by D. I. Telbat
"Are you taking them to the cave?" Panting, his voice was raspy as he spoke.
"Yes, Duulgii. The soldiers won't be postponed for long."
"Can it be said—" He groaned from his pain and his companion shook his head at me. "Can it be said that God, your God, allowed my sins against the clan so you would know there was a cave and a stream to escape to now?"
"It could be, Duulgii," I said. "But your sins aren't held in account by the clan inasmuch as they separate you from the living God, your Creator. You know His mighty hand. This life of yours will expire soon, friend. I trust you seek forgiveness through Jesus Christ so when you meet Him face-to-face, you are a child of His, and not a foe, as you've been your whole life."
"Leave me here and I'll find solace with the Creator, then." He rolled his head toward his friend and bid him to go on without him.
I couldn't linger, but Duulgii had grown up in Kazakhstan and he knew some of the basic truths of Jesus and the Cross. What he remembered from childhood had been emphasized during his time with us in camp. He had a knowledge, but he would only find everlasting life and peace if his heart was truly repentant.
"Mr. Foworthy! Come . . . to me!" someone called in English.
Only one person amongst us could speak English. I found Chong sitting on a rock with a hand on her side. She bore a cheek wound that had only recently stopped bleeding.
"Me not strong like Kazakhs, Mr. Foworthy." Her teeth were clenched in pain. "No more can continue."
"Let me see, Chong." I slid off my horse and knelt next to her.
"It no bother at start." She pulled back her coat. "But now, it too bad."
She had the worst of the wounds of the living, except for Duulgii. From her right armpit, shrapnel had cut her through to her ribs. Somehow, there wasn't much blood. The way the shrapnel had injured her, I found it surprising that her right arm was intact at all—and that she was still conscious.
"We'll take care of you." Turning, I looked for help. "Olz, boost Chong up with me!" I climbed back onto my horse, the boy still in front.
"But your wife!" Chong protested as she was launched upward by strong Olz.
"It's okay. She won't mind and she's perfectly fine to walk."
Clinging to me with one arm, she held onto her wound with the other under her coat. After a few more minutes, the gear was rearranged and the wounded were seen to enough to start forward again—led by earless Gan-gaad who had Beveg riding behind him. With a parting nod to Duulgii, I brought up the rear with Chong as the clan descended from the ridge.
"Would you have left your post with us if you would've known you'd be joining us in these circumstances?" I asked the Chinese woman.
"If not leave, they torture me to death. I torture enough before I came to Christ, Mr. Foworthy, to know torture no way to die. If die now, die with friends. Not alone."
I looked up at the sky. It was so peaceful and blue above so much turmoil. If the trumpet sounded right then, no one else would need to die at all—no believers, anyway, and certainly not Chong.
#######
When Zima saw I was butchering the dead goat that Lucky Hunter had brought me, she took it from my hands. Firelight glinted off the walls of the cave.
"You're ruining the skin, Pond," she said as politely as possible. I was still a beginner when it came to skinning. "Here. You see to the dressings."
She handed me a wooden plate of steaming rags fresh from boiling. Naturally, the gaze of the clan members who waited for care now shifted to me. There were so many.
Gan-gaad knelt in front of me and offered the side of his head toward my reach. I grimaced at the earless scalp, and began to clean the dried blood and shrapnel from the wound. Infection would be our greatest adversary without medicine.
"Any man who leads a clan as you do should know how to gut a goat, Pond." The man grunted. "How did you survive in America?"
"Cockroaches." I set my hand on his shoulder. "You can go now. Come back to see me in the morning—and keep your wound clean, you hear?"
"Huh?" he said, mocking as a deaf man and twisted his head with his one ear toward me. "I can't hear you."
He chuckled as he took up an axe and exited the cave. My next patient was the woman with the infant who'd first been at North Camp. The baby was the only one among us who was unscathed. The mother had taken shrapnel and rock in her back muscles that needed to be plucked out and the wounds cleaned.
