The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (6 page)

She had seen how avidly the men clutched the tiny packets of tobacco that Kubelik passed out. Maybe that was how her father got the knife.

For a long time she thought, wondering about the mountains and the inlet itself. If she could manage to steal a boat, she might get to the San Tadeo at least, and from there perhaps she could find her father’s ketch. She would need neither food nor water to go that far. The thought of the eight miles against the engine of the schooner changed her mind. The river was out of the question.

Julie got up and put out her light, yet scarcely had the cabin become dark when there was a scratching at the window. Going to it, she stood to one side and peered out. In the vague light she could see a figure crouching in the darkness. Gently, she lifted the window.

“Missy? This Cuyu…you got tobac’…sí?”

Cuyu was one of the Yahgans. She remembered him at the funeral. He had been one of those who carried her father’s body to the grave and helped fill it in. She remembered his eyes as she’d turned away, how they had seemed strangely gentle and compassionate.

“Yes! Yes, I have tobacco! Come to the door!”

“No door! He watch. He watch alla time! You speak me here!”

“Cuyu, can you get me away from here? Can you? Please!”

The Yahgan was silent. What sort of man was he? Would he be even worse than Kubelik? She dismissed that idea at once. Nobody could be worse.

“Can you get me to our ketch? My father was told it was anchored over on the San Tadeo!”

“San Tadeo? Sí. The boat, it there.” There was sudden eagerness in Cuyu’s voice.

She was almost frantic with excitement. “Oh, Cuyu! Take me to it and I’ll give you all this tobacco! Yes, and more, too. Can we steal a dinghy?”

“No.” The finality of his voice ended that possibility. “Maybe mountain.” His voice was doubtful. “You strong? Walk fast? Climb?”

“Yes, oh yes!” Suddenly he hissed, and then like a shadow, he was gone.

Outside, in front of the cabin, she heard a crunch of boots on gravel. Had Kubelik changed his mind? Was he coming
now
? Or was he suspicious?

Instantly, she slipped off her shoes and got into bed, hunching the blankets around her. He came to the door, and she heard her latch lift, but the bar was in place. He hesitated, and there was no sound. Fear welled up within her. Suppose he broke down the door? Certainly, it would be little effort for a man of his brute strength. Praying she could make it sound right, she turned in the bed, as though in sleep.

Footsteps crunched around the house, and she felt rather than saw his head at the window. She had been unable to close it in time, and hoped he would believe she’d left it open for the air. He stood listening, and she kept her breathing deep and regular, hoping he would not look beneath the window for tracks. Suddenly, a light flashed on her face. After a minute of examination, he turned and walked away. Julie lay rigid, listening to the retreat of his footsteps on the coarse gravel.

It could have been no more than a minute before she heard the Yahgan again. Instantly, she was at the window. “I take,” he whispered, “you bring tobac’, sí?”

Swiftly, she dressed. She pulled on her boots and thrust the knife into the capacious pocket of her coat. It took her only a moment to climb through the window. She passed the tobacco to the Yahgan, but he returned it to her. “You keep—for now,” he whispered.

Tugging at her sleeve, he moved off and away. Almost before she realized it, they were working their way through the gray trunks of ancient, long dead trees, and then into the timber itself. Her feet tangled in a soft, sinking bed of moss and she almost fell.

Cuyu caught her sleeve again and guided her in the darkness to a deadfall. She perceived his purpose; by walking on the fallen tree, they could keep out of the moss. Yet it was only a short distance, and then they were struggling in the knee-deep moss again. It was heavy with moisture, and before they had gone fifty yards she was soaked from the knees down. Yet Cuyu seemed to have eyes like a cat, for he found one deadfall after another.

How long they struggled and fought against the clinging, wet fingers of the forest she had no idea. Time and again she fell. She scratched her hands and face, but she kept going, fighting with the strength of desperation for every inch of distance. Suddenly, they emerged from the forest.

She was amazed. Before them, white and wide in the night, lay a glacier! Overhead, the clouds had momentarily parted and a few friendly stars shone through, but the Yahgan was looking at neither the stars nor the glacier. He was moving swiftly out over the icy surface, and the measure of his fear was the measure of her own. From time to time he glanced back. Was he expecting pursuit so soon?

