Little Lost Lambs at the Post

by Harold Lamb

  Johnny lowered his voice, as if any others could understand English. He told her it wasn’t so simple as that. Most any boy hereabouts hankered to get to the U.S.A. But how many of them could adjust themselves to an utterly new environment? How happy would Arg be in the treadmill of a city’s streets, without a mountain or an animal in sight?

  Reluctantly, Mary nodded. Her training had taught her such psychological aspects. “I know, doctor. But he'd be company for you. And Issachar wants to send him—look!”

  The neighbors had been piling in. Arg and the neighbor's wife carried over the smoking spit, and hungry men whipped out their knives to cut the haunches apart. The bowls of wine passed around—Issachar tasting each one. He clapped his gaunt hands, and an old fellow with a gypsy’s headcloth began to pull a bow across a three-string fiddle. The chained hawk screamed at the whine of the fiddle, and the guests fell to on the food.

  “It is what you call a going-away party,” Mary explained over a barley cake. “Issachar invited them because Arg will be taking the road to America.”

  The girl’s English began to have a Georgian twist. Apparently she had given up trying to persuade Johnny, who chewed morosely at a strip of venison. Suddenly she slipped over to her grandfather, taking a wine bowl away from him. Coming back with the bowl she explained. “Excuse me. Issachar should not drink more. It is true that he is sick.”

  “In what way?”

  The fiddle struck up a jump dance, and booted feet stamped the time. Mary touched her body. It was cancer, she was almost sure.

  Johnny looked at her. “Why in the world don’t you have him examined?”

  “Where?" The girl gulped some wine; under the shining veil her head tossed up with sudden temper. “This is not what you call the treadmill of your cities! No—my grandfather has outlived his son, and he says only a fool would want more years than the Lord gave to him. He only wanted to live to see his last grandson provided for.”

  Over on the hearth one person was watching the American’s face as if it were the face of Michael the archangel, who held the scales of judgment. Arg’s brown hands squeezed down on the magazine with the picture of the farm and the horse corral. Johnny thought: he doesn't even think about taking a chance—he's willing to step out of his life into someplace else. And he said, "Listen, girl!"

  Issachar peered at them, and the fiddle quieted, the guests stopped stomping. “Tell him,” ordered Johnny, “my home is in Denver, Colorado, where we have mountains like these, and the boys can ride horses to school if they like. Tell him when I look out from my door I view a hundred miles, up and down, of God's country, with deer hunting thrown in. And say that I'm taking Arg to my home, so help me.”

  When he heard that, Issachar answered. "Gumarabo!" and the guests drank healths all around. What with that, and the clamoring of voices he didn't understand, and the high altitude, Johnny began to feel drowsy. He felt pretty good, too, because he'd done what he could for Mary's patient.

  When he woke up, Mary had taken off her veil to curl up in a quilt by Issachar. Everything was quiet; even the wind had stopped. In the gray light from a window, the room really looked bare, with poverty spelled all over it. Only the boy moved about, making up the fire, while he packed some things into his belt sack—his oiled leather sling, a knife handle and what looked like large marbles.

  Through Johnny's throbbing head flashed sharp foreboding. Clear daylight outside meant the end of the storm. Going to a window, he stared out past the black wall of the canyon, with snow summits rearing up beyond over white clouds, and a blue sky over all. Only too well he remembered that in the festivity of the night he had promised to take the Georgian boy out of all this through a Soviet frontier post, not to mention Mary and himself, without authority of any kind. There'd be no convenient murk of snow to screen them going back.

  After Mary rousted out, she did not seem to worry. “My brother will be looking for us,” she explained while Arg finished his packing. Issachar helped, and the daylight showed the telltale film over his gray eyes, and the yellowish tinge to his skin. When they both stood by the ladder door, Issachar patted the boy’s shoulder and murmured something. To start going, Mary said.

  The boy took one long look around the room—at his folded quilt, at the falcon on its perch—as if fixing it all in his mind. Then he disappeared down the ladder.