And so, I doctored the clan that first evening of our exodus northwest. A fire had been our first priority upon arriving, and there'd been plenty of wood to gather to get it roaring. Next had come the cleaning of the wounded so everyone could get about their chores. Every able man was outside collecting more wood while the women saw to the evening meal or mended torn gear. The dogs would've normally been darting up and down the cave's narrow pathway, which Sembuuk had widened, but even the dogs limped, whined, and huddled against one wall, licking their wounds.
The limestone walls of the cave radiated the heat from the central fire, and in no time I'd stripped off my coat. I was only temporarily frustrated over not being able to cut wood with the men due to my leg, but I saw I was more necessary in the cave as a medic. Carefully, I rationed out the last of my first aid supplies to the worst of the injured, particularly Chong, who lay not far from the fire. There was nothing I knew to do for the woman who was missing so much of her side. She was surely in tremendous pain, yet she didn't complain.
I hobbled over to her and lifted her blanket. Every time I looked at her wound, I found new debris to remove.
"Your leg, Mr. Foworthy?" she asked weakly.
"It's healing fast. I'll be able to walk on it a little in a week, maybe less."
"What condition of clan?"
"Um . . ." I surveyed the cave. "We lost Bolor, Duulgii, and two others. Three horses didn't make it, and two others will have to be put down tonight. All the dogs made it, but only two goats are alive."
"The earthquake . . . was God," she said assuredly with a tear in her eye. "He save us."
"No doubt about it." I felt her fevered brow. "Rest, I'll be back in a few minutes."
Using my crutches, I walked to the mouth of the cave and peered through my binoculars at the ridgeline miles away to the east. There was no movement from the Chinese infantry, yet, but that's where they would first appear, on our back trail. Even if I saw them coming, there was little we could do. We were too crippled to move that night. The horses across the game trail below the cave were as wounded as the humans. I'd be surprised if we even mustered the strength to leave the next morning. Dusbhan's maps didn't show any natural shelters for another forty-five miles. That meant we'd be spending at least one night in our gers between here and there.
Lucky Hunter nudged my leg and I patted his head as he whined softly. He was missing a patch of fur high on his spine where he couldn't clean himself. Earlier, he'd come to me, knowing I could ease the burning. Like all the others, there was nothing more I could do for him after cleaning it gently.
"You'll be all right, boy."
His ears perked and he gazed to the east. My binoculars went to my eyes and I studied the mountain for any pursuers. Instead, I heard and felt a shallow rumble coming from the east. Another earthquake or aftershock. There'd been a dozen of them in the last few hours. God was keeping the soldiers at bay.
I tested my weight on my leg. If I started walking on it too soon, I'd tear the recently healed tissues. Maybe in a few more days . . .
"Mr. Foworthy! Mr. Foworthy . . ."
Quickly, I went to Chong's side.
"The Bible. Read Bible," she requested.
"It's in Mongolian, Chong."
"You translate, Mr. Foworthy. Read Psalm."
So, I read to Chong, but slowly, interpreting into English for her as I went. She closed her eyes and sighed, often repeating the same verse in Chinese as it came to her practiced memory. And this is how my Chinese torturer died, while I read her the Psalms, though I didn't know s
he'd passed for some time while I read. When she was silent for a long time, I closed my Bible.
"I'll see you soon," I said, and kissed her forehead. Then I chuckled and wiped a tear of my own away. "No lies, no spies, sister."
As darkness approached, the cold became too bitter for the men to remain outside tending to the horses and wood. The two horses too injured to travel were slaughtered, and we ate well that night of horse meat, goat, and mare's milk.
The cave was just large enough for the survivors to crowd in with bed mats slightly overlapping in places. As everyone settled onto their mats for the night, Sembuuk insisted on keeping watch at the cave mouth. After midnight, I awoke to spell him.
"Wolves," he said, and I watched the snowy ground below for the dashing shadows in the night. "They smell the meat and blood, even our wounds. The pack already ate the snow where we slaughtered the two mares."
"Are they leaving the horses alone? The path is too narrow to bring them inside."
