The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (10 page)

No more planes came over…by nightfall he was dead tired and glad for sleep. On the fifth morning, two snowshoe rabbits were in his snares…on the sixth morning a third rabbit. He had no luck with the larger and more cautious Arctic hares. On that day, he ate nothing but food he had gathered himself, except for tea.

He had avoided the plane except to clean off the snow…only once after his first leaving had he entered, but the motionless bodies of his former companions had filled him with gloom. Instead he collected debris from the crash, pounding sheets of aluminum into a crude stove and reflector.

On the seventh morning, his snares were empty and for the first time he failed to add to his supply of food. On the eighth day, they were again empty…he struggled to the tundra for more of the yellow roots. Returning, he found a patch of black crowberries and, sitting there in the open, he ate all he could find.

Since that one time he had heard no planes…had the search been abandoned? Had it been a searching plane at all?

On the ninth morning, he found a small snowshoe rabbit in a snare and made a rich stew using lichen and the yellow roots. But still he heard no planes. He no longer listened for them nor looked for them. He went on about the business of survival…he gathered lichen and roots, he checked his snares…the rabbits were more cautious now…he added to his supply of fuel.

Returning to the plane, he found his bag, forgotten until now. Back at his fire, defying the cold and the loneliness, he shaved. Almost at once he felt better. The smooth feel of his cheeks under his hand was better than the scraggy beard. He concealed the bag under the trunk of the tree.

His clearing had taken on a lived-in look. The snow was trodden down, there was a huge stack of fuel, the lazy smoke of the fire. There were the skins of the rabbits he had staked out. He added fuel to his fire, including a chunk of birch, and walked away.

Alone on the edge of the tundra, he looked across the flat white sea of snow…what lay beyond? Just a vast space, or perhaps a settlement? A trapper’s cabin? He was slogging along over the snow, head down, when he smelled smoke. A lot of smoke…

His head came up—then he broke into a clumsy run. From the site of his shelter rose a bright column of flame!

Heart pounding, he lunged across the snow. Twice he fell, plunging headlong, facedown in the snow. He had been almost a mile away…he stumbled into the clearing and stopped, blank with despair.

His shelter was gone. His blankets were gone. The other coat was gone. Only charred, useless masses remained. More than half his fuel was gone and the rest still burned.

In a panic, he tore at the pile of fuel, pulling the pieces back, rubbing the fire away in the snow. A spark blowing into the dry, resinous stuff of the shelter must have set it off. A low wind whined among the bare boughs overhead, moaned in the evergreens, stirring the blackened ashes of his fire, rattling the dead fingers of the birch, whispering out over the tundra, a lonely reminder of the cold and the night to come.

Soon it would be dark…it would be colder. Wind would come…his clothing would turn to ice now for he had perspired freely…his strength was burned out from the running and the work…he would die…he would freeze.

He stared around him…what to do? Where to begin again? Begin again? He was a fool to begin again. Begin again…? He laughed hysterically. His little corner of civilization was gone. But what had it been? A pitiful shelter. An almost irreplaceable pile of wood. Some junk that he had used to survive. Before the crash he probably would never have recognized it as a camp, he might have thought it trash collected by the wind. Before the crash he never would have recognized what had burned as being the difference between life and death. He never realized how little it took, never realized how simple the things were…as long as they were the right things.

He had to do something….

With his knife he made rawhide strips of the rabbit skins. It was growing dark, the wind was increasing. Another storm was coming. He must contrive something new…there was a patch of willows no more than two hundred feet away. He went there, scanned a thick clump a dozen feet around, and then going into the clump he broke off all the central trees, none of them in the center being over two inches in diameter, mostly less. Then he drew the tops of the outer ones down and tied them together with the rawhide strips. When he had several of them with their tops tied at the center, he went out and wove others among them, using some willows but mostly evergreens. As the dark closed in he was making a strong, hivelike shelter with a hole in the top for smoke to escape. A shelter strong because it was made of living trees.

