Novel 1986 - Last Of The Breed (v5.0) (47 page)

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 tilted 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 could 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.”

He was within sixty feet of the soldier when he turned and saw him. The soldier did not speak, but with a kind of triumph he lifted his rifle, and he must only have seen the arrow flash in reflected sunlight before it transfixed his throat. He was the last man in line, and he fell, his hands grasping the arrow, his eyes glazing.

At the edge of the woods, Joe Makatozi ran softly on the moss. He ran and then waited, and as the next soldier appeared between the trees, he let go his arrow. The soldier cried out and fell.

The man ahead of him in the single file turned impatiently, then stared in horror at the arrow and died beside him.

There were six men in the patrol and a huge, bearlike man who led them. Joe Mack ran on, and when they stopped at a small stream, he let go another arrow. The target turned and took the arrow in the shoulder instead of the throat.

He cried out and the others turned. Joe Mack dropped his bow and drew a pistol.

He fired once, caught up his bow, and vanished into the trees, not waiting to see the effect of his shot.

It was growing dusk, as dusk as it ever became at this latitude, and he faded back among the trees.

On the soft moss, his moccasins made no sound. He moved among the trees, listening. There was no sound but a subdued murmur from a stream.

Alekhin had survived, then? He was here. “Now, my friend,” Joe Mack said aloud, “we shall meet, you and I, and I am ready for you.”

He circled the camp, but there was no camp, and they had no fire. They waited for him somewhere in the woods.

He crept close and lay still in the brush. How many were Siberians, he wondered, aside from Alekhin? He waited, and feeling about he found a rock and threw it, arching it high. It fell into the brush and he lay still. They would be waiting, and they would be fearful, for three or perhaps four of their mates had died.

Where was he? They did not know.

Did it mean he was there? Or somewhere near? He threw another stone and heard it land.

No sound, and he expected none. Would they remain where they were until morning? Or would one or more of them try to slip away to some further spot? He believed they would think of going but would stay.

He waited, resting easily on the moss, ears tuned to the slightest sound. Then he threw another stone. This time there was a subdued gasp, not too far from where the stone landed. There was vague light, and something stirred in the shadows; something moved. He let go an arrow and heard the thud of its strike and then a rustling in the brush. He let go another arrow. It was a miss, he believed, but a close one.

Gently, ever so gently, he eased back, went down into the hollow behind, and crossed a stream. He climbed into the rocks to a place he had seen earlier. Then he settled down to rest.

When the dawn was yet an hour away, he prepared several traps, and when he went back he left several slight tracks. Not enough to make them suspicious, but several. Then he went down the mountain toward the shore.

Major Joseph Makatozi walked along the shore in the gray morning and looked at the gray seas rolling in to beat against the rocky shore. He looked at the piled roots of great trees and at the little cove where a man worked upon some nets. He walked down to him and stood for a moment, watching. “I have come far,” he said at last, trying his English, “to see the place where once Olaf Swenson traded. He was an American, I think.”

“And an honest man,” replied the old Chukchi. “I knew him when I was a boy, but he traded with my father and my grandfather.”

“My grandfather was a Scot. Once long ago he sailed to these shores and traded here with Swenson.”

“That was long ago. Nobody remembers Olaf Swenson anymore. They do not remember the good days of trade, nor do they remember that we Chukchis crossed the narrow seas to Alaska each year, sometimes more than once in the year.”

“You caught salmon there?”

“No more. All that is gone. They will not let us go anymore, but sometimes—

“Sometimes I wish I could go again, but I am old, old.”

“I would go,” Joe Mack said, “if I had a kayak.”

The old man looked up. His brown face was deeply lined under the mane of white hair. He looked at Joe Mack and at his braids. He looked at his face again.

“It would need a man who knew the kayak to do it. Such a trip is not easy.”

“But with a kayak, they might not know he was going. It is a small thing, made of hide only.”

“It might be done. I am an old man and have not tried.”

“But I am a young man, and my home is over there. I want to go home, Grandfather.”

“I have a kayak, a very good one. For the grandson of a man who sailed with Olaf Swenson—I do not know. Perhaps.”

“I have some rubles. A kayak is not a small thing. It is made with craft not many possess. I would pay.”

“What are rubles to an old man? The sea gives me my living, and I give it my blessing.”

“Once long ago, Grandfather, it is said my people came this way, crossing when there was no water here. I follow in their footsteps.”

“I have heard of this, and I have found arrowheads and bones. Yes, I believe it is true.” The old man looked up from the net. “Those who watch have eyes to look where we cannot see. They have wings to fly over.”

“I shall go at night, Grandfather.”

“Ah? It has been done by day, and long, long ago. One must understand the kayak.”

“We are not strangers. I have used them at sea, and upon rough rivers.”

“When?”

“Tonight, if I live.”

The old man looked at him again. “I have heard some shots fired upon the mountain.”

“Yes, and today I shall go back to find one who looks for me. I do not wish him disappointed.”

“There will be shooting?”

“I hope not. I wish to do it with these.” Joe Mack held up his hands. “My people were warriors once. Am I to be less than they?”

“If you come in the evening when the sun is low, the kayak will be lying by those roots. What you do is your affair.”

“Speak to the spirits of the sea, Grandfather. My voice is lonely in the night.”

Chapter 47

H
E SMELLED THE smoke before he saw the fire, and when Joe Mack walked through the scattered rocks, Alekhin was waiting.

Joe Mack’s eyes swept the little hollow, but the Yakut said, “They have gone to recover the bodies you left.”

“I came for you.”

“I am here.”

C
OLONEL ARKADY ZAMATEV took up the package the soldier had placed on his desk. Slowly, with careful fingers, he began to undo the knots.

The package was very light, and it was wrapped in the skin of some small animal, but there was something inside, part of which felt like bark from a tree.

The last knot came loose, and the package opened. Colonel Arkady Zamatev sat very still, his mouth dry, his heart beating heavily. What lay on the table before him was obviously a human scalp with a small, distinctive blaze of white on one side, white hair growing where an old scar had been.

With it was a narrow strip of birchbark, and on it, printed in neat lettering:

THIS WAS ONCE A CUSTOM OF MY PEOPLE.
IN MY LIFETIME I SHALL TAKE TWO. THIS IS THE FIRST.

About Louis L’Amour

“I think of myself in the oral tradition—

as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man

in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way

I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.

A good storyteller.”

I
T IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel,
Hondo
, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include
The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum
(his twelfth-century historical novel),
Last of the Breed, Last of the Breed
, and
The Haunted Mesa
. His memoir,
Education of a Wandering Man
, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.