"So far, yes," he answered. "I think your half-blind aduu gave one the hoof an hour ago. The wolf crawled too close when he thought the hooved ladies were sleeping."
"Once Lucky Hunter is feeling better, he'll keep us better guarded," I said. "The horses know our dogs protect them, right?"
"Oh, yes." He laughed quietly. "They're probably mad that the dogs are up here relaxing in the warmth. But our dogs aren't shy of those range wolves, or of the Siberian timber wolves. Lucky Hunter outweighs any two of them, but a lot of that is his coat. He was Lugsalkhaan's best dog, you know."
"Yes, and I see why. He'll be better tomorrow. Go get some sleep, Sembuuk. I've got this watch."
Throughout the rest of the night, I prayed, wrote in my journal—from which you're reading now—and watched the wolves sulk about.
Below to the right of the cave, the men had buried Chong under a pile of rocks. The wolves weren't strong enough to move those rocks, but I listened to them whine hungrily for her frozen body.
*~*
Chapter 32
Morning dawned with a crack of a gunshot—but it was so far away that it sounded more like thunder. I'd heard it, though, and so had Gan-gaad, who was the only other early riser as he saw to our horses. My throat went dry as I watched through my binoculars soldier after soldier pour over the eastern ridge. They were on foot, and not knowing the way, it would take them the better part of the day to circle along the base of the mountain, find the game trail, cross the meadow, and discover the cave that was more or less out of sight to them still. The land was too rugged for their vehicles, which equalized us when it came to traveling.
"Now, we have no choice but to move," Jugder said as we discussed our options in a hushed circle, not wanting to cause fear among the others. "We can't help but leave a trail for them to follow, but we can at least try to stay ahead of them."
"If we can do twenty miles today, we'll be okay," Kandal said, almost too calmly. "Just because they made it over the ridge doesn't mean God won't have more in store for them, right, Andy?"
Zima squeezed my hand, rejoicing with me as the clan elders trusted God.
"We have ten rounds left for the AK," Gan-gaad said. "I could stay behind and snipe at them."
"No," Sembuuk said, "we need those bullets for game when our meat runs low. But we have feet, so we'll flee. And we have God, so we'll not worry."
"You guys need to stop talking about God and give your hearts to Him, like Kandal and the others have," I said. "Recognition of God isn't enough. He desires to know you, each of you. Today, I want everyone to search their souls and ask why we're not all seeking God more. He's obviously shown us Himself over the past months."
They hung their heads.
"Some here died, though," Gan-gaad said. "Like Dusbhan."
"Dusbhan had received Christ, and God simply called him home after he completed his job for us—this route. There's a lesson in death for the living. God allows some to die, I believe, just to get others to recognize that we all go sometime—and we'd better get our hearts straight because it's too late after we die. I can't make the decision for you, but I know this much: even through this tragic time, the Spirit of God gives me peace that is beyond human understanding."
"It's true," Kandal testified. "I sense Him, too."
"We'll talk more tonight," I said. "Gan-gaad, take point, Manai with you. Sembuuk and I will take the rear. Let's get moving."
As we dispersed to gather the women and children, I tugged at Gan-gaad's arm.
"The shot we heard at dawn, why would they announce themselves like that?"
"They aren't clumsy." Gan-gaad shrugged his bulky shoulders. "Maybe they shot at a wolf. Who's to say? But if they understood this terrain, they'd be on horseback. Since they're on foot and we're on foot, we have the advantage, Pond. We're more accustomed to traveling with burdens. If we keep moving, we won't have difficulty staying ahead of them. Everything they have is on their own shoulders."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"Pond?"
"Yes?"
His eyes searched mine.
"What you always say . . . that our sins must be washed away. I have done too many horrible things. You remember . . . Tzegabor. And there were others, too, in my youth."
"There's no sin too great that God didn't take and put upon His Son on the Cross, Gan-gaad. King David, Moses, and even Paul in the Bible—they were murderers or criminals at times, but God changed their lives and hearts and used them after they repented. Some of us have darker pasts than others, but He can heal us. By faith, we must rely on His grace to save us through Jesus Christ." Before he knew what was happening, I gave him a brief embrace, a sturdy bear hug, clapped him twice on the back, then held him at arm's length. "I'll pray that God helps you sort this out, Gan-gaad. Since the day we met, I've prayed for you."
