Novel 1986 - Last Of The Breed (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “It is the same everywhere,” Baronas commented. “To survive one must adapt.”

  Natalya returned to the room and knelt by the fire, adding some sticks. She poured tea for them and sat on the edge of the hearth.

  Joe Mack listened to the night. If there were footsteps he would hear them. “They will look for me,” he warned, “and eventually they will find this place. I would not wish to bring trouble to you.”

  “We have always known they would find us one day. They have not simply because they have not cared. We have done no harm, we do not wish to do harm.”

  “What will they do if they find you?”

  Baronas shrugged. “Perhaps to a labor camp. If they think we are trouble enough, to one of the extermination camps, working in uranium mines, cleaning the nozzles of atomic-submarines. They always know what to do.”

  “And you?” Natalya asked. “How did you come to be here?”

  He glanced at her. “I was a major in the Air Force, but I was flying experimental aircraft. Testing them, if you will. They knew this, of course. They believed I might cooperate and tell what they wished to know. One of the planes I was to test was planned to operate under extreme Arctic conditions, so I was becoming acclimatized. Suddenly, out over the Bering Sea my radio would not work. I was forced down at sea and taken prisoner. Obviously it was neatly planned and carefully orchestrated. The details are not important.”

  “And if you return to America?”

  He shrugged. “I shall leave the Air Force. What I shall have to do they might understand but could not condone. It is better that I am a free agent.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. He talked easily enough, and he was friendly, but there was something different about him. Often he was quiet for long periods and he smiled rarely. She was drawn to him and yet a little frightened by him.

  “I had friends who migrated to America,” Baronas said. “Some went for the greater freedom, some in hopes of becoming wealthy and returning with money. Only one of them ever came back and he only to visit.”

  “My home was in the mountains,” Joe Mack said, “very remote. It was a very large house at the end of a meadow and with a magnificent view, but it was built into the mountain and built of rocks found close by. We had huge fireplaces and we burned down-wood, like in the forest around here. There were many Indian rugs.

  “My grandfather, who was a Scotsman, built the house with the help of some men he hired. There was no road to the place, only narrow trails. Anything brought from the outside came on packhorses. Later, I flew home several times in a helicopter.

  “It was a wild, lovely country and I loved it. I shall go back there again. From our wide porch we could look into the neighboring state of Washington, and off to the north was Canada.”

  “It sounds wonderful!” Natalya said. “It would be good to live in a real house again, even one so remote.”

  “It did not seem remote to us. It was our world, and only the seasons changed. Not far from our house there was a bunkhouse for those who worked for us. They were Indians.”

  “Sioux?”

  “No, that was not Sioux country. It had never been. We had anywhere from four to six Indians working for us, and they were usually Kutenai or Nez Percé. After a while my father hired a couple of Basque sheepherders, and they are still with us, as are the Indians.”

  “Were there any towns close by? Where there were people?”

  “We used to go down to Priest River, sometimes, but often we would ride through the mountains, staying always away from roads and towns until we could visit friends in central Idaho. We didn’t care much for towns,” he added, “only for shopping.”

  He stood up. “It grows late, and you will wish to sleep.”

  “Yours sounds like a wonderful country,” Natalya said wistfully. “I wish I could see it.”

  “Will they let you leave?”

  She shook her head. “It would be very hard, I think. Very hard, indeed.”

  He went out into the night and stood for a moment, standing close to the wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the outer darkness.

  The wind stirred the dry, unfallen leaves. A branch creaked in the cold. Something moved in the forest and he remained still; then he went along the wall, ducking below the lighted window, and hesitated where the trees began.

  All the twigs and sticks had been picked up from the ground to be used in kindling fires, so he moved soundlessly under the trees; then he paused to listen. Something or somebody was out there.

  Peshkov? Probably—

  He moved on in the darkness under the trees and then went up the hillside under the trees. There he crouched, waiting.

  Somebody was coming. Somebody was following him.

  Why would anyone follow him at night? To capture or kill him. There could be no other reason.

  Unless, perhaps, to enter his hideout and steal his furs and meat.

  A footstep crunched on the frozen earth. A huge shadow moved, and he arose from where he crouched and stood behind the man.

  “If you start to turn around,” he said, “I will kill you.”

  Chapter 19

  *

  JOE MACK HELD his knife against Peshkov’s kidney. “You follow me,” he said in Russian. “I do not like it.”

  “No, no! I go to my own place. I go to sleep!”

  “Go, then. But if ever I find you following me or lurking around where I am, I shall hunt you down and kill you.”

  Peshkov was recovering his nerve, which had been frightened out of him. “Or maybe I kill you!” he blustered.

  Joe Mack stepped back, the knife still ready. “Good! Now we understand each other. Go, but do not turn around. The sight of your face might make me change my mind.”

  He went, hurrying and stumbling. Once, when some distance off, he turned and shouted something, words lost in the wind.

  Watching him go, Joe Mack knew it was soon to be time for him to leave. One enemy was all he needed, and an enemy who brought trouble to him would bring it to this small community, and they had befriended him.

