There was an instant of frozen stillness as the snow moved, and then his men scattered, some running forward, some running back, a few crouching in place looking for something they could grip. And there was nothing. The whole mountainside seemed to be moving, and then, with a thunderous roar, the snowfield gathered speed and swept toward the rim of the gorge.
Spilling over the lip, it fell like a Niagara of snow into the vast depths below!
One moment he saw his men, swinging arms wildly, fighting to stem the tide; then over they went, and far away as he was he seemed to hear their screams, screams that he would never forget. And one of those who fell was Captain Obruchev, engaged to his sister.
After the roar of the avalanche, silence.
Chapter 38
*
MAJOR JOSEPH MAKATOZI crouched beside a giant spruce, looking up the canyon. He was sheltered from the wind, always a major consideration, and his coat made from the hide of a mountain goat was warm. The pelage of the mountain goat is the finest, softest, and undoubtedly the warmest of any animal. Being white, it blended well with the occasional patches of snow. His pants were made of the same material.
From beside the spruce, he had seen the patrol start across the snowfield. This was war, and they were hunting him to kill or capture. And capture meant eventual death.
He watched them move out on the snowfield with exasperation. What could their commander be thinking of? Certainly, he was not a Siberian, but any Russian accustomed to mountain travel should know better than to walk across a slope that was obviously unstable.
He found himself almost hoping they would make it across, but if they did they would be in a position to see into his hanging valley, and they might even see him in his hideout above it. Certainly, a man with a good glass would be able to pick him out. And he was, for the time being, tired of running.
Joe Mack knew that in such cases, with snow poised to start, a sudden shout or a shot might be enough to start it, particularly in the narrow confines of the canyon.
Their movements on the snowfield might be enough to start a slide, but he could not leave it to chance. He lifted the AK-47 and fired.
He did not aim, because he had no plan to hit anything. He did not know the accurate range of the weapon, although all guns carried farther than most people believed, but the men were a good half mile away. He simply fired, and whether it was their movements or the shot he did not know, but the slide started.
At least two of the soldiers at the rear threw themselves back off the snow, while another two or three had not reached it, but for the others there was no chance.
When the roar of the slide ceased and snow puffed up in a thick cloud, he settled back against his tree and waited. He was relatively secure. There was nowhere on this side of the canyon that overlooked his hideout and no way it could be easily reached except above and behind him, and even that was not a simple way.
He guessed that the patrol he had seen was but one of several. No doubt they had planned to work along both sides of the canyon, but only an officer unfamiliar with such mountains would have attempted it. In such canyons there are usually several levels left by the water in cutting its way through the rock and carving out the gorge. A thorough search might be made on one level while leaving unseen hiding places on the next. Of course, many of these were visible from across the canyon, as his would have been had the patrol crossed the snowfield.
The tilted slope opposite him and somewhat higher was now almost bare of snow. He could see several men huddled together, who seemed in shock. He did not blame them. The snowfield had extended several hundred feet above them and back. It must have seemed that the whole side of the mountain was moving. As he watched, the men turned and started back the way they had come, occasionally turning to look back as if in disbelief of what had happened.
Going to the little hollow at the back of the bench, he built a small fire of dry wood that gave off almost no smoke. He made tea and a thick broth of meat scrap and melted snow. Occasionally he peered through the trees, and always he listened. Alekhin was out there somewhere.
The months of living in the snow and cold had built his resistance to it. It had begun to warm up, and at thirty degrees below zero he was almost warm. He remembered long ago reading an account of Byrd’s men in Antarctica shoveling snow, stripped to the waist at ten degrees below zero. Given a chance, the human body had an amazing capacity for adapting itself to changing conditions.
Undoubtedly a patrol was coming along on his side of the canyon. Knowing the terrain, he knew that the patrol must either be well scattered or fail in covering the area. The nature of the country left only a few possible routes.
His present position was invisible from below. Looking up, they would see only a forested mountainside much too steep for travel. From below, as he had seen for himself, there was no indication of the little bench on which he was camped.
The only possible way of seeing it was from across the gorge where the soldiers had been headed who were carried away by the avalanche. He had meat, and he could afford to sit tight. Hard as it was to remain still, that was just what he must do. The risk was great, yet he needed the rest.
The very nature of the traps he had left behind denied him the chance to know if they had worked. If nothing else, they would make his pursuers move more slowly and with greater caution. Yet now he was within a few hundred yards of at least two such traps.
Here he was sheltered from the wind and from observation except by aircraft, and if he was under the trees they might see his hideout but not him. However, sighting the hideout might lead to a search. Was there communication with the ground forces by radio? He had to believe there was, although there might not be.
Under the trees he found a viewpoint that permitted him to see both possible entries into the hanging valley below him.
Suddenly, on the trail opposite, a soldier appeared. He was only two or three steps above the flat white stone Joe Mack had undermined.
The soldier halted, his weapon ready. He was surveying what he could see of the surprising little valley. He turned and spoke over his shoulder to someone; then another man appeared. Joe Mack could not see his insignia, but supposed him a noncommissioned officer.