  “He has skis,” said Mary, “and he will find his way down the mountain. Then while we are making an explanation to the soldiers he will find his way across the river, which is frozen. Now we should go, because it will take us longer. I told you it would not be safe.”

  Before Johnny could think that out, Issachar kissed the girl’s forehead, and waved them on. As he followed Mary down the ladder, the American thought that this house would soon be empty, like the church, and before long these mountain folk who belonged to another time, would all be gone. They were careless enough of their lives—but were they careless of what meant the most to them?

  Starting the half-frozen machine heading down the grade, Johnny wondered what explanation he could make at the control post. The chance of arguing their way through armed Soviet frontier guards was very slim, from all he'd heard.

  He had his papers, of course, and he fixed it up with Mary to explain that they'd lost their way returning to Suyun in the storm after visiting a patient. She said she'd try, but the best chance was that her brother, Lieutenant Thavad, would be looking out for them.

  "As your proverb says, 'Never go ahead of a wise man,'" muttered Johnny, who had all he could do to keep traction on the jeep, sliding on the frozen snow, and bumping off rocks down the steep pitch. They skidded through a pine growth, plowing into snowbanks, and came out on the river flat with all the chains singing. Johnny's hope that they might escape observation on that lonely trail vanished quickly.

  Before the bridge stood a tall member of the Red Army, with boots planted wide beneath his greatcoat and a tommy gun resting on one arm, and no glove on that hand. The other, gloved hand was raised for them to stop. From the doorway of the adjoining hut two gray soldiers watched expectantly.

  Johnny braked to a stop beside the sentry. The muzzle of the tommy gun was tracking him, and the man’s bare hand was on the grip. Mary started speaking her piece in Turkish, but after a minute the sentry hardly listened; he jerked his head toward the hut. Johnny only wondered where they’d go from that hut—in the area closed to visitors by Soviet military authority.

  Then there was a call from the doorway. The guard glanced quickly across the river, and Johnny’s pulse missed a beat. At the other end of the bridge several figures in the khaki brown of the Turkish Army seemed to be going through a morning drill. One soldier pulled the cover away from a heavy machine gun. Two hundred yards away over dazzling snow and ice, a young lieutenant bent over the weapon’s sights, bearing on the sentry. Mary’s brother was waiting for her.

  The sentry grunted and swiveled the other way. Johnny took a quick look back of the jeep. He saw only the boy Arg sliding to a stop ten yards away, using a long stick for a brake. Leather thongs trailed from his other hand.

  Paying no more attention to the boy, the big guard reached for Mary to pull her out of the vehicle. After one look at his face, Johnny grabbed the girl’s arm and shoved her down to the floorboards. His hand clamped on the gearshift, while the rest of him tightened against the explosion of weapons spitting slugs. He heard nothing except a hiss of air.

  Beside him the gray-coated guard sat down in the snow. The gun dropped down, and a smooth stone rolled away. The man’s hand groped at his head.

  In less than no time Johnny jammed in the gear; the wheels spun, the chains gripped, and the jeep streaked across the bridge to the Turkish post. Arg was with it, hanging on behind. No shot had been fired. The next moment Mary was crying while she hugged her two brothers. After that, Johnny said the boy's name could only be David.

  In the lounge of the Chicago airport, they had all forgotten about waiting, while
they listened. The marine corporal chewed gum steadily; the small boy had ditched the comic. His mother and dad didn't look so tired, and the baby slept. The big attorney grunted and took up his papers.

  “If all that happened as you say, captain," he said, still with an objection, “how did this boy get into the United States?”

  Johnny moved his head to the rhythm of the music. Then he stopped as the loudspeaker rasped. “Passengers for flight T-117 now loading at Gate Eleven. All aboard, please.”

  The people stirred and gathered up their stuff. The lady with the poodle said it was about time. They moved toward the exit gratefully, turning their backs on the crowded waiting room. Johnny Calhoun glanced after them and said to me, “Well, he’s here now, isn’t he?” He nodded to the watching boy. “Hoist up, son.”