"You have?"
Smiling, I hobbled away.
Our stiff wounds were loosened in the first few minutes of travel. Since our horses were few, most everyone was on foot now. Those of us who rode gave others rides periodically or swapped off and on. The youngest children were piled on top of the horses' backs atop the gear, sometimes two together, and we made good time all morning until we stopped at a frozen spring midday. Gan-gaad and I consulted Dusbhan's sketches of the route ahead while cinches were loosened and snow was melted for the people.
"We're as far as I've ever hunted," Gan-gaad said. "Our greatest obstacle to leaving this valley now is through this pass . . . here."
"This is a steep pass. I hate to risk a fall, but Dusbhan says he searched for a whole day for an alternate pass out of the valley." I sighed. "There has to be something else, something safer."
"There's this." Gan-gaad pointed at Dusbhan's scribbled marks. "To the west, another pass, but we would be too far west of the mountains then to take advantage of the better climate and natural shelters within the range that Dusbhan found for us along the way. That's why he didn't even check that route. If we did end up going west, we could circle around to the north to get back on track, but we'd lose a day. All that to avoid a steep pass?"
"How much would the steep pass hold us up?"
"It would be slow-going." He nodded in contemplation. "The Chinese may even come into sight there—maybe not within mortar range, but they may get a chance to catch us."
"Here's what we should do . . ."
I gathered Jugder, Olz, and Sembuuk together for my plan. Where the fork in the trail occurred, we would leave sign that made it appear that we'd turned west—obvious sign and tracks. But we would actually continue north to the steep pass and cover our tracks for a safe distance behind us to ensure we weren't followed right away. The Chinese would realize our trickery in time, but a delay was all we needed. If it worked well, we might stay ahead of them while climbing the steep pass, and maybe even leave them behind as they maneuvered the pass themselves. Lord willing, we would think of another scheme after that.
So, we cinched up and started away from our break spot. Th
e three men who knew the plan rode far ahead to scout the western and northern routes to lay our scheme in place. The word spread of our plan and the clan's spirits were high as we hurried forward in anticipation of both the plan and the pass.
Zima clung to my stirrup as she walked alongside.
"If we come upon a lake, should we expect the water to part for us to cross?"
We laughed together as I considered a response.
"I'm not Moses, my wife, and we're not the Israelites, but we do serve the same God."
The dogs were feeling better that day and seemed to be themselves as they ran about nipping at each other when they weren't at the two goats' flanks to keep them in order. That is, all the dogs except Lucky Hunter. He'd been a loyal dog in the past, but since I'd cleaned his wound the night before, he displayed a sense of obligation to never leave my side now. I saw it in his eyes as he looked up at me on my horse every few seconds, and the way he growled and snapped at the other dogs when they ventured near me: I was his.
Three hours later, we came to the fork where Sembuuk and the other two directed the clan to not stop, but to turn left and west without hesitation. We traveled that way for a hundred yards, then we were led to the right across a broad rock that would leave no sign. Minutes later, we were back on track, heading north, our misguidance fully intact.
Pausing with Lucky Hunter, I looked back. Jugder was using a tree bough to wipe out any sign we'd left, and Olz made sure enough sign was left to the west to mislead our pursuers. He even dropped horse manure and a couple ribbons of clothing. Once the Chinese trackers saw the sign and our suspected heading, we hoped they would confidently rush west to the wrong pass.
Lucky Hunter growled beside me.
"I hear you, boy. The bad guys'll be sorry to run into you."
Though I did hear him, I didn't see where he was gazing right away. He was looking off to the left where a thin forest was outlined by scrub brush. Suddenly, I saw a gray wolf run past. It stopped to cast me an icy, hungry glare, then it moved away like a drifting mist. There was a rule of thumb about wolves: they hunted in packs. If I saw one, that meant others were near.