Last of the Breed

Chapter 15

Joe Mack left the dim trail he had been following and went down a steep hill through the aspens. They grew so close together he had to weave his way, often turning sidewise to get through. Here, on the damp leaves and fallen trees he left almost no mark of his passing. He hesitated several times to look carefully around and to listen.

His hiding place was as secure as any such place could be. He had worked his way around on all sides, and a hunter might walk right over the rock above it and never suspect the presence of the overhang. Yet each time he approached it he tried a different route and each time with increasing care. Confidence could breed carelessness.

He wanted to go to the village. Baronas should be back with Borowsky and Botev. They would have news, and they might have money.

He stopped abruptly. A shadow had moved in the forest. He waited, listening. The sound had been ever so slight, and then there had been a movement. This was not a wild animal. It was a man.

Joe Mack drew an arrow from his quiver and waited, bow in hand.

Again there was movement, a sly, cautious movement. Joe Mack was high among the aspen on the side of the hill. He peered through the forest, waiting. There was no way he could get a clear shot at anything, the trees stood so thick. There were few low branches, and those few were dead, black, and bare. He waited. He was an Indian and he understood patience; he understood wild game, and hunting men.

A movement again, something black, something moving with extreme caution, something stalking.

The shadow moved again, briefly glimpsed among the trees. It was a man. It was Peshkov.

He was searching for Joe Mack’s hideout.

They were not within a half mile of it yet, but Peshkov could not know that. He was either looking for the hideout or he was stalking somebody. Not an animal, for in this thick stand of trees there was little chance of finding an animal at this time of day.

Peshkov moved again, crossing in front of Joe Mack but at least a hundred yards away. He was visible only in brief glimpses, as the trees at that distance formed almost a wall, merging one with the other.

Now the man had come into a small clearing. Watching him, Joe Mack decided Peshkov was simply casting about, looking for some indication. He would find nothing where he was, yet had Joe Mack been only a few minutes further along they might have come face to face.

Now he was moving away, and Joe Mack watched him go. At least he knew he was being hunted, and after this he must be doubly careful in going from the village to his hideaway. He remained where he was for several minutes longer, then went down the mountainside, handing himself down from tree to tree.

Returning to the hideaway, he left his furs, then went to the village. Stephan Baronas awaited him with a handful of rubles. “We did well,” he said, “but I am afraid there is trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“We waited outside of town until dark, and we saw a helicopter land. Two people got out, a man and a woman.”

Baronas took up his pipe and methodically stoked it with tobacco. “We do not see helicopters very often. They are used on the big jobs, like building the BAM. Sometimes they drop prospectors off, but as the season grows late we see few of them.”

“Did you know the people?”

“No, but the man, and he seemed subordinate, carried himself with a certain air. You know how it is? I would swear he was KGB or something of the sort. Borowsky had the same feeling.

“We had sold our furs earlier, but Borowsky wished to go back. Often there are things we need that we cannot buy ourselves. Zhikarev has often arranged to get them for us. We were going back to see him.”

“And—?”

“He was not there. The place was dark and silent. That was unexpected, as he lives on the premises. We were just leaving when a car drove up. It was the same man and woman, the two from the helicopter, but this time Wulff was with them. They tried knocking on Zhikarev’s door, but there was no answer. Then the man who looked like KGB forced his way in.

“We watched from some distance off. We could hear nothing, but it was obvious they found nobody inside. They locked up again, got into the car, and raced away.”

Baronas was silent, smoking and thinking. “We came away very quickly and returned here by a different route. We have no idea what took place or why Zhikarev left, if he did.”

“They look for me.”

Baronas shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“Peshkov has been looking for me, too.”

“You know Peshkov? Oh, yes! I remember! Talya spoke of your meeting with him. Be careful. He is a dangerous and a treacherous man.”

Joe Mack stared into the fire. Outside the wind blew cold. Soon he must start back to his own place, being careful he was not followed. Did Peshkov plan to rob him? Kill him?

It was warm and pleasant here. Talya came in from outside. He made a move to rise, but she gestured for him to remain seated. “And stay. I have a ragout. We will eat soon.”

Baronas began his instruction in Russian, and Joe Mack listened carefully, repeating the words after him. Soon there was coffee, and the instruction continued while they drank coffee and, later, ate their dinner.

Borowsky came in. “I believe he has gone,” he said. “I mean Zhikarev. I think he fled. He told me once he would die before he suffered questioning again, so I believe he simply left everything and ran.”

“How can he escape?”

Borowsky shrugged. “Men have done it, and he is a shrewd old man, A trader in furs establishes many strange connections. He knows a lot. After all, he knows where the furs are from, in most cases. Or he can guess pretty close. After all, certain kinds of animals have certain habitats, and from some areas the fur is better than in others.”

“I wish him well,” Joe Mack said.

“He will need your prayers.” Borowsky glanced over at Talya, who had just come back into the room. “I believe I shall disappear for a while.”

“At this time of year? Where would you go?”

“I will have been seen entering Zhikarev’s. If they look for him, they will look for me, also.” He glanced at Baronas. “Be careful, Stephan. They have never found this place, but I do not believe they looked very hard. Wulff has been doing well, but if it is his neck or ours, it will be ours.”

When Joe Mack finished eating, he looked up at Natalya who had come back into the room to stand near them, “They will not find my place so easily. You could come there.”

“We will be all right, I think.”

He got up. “Remember where it is, and come if you can.”

“Better find yourself another place, Joe Mack. A place further away. Stock it with firewood and meat. In this weather the meat will keep, but there is frost in the earth. Dig down a few feet and it is better than any of those refrigerators that I hear you have in the States.”