  David got up quickly. He followed us close to the exit. Then he turned to look once more at the mystery of the hidden lights, the waiting food machines. As if he was fixing in his mind this warmth and music of the room in his new world.

  Panic on Flight Nine

  There wasn’t a sign of trouble that drowsy afternoon, at four o’clock Central Standard Time by my watch. Our Flight Nine, a DC-7, was rolling up the great plains, nonstop from Washington to Los Angeles, flying at 18,000 feet—according to our captain, who had come back to pass the time of day with the passengers and had reached the lounge where the windows give observation and the four of us sat. His name on the board was Eric Schmidt, and gray showed in his close-clipped hair. He told us that, to avoid weather over the mountains ahead, we’d detoured south over Tulsa.

  I merely reflected how perfectly modern man had conquered the sky, where the ancient gods had been supposed to rule over the cloud level. My work consisted of teaching what happened in those dawn ages known commonly as ancient history. In our pressurized cabin we passengers were as safe and temporarily idle as in a city waiting room. Even the shapely young stewardesses, Miss Pike and Miss Stauber, had removed their serving slipons after clearing away the luncheon impedimenta, to take a break with us three men in the lounge seats.

  Then the boy came in from the tourist-or economy-class compartment and began to look over the magazines in their holders. Probably he was not entitled to the privilege of the lounge, because Miss Pike said, “I will bring you a magazine.”

  The boy looked at her, gracefully curled up after shedding her shoes, dealing five cards at a time across a magazine holder to the tall passenger with the initials MG embroidered on his custom-made silk shirt. “Don’t trouble,” he said flatly. “I’ll pick my own.”

  Miss Pike had a red glint in her flawless gold hair, and she had a stubborn chin. She was slight as a fashion model, and really lovely to see in her trim uniform. No older, I think, than the tourist passenger whose sandy hair needed cutting, and his old suit pressing. And he wore no wrist watch. Miss Pike surveyed him with hard blue eyes and turned her shapely shoulder against him. She was angry, but disciplined.

  Now we professors aren't so absent-minded as you may have heard. We have to get acquainted with the inside as well as the outside of our students, to separate the showy cheats from the clumsy pluggers, and watch out for the spoiled scions of family influence. We could qualify as judges in most juvenile courts. I noticed how the boy from the tourist section felt defensive in the first-class lounge, and how he merely turned the pages of the magazines curiously as if he hadn’t seen such things for a long time. Then he took out a crumpled letter to read, addressed to a David Curran at an A.P.O. number through New York. That, with the way he wore his threadbare civilian suit, indicated that he’d been out of the country for a long spell, possibly in uniform and certainly without much money. Or so I thought.

  As for the attractive Miss Pike, I’d heard that these young stewardesses played up to promising male passengers, being in quest of a well-qualified husband. And why not? Sex, either male or female, has changed little during our six millenniums of civilization. Women have always been more clear-minded—call it mercenary if you will—in choosing a mate. They’ve had to think about food and a secure home, if not children.

  “Luck,” remarked Miss Pike brightly over the cards, “is breaking against you, Mr. ——”

  The big man with MG initials did not give his name. “There’s no such thing, girlie. Only circumstances. Play circumstances right and you have what superstitious yaps call luck. Give me three.”

  Miss Pike laughed softly as she dealt out three cards. MG spoke like someone accustomed to attention. The briefcase wedged behind him had his initials in gold; his loosened silk tie had an antique opal pin, and his turned-up cuffs had links fitted with fine crystal cameos that looked Roman to me. Older than the silent David, MG seemed to be successful, decisive and clear-minded. Also he liked Miss Pike for a companion.

  A buzzer sounded somewhere. Miss Pike didn’t stir, but Miss Stauber came back with a low word for Captain Schmidt, who’d been watching the cards. I caught the word “storm.” The captain looked out the window, ahead, and started back casually to the nose of our Flight Nine. Above us the blank August sky was clear; ahead in the west, white clouds banked high.

