Last Of the Breed (1986)

by L'amour, Louis

  Ostap glanced toward the stable. The door had been closed and an iron pin on a short chain dropped in place to keep the hasp closed.

  Two KGB men loitered near the Volga Alekhin had come in. A third man stood near another Volga. “Mikhail,” Alekhin said, “I shall give this lad a drink. Then you can drive him back, eh? No need for him to be here, and you won’t be needed.”

  Alekhin took Ostap’s arm. “Come! One glass of vodka before the road!” Alekhin pinched his arm. “Maybe two glasses, eh?”

  It was an hour before he staggered into the darkness outside the tent. The two KGB men were sitting in Alekhin’s Volga, sharing a bottle.

  Ostap had to pass by the stable to get to the other Volga, where Mikhail seemed to be asleep, waiting.

  What made him do it, he did not know, but he lifted the pin and let it down against the door. He opened the hasp. “Now!” he said, and walked on to the Volga.

  Mikhail awoke. “Good!” he said. “I want to get into town.” He glanced at Ostap. “I’ve a friend there, and maybe she has a friend. Do you have any rubles?”

  “Some. I’d like to meet your friend.”

  He hunched down in the seat, trying not to think about anything at all. Why had he done that? The man was helpless, but — He shook his head to drive away the thought. If they found out, he would be the one in trouble.

  Lying on the filthy floor in the freezing cold, his body heavy with pain, Joe Mack heard the pin drop, heard the low voice and the word “Now!”

  His brain was fogged with pain. Some vagrant thought told him he had a concussion. What did it mean, “Now!”? Suddenly through the fog in his brain an arrow of clear light penetrated.

  “Now?” And the rattle of a chain. He shook his head and almost passed out at the resulting agony.

  Now! He rolled to his knees, fighting the agony the movement caused, and brought his handcuffed wrists down over his buttocks. Rolling on his back he drew his knees up to his chest and put his feet through the circle of arms and cuffs, so they were now in front of him. Somebody had lifted the pin! Perhaps the door would open. He forced himself to listen, and he heard nothing but subdued voices and, from somewhere outside, laughter.

  He caught hold of one of the posts that supported the stable roof and pulled himself up. Then he leaned there, his brain swimming. He staggered and fell against the next post. He held himself there, forcing himself to listen. His face felt stiff and strange. He lifted his hands and touched it carefully. His face was caked with blood, and his hair. When he moved, pain shot through him. He thought he also had a broken rib.

  He fought to clear his fogged brain. He must think. He must act. Somebody was outside. Somebody would be on guard. They believed they had beaten him into helplessness. Maybe they had. He could only try. He took a careful, trembling step to the door. Gently, he touched it with his fingers. A crack of light showed.

  Ever so carefully, he widened the crack. There was a pyramidal tent opposite with a light inside and several men sitting. He could see their shadows against the light. He saw a Volga with two men sitting in it, their backs to him, talking. One man’s hand hung outside, holding a bottle. Beyond, close together, stood three trucks.

  His head was heavy with pain, and he had trouble bringing his eyes into focus. Inside him, something was pushing, driving, something that said, Now! Now! And something else that warned him there was no other time than now.

  He took a step, staggered and almost fell, caught himself, and moved closer to the Volga. The door of the car was open, and the hand holding the bottle was outside. He could hear the man mumbling, and he heard a snore. The other man was asleep!

  A step closer. Another step. His forearm slid across the man’s throat, and the other hand slipped into place. The KGB man reared up, struggled briefly, then subsided. Lifting him from the car, Joe Mack frisked him quickly, expertly. He took the man’s pistol and ammunition. Walking around the car, Joe jerked the drunken man from his seat behind the wheel and threw him to the ground. As the man started to rise, he kicked him.

  For a moment then, Joe Mack stood still. His head was spinning and his eyes still would not focus properly. He steadied himself, and then kneeling, he searched the man he had kicked, recovering another pistol and ammunition.