Yet they made better progress now. Nor did Cuyu waste time. He led off swiftly and she almost had to run to keep up. That the Yahgan was frightened was obvious.

Leaving the glacier, they went up a steep, rocky trail along an icy black cliff, then down through a ravine. It was growing gray in the east, and despite all their travel, she had the feeling they had gained little ground. From time to time now, Cuyu stopped. He kept staring ahead, then listening.

Something worried him. She was fighting exhaustion now, for they had not only encountered the roughest possible travel, but had kept up a pace far beyond her strength. Yet the Yahgan showed no evidence of tiring and no intention of slowing down. It was plain that he knew that if they were caught, while she might be taken back to the inlet, he would be killed on the spot.

Cuyu turned now, changing his course to proceed more directly north, but his eyes continued to watch toward his left. Once, through a break in the curtain of trees shrouding the cliff on her left, she thought she saw water.

Was the fact that they must go down to the water what Cuyu feared? Kubelik, guessing their route or seeing their tracks, might use the boat to come around the point and head them off. It would be pitifully easy, and in a matter of an hour he could render useless their night of struggle.

The dim game trail they had been following dipped sharply down into a fantastically rugged gorge. Here the moss was scarce, but the trees were laden with snow, and there was an occasional patch of ice. They went down the steep side, passing themselves from tree trunk to tree trunk to keep from sliding or falling all the way to the bottom.

A brawling stream roared along over stones, and Cuyu dropped on his stomach and drank. Julie followed suit, then got to her feet and looked around.

The gorge curved sharply right before them, and the course of the stream led down toward the north. While the direction was perfect for them and would make travel easier, it must also lead to the inlet she thought she had seen. Now she comprehended the reason for Cuyu’s hurry. He hoped to get to the mouth of the river before they could be headed off.

He started again, with only a glance at her, nearly running wherever the path was smooth enough to permit it. At times they had to climb down over great tumbled masses of white boulders, or walk gingerly across slippery rocks, some of them covered with encroaching peat moss from the forest.

They came out of the trees and into the open delta of rocks and sand where the inlet met the mouth of the San Tadeo River. There was no boat in sight, but they ran now, trying to cover the exposed area as quickly as possible. They reached the woods where the river poured forth, a wide course of dark water rushing down from the mountains, and Cuyu paused to let her catch her breath. For a brief moment he grinned at her.

“Almos’ to boat…you’ll see.”

Slowly, they started upstream along the watercourse, and soon, through the branches of the trees ahead, she could see the white of the ketch’s hull. It was only a matter of minutes to reach the vessel. The trim craft was tied up in a deep backwater out of the main flow of the river. A good anchorage, Julie realized, but a difficult one for her to maneuver out of even with Cuyu’s help. The ketch would have to be carefully backed and turned into the river, with most of the backing being into the current.

Without bothering to pull the boat in to shore, she climbed out on a low hanging branch and dropped to the deck. Cuyu followed as she made her way to the pilot house.

“You take us away?” he asked.

She could see that he was more terrified than ever, now that they had reached their destination. Terrified because, unlike the stretches of forest and glacier, this was a place where Kubelik would have to come on any search for them that he might make. She thought of the difficult job of fighting the river’s current with a reversed engine, of how the ketch would slip sideways even as it moved back, and feared what roots or rocks lurked beneath the black waters of the San Tadeo. Sometime toward morning there would be a tide, and that would make her job much easier, but high tide was hours away and she was sure they didn’t have an hour, let alone hours.

“I can try,” she mumbled. The thought of the miles of gray, white-capped water frightened her. She had spent many months at sea, but never without her father. She took a deep breath and reached out for the switch that activated the pumps. Nothing happened. She tried again.

But the moment she touched the console, she heard it. Off in the distance, but not distant enough, was the low
thot-thot
of an auxiliary engine. It could only belong to Kubelik’s schooner. She turned, and through the open hatchway could see a movement through the trees that blocked her view of the river.

