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

by Louis L'Amour

  Emma Yavorsky’s lips tightened in disapproval. “It will cost too much,” she said. “They will not allow it.” She stared at him. “You are being foolish about this. The man will die out there. Siberia will kill him. Let him alone, let him die.”

  “Your advice is usually good. But not this time. Many men will die out there; many men can die. But not this man.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  IT WAS TIME for a change of direction. Joe Mack rubbed his cold hands, watching his back trail. Something moved back there, probably an animal, but instinct as well as common sense told him he was being followed.

  By now they had guessed his intent, and they would prepare for his coming. He had set traps, deliberately chosen difficult ways, done what he could to slow pursuit and discourage those who followed him.

  Spring was coming, but it was still some weeks away, and a move toward the coast would put him in somewhat warmer weather. It would also lead to greater risk, for villages were more frequent. To strike back into the interior would increase his distance from his final goal, so he would move toward the coastal mountains.

  First, to find a suitable place to make the change. Squatting on his heels he studied the terrain. What he hoped for was a rocky shelf relatively free of snow. As his eyes sought a possible avenue of travel he was alert for any movement. In the vastness of the taiga, there were men as well as animals, and in the wilderness all men went armed. Many of them were bandits, working singly or in company, and robbing any unwary travelers.

  Joe Mack carried his bearskin in his pack with the carefully folded shirt Natalya had made for him. Now he wore three lightweight garments, the outer one made from the intestines of reindeer, carefully cleaned and then cut in strips and sewn together with sinew. Such a coat would shed rain and snow as easily as a slicker. He wore the stolen sweatshirt next to his skin and then a loose jacket of wolf hide. Necessarily, Joe Mack had used what could be had, not what he preferred.

  Joe Mack came down the mountain in the late afternoon and walked eastward over rock polished smooth by ice. He walked steadily through scattered trees and low brush. It was very cold, but the air was clear. Cold as it was, this part of Siberia had more clear days than any other part of the Soviet empire. Several times he saw deer, and once a moose, a huge old bull who raised his head, staring at him. He had been expecting moose as he had seen their teeth marks on aspen trunks.

  Leaving the rock, he climbed up a steep slope, placing his feet with care to disturb none of the smaller rocks, which might mark his passing. He avoided limbs, ducking under them or passing without brushing them where possible. Some had a light coating of snow that could be disturbed, others might be broken or the leaves pushed out of shape, all evidence of his passing if seen by a skilled tracker. When stepping back on a rock surface again, he was careful to knock the earth, sand, and leaves from his moccasins before reaching the rock, so as to leave no traces. These things were done without thinking. They had become habitual.

  Crossing the mountain slope, he next went down a gorge filled with a dense growth of spruce, weaving a careful way through them. He did not stop to leave any traps, that would come later, when a follower was apt to be tired and less cautious. He slept that night in a huge hollow tree, the hollow trunk serving as a chimney for his small fire, perfectly shielded by the tree itself. The place was snug, and in a few minutes, with a fire going, it was warm. The opening in the hollow tree had been covered by a crude door made of evergreen boughs woven together.

  When morning came he made a stew of some of the dried meat and then made tea, taking his time and resting. It had been weeks since he had slept so well and days since he had enjoyed a warm meal.

  The forest was changing. Now there were many cedar trees, some ash, oak, and walnut. There were more birds, too, and the tracks of deer were everywhere about.

  As he moved, his thoughts were busy, not only absorbing the country but trying to guess what Zamatev was doing. They knew about where he was now, not within miles, but certainly within the area. His sudden shift toward the east might delay pursuit for a brief time, but no more. Also, it would have the effect of narrowing still more the area in which they must search. He must at all costs avoid contact with or being seen by people, something that could grow increasingly difficult. Twice on this day he had come upon the remains of old campfires, so hunters did range these woods.

  His thoughts kept returning to Natalya. How were they? What had happened after he left? Could she get away to the coast? To the Maritimes? Even so, how could he possibly slip in there and get her out? It was ridiculous to even consider it, yet he might get her away from there. The interior? No chance, no chance at all.

  He stopped suddenly. He had been following a game trail, and suddenly in the trail before him was the track of a large cat.

  A tiger!

  As if he had not troubles enough. It was a fresh track, perhaps not an hour old. There were leopards in the area, too, or down in the Sikhote Alins nearer the coast. But this was a bigger track than that made by a leopard, and tigers went further in their hunting than did leopards, and they stood the cold better. This area had long been known for tigers of great size as well as of fierceness, and the Chinese as well as the native Soviet population had suffered from them.

  He followed, estimating the size of the beast by its stride and the impression of the tracks, although there was small chance of that because of the frozen earth. But here and there, in a few soft spots, the pugs made a definite impression. The tiger was a large one. Soon the tracks left the dim trail and went off down the mountain to the east.

  The months had changed him. He was lean, hard, and even more muscular. More and more he was becoming the Indian, a man of the wilderness. He was no longer a stranger to this country, for he had come to know its ways and had learned to live with it.