There was no way they could see more of the valley without descending into it. As if on command, the soldier started forward; he hit the step above, moving fast, and then he stepped down hard on the flat white stone, as it was somewhat lower than a normal step. Instantly the stone tipped and slid, and the soldier came down hard. The fall was no more than fifteen or sixteen feet, but it was immediately apparent that the fallen soldier had broken his leg.
Others gathered around him while two or three descended into the valley and began a search. An injured man was better than a dead man, for it would take at least two men to carry him back to where he could get attention.
An improvised stretcher was made while two other soldiers attempted to restore the broken step in the path. Joe Mack, resting in his brush hideout, waited and watched.
Only minutes passed before a helicopter appeared. It swung around and surveyed the hanging valley, but appeared to ignore his hideout, which from the air must have seemed no more than a small ledge on the side of the mountain above the valley, a place of no consequence. Unless Alekhin was in that helicopter.
Always, he must remember Alekhin.
The soldiers were laboring back up the path, and he lay quiet, watching them. At last they were gone, and he added spruce boughs to his bed. Taking a chance, he kindled a small fire of dry wood and broiled some meat from the mountain goat. He ate well, drank tea, and extinguished his fire. Again he took a look all about and then returned to his bed.
Lying on his back on the boughs, he stared up into the branches overhead. He had done the right things, made the right moves. Even so he had been lucky, indeed, and such luck could not be expected to last.
He sat up and in the dimming light, studied his maps. Ahead of him lay lower a
nd fewer mountains and many small lakes and tundra. Places to hide would be infrequent, and much of the time he would be traveling in the open.
For three days he remained on the small bench, cold most of the time, having a fire but rarely with which to make tea and boil meat. He saw no more soldiers, although twice planes flew over and once a helicopter. Once, on the far side of the hanging valley, he saw movement in the brush, but nothing appeared. If it was a wild animal, it did not emerge.
He lighted his fire only when the wind was taking the smell of it out over the gorge. He always used dry wood, avoiding smoke.
On the fourth day, he decided to move. Carefully, from a hidden place among the trees, he studied possible routes by which he could keep under cover. He selected a possible destination, although that would vary according to what he found when he arrived. While in camp he doubled his supply of arrows and found two new and better chunks of iron pyrite, which he partly covered with rawhide for a better grip when striking a fire.
He started before dawn on the fifth day, impatient to be off. He went out to the north and stayed under cover of the trees. Now he took special effort to leave no trail. Although he did not like the added weight, he kept the AK-47.
Topping a ridge, he looked over the vast panorama of mountain, forest, and valley toward the east and south. Timbered ridges marched away in endless procession, with hollow basins, ridges of slide rock, patches of snow, and here and there what seemed to be glaciers. Beyond that were great crags and the cone shapes of ancient volcanoes. Avoiding an easy path into the woods, he took a mere goat trail up into the crags and crouched there to study the country. The more he saw of it, the more he was inclined to cut back to the southeast and try to stay clear of regions of small lakes and tundra. It would be much the longer route, but offered better chances of finding cover, as well as wild game.
That night he decided he would turn southeast and try to reach the Kolyma Mountains above Magadan and then follow them to the northeast.
Every few minutes now, he checked his back trail. That somebody was following him he was quite sure, and he began to think of a trap, a very subtle one that might fool even Alekhin.
Dipping down into a narrow opening between two appallingly sheer gray cliffs, he walked along a sandy floor, crawled over boulders, and wended a precarious way through a forest of tumbled rock. Here and there were patches of snow and narrow crevasses into which a man’s foot might slip, breaking an ankle. Growth was scarce except for lichens.
Except for his carefully husbanded tea, his food was almost gone, so he watched for any kind of wild animal that he might kill.
Several times he glimpsed grouse, or ptarmigan, but it was midday before he was able to kill one with his sling. He had just climbed down over a steep wall of black rocks and at their base came on a pile of driftwood stacked up against boulders by the rushing waters of spring runoff in past years. He made a small fire, broiled and ate the grouse, and then carefully covered the feathers and bones.
Looking back up the narrow gorge down which he had come, he was amazed. He must have descended more than a thousand feet, and watching, he could see no signs of movement behind him or on the cliffs above. Finding a break in the canyon wall, he turned into it and climbed steeply up, crossing a wide belt of slide rock that sounded, as he crossed it, like walking on piles of empty bottles. At the top of the slide, he found a few inches next to the cliff where he could walk. The towering boulders at the place he had started his climb now looked like mere pebbles.
Trees choked the great crack up which he was traveling. Mostly spruce and fir, there was a scattering of larch and an occasional dwarfed and gnarled cedar. There was much debris, broken branches and fallen trees, many of them mere bare poles now. He found some long-dead bark and gathered tinder for a fire whenever he might decide to stop.
