Last of the Breed (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 9

  Desperately, he needed to find some animal that could provide him with a warmer coat or something to wrap around himself when he slept.

  Day after day he worked his way southward. Several times he saw planes, and twice there were helicopters. Were they searching for him or involved somehow with the railroad? He had no way of knowing, but it mattered little, for by now all Siberia must be aware of his escape.

  He was always cold. He needed better food, and he needed fat, always the hardest thing to find in the wilderness. He had worn out another pair of moccasins, and his feet were sore from walking over rocky terrain. More and more often he was stopping to rest. From time to time he killed a ptarmigan or grouse. Once he caught some fish. Time had ceased to exist; all he thought of now was to move on.

  And then he saw the bear.

  ELEVEN

  IT WAS A large brown bear, rolling in fat. Joe Mack squatted down beside a fallen tree and studied the situation. He needed that bear, needed it badly, but could he kill a bear of that size with an arrow? It had been done and no doubt might be done again, but he had never done it.

  He glanced around for a tree with low branches. He might need to climb very fast, and it was unlikely a bear of that size would attempt a tree. The larger bears rarely climbed trees, instinctively knowing what their weight could do.

  He glanced again at the tree, decided what branches he would take, and looked again at the bear. There was almost no wind. Joe Mack took an arrow from his quiver, put it in position, and then waited an instant. Then, reaching back, he withdrew two more arrows. Once more he lifted the bow, waiting and watching. The distance was about right; the bear was facing away from him, its left side clearly visible. He drew back the bowstring and let the arrow go.

  It went true, into the bear’s side right behind his left foreleg.

  The bear let out a grunting roar and half raised itself to a standing position; then it fell back, trying to grab at the arrow or to bite it. Joe Mack stood up and too eager, missed his second shot. The arrow barely grazed the bear, which wheeled about and saw Joe Mack. With a roar, it started for him. He let go his third arrow as the bear leaped over a log. For an instant the bear’s throat had been clearly visible, and this time his aim was good, but the bear kept coming.

  Wheeling, he grabbed a limb and hoisted himself up. The bear lunged against the tree, his long claws raking Joe Mack’s leg, ripping his pants and pulling the moccasin from his foot.

  Joe Mack climbed higher and then looked down. The bear was clawing at the tree, breaking the lower dead branches in a fury to reach him. Joe Mack notched another arrow, and as the bear started to climb, he shot the arrow down the wide red maw into the bear’s throat.

  Its shoulders were already covered with blood from the previous wound, but it clawed after him, shaking the tree until Joe Mack was hanging on desperately. Choking, the bear tried to climb. Joe Mack prepared another arrow but lost it when he had to grab wildly at the tree to keep from being shaken loose.

  He clung to the tree, getting a good grip on a higher branch and pulling himself up.

  The bear’s efforts seemed to weaken. It dropped back on its haunches and then reared again as Joe Mack moved.

  Then it fell back, struggled to rise, and finally lay still. Joe Mack waited, watching. At last, very carefully, he crawled down the tree. He poked at the bear with the end of his bow. There was no reaction.

  First he retrieved the dropped arrow and then the one buried in the bear’s side. Arrows were hard to come by and would be needed. Then he looked carefully around.

  The land about was bleak and harsh. A small stream raced among the rocks nearby, a little ice along its fringes. The pines were ragged and storm torn, growing sometimes from the naked rock.

  From under straggling birches he gathered dry sticks and built a small fire, concealed by the trees around. Then he went to work on the carcass of the bear.

  It was a long, tiresome job, and his strength was not what it had been. He peeled back the hide and began gathering the fat, taking the best cuts of meat. Over the fire he roasted some, eating it as he worked.

  What he would have given for a good cup of coffee!

  A cold sun was disappearing behind an icy ridge. The wind crept down the canyon and prowled among the trees, finding leaves to rustle and branches to rattle in the cold. Joe Mack worked on into the night, warming his cold hands by the fire, building a rack on which to dry meat and smoke it. Clearing a flat place he staked out the great hide and began to scrape it clean of fat and fragments of meat.

  Out in the night, a wolf howled. From somewhere further off, another replied. They smelled the bear’s fresh blood, and they would be coming. He stood his bow and his arrows close at hand. Firelight flickered on the pines and the stark, bare branches of the birch. He warmed his cold fingers. Would he ever be warm again?

  He built his fire up, and when it had burned down he moved the ashes and lay down upon the warm earth. Then he slept a little, awakening in an icy dawn. The water of the creek was so cold it made his teeth ache, but he drank and drank again.

  The wolves were not gone. He glimpsed them from time to time, swift gray shadows among the trees, waiting for what they knew would be theirs. “I will leave some,” he said.

  Later, standing beside the bear’s skull, he rested a hand upon it. “I beg your pardon, Bear. It was with no anger that I killed you. I needed your meat. I needed the fat from your ribs.”

  He roasted more meat and ate it, and ate great pieces of the fat. This he would need to survive.

  At last he began gathering what he could carry of the meat, packing away what he had smoked and dried. He worked on the hide and finally gathered it up to carry along. It would be heavy, but now he could be warm, warm.