Trampling down the snow, he dug a hole with his knife and built a small fire there. He carried boughs within and scattered them around, then made a bed near the fire. Outside he threw more evergreens on the house, then gathered fuel. One of the deadfalls was close by, and working until long after dark, he carried as much of it to the door as he could, and several armsful inside.

Finally he made a door of woven boughs and pulled it across the entrance. Outside the snow was falling, the wind was blowing with hurricane force. Inside his wigwam of willow and evergreen, its framework rooted in the ground, he was secure.

His blankets were gone and his food was gone…including the precious tea…but outside the snow fell and packed tighter and thicker about his shelter. Inside it grew warmer. A drop from overhead fell and hissed gently in the flames. Reclining on the boughs, he considered the situation again. This storm would end hope of rescue…everything would be shrouded in snow and he doubted if he would have the strength to uncover the plane…and for days he would not have the time. He must find food again, set snares, gather more fuel.

If he could only trap a caribou! Sitting up suddenly…there was that book about China…what had its name been? It had told how they trapped deer in the Altin Tagh…a hole about eight to twelve inches in diameter and a couple of feet deep…less could do…and a ring of sharp sticks, the sharp ends pointing toward the center. When the deer stepped into the hole, the sharp sticks would prevent it being withdrawn. Then he could rush in with his knife…he grinned at himself. What preposterous thing would he think of next?

Awakening in the dark, icy cold of morning, he rebuilt his fire and this time the shelter grew quickly warm, testifying to the thick outer covering of snow. He squatted beside the fire, dreading the outer cold but dreading more the cold his leaving would let into his shelter.

He must have food, and unless the snow had buried the snares completely, he might have something. There had been a few more stalks of the yellow root not too far away on the tundra. The idea of the previous night returned. If he could kill a larger animal his food problem would be solved for days on end…and if trapped, he might kill it with a sharp stick or his knife. Banking his fire carefully, he went out of the hut, closing the door and covering it with snow.

All was white and still, but with a strange difference. Suddenly, almost with shock, he realized why. The sky was clear!

Now, if ever, a plane might come. But were they still searching? Had they given up? Then he remembered…the crashed plane was shrouded in snow and would be invisible from the sky!

He started toward it, then stopped. The chance of rescue was a wild gamble and he needed food. In this country, one’s strength need wane only a little for the cold to kill. Weakness and exhaustion were fatal. Turning, he walked toward the snares. Two were buried and useless…the third had been tripped and the rabbit had escaped. He reset them and went through the woods to the tundra and found two stalks of the yellow-rooted plant. The roots were pitifully small.

Circling back, he stopped suddenly. In the snow before him were the tracks of a herd of caribou. The tracks were fresh and the herd must have passed within a few minutes! He was following them when suddenly he heard the roar of a plane!

Wheeling around, he ran from under the trees and stared up at the sky…it was there, big and silver and beautiful! It was low enough to see him. But it was also low enough to be quickly out of sight. He sprang into the air, shouting hoarsely. It disappeared off over the trees to the north. Rushing toward his shelter, he could only think that the crashed plane had been covered with snow. He went past the shelter and finally got to the plane. He had no more than reached it when he heard the ship returning.

It was coming too fast…he could never make it. Desperately, he began trying to uncover some part, the silver of a wing, to the sunlight. But the snow was heavy and he was too late, the plane soared off to the south and its sound died rapidly away.

Glumly, he started to turn back and then went to work and cleaned the snow from the one undamaged wing and the fuselage. It was a slow, heavy task and noon had come and gone before he completed it. He was physically exhausted and ravenously hungry.

A plane had come, crossed over the area and gone. He must, he told himself, appreciate the significance of that. It meant his last chance for rescue was gone. They would not cover the same ground twice. As he prepared his meal, he considered that, using the two yellow roots and his prize…an Arctic hare found in a snare set that very morning.