  At the car, he felt for the keys. They were in the ignition. He was in a fog, almost as if he were drunk himself, but some inner drive was pushing him. On the back seat of the car was a gun, different from but similar to an AK-47. He picked it up and turned toward the tent. At that moment the flap was thrown back and a man emerged. His brain buzzing, Joe Mack turned the gun toward the tent and let go with a long, continuous burst. Then, turning, he sprayed the trucks with gunfire. He shot into the nearest gas tank and saw flames leap up and the wind catch them.

  Getting into the Volga, he turned the car into the road and drove away. Behind him he heard a dull boom as a gas tank exploded.

  A dim road took off toward the north and he accepted it. His eyes, almost swollen shut from the beating, offered only slits from which to see. With his fingers he tried to push the swollen openings wider, without much luck. His head throbbing, his body in agony with every move, he drove north. Then, like a drunken man, he began to sing “The Frozen Logger.”

  The road was winding and bumpy, a mere trail most of the time, but he drove steadily, and after driving for a time he switched off the lights. The moon was up, and he could see enough to drive.

  His thoughts fought for acknowledgment, but his brain was foggy. Where was he? In Siberia. He was in a Volga, on a road going — ? He did not know where. Worry intruded itself. There was something he had to do, something which he must acknowledge. It was —

  He had to leave this car. It was such an easy way to travel, but it held him to a road and they would be looking along roads. They would be looking soon.

  They had not taken his watch. They had searched him for a gun. The rest was left for Alekhin.

  And Alekhin was probably dead.

  No, he did not know Alekhin was dead. He had fired a burst or two into the tent. The light had gone out, and he had heard some scrambling, and the tent had caught fire. Several of them might have escaped.

  How long had he been driving? He did not know. Too long, probably. They would have helicopters looking for him again. Miles unrolled beneath him. He was not going fast; one could not over this road.

  There was a river ahead. He could see moonlight on the ice. Stopping the car, he got out and went through it carefully. Emergency rations for two, two bottles of unopened vodka, and some further ammunition. He loaded his pockets, turned the car toward the river, and drove it under some overhanging willows. There he left it and turned eastward into the mountains.

  He had to have rest. His legs, body, and head were badly bruised and beaten. Every step was sheer agony, but he pushed on. Snow was almost entirely absent, but the earth was frozen and rough. There were few trees. He was going to have trouble finding cover. He plodded on, stupid with pain and whatever had happened to his brain. A concussion, he told himself. He hoped that was all it was.

  He should have taken a coat from one of the KGB men. It was cold, and all he had was a fur robe taken from the Volga. He drew it tight around him and hobbled on. Twice he fell, and each time it was a struggle to rise.

  He was no longer thinking well. He was aware enough to realize that. He kept thinking of Talya, expecting to see her. But how could he see her here?

  He no longer had a map. What river was that where he had left the Volga? It was a large river. It could have been the Omolon.

  He fell, catching himself with his hands and lacerating the palms on the rough, frozen earth. He got up. He could go no farther. He looked at the cuffs. He had to get rid of them.

  He stared around, blinking slowly. He did not know where he was. He knew what to do about the cuffs. He had a shim, a bit of wire.

  East, he had to go east. He must go east. That was the way his ancestors had gone, the ancient ones w
ho had followed the game to America in the years before there was a Bering Strait.

  Bering Strait? What was that? Something to be needed, to be sought for. He stumbled on, then went down into a creek bed and found a place where a bank offered shelter from the wind.

  He would build a fire. He needed a fire. He did not want to freeze. But a fire would attract attention. No, not if there was no smoke.