  Miss Pike remarked to her companion that this would be the last hand, because we were going to dodge some clouds, and MG said as he was loser, she’d have to give him a play at the cocktail hour. Flight Nine served drinks and snacks to the first-class passengers.

  Dave Curran looked out and muttered, “Clouds, at eighteen thousand feet? In August? Don’t you mean thunderheads over the mountains?”

  It was true that somewhere ahead lay the Sangre de Cristo Range, with the lift of the Rockies beyond. Until he mentioned mountains I had not thought of that. The girl’s tense temper sent out a small spark, a whispered exclamation. “Shall I tell the pilots you're afraid of thunderstorms?”

  MG smiled and laid his hand on hers. Then his expression changed queerly. Curran said nothing, but took something out of his pocket to look at. I thought it might be a compass, but it was a clear violet stone, large as the end of my thumb. In a shaft of sunlight it shone with purple fire. Something had been carved on the flat side of the jewel.

  “An oriental amethyst!” said MG decisively. “That’s rare enough. Where’d you pick this up, mister?”

  “In a hell of a snowstorm.”

  MG never took his eyes from it. Pulling a pocket magnifying glass from his briefcase, he studied it swiftly, and Miss Pike leaned over to look, exclaiming that it was lovely.

  It was certainly strange that this boy without a trace of jewelry on him should be carrying such a translucent stone loose in his pocket. I began to suspect what it might be and when I had a chance to examine it I did not need the glass to make certain.

  The flat surface of the amethyst had a figure carved with incredible skill—the form of a tall man with towering crown stepping out of a cloak that resembled a cloud. By some peculiarity of the cutting it seemed to move when turned toward the light. One hand thrust out a kind of broken spear, the other raised a knobby club.

  “It's old enough to be Greek,” observed MG. The signet ring on his finger was a Greek gem—a trinket compared to the treasure of the amethyst.

  “No," I told him, “it’s a thousand years older than Greece. Few like it have ever been found. The carved image is the sky god of the Hittites; archaeologists have named him Teshub, the weather god. This spear means a lightning shaft, and the club a thunder stroke.”

  “So that’s the gimmick.” MG was looking at Curran with new appraisal. The cardplayer seemed to be a collector of antique gems.

  I explained what everyone ought to know but didn’t. How in the dawn of time civilized man made the sky his first god. Out of the sky came death-dealing floods or drought or life-giving rains and sun warmth. Of course those earliest peoples could not explore the stratosphere with planes or instrument-bearing missiles—or get a weather report from Greenland. They personalized the sky, and made themselves small images of the person-in-power above them. They tried t
o protect themselves by carrying such images wherever they went. And they fancied that the mysterious amethystine quartz had protective power. Even the Greeks believed that an amethyst cup protected them from drinking poison.

  “Superstition!” said MG.

  Curran had followed all I said attentively—I know when a student becomes really interested. “I don’t know," he muttered, half to himself. "There's plenty we don’t understand about atmospheric phenomena."

  “Whatever the gimmick is,” said MG, “I’ll give you this for it.” He put two fifty-dollar bills from his wallet by the violet stone on the magazine holder.

  Miss Pike stirred but said nothing. And I had a sudden misgiving. This boy coming out of the tourist section on his own, producing a rare gem under the eyes of a passenger obviously wealthy with a fancy for such things—was it pure coincidence or a smart selling pitch? I guessed that the girl was wondering as much. Yet the stone was real enough. No modem gem fakers could carve the hard surface of a jewel as the ancient Hittites did. Either way, MG wanted that stone.

  Until then our lounge had been motionless as the floor of a building. Now it rose gently and sank under us. The sunlight dimmed out. Curran was looking at the bank notes near his hand, and I knew he wanted the money. “No,” he replied slowly, “I don't think I'd sell this, even for two hundred dollars."

  MG could make up his mind quickly. "All right," he snapped; I'll pay you five hundred." He pulled a folded checkbook from his pocket. "Two hundred cash, and my check for the balance." He flipped a hotel credit card out of the book.