All right then. No rescue. If he was to survive until spring and then walk out, he must do it on his own. Dru Hill was surprised to find that he did not view the situation with alarm. He could survive…he had proved that…and if he could trap a caribou, he would have a good supply of meat. He could trap two if he could trap one. He could dry or smoke the meat and so build supplies for spring. He could make a pair of snowshoes and, now that hope of rescue was abandoned, he could afford to go further afield for food, not needing to remain near the crashed ship.

He took a deep breath and thought of the miles of wilderness that surrounded him. He didn’t have much but the woods could provide, they had shown him that. He no longer thought of this Arctic forest with fear. It was beautiful, the trees comforting, the vast expanse of tundra a wonder and a challenge. His hearing had become supernaturally acute, his sense of smell delicate. He could survive.

This was something he never could have imagined two weeks ago. A man needed lights, an automobile, the complex comforts of the modern world. He, in his chosen profession, had provided the electricity, the gasoline, and the plastics to provide those comforts.

He grinned to himself. Farther afield there might be better hunting grounds, berries, perhaps more game. He thought of something else…of the change in himself. Here he was, calmly and with confidence considering surviving the entire winter where a few days before he had doubted his ability to survive a few hours. But he was right. His doubts were gone, and justly so. This place was warm and could be made warmer. He could take some metal from the plane for heads for a spear and for arrows. He could…he heard voices.

He pushed aside the door and thrust his head out. Three men, two of them in Canadian Air Force uniforms, and the third was Bud Robinson, were slogging down the path.

He stood there and they stared at him, and then Robinson said, “By the Lord Harry! It’s Dru Hill!”

Robinson looked around curiously. “We never dreamed anyone would be alive, but when we flew over this morning, Gene thought he saw a black spot on the snow. Only it was not on the snow, but where the snow had melted off the trees over your fire, here.”

“We flew clear back to the post,” Gene explained, “but it kept nagging me. There shouldn’t be anything black after all that snow falling, so we took a chance and came back. It’s lucky for you that we did.”

Hours later the plane dropped down onto the runway of an airfield surrounded by warehouses and industrial buildings. Nearby a pipeline ran toward the distant sea. Dru Hill was hustled across the field and into a waiting ambulance. He insisted on sitting in front with the driver and at the hospital they gave him a clean bill of health, something he had not doubted.

They left him alone finally, the reporters, and doctors, company representatives, and police, in a brand-new motel room near the airfield. The walls and roof seemed strangely close. He paced the odd green carpeting far into the night. To Dru Hill the room smelled of cleansers and cigarettes and wallpaper glue. It was uncomfortably warm. He opened the window, letting in the cold night air and a small shard or two of ice. Beyond the parking lot was a line of scraggly pines obscuring a set of trash bins and the highway. The sound of engines and tires on the asphalt filled his ears. The air outside smelled like gasoline. Gasoline and garbage.

But then the wind blew and after a moment it carried away those smells, replacing them momentarily with the smell of the great Alaska beyond. Beyond the suburbs, the trailers, the gravel pits, and oil wells. He remembered how, as the plane lifted itself from the snow, he had looked back. The trees at the edge of the forest were only a dark line. The place where he had built his hut, staked his furs, and piled the wood for his fire could no longer be seen.

But he knew it was there.

The Diamond of Jeru

T
he Penan people of Borneo say that the forest and the earth will provide for you if only you will let them. I hadn’t exactly found that to be true, but what did I know? I was an American, stopping briefly in their land and ignorant of their ways.

I
WAS DOWN
to my last few coins when John and Helen Lacklan arrived in Marudi. I’d come down from Saigon to make my fortune but luck had not been with me. For over a year I’d been living like a beachcomber who had accidentally found his way inland. There was a longing in me to make my way back home but no money to do it with. I’d told myself it was better to stay where I was and wait for an opportunity. Around Sarawak, in those days, a white man could go a long way just on confidence and the color of his skin.

