A gentle rap at the door gave me the answer. A visitor. How long had they been there? Who was it? My heart raced. Where was my gun?
    The gentle tap came again, slightly more insistent.
    Light. I needed light.
    A sweep of my human arm knocked my glow cube from its position on the little table by my worn-down cot. I swore out loud.
    There was another gentle tap at the door. In my experience, death didn’t knock. I forced myself to calm down. Deep breaths.
    “Just a minute,” I said, though it might have come out as a rhythmic cadence of grunts. I rolled off the cot and landed on my knees on the earthen floor. The cube had to be close. Crawling, I carefully swept the area for the device, finding it after only a few seconds.
    My thumb found the indentation on the top of the device, and a blue glow filled the room. A red light on the top of the device indicated some kind of message, though I couldn’t figure who it might be from. There wasn’t time for it. I stood up and opened the thatch door. Only once it was open did I remember that I was wearing only an old pair of long underwear, one of the few remaining intact items of clothing in my possession.
    Isi Broadfeather was the tribe’s chief by the simple authority given a brilliant, charismatic man of advanced age. Like many folks of his years, he was not of a mind to sleep much more than a few hours a night. Maybe his body didn’t require it, or perhaps he felt the looming end of his long life pressuring him to make the most of those final days. Even my sleep-addled brain should have figured it was him at the door.
    “Morning,” I said. “C’mon in.”
    Elder Broadfeather’s eyes twinkled with amusement when he saw me. His gnarled wooden cane tapped the earthen floor as he waddled past me. There was only one chair in the place, and he settled comfortably into it and folded both hands on the end of his cane. The old man wore tanned leather and a modest assortment of feathers. His gray hair was pulled back and tied neatly away.
    I sat on the cot across from him, and there we stayed for several minutes. My neck and arms benefited from a good stretch, and soon felt like they could move as reliably as a person could expect.
    Broadfeather spoke first. “Good to see you walk back to town last night.”
    I nodded, wondering if he saw me come into town or if Mina had told him.
    “Didn’t want to come back on horse?”
    “Not badly enough.”
    “Maybe they would rather be free.”
    “Wouldn’t we all?”
    Broadfeather smiled at that. He had always supported my attempt at taming the horses, but I couldn’t help but feel like he’d been betting against my success. Yet, every time I came back he’d lay out a new ploy to try to catch them.
    “It almost worked,” I said. “Had them running right for the canyon, but the skidder failed and they got away. That black’s a smart one, I think. She had an eye out for me.”
    “I once heard a story of a man who wanted horses, but all he had were apples. The man would walk out into the field with apples each day, leaving them for the wild horses that roamed the area. Soon the horses started visiting that location each day, and each day the man would get closer to them. One day he fed an apple directly to a beautiful mare.”
    “He made friends with it?”
    “No, of course not. He tricked her and broke her until she would do his bidding.”
    “Seems a broken horse wouldn’t be as good.”
    Broadfeather shook his head. “Nonsense. A horse must be broken to be ridden. That is