“The permafrost?” Joe Mack knew about that. The earth was frozen and remained so, year in and year out. Building became difficult, for anything that brought heat to that frozen ground caused it to thaw and flooded the area around.

They talked long, and he listened, saying little. To talk much was not his way, yet he liked the others to talk, and he learned much.

“Stay the night,” Baronas suggested. “The cold is bitter now.”

He did not like it, but liked the thought of the cold walk through the woods even less. He stayed, and it was warm and pleasant there. Borowsky left, finally, and they talked among themselves and he asked many questions, but they asked more questions of him. What was it like in America? He told them a little, careful of how much, or they would believe he lied. He got out the map he had stolen and they studied it. Looking at the map, Baronas could tell him much about the country. Some of it he had traveled, of some he had only heard. They spoke in a mixture of English and Russian.

“Do you speak French?” Baronas asked suddenly. “I hear it is taught in the schools in America.”

“I speak it.”

“In my country there are few who do not speak several languages. We are a small country, and many speak Polish and Russian, but there are some who speak Swedish, too, or French or German. In the old days when I was a boy, there was much travel. My father had been several times to Copenhagen and to Oslo. He had a cousin who went to America.

“When I was young I read some of his letters. Wonderful letters! He lived in Minnesota.”

“Some of my people lived there also,” Joe Mack said.

“You said you are an Indian? But you have gray eyes.”

“My grandfather was a Scotsman, a Highlander. Some of my ancestors fought beside Bonnie Prince Charlie. There were others riding with Crazy Horse when he defeated Custer.”

“Ah! I have heard of him!”

“Most people have. He was a great fighting man, and many of my people admired him until they began reading the white man’s books about him. We fought him and he fought us. He was a soldier, as I am. He did what he had to do, as I do and have done. A soldier is given a mission to perform, and he does his best to carry it out.

“An Indian is different only in that he chooses his mission. Nobody ever made an Indian hunt scalps. He hunted them for honor, for prestige in his tribe. When I was a small boy, old warriors came to visit us who had known Custer. He was admired by them. They had no use for weak men.

“Later, some warriors claimed to have killed him. The truth was they did not know him. Before that last march he cut his hair, and they were looking for the long hair. Nobody knew who killed him or when. The old men who came to visit us believed he was killed early in the fight.”

Joe Mack paused. “So few realize that was not the first fight. Only a few days before, the Sioux fought the great General Crook to a standstill. The Sioux believed they won. Crook thought he did, but Crook’s men had to withdraw. Many were wounded; most of their ammunition was gone.

“In that fight the Sioux were better armed, and they outnumbered the soldiers. The Sioux had new Winchester and Remington rifles, repeating weapons far better than the single-shot Springfields the army carried.

“There were Shoshone Indians fighting on the side of the white man, but that was often the case. The Shoshones were old enemies of the Sioux. They did not fear us individually, but they feared us as a people.”

“We know so little of your Indian wars, and most of the stories are sensational rather than factual.”

Joe Mack agreed. “It is so with us, also. Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries.”

The fire crackled. “It is cold,” Natalya said. “This night will be the coldest so far.”

He glanced at her. “Do you know anything of the country between here and the Bering Strait?”

“You would be foolish to go that way. It is miles upon miles of forest, mountain, and swamp, with many freezing rivers to cross; then there is the tundra. And on the tundra there is no place to hide. Miles upon miles of wide-open country. Your best chance is toward Manchuria.”

“Perhaps.”

“Talya is right. That way you have no hope. There are few villages and fewer people, except along the seashore. Those you find will be native peoples or government men, those who man the radar installations or the few airfields. As she says, there is no place to hide.”

“You may be right.”

“You still intend to try?”

“I do, and for all the reasons you suggest. If it does not make sense to go that way, they will be inclined to believe I went elsewhere.”

Joe Mack brought fuel to the fire. The wind was picking up, and it was cold. Stepping away from the fire, one felt it at once. A large space could not be heated at all, a small space with ventilation for the carbon monoxide might. He must remember that.

She made a pallet for him near the fire and one for herself across from it. Her father would sleep between the fire and the outer wall, but closer to the fire, with a reindeer hide hung a few inches behind his back to act as a reflector of heat. There could be warmth beside the fire and ice forming on the wall.

They talked, but he was silent, listening. His thoughts were already reaching out to the northeast, toward the Bering Strait and the miles he must cross. When the worst of the cold was over, he would start. He would not wait for spring. With warm weather there would be travel.

He watched her face in the flickering light from the fire. She was beautiful, and she seemed so slender as to be fragile, but she had been strong with Peshkov. She was not afraid.

“You have known nothing but this?”

She looked around. “At first, when I was young, we lived in a town. It was a small town but very nice. I liked it. In the summer we had flowers, and there was a church.”

“You went to the church?”

“It was not safe. If one went to church, one was investigated or called in for a scolding. Sometimes a minister would come to our house and talk to us. He was a Lutheran, a man who lived in the village and worked in a mill. I remember him well.”

“He was a good man,” Baronas said.

“What did you do?” Joe Mack asked Baronas.

“I was a gardener. A farmer in a small way. I raised barley and rhubarb. Rhubarb was very popular as a medicine, as well as food.” He looked up from gazing into the fire. “I learned how to raise it, and I learned a little more about gardening. Some things grow very well here, but the season is short. Often the frost comes early and all is lost.”

“I have never gardened. In the mountains we raised some corn, and sometimes I helped with that.”

The wind was rising.

“There was a sailor I knew once,” Baronas said, “and on such a night he would repeat what was said by the wives of deep-sea fishermen and seafaring men. When the winds moaned and the great seas broke against the rock, they would say, ‘God have pity on the poor sailors on such a night as this!’”

“Amen,” Joe Mack said.

“Ssh!” Natalya lifted a hand. “Someone comes!”