  Dry wood. He needed dry wood. Fumbling, he got the wood together. He found some dry moss, gathered some dry brown grass and bundled it together. He built a cone of thin sticks over it and struck a match. Huddling close to the fire, he got out the thin strip of metal and went to work on the cuffs. They were old-fashioned cuffs, but his hands were bruised and clumsy. When he had them off, he put vodka on the cuts. He wiped it dry with a handkerchief and the fur of his robe. He capped the bottle and huddled under the bank and tried to sleep.

  Chapter 46

  Three weeks later Joe Mack huddled in a cave above one of the minor tributaries of the Oklan River. The terrible beating he had taken had not sapped his courage, but something had. He was not even sure of what it was, except that he was very ill.

  Day after day he had slogged along through storm and sun, working his way, mostly by night when there was any night, toward the east. He had camped in the cold, slept on boughs over icy ground. His feet were in terrible shape, and desperately he needed moccasins.

  When the emergency rations taken from the Volga had given out, he had subsisted on marmots, even voles, and occasionally a ptarmigan.

  Shortly after he abandoned the Volga, the country had been crisscrossed by helicopters and planes, and during most of that time he had huddled in a niche in a clay bank behind some dead poplars and a few straggling willows, a place planes flew over time and again, the searchers never imagining that even a marmot might conceal itself there. For three days he had had nothing to eat; then he caught some fish in a trap he had woven from plant fibers.

  Spring was here, and the tundra was aglow with wildflowers. They were flowers found above timberline in his own country.

  He made a new bow and arrows, as well as a sling, but it was the sling that served him best. He had found the cave by accident, while kneeling on an icy rock near a small stream. As he had started to rise he had seen the opening. It was not three feet wide and scarcely that in height. It was masked by some dwarfed stone pine, and when he examined it he found a spacious cave with a sandy floor.

  He was not the first to use the cave. Someone else, long ago, had built fires here. He found the crack used for a chimney and gathered driftwood along the stream and broken branches from under the stone pine.

  For the first time in days he was able to be warm, and in another gorge a half mile away he found some birch. He gathered bark to make a crude raincoat for himself and used some of the leaves to mix with vodka as a rubdown for his bruised legs.

  Despite the fact that spring had come, the nights were piercingly cold, the skies very clear, and the stars unbelievably bright. He was always cold, huddling above his fire like some Stone Age creature. He made moccasins of the skins of marmots, but they wore through quickly, and he could find no larger animals. Occasionally he came upon the droppings of mountain goats, but saw none of them. Once he came on the sign of a very large bear, a huge beast, judging by the size of the tracks. He comforted himself with the thought that no bear of that size could get into this cave now, although once the opening had been considerably larger. Floods had piled up sand and rocks until much of the original opening had become covered.

  He existed like an animal, and a poor creature at that, with little food and never enough of a fire to really become warm. Fuel was scarce, and soon he must move on.

  Here and there on the smooth rocks he had seen scratches left by glaciers in the remote past, but there was no evidence of them in the low country. They seemed only to have affected the higher rock formations.

  He must move on. He told himself this as he huddled, shivering over his small fire. He must move on, find another place, try to find some large animals that he might eat. How long since he had not starved? How long since he had anything but the most meager meal?

  Yet it had been days now since he had seen a plane, days without seeing a helicopter. No doubt he had been given up for dead, and well he might be. He had been kicked and pounded, struck with clubs and doubled belts, but he knew that was nothing to what awaited him if he were recaptured. Such beatings were sheer brutality, not the refinements of torture that he could expect from Zamatev.

  He dreaded the thought of moving. He dreaded the cold, the wind, the nights without a fire, the cold, icy rains.

  It would be easier, far easier to just lie down here and die.

  Why fight a losing battle? Even if he got to the coast, how could he ever get across the Bering Strait or the Chukchi Sea?

  Yet when morning came he took up his bow and arrows and started once more. He had never gone back for the things he had cached. He had feared to lose the time, so he had driven the Volga until the gas was almost gone.

  Had they found the car? No doubt, although he had left it hidden under the willows and standing on ice that by this time had melted.