My luck paid off in this way: a friend in the government office offered to send me some tourists, Mr. and Mrs. John Lacklan. He had set me up, time and again, with minor engineering and construction jobs and was responsible for my having been able to keep body and soul together over the last few months. The Lacklans were an American couple, in from Singapore. They were recently married and, most importantly, they were looking for a diamond.

Now they find diamonds around Bandak, around Kusan, and near Matapura, to name only a few places. They also find some rare colors in the Sarawak River. Most so-called “fancy” stones are found in Borneo, for diamonds come in a variety of colors, including black. But after looking over the possibilities they had come up the Baram River to Marudi or Claudtown, as some called it, and Vandover was going to send them to me.

It was late in the day and the wind picked up slightly, coming in over the river to where we sat on his porch near the old fort. “I told him about you.” Vandover poured cold beer into my glass. “He wants to go up the Baram. You want enough money to get you home and…” He eyed me mischievously. “I suspect that you wouldn’t mind having one more go at the river yourself. All the better if Mr. Lacklan is paying.”

We toasted my good fortune and I let the beer slide back down my throat. Cold beer had been a rare and precious luxury in my world for too long. If everything worked out I would soon be done with Borneo and on my way back…back to the land of cold beer.

I
T WAS DARK
by the time I got home. I navigated my way across the room to the bed. Without lighting a lamp I undressed and lay back under the mosquito netting. Above my head fireflies cruised lazy circles against the ceiling, flickering, on…off…on…

Money to go home. A buck or two to help get my feet back under me at the worst. At the best…?

I, too, had come to Borneo hunting diamonds. If you were lucky you washed them out of a river just like panning for gold. I had found a fortune of them, in a pool just below a dried-up waterfall. I had spent a month in the bush digging them from the river, but ultimately, the river had taken them back.

Eager to return with my treasure and careless, I’d put my canoe into a rapid at the wrong angle and almost lost my life. As it was I lost the boat, the diamonds, and most of my kit. A family of Iban pulled me from the water and took care of me until I was on my feet again. I was seven weeks getting back, nursing broken ribs and a persistent fever.

What money I had left had slowly trickled away; paid out to Raj, my houseboy, and for food, drink, and quinine. I’ve heard it said that, in the tropics, you rented your life from the devil malaria and quinine was the collector. After my disaster on the Baram the disease had become a most demanding landlord.

But now I would have another chance. We would go upstream of the pool where I found my diamonds, closer to the source, the find would be better this time and I’d have Lacklan’s fee even if we didn’t locate a single stone. With the good feeling of money in my pockets I drifted off to sleep.

M
Y PLACE WAS
a deserted bungalow that I’d adopted and repaired. When Lacklan and his wife appeared, I was seated on the verandah idly reading from Norman Douglas’s
South Wind.

They turned in the path, and I got to my feet and walked to the screen door. “Come in,” I called out, “it isn’t often I have visitors.”

As they came up on the porch, I noticed that Helen’s eyes went at once to the book I had been reading. She glanced up quickly, and smiled. “It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it?”

She was tall and lean, with fine thin limbs and dark blue eyes that shone in the shadow of her wide-brimmed straw hat. She had a face like that of a model from one of those fashion ads but with more character, faint friendly lines around the corners of her eyes and mouth, no makeup. Her nose was large but perfectly shaped and her jaw betrayed strength, a strength that also was apparent in her body, beautifully formed but built for a lifetime of swimming and skiing. Her skin, where it disappeared under the fabric of her sundress, looked like it was taking on a healthy shade of copper from the equatorial sun.

She had commented on my book…. “It’s an old friend,” I said, smiling.