  As night came on again he moved higher on the slope to find a place where he could catch whatever warm air there was, for it would rise, leaving the slopes often warmer than the valley below.

  He found a rockfall where several great slabs had fallen in such a way as to leave a shelter beneath them and a place where he could have a small fire unseen. He was gathering sticks for his fire when he saw the highway.

  It was miles away but could be nothing else, for he saw the lights of what appeared to be a convoy moving along toward the east. There were six trucks in the line. Borowsky had told him that trucks often traveled so because of occasional hijackings. The goods they carried were worth so much on the black market that hijackings were not uncommon.

  He returned to his well-hidden cave under the slabs and fixed a small meal. He did not make tea. He had enough left for one more brewing, and then he must do without. Coffee was an almost forgotten luxury.

  Later, when he emerged to make one last gather of fuel before sleeping, he looked down toward the highway.

  There were no lights. He was turning away when he saw one set of lights moving very slowly. He paused, watching.

  Something seemed to be wrong. The truck slowed and slid a little to one side, and then the lights were stationary. After a few minutes they started to move once more, barely creeping. Then the truck turned toward him and stopped. The lights went out.

  Puzzled, he watched for a few minutes, then returned to his fire and his bed.

  It was still dark when he awakened. The first thing he thought of was the truck.

  Apparently it had been disabled. Yet that was not necessarily so. Should he go down to it? Almost anything such a truck carried might be useful to him.

  Yet he might be seen. He decided not to take the risk and came down off the mountain and started east. The highway, if such it could be called, ran along the river he had crossed a few days ago. That river had taken a bend to the north, and—

  He stopped again. Directly before him was a road! A dirt road of simply two parallel tracks, such as ma
ny he had seen in his own country. On that road were fresh tire tracks, two sets of them. Puzzled, he turned left, following along. He found the tracks of some small animal crossing the fresh tracks, and there were spots of oil, scarcely stiff from the cold.

  The truck he had seen must have turned off the highway and come here. The second set of tire prints showed the truck returning. Wary, but curious, he followed the road but kept back in the trees.

  Something dark and shadowy loomed ahead. He drew closer. A building, a tailings pile, and a track that ran out on a dump and ended there.

  For a few minutes he watched. The place seemed deserted. An abandoned mine.

  Why had the truck turned off the road to come here? It had not been disabled as he had thought, but simply seeking the turnoff in the darkness.

  No smoke, nothing. He moved down to the nearest building, where the road ended, and peered inside.

  Boxes, crates, and barrels, all neatly stacked!

  He had come upon the cache of a black-marketing truck driver. Not many of the boxes and crates were alike. It was possible that the driver, either on his own or with the connivance of some others, had been loading extra boxes from a warehouse, discharging them here to be picked up by others.

  Was there somebody around? Someone to guard their stolen property? Or was it sufficiently far into the wilds where none was needed?

  He had learned to speak a little Russian, but read it he could not. He doubted if the few words he saw stenciled on the boxes had anything to do with the contents. Another quick look from the window showed him nothing, and with a hammer nearby he opened the nearest box.

  Canned goods! He tried a second and a third. Food in most of them, and then several boxes of clothing.

  Running to the windows for another quick look, he made up a bundle of both clothing and food and carried it into the forest. What he had hoped to find was a pistol and ammunition, but there was no such luck, and he had already spent enough time. Bundling the boxes back into shape, he renailed them, and wiping out what tracks he had left, he slipped away into the woods.

  From first to last, he doubted if he had been in the building more than twenty minutes. As he was leaving he heard the distant sound of a truck.

  Catching up his bundle he scrambled higher on the mountain. Looking back, he could see nothing of the building he had just left or any sign of the road leading to it. A truck was passing on the highway. Taking his pack, he moved back deeper into the forest and away from the highway. At dusk he stopped and building a small fire, ate better than he had for weeks. When he had eaten and his fire was down to glowing coals he looked again at the clothes he had taken. There had been no time to try on what he had found, and he had judged the coat just by laying it open on its box, but it had looked large enough. He had taken the pants that went with it, and now he tried on the coat. It was a passable fit, not good, but better than he expected. The trousers were too large in the waist, but that was no problem. A tight belt would handle that.

  He packed the suit in as neat and small a package as possible and put it with the shirt Natalya had made for him. If he needed to go into a city, he was now prepared, but for one thing. He had no shoes or boots. His moccasins would attract the eyes of any who saw him.

  He walked on into the forest. From the ridge where he had looked at the passing truck he had seen what appeared to be a large farm in the distance. In Yakutia, he knew, there were many large farms, and although he had passed out of that area he was apparently coming into another such.

  Steadily, he worked his way east through dense forest, avoiding roads and signs of cultivation. From time to time he glimpsed people, mostly dressed in furs as he was, from what he could make out at the distance. From now on it would be more and more difficult to hide; nor could he leave traps here. Joe Mack had no desire to accidentally injure some unsuspecting person. Those who were trailing him did so at their own risk, but a trap left for them might be stumbled upon by a trapper, a hunter, or simply some wanderer in the forest.