  Weeks had passed and he had lost count of the days. How long until spring? How long until it would be warm enough to travel? He had no desire to die in the snow, and men froze quickly, almost instantly if somehow they broke through the ice of a stream or became wet.

  He went through the trees to his hideout, pausing to listen, to learn if he was followed. It was bitterly cold, and his face was covered to the eyes. He built a small fire when he was safe in his cave, for only a small fire was needed. He would not be warm, only safe from the cold.

  Where was Zamatev now, and what was he doing? Cold weather might slow a search but would not stop it, and the Russian colonel was ruthless and relentless. Wherever he was he would be thinking, planning, conniving.

  And Alekhin? Where was he?

  There had been a woman in Aldan. Women in Russia worked as did men and might be found filling any role. This one must have been someone with rank, perhaps a second to Zamatev himself. Of her he must be especially careful, for women sometimes had flashes of intuition or at least an approach different from that of a man. Her mind, working in another channel, might come up with answers Zamatev and his male cohorts might not consider.

  The worst of it was that there might be something he would not consider. As he lay curled in his bear robe he thought of that. Perhaps he should discuss it with Natalya. She might foresee something he was ignoring.

  What he must do was simple enough. He must escape from Siberia and return to America.

  Their problem was equally simple: to prevent his escape and recapture him. His logical route was toward China, but that way was barred, he was sure, by the careful border watch. Sooner or later they would guess he was going east, and the further he went, the narrower the country through which he must travel and the more confined their search for him.

  Even now they would be sitting together, putting their thoughts together with one object only: to capture hi
m.

  He awakened rested, and his hunting led him to a fine young moose in good condition. He killed it with one arrow and skinned it rapidly, for fear it would freeze solid before he finished. Yet he managed to save the hide and the best cuts of meat, and he was not fifty yards away before wolves were tearing at the carcass. He took the meat to Baronas to distribute, keeping only enough for himself.

  “Good!” Baronas was pleased. “This will quiet some of the talk.”

  “Talk?”

  “Some of them are growing nervous. Botev is back, and Lermontov has come in from Yakutsk. There are special details there, with helicopters, just waiting for the weather to break. Our people are frightened.”

  He got up. “I will take the meat to them. They will be so busy eating, they cannot talk.”

  When he was gone, Joe Mack looked over at Natalya. She was sewing on the shirt she was making, a very handsome shirt. “I will have to go,” he said.

  She nodded. “I know.” She looked up at him, and their eyes met. “It has been good, having you here.”

  “Yes, good for me, too.”

  There was a long silence then, and he fed sticks to the hungry fire.

  “When you get back to America, will you think of me?”

  “How could I forget you?” he said, and was startled at the words. Now why had he said that?

  “It is very far. Everyone will be against you.”

  “How could it be otherwise? If our people and your people could sit down together and talk about their families, their farms, and their jobs, I think there would be no trouble.

  “It is our governments that are continually fencing for position, each trying to gain some advantage.

  “Russia does not trust its own people. They have built a wall to keep them in, and they are not permitted to travel.”

  “Do your people travel wherever they wish?”

  “Of course, and so does most of the world. Each year millions of Americans travel in their own country or go abroad, and many visitors from other countries come to America. They can go anywhere they wish except for a few military establishments that nobody wants to see, anyway. They photograph everything, and we do not mind. It is expected of them. Our people do the same thing when they go to England, France, Japan, wherever.

  “The ironic part of it is that the Soviet Union spends millions trying to steal information they could have for the taking if they were friendly.”

  The fire crackled and a stick fell, sending up a shower of sparks. “It may be,” he said, “that I shall have to leave suddenly, with no chance to say good-bye. Do not think me ungrateful.”

  “Father warned me of that.” She held up the shirt to inspect her handiwork. “I cannot imagine how you will live or how you will escape them. They will be searching everywhere, and the closer you come to the sea, the more intense the search will be. And how will you escape? How can you cross the sea?”

  He shrugged. “That is tomorrow’s problem. I think of that always, but meanwhile I deal with today.”

  “There are few people where you go. If you are seen, they will know it is you.”

  “I must cultivate the art of invisibility.”

  “I do not want you to go.”

  He met her glance and was silent. What was there to say? He must go. To stay was to die. And to stay was to be defeated, and he was a Sioux. He could fight them alone. He had always been alone. It was one of the reasons he had liked flying the aircraft he had flown. He was up there alone, dependent on nothing but himself.

  When he had roamed in the forest as a boy, he had been alone. When he went away to school, the only Indian, he had been alone. But he had never minded. He was the stronger because of it.

  Thinking about it, he knew he liked people. He enjoyed having them around, enjoyed their voices, their movements, their activities, but he had never had to be a part of it. He was rarely a participant. He was the interested bystander, but when he acted, it was he alone.