Lacklan looked from one to the other of us, irritated. “You’re Kardec?” he demanded. “I’m John Lacklan.” He was tall and slightly stooped. A thin blue vein pulsed in one of his temples as he peered at me from behind glasses with round, nearly black lenses. Vandover had told me he was an administrator at one of the big government labs back in the States. Atom bombs or something.

Lacklan pushed ahead, up the stairs. “I understand you’re the authority on diamonds?” The way he said “authority” indicated that he doubted it.

“Well”—I hesitated because I was well aware of all that I didn’t know—“maybe. Will you sit down? We’ll have a drink.”

Raj was already at my elbow. He was a Sea Dyak, not over sixteen, but his mind was as quick and intelligent as anyone I’ve ever encountered.

“Scotch,” Helen said, “with soda…about half.”

Raj nodded and glanced at Lacklan, who waved a careless hand. “The same,” he said.

When Raj returned with our drinks, Helen sat there sipping hers and watching me. From time to time, she glanced at her husband, and although she said nothing, I had an idea that she missed nothing.

“You’ve been up the Baram, above Long Sali?” he asked.

“Yes.” I saw no reason for explaining just how far I had gone. Marudi was a rough sixty miles from the mouth and Long Sali was a village a hundred fifteen miles farther upriver.

“Are there diamonds up there? Gemstones?”

“There are,” I agreed, “but they are scattered and hard to find. Most of the stones are alluvial and are washed out of creeks back up the river. Nobody has ever located their source.”

“But you know where diamonds can be found, and you can take us to them. We’re not wasting our time?”

In this part of the world I had become used to the cultures of Chinese and Malay, Muslim and British, all of these groups had a sense of politeness or patience bred into them. In comparison the directness and force of Lacklan’s questions was like an attack.

“You are not wasting your time,” I assured him. “I’ve found diamonds. I can’t promise, but with luck, I can find more. Whether they are bort or gem quality will be anyone’s guess.”

“You speak the language?” he asked.

“I speak marketplace Malay,” I said, “and a scattering of Iban. Also,” I added dryly, “I know that country.”

“Good! Can you take us there?”

“Us?” I asked cautiously. “Your wife, too?”

“She will go where I go.”

“It’s our project, Mr. Kardec,” Helen Lacklan said. She stretched out a long, firm hand to show me the ring on her finger. An empty setting stared up at me like a blind eye. “John gave me this ring five years ago. We’re going to find the stone together.”

It was a wonderful, romantic notion but far easier said than done.

“You know your business best,” I said carefully, “but that’s no country for a woman. It’s jungle, it’s miserably hot, and there are natives up there who have never seen a white man, let alone a white woman. Some of them can’t be trusted.”

I was thinking of one nefarious old codger in particular.

“We’ll be armed.” His manner was brusque and I could see his mind was made up. I suddenly had a vision that both amused me and made me very nervous: John Lacklan as Henry Stanley blasting his way through the forests of central Africa. His chin was thrust out in a way that told me he was primed for an argument…I knew to never come between a man and his weapons, especially when he’s a client. I turned to her.

“I don’t want to offend you, Mrs. Lacklan, but it is very rough country, bad enough for men alone, and with a woman along…” I could see I was going to have to give her a better argument. “There will be snakes and leeches. I’m not trying to scare you, it’s just a fact. We’ll be on the water and in the water all day, every day, and with the humidity we’ll never get dry, not until we get back. We’ll be eating mostly fish we catch ourselves and rice. There is the risk of infection from any cut or scrape and an infection while you’re upriver can kill you.”

She was quiet for a moment. “I believe I’ll be all right,” she said. “I grew up in Louisiana, so the heat and humidity…well, they are only a little bit worse here.” She laughed and her teeth were white and perfect. “Really, Mr. Kardec, I’m quite strong.”

“I can see that,” I said, and then wished I’d said nothing at all.

Lacklan’s head snapped up and for a moment he glared at me. This man was deeply jealous, though Helen didn’t seem the kind of person who would give him reason. Of course, that very fact made her all the more attractive.