  He no longer thought of Alekhin or Zamatev. Nor did he even think of Natalya. All that was far away and in another world, a world of much meat and of at least a little warmth. For weeks now, he had been merely surviving, and for what? If found now he was in no shape to resist or even to try to escape.

  He walked slowly up a shallow draw toward the crest of a low hill. He picked his way over bare rocks. Ice still lingered in shady places, and a small trickle of a stream found its way down a deep crack. From long habit, he approached the crest with infinite care and then peered over.

  He had expected more of the same terrain. Instead he looked across a tremendous valley, many miles wide and through the center of which there was obviously a river. He could not see it, but he could see where one had to be, and many small lakes. Below him, there was a road or trail, and some six or seven miles away, a town and an airfield. Between himself and the town there was tundra, with no cover except along some of the smaller streams where there were clumps of Manchurian poplar and tight thickets of willow. There was simply no way he could cross without being seen. Wearily, he turned back and went down the mountain and began working his way through the low hills toward the north.

  Now he must be doubly careful, for he was within the vicinity of people, and planes would occasionally be flying to or taking off from that airfield.

  Remembering the map, he thought the river was the Penzhina, and if so, it flowed down from the mountains before him and he would have it to cross.

  That night, descending the mountain, he came upon three goats lying among the rocks. They were accustomed to enemies coming up from below, and because the wind was from them and toward him, he was unnoticed.

  His first arrow was a kill. One of the goats ran off, but the old ram stood up, head down as if to attack. He was a big fellow and surly, yet when Joe Mack began to approach, he backed off. Then with many a backward look, he went away.

  He skinned out the goat to save the hide, then cut out what meat he needed. Descending into a hollow, he found a secluded nook and built a fire, roasting his meat. It was his first good meal in weeks. He packed the rest of the meat and spent some time working on the hide before rolling it up. He doubted the small smoke had drawn attention, but wished to get away from the vicinity in the event it had been noticed.

  Joe Mack was alone upon the mountains, and he idled his way across vast slabs of tilled rock, edging ever north, avoiding the few villages and the fewer houses. He ate good meat again and gained in strength. In a stream where a warm spring flowed, he bathed, enjoying the warm water. That evening before sundown, he killed a deer and renewed his meat supply.

  He kept to low ground when possible and walked through the larch forests when he crossed the Mayn. He was nearing the sea again. Sometimes in the morning he c
ould almost taste the salt wind. For days he had seen nothing human, nor had he seen a plane. Yet he knew they would not have given up. They would be seeking him even more seriously.

  His wounds were healed. His jaw was back to normal. His eyes could focus again, and the ache in his skull seemed to have gone away. Sometimes he would stop to lift rocks, building back the muscle he had lost.

  He made pants of buckskin and a coat from the skin of the mountain goat. He made a belt to carry his pistols and a quiver for his arrows. He carried the bow in his hand, and he walked with an easier step.

  How long since his escape? Spring had come, summer and now fall, and another winter lay over the edge of the world, waiting to kill him.

  “Not this time, old friend,” he said aloud. “I shall be gone, or killed by others.”

  Twice during the day he saw birds of the sea. Once he saw some gulls, and another time what he believed was a tern. He walked upon a mountain and saw the sea’s reflection in the sky. He was close, and over there, across the horizon, was Alaska, was America, his country, from which he had been too long away.

  This was the way by which his people had come. He only knew what the scholars said, for his people had no written language, and tales told by a campfire have a way of changing and growing or even lessening in the passage of time. In any event, that over yonder was his land, his home. There lay the mountains of his birth and the soil to which his people had given their blood and their flesh. They had fought well in their time, they had won many battles and lost a few, but they had died well when their time came.

  “Do you be the same,” he said. “It is the measure of a man to die well.”

  He was walking on the mountain, through the forest, when he saw them. “You have followed me too far,” he said. “I will not be taken again.”