  He liked being here, now, in this quiet place. He liked having Natalya near him, liked watching her, liked the way her eyelids lifted when she looked at him, liked to watch her fingers move. She was a lovely, graceful, beautiful woman, and here in this place there was no future at all, not for her.

  “What are you thinking of?” she asked suddenly.

  “You.”

  “Of me? What of me?”

  “Of how lovely you are, how wasted all that beauty is in this lonely place. You should be in America.”

  “I believe I would like it. I have thought of it; long before you came, I thought of it. It has been a dream.”

  “I could come back for you.”

  “Here? To Soviet Russia? To Siberia? You are mad.”

  “I shall come back, anyway.” He spoke quietly, and startled, she looked at him. “I have been attacked. I have been taken from my country, brought here a prisoner. I have been threatened, and he who threatened me, he who had me captured, has not faced me alone, man to man.”

  “But that’s absurd! He never will, of course. Things are not done that way.”

  “He may have no choice.”

  She looked at him, amazed. Was he mad? “If you are lucky enough to escape, and the odds are a million to one that you will, you had better stay away.”

  “I do not have your standards. I do not have even those of my country. I am a Sioux. At heart I am a savage.” He waved a hand around. “This forest? Do you think it strange to me? The forest is my home. I am a part of it, just as are the tiger, the bear, and the wolf. I belong there and have always known it. I was born out of my time. I should have ridden with Crazy Horse. I should have sat in council with Red Cloud or John Grass, but better still I should have been out there leading war parties against the Crow, the Shoshone, or whoever our enemy was.

  “Always, I have known this.” He bared his chest. “See these scars? I underwent the trials of the Sun Dance. Rawhide strips were buried in my flesh, and I was hung by them until they tore loose. It was once a custom of my people; it is so no longer, but for me it was necessary.

  “Once, long before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, where General Custer was defeated, a warrior named Rain-in-the-Face was arrested by Tom Custer, General Custer’s brother. Not only arrested, but physically overpowered by Tom Custer, who was an unusually strong man. Rain-in-the-Face never forgave him. It is said that during the massacre he cut out Tom Custer’s heart and ate it.”

  “How awful!”

  “Perhaps. But he never forgot, and I shall not.” He was silent for a few minutes, and then added, “Captain Tom Custer was a very brave man. Few have ever been awarded the Medal of Honor, our highest military decoration. Tom Custer won it twice.”

  “To eat a man’s heart? It is awful!”

  “To our thinking, yes. But to Rain-in-the-Face it was the highest tribute he could pay a brave man. By his thinking he had to count coup upon the body of Tom Custer. Whether Rain-in-the-Face actually killed him we do not know. Some deny the heart-eating episode, but to Rain-in-the-Face it was the greatest honor he could pay him because to eat the heart of a man or animal meant you wished to obtain some of his strength and his courage.

  He shrugged. “I do not even know whether I believe it or not. It does not matter. Given the kind of men they were, it could have happened. It was what Rain-in-the-Face would have done. In the heat of battle he would have sought out Tom Custer to kill him, and Tom Custer would have been expecting him. Be sure of that.

  “Rain-in-the-Face may have hated Tom Custer, but he respected him, too. As for Custer, I doubt if he hated Rain-in-the-Face but he did know him as a fighting man.”

  “And you call yourself such a savage?”

  “Colonel Zamatev sat behind a desk and wrote an order that forced me down at sea and destroyed the plane I was flying, and he had me captured and brought to him. This was not only a blow against my country, but an insult to me, personally.”

  He smiled, but without humor. “I just want to see if he can
do it, man to man, alone in the forest somewhere, or even on a dark street where there are just two of us.”

  “You are very foolish. If you should escape, stay away and be safe.”

  “Foolish to you, foolish to me, also, in some ways. But it is the way I feel. The way I am. I have told you I was a primitive and content to be so.

  “Oh, I should like to face him across a table at some diplomatic function. Nothing would suit me better. The possibilities of that are slight. So if I escape, I shall come back.”

  She shook her head in wonderment. “My father will not believe this.”

  “I think he will. He will not approve, but he will understand. I do not belong in this century, Natalya. I do not even belong in the last. I have always known this.

  “I walk in the shoes of the men of today. I fly their planes, I eat their food, but my heart is in the wilderness with feathers in my hair.”

  “You do not hate the white Americans?”

  “Why should I? My people came west from the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, and we conquered or overrode all that got in our path. We moved into the Dakotas, into Montana and Wyoming and Nebraska. The Kiowa had come down from the north and occupied the Black Hills, driving out those who were there before them. Then we drove them out.

  “We might have defeated the Army. We fought them and sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. Only at the end did we get together in large enough numbers, like at the Battle of the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn. We might have defeated the armies, but we could not defeat the men with plows. They were too many.

  “But that was long ago. The United States is our country, too, and if we do not make the most of it, the fault is ours. Many of us have. Indians are in politics, in the arts, in business, everywhere. Many of them have Anglo names and so are not known to be Indians by those who simply hear of them without knowing them.

  “Many Indians like the old life, only now they ride a pickup instead of a pony.”