She caught his reaction to me and quickly said, “Perhaps it would be better if I stayed here, John. Mr. Kardec is right. I might make trouble for you.”

“Nonsense!” he replied irritably. “I want you to go.”

His eyes narrowed as they turned back to me and burned as they looked into mine. I couldn’t tell if he was disturbed about my appreciation of his wife or because I’d made her consider not going upriver with him or, and I only thought of this later, because I’d made her consider staying in Marudi where she would be on her own while we were gone.

“We will both go, Mr. Kardec. Now what will it cost me and when can we leave?”

I explained what they would need in the way of clothing and camping gear. Warned them against wearing shorts, no reason to make life easy for the mosquitoes and leeches. And then told them my price.

“I get a thousand, American. The canoes, Raj, and four Iban crewmen will run you six-fifty. Kits, food, first-aid and mining supplies, maybe another three to three-fifty. Depends on whose palm I have to grease.”

“Is that the best you can do?” he objected. “You’re taking more than half for yourself!”

“Look, Mr. Lacklan, I’ve been where you need to go. I’ve found diamonds…lots of diamonds. I lost them all but I know where they were. If it was easy, or cheap, I’d be back there working that streambed right now instead of trying to make a deal with you.”

I could see something behind his glasses. A calculation taking place, like in one of the computers he probably used at work, punch cards feeding in data, tubes glowing with orange light. “All right,” he said. “But how are we going to split up our take? After all, I’m paying for this expedition. I should get a piece of whatever you dig out.”

I guess I recoiled a bit. Anyway, Helen looked at me in concern and Lacklan leaned back in his chair smugly. I hadn’t really given it much thought. I’d figured that I’d take them there and they’d work the river in one area and I’d find somewhere else. I could see that this might lead to problems, especially once he realized that he could enlist the boat crews in the digging and panning.

“We’ll split what we find, fifty-fifty,” I said. “With the best stone to be for Mrs. Lacklan’s ring.” He was still gazing at me, one eyebrow arched above the round steel rim of his dark glasses. I gave in a little more. “I’ll give Raj and the boat crews a bonus from my share.”

Helen Lacklan turned to him. “That’s fair, darling, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

We settled on a date, ten days from then, to leave. They went to the door and Helen hesitated there. “Thank you,” she said graciously. “I enjoyed the drink.”

They walked away toward the town.

It’s maybe only once in a lifetime that a man sees such a woman, and I confess I looked after them with envy for him. It made my throat dry out and my blood throb in my pulses just to look at her, and it was that as much as anything else that made me worry about taking the job. A man needed all his attention on such a trip as this…and no man could remain other than completely aware of such a woman when she was near him.

Nothing moves fast in the tropics, yet despite that I had lined up the boats, boatmen, and equipment within a week. Raj was instrumental in bringing everything together as always. Even when I had no money he stuck with me. “You make better job, boss,” he’d say when I pushed him to look for work elsewhere. “We don’t work much but we make lots money!” I’m not sure that I’d have liked the irregular pay if I had been in his place. But Raj seemed to come alive when trying to figure out something he’d never done before and the jobs we got were always a challenge of one kind or another.

Around Marudi I caught sight of John and Helen once or twice, it wasn’t a big place. He was not one to take his attention from whatever he was doing to nod or say hello but once or twice I got a smile from her. Then for several days in a row I didn’t see either of them.

The day before we were supposed to leave I spotted the Lacklans coming up the path from town. And something—their postures, the way they walked?—told me the plan had gone wrong.

“Kardec?” There was a bluster in his manner that seemed ready to challenge any response that I might have. “We’ve made other arrangements. I’ll pay whatever expenses you’ve incurred so far.” Helen did not meet my eyes.

“Other arrangements?” The answer was evasive. “You’ve decided not to go?”

“We’ll be going, but with someone else. How much do I owe you?”