  On the third day he went away, leaving the bear’s head in a fork on the tree, and the carcass for the wolves. He walked away between the raw-backed ridges that gnawed the gray sky, away from the ragged pines where his bear skull rested, and downstream toward a warmer land.

  Two days later, gaining in strength, he found a landmark—a gash upon a tree, a thin gash only, with a smaller above it—and he hesitated. He was close then, close to the people of whom Yakov had spoken. Beside a stream he sat to wash the wounds left by the bear’s claws. They seemed to be healing nicely. In a still pool he saw himself in the water. His hair was ragged and wild, and his clothes were soiled from travel. The day was warm, so he took time to wash and dry his shirt, to brush out his hair and shake his sheepskin vest clear of the leaves and twigs it had picked up in passing through the woods. As was the case with most Indians, he had little facial hair, so shaving was rarely a problem. The few hairs growing on his chin he could pull out if they bothered him.

  He washed his face and hands, then checked his gear. Yet he did not move on. Should he, or should he not try to find the people of whom Yakov had spoken? He knew no one here, could trust no one. Whenever such a group got together there was always one who was an informer or who would sell out for a privilege or some benefit to himself or herself. Yet he needed shelter, and they would have shelter. Obviously they were surviving the cold, and with them he might have a better chance.

  He had lost count of the days since escaping from the prison.

  There was no more time. He must find a place in which to last out the winter, and certainly in this vast land, with its miles of forest and tundra, with its bleak mountains and rocky gorges, there had to be a place.

  Still he shied from the refugees of whom he had heard. How could they exist free of the law? How support themselves? How remain undiscovered? Was there official connivance? Would he, a much sought man, be welcomed?

  A pale sun hung in a gray sky, a faraway sun, dimmed by distance. The forest was dense, the mountains visible only through occasional breaks. He saw deer, and once he saw the track of a large cat.

  A tige
r? There were many of them south of here in the Ussuri River country and in the mountains along the sea. How far south was he? The growth had changed a little. Again he saw the faint scars on a tree, but he saw no human tracks. This path was rarely used.

  His moccasins made no sound on the pine needles that covered the path. Here and there leaves had fallen from other trees, but he avoided them. They rustled when one walked through them, crackled when dry. This was not the forest of Idaho, Oregon, or Washington, but it was a forest, and now he was at home. He had meat and a warm robe he would trim to the size he wished, and he would find a place in which to await the spring with its bright and running waters.

  He smelled the smoke first, just the faintest, most intangible of odors, and he paused in midstride, moved under the trees, and waited, listening, scenting the wind.

  It was a moment before he caught it again, and then he moved away, more slowly now. He was dipping down into a grove of aspen now, aspen most of whose golden leaves had fallen, littering the forest floor on which he walked, paving it with a scattering of leaves like gold coins.

  Somewhere before him there was a fire, wood smoke from that fire was what he had smelled. A fire meant people, life, something dangerous to him.

  Ghostlike he moved among the trees, stepping over deadfalls, avoiding the path. From time to time he hesitated, waiting for his senses to pick up some scent, some sound. He heard nothing.

  It was there quite suddenly, an odd-looking shelter among the trees, smoke coming from a squat chimney, a door open and a woman’s voice, her tone cold, level. It was a tone of dismissal, and he needed no language to understand.

  A man appeared in the doorway, a bulky man, big and dressed as roughly as Joe himself. The man was arguing in a threatening tone, but he was backing away. Then a woman appeared in the door, blond hair under a fur hat. In her hand she held a pistol.

  She was not frightened. She was coldly angry. The words he did not understand, but their tone was commanding. She gestured with the gun, and the man backed away, muttering. Then he turned and went down the path and away from the shelter. Once he turned to look back; pausing, he spat into the dirt.

  Were these the people he sought? Yakov had spoken of a woman who said yes or no, and this one appeared capable of it. He chuckled, amused, and the woman, who had started back inside, must have heard, because she paused suddenly, looking carefully about.

  From where she stood she could see her antagonist, if such he might be called, walking away and some distance off. She looked after him, then looked carefully around. She spoke a question, as if to ask if anyone were there.

  Suddenly he smelled something else.

  Coffee!

  He stood up, and her eyes were quick. They found him at once, and she spoke, questioning.

  “I would like a cup of coffee.” He spoke quietly, just loud enough.

  Surprisingly, her reply was in English. “Then come and get it.”

  Her pistol was still in her hand when he stepped from the trees. He crossed the narrow path and went up through the scattered trees to where she stood on the step of the shelter. She was tall; her eyes measured him. “Who are you?”

  “My friends call me Joe Mack.”

  She was startled but not afraid. She knew at once who he was, who he had to be. And she knew trouble when she saw it. If they came looking for him, they would find them, they would be exposed, ruined, destroyed. All they had built would be lost.

  First, the promised coffee, and then to be rid of him. She hoped it would be that simple.

  He was tall and very straight. He walked easily, and his eyes swept the room as he entered. He stopped just inside the door where a sawed-off end of a log offered itself as a seat. He unslung his pack, placing it down beside him. “I have meat,” he said.