Looking back down, he judged any follower would have gone on down the canyon, not thinking that a man would choose such a precipitous climb. He turned and kept on, climbing now as if up a steep stairway. Soon the crack became so tight he could touch either side with ease. At the top a raven flew up, flapping its black wings slowly away. He had to use his hands to lift himself out of the crack at the place where it began. First, just enough to look around.
Not fifty feet away was a mountain goat, a big one weighing he would guess not less than three hundred pounds. It was looking right at him, no doubt astonished by the sudden appearance of this weird looking creature in a domain where he no doubt ruled the roost. The animal seemed in no wise frightened or even disturbed.
Carefully, aware that his hands were busy and unable to use a weapon, Joe Mack hoisted himself from the crack and sat on its edge. He needed the meat, but estimating the distance, he did not like the odds.
Cautiously, Joe Mack got to his feet. The goat was amazingly white, his horns jet black and sharp as needles. His build was like others of his kind, stocky and powerful, better for climbing and leaping than running, something he would rarely have a chance to do, living on the heights as he did.
Joe Mack brought his bow around, and then seeing some larch trees not far off, he backed toward them. The goat watched him with interest, once bobbing his head low and giving it a kind of twisting shake.
Having seen goats in action, Joe Mack was perfectly aware of how dangerous they could be. Usually they hooked low and hard, trying to rip the belly of whatever they were attacking. When he reached the trees, Joe Mack retreated into the small grove and began working his way through them. When he emerged, he was upon an almost sheer mountainside, with an enormous panorama of ridges, peaks, and mountains lying before him. He was facing east and a little south and looking at one of the most rugged bits of terrain he had ever seen. It reminded him of the Sawtooth Range in his own Idaho country.
Climbing a promontory, he studied the country behind him. He could see no movement, nothing to indicate pursuit, although he knew it was there. He doubted whether the soldiers would persist, however, but somewhere soon he should be meeting the trappers and hunters Shepilov had sent to find him.
He descended from the rocks and made his way carefully over the bare rock of the mountain’s crest. Here and there were loose slabs and patches of snow, some of them extensive.
He was working his way down a steeply sloping dome of granite when he saw them.
Three men, trappers or hunters by their look, far down the slope below him. If they looked up they would see him, unless his goatskin coat and pants appeared to them like snow. These men would be good shots, and all carried rifles.
For a moment he held himself still; then, just a little further down the slope, he saw a big, rounded boulder balanced on the slick rock face.
Carefully, he began edging closer. If that boulder fell—!
They were right beneath it and at least three hundred yards away, but at the base of a steep hillside.
He climbed down, using his hands to ease himself down in a sitting position. The rock was very slick, and at places there was ice. The three men were coming closer.
He reached the boulder, lifted his feet until he could put them high on its side, and then bracing himself against the mountainside, he pushed.
There was a moment when it only crunched slightly, and he pushed again, with all the power in his legs. The boulder teetered, crunched, and slowly began to turn over.
Ponderously, almost majestically, it began to roll over, and then suddenly, seized by the forces of gravity, it turned over and began to tumble down the slope.
It reached a drop, fell, and bounded high, and then as it began to fall, the hunters froze in place, staring up, eyes wide with horror.
Chapter 39
*
THE HUNTERS TOOK that one startled look and then scrambled to escape. All three made it.
The boulder landed within inches of where they had been standing, hitting with terrific impact. Then it rolled back a few feet and lodged against a smaller rock.
Two of the men had fallen. They got
to their feet, badly shaken, and looked up at the mountain. They could see nothing.
Hurriedly, they moved back into the nearest trees. There were not many at that point, but they were some shelter.
“That was no accident,” one of them said.
For several minutes nobody spoke, and then Hymoff said, “Did you ever think of all you could do to somebody following you into the mountains?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“I never liked Shepilov, anyway,” Hymoff suggested.
It was a dangerous remark, and they all knew it. If such a comment were repeated, it could mean trouble for the speaker.
“Well, a man could always trap some fur. Doubt if this country has been trapped lately. A man could keep busy,” he added.
“How did he come to be a prisoner here, anyway? My grandfather sold furs to an American trader at Emma’s Landing, years ago. Said he was an honest man, as traders go.”
“No way he’s going to escape, anyway. No way he could cross the Strait.”
“The Chukchis crossed it for years, hundreds of years, I guess.”
“That was before radar and patrol planes. I crossed it most of the way on the ice, one time. I was with my father, and I was just twelve that year.”
From high on the slope, Joe Mack watched them. What reward had been offered for him he did not know, or what other inducement, if any. He had not planned to kill any of them, but that was their problem. If they chose to follow, he would stop them, one way or another.
He arose and went back off the ridge and followed it toward the southeast. It was easy walking here, with few trees, scattered rock, and nothing but sky above. It was clear and blue, like most skies in this part of the country. He did not hurry, but he made good time. Yet at intervals he stopped to study his back trail. Alekhin would be back there somewhere, or perhaps outguessing him and waiting up ahead. That had been one of the reasons he had changed direction so drastically.
Novel 1986 - Last Of The Breed (v5.0) Page 31
