Last of the Breed

Chapter 47

He smelled the smoke before he saw the fire, and when Joe Mack walked through the scattered rocks, Alekhin was waiting.

Joe Mack’s eyes swept the little hollow, but the Yakut said, “They have gone to recover the bodies you left.”

“I came for you.”

“I am here.”

Colonel Arkady Zamatev took up the package the soldier had placed on his desk. Slowly, with careful fingers, he began to undo the knots.

The package was very light, and it was wrapped in the skin of some small animal, but there was something inside, part of which felt like bark from a tree.

The last knot came loose, and the package opened. Colonel Arkady Zamatev sat very still, his mouth dry, his heart beating heavily. What lay on the table before him was obviously a human scalp with a small, distinctive blaze of white on one side, white hair growing where an old scar had been.

With it was a narrow strip of birchbark, and on it, printed in neat lettering: