Sitka

by Louis L'Amour

  Like a ghost ship on a ghost sea they slid along through the fog. He was coming up from below when Kohl called him. The schooner faced a continuing channel ahead, but to their right lay another opening, a little wider. "What d' you think, Barney?"

  Kohl rubbed his neck. "A man can only guess." Together they walked to the bow and looked at the water. Just beyond the entrances both passages were blocked off by fog. One might be an escape, the other a trap, but which was which? A decision had to be made, yet Jean delayed, hoping for some indication, some evidence on which to base a choice.

  "What's the book say?" Kohl had noticed the black book LaBarge occasionally referred to.

  "It doesn't say. The man who told me about this channel hadn't navigated it, he'd only crossed it at the Narrows with some Tlingits after him. He did get a taste of the water and it was salt."

  He stiffened suddenly, lifting a hand. "Listen! I heard something then!

  Something dropped on a deck!"

  All ears strained into the silence and fog. Kohl grabbed his arm. "Cap'n ... look!"

  It was a piece of shelf ice such as forms along a shore, and it had drifted from the opening that lay ahead. It was moving upon some strong, unseen current. "Put the helm over, Noble," Jean said. "We take the other opening." Suddenly from out of the fog there was a cry, "Sail, ho! Dead ahead!" And the words were in Russian.

  As one man the crew sprang into action, getting sail on the schooner. Putting the helm over sent them into thick, blanketing fog, and like a gray ghost the Susquehanna gathered speed, while behind them they heard excited talk in Russian.

  "Gant, Boyar, Turk!" LaBarge grabbed the three men. "Lay aft with your rifles.

  Stand by to fire but not a shot until I give the word, understand?"

  He turned on Kohl. "How did they see us before we saw them?"

  "They must've had a man at the masthead."

  Behind them a cannon boomed suddenly, and they heard the shell crash into the forest, some distance off.

  "Shootin' up the other channel," Gant said. "They didn't see us duck out." A half hour later, sliding more swiftly through thinning fog, they heard another shot, far behind them. The patrol ship had obviously taken the other, more obvious channel. Yet they themselves were sailing into the unknown and from brief glimpses of the shore nobody could guess the position. Abruptly, they emerged from the fog and saw dead ahead of them a mighty shaft of rock towering over two hundred feet into the air! Kohl whooped. "Cap'n!" He grabbed Jean's arm. "We're okay! That's Eddystone Rock an' we're not more than twenty miles above Revillagigedo Channel! I've been this far a dozen times!"

  Far behind them the patrol ship Lena captained by Alexi Boncharof, with Baron Zinnovy aboard, felt its way slowly up the unknown channel. Boncharof, knowing the temper of his passenger and superior, was growing more and more worried. There was a current flowing against them and he was positive it was no tidal current.

  "I think," he began hesitantly, "there is a river at the end of this inlet. I do not believe they went this way."

  "I heard them, I tell you!" Zinnovy's voice was coldly furious.

  They proceeded another mile, two miles. Boncharof was thoroughly unhappy. Experience had taught him it was foolhardly to pursue poachers; one had to wait until opportunity offered rather than venture into narrow channels filled with dangers of all sorts. But who was he to advise his superior, an officer of the Imperial Navy?

  Yet when the fog broke they saw two rivers flowing into a dead-end inlet, and no sign of the Susquehanna Baron Paul Zinnovy stared wide-eyed with anger at the shore and the rivers, then he turned abruptly and went below, nor would he appear on deck again until they reached Sitka.

  Below deck he poured a glass of cognac. The American had escaped him again, yet he dismissed his failure as he dismissed all failure. One thing he had decided. He dare not let Rotcheff return to St. Petersburg, nor his wife, either, for that matter. He turned the glass in his hand, knowing he must move soon and swiftly. He wished to return to St. Petersburg a wealthy man, to establish himself in the capital. There was no better place for a man to be who had wealth, but without it, one was nothing.

  LaBarge now: the man must have taken a small fortune in furs! That schooner was well down in the water; it would take a lot of fur to bring her down so far. If he could have captured the schooner with that fur ... ! Paul Zinnovy had come into the world as an only child in a country mansion remote from all others of his class, and on an estate where he ruled almost as a prince. His father's overseers had gotten work out of the peasants with the knout, and Paul had been taught to do likewise. Zinnovy recalled his mother as an inconsequential woman in black who had lived for twenty years in fear of her husband, and as he grew up she came to live in equal fear of her son. At school he was the only child from the gentry and tyrannized over the others, yet he was intelligent and his grades were good. Later, at the university his grades were even better, yet there for the first time he felt discontent. He was no longer first. He found many who were richer, stronger, students who lived on vaster estates, and knew more important people. A tall, handsome and somewhat cold young man, he repelled people rather than attracted them, and soon learned that his father, a tyrant on his estates, was only a provincial member of the petty nobility and of no consequence in St. Petersburg.

  A fine navigator and an excellent officer, Zinnovy soon won promotion on his own merit. Several friends sponsored him in various ways, only to be promptly discarded when their usefulness was at an end. Paul Zinnovy had never heard of Machiavelli, but the Italian could have taught him nothing. His reading had been limited to gunnery tables, charts, books and papers essential to his career. He was fiercely proud, without scruple or loyalty, and if it is given to any man to be so, he was without fear. His first duel at the university, where duels were usually concluded with the drawing of blood, ended in death. He easily ran his man through, and from that day he was feared. His second duel, with pistols, was with a drunken artillery officer and again he killed his man. Then had come the first of those "duels by request." A young journalist had written articles critical of the Navy, and a superior officer of Zinnovy's casually suggested that if Zinnovy were a loyal officer of the Navy he would resent the articles. He resented them, and killed a man who had known no weapon but the pen, until given a pistol for the duel. There are always those who admire skill with weapons as there are women who are attracted by a reputation with no thought of what the reputation implies. Paul Zinnovy was valuable to the right people so he obtained promotion. He dressed with care and danced well.

  There had been a riot at Kronstadt when Zinnovy was Officer of the Day. Although a mere outburst of rebellious fury on the part of seamen who had endured too much, Zinnovy treated it as the beginning of revolution. Acting with ruthless speed, efficiency and cruelty, he personally killed the ringleader with a pistol and summarily executed three others. He was commended publicly by his commanding officer, who commented in private, "Efficient, but too bloody." During this period in Russia all books on logic and philosophy were forbidden, and although there was reform later it. was so slight as to warrant no discussion. Censorship subjected all printed matter to rigid scrutiny. It was a period of stifling tyranny and obedience without discussion, an atmosphere suited to the development and rise of Paul Zinnovy. Yet the new Czar, Alexander II, did not approve of undue violence, and his policy was somewhat more liberal than Russia was expecting. Baron Zinnovy had ordered the knout for a cadet, and he was about to be broken in rank for this offense when influence was brought to bear and he was sent to Sitka, instead. If he made good there he would be returned with honors. He was given other, strictly confidential orders.

  Those orders concerned the mission of Count Rotcheff and future plans for a new company charter. The Count was to be rendered ineffectual at Sitka, and if this could not be done, he was to be destroyed, and in such a way that the Baron's hand would not be visible.

  As for Jean LaBarge, Zinnovy thought, his time woul
d come too. He was not important except that he was aiding and abetting Rotcheff, but Paul Zinnovy hated him.

  He finished his cognac. LaBarge had gotten away, and nothing could be done about that, but there was much to be done in Sitka. He must make careful moves that would cut the ground from under Count Rotcheff's feet and leave him without authority.

  Authority, to matter, must be enforced. If the means of enforcing it be taken away nothing but prestige is left, and little enough of that. Paul Zinnovy thought he knew a way...