“Quick!” she said to Cuyu. “We must get off the boat and hide.” But the native was already headed across the deck. He jumped for a branch and pulled himself up. Julie, desperate to know the full extent of her troubles, flipped up the cover and glanced into the electrical console. The battery cable had been removed, and the deck boards were scarred where Kubelik had yanked it up through the narrow channel. He had made sure that no one was going to be taking the ketch out of the river, at least not without winching it out of the backwater and upriver against the current. She dropped the cover and ran.

Back on deck, she saw Cuyu motioning frantically from the bank. She’d started for the branch when a shot rang out.

The Yahgan fled. The schooner was drawing into the backwater, and standing in the bow, a rifle in his hands, was Pete Kubelik!

“Cuyu!” Her cry seemed lost in the space between the trees.
“Look out!”

She saw the Yahgan glance back, and then he left his feet and dove into the brush and in that instant the rifle barked. Did he stumble? Or was he already falling of his own volition?

The rifle barked again, but she heard no whine of bullet nor was she hit. Cuyu must have still been alive then, and another shot had been sent to finish the job. She heard Kubelik shout, and turned back to the companionway. Dropping down the ladder, she ran for her father’s cabin. Just as she unlatched the door she both heard and felt Kubelik’s schooner bump up alongside the ketch.

Hanging from leather loops attached to the side of the bunk was George Marrat’s old Mannlicher carbine. Julie jerked it free and grabbed up the leather cartridge wallet that hung with it. Footsteps pounded overhead. She had no time to load and barely time to think. Kubelik was coming down the ladder. As she ducked into the companionway she could see the back of his legs as he descended. She slid through the galley door and threw the lock, although that would hold him only an instant.

Scrambling onto the mess table and pushing open the skylight, she tossed the rifle through and started to crawl out herself. Behind and beneath her, the door splintered open. She rolled through the hinged skylight as Kubelik roared, charging across the cabin.

Julie grabbed the carbine and plunged overboard. The icy water hit her like a fist, a cold, solid hammer in her stomach. Down she went, striking out toward the shore but still sinking. Her clothes, heavy shoes, and seven pounds of rifle carried her to the muddy bottom. Her ears popped and she pushed off, hitting the surface and gulping air. She saw a vague shape to her left and grabbed out, her hand scraping along the side of Kubelik’s schooner. Her eyes cleared, and looking past the bow, she saw Kubelik stalking along the rail of the ketch, rifle in hand.

Julie Marrat took a deep breath and sank away from the boat. A couple of strokes and she felt the bottom again, and then the dirt and roots making up the side of the backwater. A submerged branch hit her in the face, and she grabbed at it, pulling herself up and along a fallen log to the shore. She stumbled up and water poured from her clothes in a rush.

There was a whip of air by her body and then the slam of a rifle shot. Pete Kubelik jacked another round into the chamber of his rifle, the spent case bouncing off the deck of the ketch. On the schooner, Rudy came running forward, shotgun in hand. She fell, rather than ran, into a dark space between the trees.

“You come back here!” Kubelik roared. “You come back or I’ll kill you!”

Now it was the air that was a freezing fist closing on her lungs. Her sopping clothes clung to her as she slogged, almost knee deep in moss, deeper into the forest. Even as she ran she was sobbing with fear. Soon she slowed, realizing that she was leaving a trail even a blind man could follow, and found a deadfall like Cuyu had used. She worked her way deeper and deeper into the immense stand of beeches, and finally, shivering, collapsed from exhaustion.

Her breath came in shuddering gasps, but as she slowly caught her wind she became aware of the silence. There was no noise of pursuit…there was almost no noise at all. For the moment she was safe.

Except the cold would kill her. It was still in the mid-forties, but her wet clothes would rapidly give her hypothermia, and in the night the temperature would drop another ten or fifteen degrees. She tried to hold herself still and quiet her chattering teeth. There were still no sounds of pursuit. She crawled around behind a fallen log and pulled off some chunks of bark, but they seemed too damp to burn. A long crack in the fallen tree, however, gave her access to the inside of the trunk, hollowed out by heart-rot, and from there she used the knife to scrape out some light, dry, strips of wood.