  In a thick forest of larch, he found a corner near a huge fallen tree and bedded down for rest. The hour was early, but he must travel by night. Yet he was not forgetting the tiger track he had seen.

  With only his bow and quiver of arrows, he had no desire to encounter a tiger.

  He was alone, and he was tired. Not physically tired, but tired of running, tired of hiding. The sky was a pale blue, the spruce a dark fringe, almost black against that sky. He stood, looking about him, wondering if it was here, in this far land, where he was to die.

  What was he, anyway? Was he an Indian or a white man? And what difference did it make? His blood was Indian blood, but the world in which he lived was that of all men, having nothing to do with race or color. To exist is to adapt, and if one could not adapt, one died and made room for those who could. It was as simple as that. Beating one’s fists against the walls did no good. It was an exercise in futility.

  The terrorist lives for terror, not for the change he tells himself he wants. He masks his desire to kill and destroy behind the curtain of a cause. It is destruction he wants, not creation.

  A political revolution always destroys more than it creates. It had taken the Soviet Union thirty years to rebuild what the revolution had destroyed, and the government that had resulted was no different. Only the names had changed, the names of the people as well as the institutions.

  He was a Sioux, and for the Sioux as for most Indians war had been a way of life. More than one Indian had said that without war they could not exist. But it had been the same for the Vikings, whose very name stood for raiding and robbery. It had been no different for the Crusaders, who masked their lust for war under the banner of a holy cause.

  When the Sioux had first encountered the white man, the white man was despised. He was a trader for fur. If he was any kind of man, why did he not trap his own fur?

  His people had no way of gauging the power behind the westward movement or the white man’s drive to own land, to live on the land. Only the first white men to come had been free rovers like the Indian; the rest had been settlers who came and built cabins, who plowed up the grass and planted corn.

  Not until too late did the Indian realize what was happening to his country. He and many of the white men, too, bewailed the killing of the vast herds of buffalo, but where millions of buffalo roamed there were now farms that could feed half the world; there were hospitals, universities, and the homes of men.

  He was a warrior of the old school. It was the life he had always wanted, the life he knew best, but he could still appreciate the changes that had taken place. Nothing ever remained the same; the one inexorable law was change.

  Major Joseph Makatozi, once an athlete and flyer known as Joe Mack, walked down into the forest again, an Indian.

  Thinking of what was to be or what should have been did no good now. To exist, to survive, to escape, these must be all his thought, all his wish, his only need.

  This was not a war between the United States and the Soviet Union; it was a war between Colonel Arkady Zamatev and himself.

  It was also a war with Alekhin, out there somewhere, searching for him and someday, somewhere, finding him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  NATALYA BARONAS STOOD in the opening of the small, deep valley where they had found a home and looked out over Plastun Bay.

  Her father came from the cabin and walked down beside her. “I wonder where he is?” she said.

  Baronas shook his head. “Who knows? He is a man of the forest, you know. He does not fight it as we did. He understands it and lives with it.”

  “They search everywhere. I do not see how he can escape.”

  “Do you love him?”

  She did not answer for several minutes, looking out across the bay, wisps of hair blowing gently in the wind. “How can I know? I do not even know what love is. I only kno
w that I felt good when near him, lost when he went from me. I think he is a strong man. I do not know if he is wise.”

  “What is wisdom?” Baronas asked. “I have often wondered, and I am not sure. Understanding of life and men, I presume. It goes beyond mere knowledge, as knowledge goes beyond information.

  “Your young man has learned how to survive in one world, at least. Colonel Zamatev was unwise in not realizing he had captured something wild that could not stand being imprisoned. He is elemental, your friend. He is basic. His thoughts are simple, direct thoughts, I believe, although I do not know him well enough. I am a little afraid that when Zamatev had him captured he bought more than he bargained for. To Zamatev his action was totally impersonal. He captured a man to squeeze information from him, then to cast him aside. To Makatozi his capture was a deadly, personal insult, I believe. Something to be wiped out in blood.”

  “He said he would come back. Do you think he could be so foolish?”

  “It would not be foolish to him. I think your friend lives by a very simple and ancient code.” He paused, watching the gray waters of the bay. “I wonder if anyone has ever understood him? I am sure none of his fellow officers ever did. Probably they took what was on the surface as the man and looked no further. Not many men are given to study of their companions, anyway. They are concerned with themselves, their jobs, their families. Rarely do they question the motivations of their companions unless somehow it affects their own lives.”

  “I liked him.”

  “So did I, but I am afraid you cannot hold too long to a dream. He has gone, the odds are a million to one that he will be captured or killed or will die out in the taiga. That he could ever come back for you is almost impossible. Every inch of this coast is covered by radar and patrolled constantly.”

  Baronas paused. “There is something else, however. We might escape.”

  Surprised, she turned to look at him. “But how?”