  Chapter 21

  Three times in the following year Jean LaBarge took the Susquehanna to the northwest coast, and not until the third of these voyages did he encounter the patrol ship. Each voyage was carefully planned beforehand, and the route mapped out only after considerable study and an analysis of all reports from Alaska. On two of the voyages they held to the inside passage; on the third they remained far out to sea until in the latitude of the first trading point. Contrary to usual practice among traders, they moved the ship only by night, in the first hours of the day or the very last before dark, and during the day they anchored in tiny, out-of-the-way inlets. Despite his precautions LaBarge was sure there had been spies in some of the villages and that Zinnovy was aware of his presence.

  When each trip ended he paid his crew and gave each man a bonus depending on the size of the cargo and what the furs brought on the market. There was no news of either Rotcheff or Helena, though his crew circulated in port, listening to pick up information, and were given additional bonuses for this. There was a rumor they were still in Sitka but he placed no faith in the story.

  Nor could he forget Helena.

  His voyages had been highly successful, the profits enormous. On the last voyage he had bought gold from Skayeut.

  He had written Rob Walker a long letter after returning from his first trip to Sitka, and had received some months later a very serious reply, which said in part:

  Your letter is here beside me, and if you were to see it you would find those passages concerning Russian America, which you call Alaska, underlined in red ink. You would be even more surprised to find that you are very much quoted in the cloakrooms of both House and Senate. You have told me much of the wealth and size of Alaska, and of its proximity to Siberia. Nowhere else is the United States so close to the troubles of the old world as there, and, as long as Russia is on the continent of America, there is danger. I know ... our two governments are now friendly, and I trust this may be ever so, but, should Russia and the United States ever have a falling out, it would be well that they have no foothold upon this continent. Jean, we must buy Alaska! March of another year was drawing to a close when Jean, wearing a carefully tailored suit of dark gray, stopped by Winn's Branch for dinner. Part of the afternoon and most of the evening he had spent in the office of the rebuilt warehouse, planning a new trip to the northwest. The Branch was a large salon furnished in a manner both tasteful and elegant, standing at the corner of Washington and Montgomery Streets. It had become almost immediately after its opening a gathering place for the wealthy and successful of San Francisco. Seating four hundred and fifty, it was crowded most of the time. Pausing in the entrance, Jean let his eyes move over the crowd, seeking familiar faces. His own table, reserved each evening at this hour, was empty. Captain Hutchins had not yet arrived.

  At a table not for from his, Royle Weber sat with Charley Duane. Jean was quite sure Duane had at least protected the arsonists after the burning of the warehouse, and possibly had instigated the burning or served as a go-between. He started for his table, but Royle Weber called out to him and motioned for him to join them. Hestitating, LaBarge remembered suddenly that Weber was agent for the Sitka people, and walked to the table. "You want something?" Weber's face flushed at the tone. "Look, LaBarge, I have news for you."

  "What news?"

  "Sit down. We'll talk."

  "I can stand, or you can come to my office. I won't sit down because I don't like the company you keep."

  Duane's face went white and he started to rise but Weber put a hand on his arm.

  "Forget it, Charley. LaBarge is joking."

  Duane stared up at LaBarge, his hatred evident. "He's not joking," he said, "and I like neither the words nor the tone."

  "With your associations, Duane, I shouldn't think you'd mind." Duane wanted desperately to rise and smash LaBarge's face, but his memory of what had happened to Bart Freel and Yankee Sullivan was still ripe. He had himself seen the finish of the Sullivan fight, and knew he was in no such class. He shrugged. "Have your fun."

  LaBarge turned to Weber. "Whatever it is, I'll listen, but make it quick."

  "You'll be interested to hear that Count Rotcheff has been ordered back to St. Petersburg immediately, and he has suggested a desire to be taken to Siberia in the Susquehanna, and by you."

  "The order is signed by Roteheff?"

  "Yes. He wishes you to bring another cargo of wheat to Sitka, and you will be permitted to take a cargo of furs from there."

  "I'll think about it."

  "You don't understand. You must go at once."