  Her look was a question. “Bear meat,” he said. “If you like it.”

  “I have eaten it but once.” She accepted a chunk of the meat and turned toward the stove, getting out some pans. When the meat was on the fire she brought him coffee. He tasted it carefully, then smiled. His teeth were very white. “That’s good! I’ve missed it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He glanced at her. “You know who I am?”

  “No, only that there is a search, a very serious search. They want you badly.”

  He sipped the coffee. “I can’t get out of the country until spring,” he said. “I must find a place to live until then.”

  “How did you come here?”

  He shrugged. “Partly by chance. But I met a man, a man who said his name was Yakov. He spoke of people who live in the forest.”

  “Live? Hide is the correct word. They have not come for us because they do not care. We are nothing, or less than nothing, and sometimes we are valuable.”

  He glanced at her quickly. “Valuable? How?”

  “Wulff—he is the man in power here—makes something from our trapping. Each year he receives furs, the best of them, and he looks the other way.”

  “Are there many of you?”

  “Twenty-nine now.” She looked at him with cool, measuring eyes. “Some of us are descendants of old exiles, from the time of the Tsar. Others served out their terms and had nowhere else to go. Some of us simply knew the wrong people. Nobody among us is looked for.”

  “I see.” He looked up. “When I have eaten I shall move on. I will not endanger you.”

  He sipped his coffee. She stole a quick look at him from under her brows. “I am Natalya,” she said. “Here they simply call me Talya.”

  “It is a pretty name.”

  She said nothing. He finished the coffee, and she went to the stove to turn the meat again.

  “That man who left? He was angry with you.”

  She shrugged. “He is a fool, but a dangerous fool. He will ruin us all. He is Peshkov. He was a soldier, a butcher by trade.” She paused. “He says his name is Peshkov. I think he lies. I do not trust him.”

  He watched her as she prepared the meat. She was slim and graceful, a truly lovely woman. He was no good at women’s ages, never had been. She was probably in her twenties. She was poised, assured.

  “What did Yakov tell you?”

  “Nothing, except that you were here, a few of you.”

  “Why did he tell you?”

  “Winter was coming. He knew I would need a place to live out the winter, but do not worry. I shall not stay.”

  She looked at his pack. “What is there?”

  “Meat, nearly three hundred pounds of it, and a bear hide.”

  “You carried all that?”

  “It is nothing. I have carried such packs since I was a boy.” He smiled a little. “If you lived in America you might have heard of the Alaskan Indian who carried a piano over Chilkoot Pass during the gold rush days.”

  “We have our packers, too. The Yakuts carry enormous packs.”

  She brought a plate of sliced meat to him and refilled his cup. “You can hunt, then? Can you trap?”

  “There’s a blue fox skin in there, too. It was not well treated. I hadn’t the time.”

  “Will you share what you kill?”

  “I am an Indian, a Sioux. The hunters among us always shared. But I shall not worry you. I shall move on, further away, and when spring comes I shall go back to America.”

  She lifted a cynical eyebrow. “Is that so easy?”

  He shrugged again. “I do not say it will be easy. I say I will do it.”

  He ate in silence. The meat had not only been cooked, but seasoned. Nothing he had ever tasted had seemed so good. And with the coffee it was a dream time.

  She stood up. “Ssh! Someone is coming!”

  TWELVE

  THE FOOTSTEPS DREW nearer. Joe Mack continued to eat, taking his time, enjoying every bite. Only one person was coming, probably a
man by the sound of the steps, and Joe Mack knew what he could do.

  The door stood open. Natalya stepped back, but she said, “It is all right. I know the footstep. It is my father.”

  He appeared in the doorway, a slender man who appeared taller than he was. He had a thin, scholar’s face, clean shaven. He stopped abruptly when he saw Joe Mack.

  Natalya spoke to him and he listened; then haltingly, but in English, he said, “You are welcome here. We do not often have visitors.”

  Joe Mack smiled. He liked this man. “I should imagine not, but this one will not be with you long. I do not wish to create problems.”

  “Talya says you are a hunter.”

  “I can hunt,” and then he added, “and trap.”

  “It is an advantage. Our only income is from trapping. And our best hunter is gone. We need meat.”

  Joe Mack indicated his pack. “It is yours, a fat bear.”

  “Ah? I understood your people do not kill bears.” He flushed a little. “I mean the Indian people.”

  “Only when there is need. We explain it to the bear.”

  “I see.” He turned to his daughter. “We must instruct him in our procedure.” He turned back to Joe Mack. “We are left alone, but in the event a search should be made we have places to hide. So far Wulff does not know there are so many of us. And we make ourselves useful. Every two months a bundle of furs is left behind his dwelling. He wants only the best.”

  Joe Mack glanced over at Natalya. “If you wish? I would share the meat with you and your father.”

  He looked at her father. “Your home is here?”

  The older man smiled. “For the present. One day we hope to return to our own country. We are from Lithuania, a country the Russians absorbed after World War II. You know of us?”