  Jean LaBarge crossed to his table and dropped into his chair facing the room. This could very well be a trap, a means of drawing him into Alaskan waters where he might be taken at will. On the other hand, the last thing Russia would want would be trouble in the Far East or Alaska. If the signature on the request from Count Rotcheff was genuine, he would go. Obviously, the Count did not trust himself on any ship under the command of Baron Zinnovy or subject to his supervision. ... A cargo of wheat would bring a good price in Sitka, and with the furs he could make a substantial profit ... and he would see Helena again. Or would he? Weber had said nothing about the Princess. She might have already preceded Rotcheff to St. Petersburg. Jean chewed his lower lip, considering the situation ... but there was no reason to consider ... he was going.

  Sitka lay warm in the morning sunshine when Jean LaBarge walked along the passage through the log warehouse. Much had changed. The equipment was worn, the clothing shabby, and it was apparent that few ships were arriving from the homeland.

  Duncan Pope was in command of the schooner, and Kohl had accompanied Jean ashore. There were many men standing idle about the streets, most of them the hard-bitten promyshleniki, the same crowd who had brutalized the natives and fought the Tlingits. Many were former convicts, criminals shipped over from Siberia; others were renegades from various countries. Leaving Kohl in the town, Jean started up the street alone. The booths of the merchants lined the way and the Tlingit women looked at him with interest. Two Tlingit men watched him approach, and one inclined his head as if to nod. LaBarge acknowledged the greeting, if greeting it was. Baranof Castle was just before him. At the thought of seeing Helena his heart began to race. He was a fool to think of her, yet the fact remained that he could think of no one else. And as long as Rotcheffi lived she would make no move nor allow him to make one.

  The door opened as he crossed the porch and a servant bowed. "Captain LaBarge?

  Count Rotcheff is expecting you!"

  Crossing the foyer, his heart pounding, he went through the door and saw Rotcheff rise from behind his desk, hand outstretched. He looked older, more tired.

  "My friendl My very good friend!" His sincerity was obvious. "Captain, there have been times when I did not expect to see you again, but it is good! Believe me, it is good!"

  The warmth of the greeting found him responding in kind, and he realized anew how much he liked this fine old man with his scholar's face and ready smile. "It is good to be here," he said simply.

  "You brought the wheat?"

  "Yes, and other things as well." He hesitated. "The Princess? She is well?"

  "Waiting to see you. You will join us now?"

  Helena turned quickly from the table where she was arranging tea, and he saw the sudden way her breath caught, the quick lift of her breasts, then a glad, lovely smile.

  "Jean! At last you've come to us!"

  Ove
r tea Rotcheff explained. Zinnovy was in charge, the director no more than a figurehead. Rotcheff's messages were intercepted, and although they were treated with bland respect, it was obvious they were prisoners. His demands for a passage to Russia were shunted aside with the excuse that there were no ships. "I am sure the only reason we are alive is a fear of repercussions. But," he smiled, "please believe me, our greeting is for you, not your ship, relieved as we are to see it. We have missed you, and we have missed outsiders. Even the beauty of Sitka can become dull for lack of new faces." He went on to explain that after Zinnovy's failure to capture LaBarge, the Baron had returned and begun all at once to make changes. At first it seemed an effort to increase the efficiency of the operating force on the patrol ships, but soon it became apparent that one safe man after another had been taken from the Castle and replaced by someone obedient only to Zinnovy. Letters from St. Petersburg had convinced Rudakof that Zinnovy was in the driver's seat, and whatever Count Rotcheff might report would be discounted. Rotcheff and his wife were practically prisoners, and all ships coming to or leaving Sitka were checked by Zinnovy's men. At first none of this had been apparent. Zinnovy had either avoided them or been carefully respectful, but he had built carefully to the point where he would have the situation in hand. "The people of Sitka?"

  "Frightened, most of them, but they hate him. Right now the Baron is worried, I believe. When orders arrived recalling me to St. Petersburg he became very friendly and extremely polite."

  "Does he know I'm here?"

  "He was furious ... but even he will be glad to see the wheat this time, and I've told him there was not a ship I'd trust myself in ... not in Sitka harbor." Later, Rotcheff returned to his desk and left them alone. When the door closed they stood for a long time looking into each other's eyes. "Jean, Jean," Helena said, at last, "you've no idea how we've missed you!"