"L'Amour, Louis - Last_of_the_Breed12" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

"We will teach you," Baronas replied, "if there is time."
Joe Mack found his own place in a thick stand of birch mingled with aspen. Here and there were clusters of larch and pine. As usual in aspen forests the deadfalls were many, but as he worked his way deeper into the forest, planning to build a shelter from the dead timber, he found a crack in the rock of the cliff that lay behind the aspen. It was scarcely wide enough to edge through, but he had long since learned never to trust first appearances. He had edged back about eight feet when he stopped in midstep. Before him there was an ominous black hole that seemed to extend on into the mountain. Tossing a piece of rock, he heard it bound from side to side and finally end, far below, in a splash. He was starting to edge back when he noticed a shelf of rock going off to his left. It was all of four feet wide and ended in a much wider shelf.
Preparing a torch, he edged back into the crack, and lighting the torch he saw a wide area of bare flat rock under an overhang higher than a man's head. It was a cave-shelter, opening on that crevasse in which he had heard water, but the cave was partly sheltered by the rock wall and partly by a thick stand of larch. It was a fine hiding place, an excellent shelter, and it needed exploration.
He spent the afternoon setting snares along some small creeks where he saw the tracks of small animals. The weather was cold and the water was icy. He worked along several small streams that flowed toward the river in an area where he saw no tracks or evidence of trapping by others.
No matter how friendly Baronas and his daughter might be, Joe Mack knew there would be opposition from some of the community to his being included, even for a short time. Hence, he must prove his value to the group so they would accept him, no matter how reluctantly. He could live out the winter anywhere in this area, with or without them, but to finally escape he needed to know some Russian and he needed to get some rubles.
Returning at night to the Baronas's, he secured his bearskin and the rest of his gear.
"You needn't go," Baronas said. "We enjoy your company. It isn't often we have visitors, and I haven't talked to an American for nearly forty years. Not since the War."
"Tomorrow night," he promised. "Tonight I have work."
Several people came to the doors of their lodges to watch him pass. He merely nodded and went on about his business. He knew that during his absence his presence would be discussed, and he did not wish to interfere by being anywhere about during the discussions.
Returning to his cave, he packed firewood and stored it, working hard, clearing some of the deadfalls from near the trail he would use. In the process he found another entry to the cave, well hidden behind the trunk of a huge old tree. He carried in spruce boughs for a bed and found a place for his fire where the smoke would be dissipated by the foliage.
His cave was a mere overhang of rock, with the deep crevasse in front of it, half the front covered by the upthrust of rock through a crack of which he had first entered. The rest of the cave was hidden by the thick stand of tangled larch across the crevasse.
He had shelter from overhead, shelter from the wind, and a hidden corner of the cave that a fire would heat. As time went on he could make it more secure against cold. Sooner or later his neighbors would know where he was living, but he did not intend to show them, except, perhaps, Stephan Baronas and Talya.
Perhaps he could hide out the winter here, and in the spring, when the search for him had run its course, he might escape. On the third day he hunted.
The vegetation here was a mixture of the Trans-Baikal through which he had traveled and the Far Eastern region, similar, he supposed, to what grew in Manchuria. Working his way up the low mountains, he sighted and stalked a goral, a small curly-haired antelope. Later, coming back into the larch, he killed three large grouse. In each case he made his kills with the sling, and the grouse, after he struck one down, seemed in no way frightened. He was able to kill two more before they flew away.
He returned to the community under the trees and hung up the goral, keeping its hide. The grouse he took to the Baronas's and ate with them.
When he ran his trap line, he discovered that eleven of the more than thirty snares had paid off. He had taken two ermine, five squirrels, and four blue foxes. It was a good catch, but he reset the snares and deadfalls and then returned to his hideout, where he skinned out the hides and kept some of the flesh to bait his traps. That night he began his lessons in speaking Russian, learning the simplest things first, greetings and replies, and a number of terms: hot and cold, near and far, and high and low, and the terms for forest, swamp, river, lake, pool, house, and town.
"Tomorrow," Baronas commented, "I start for Aldan. I shall be gone several days. We are taking a bundle of furs for Wulff, and there is a man there who buys furs and does not ask questions."
"I have furs to contribute to Wulff and some to sell."
"Good! I thought as much. Bring them over very early, and we will see what we can do."
Next morning before dawn he brought the furs to Baronas. Handing them to him, he said, "Hurry back. I have much to learn."
Two others were going with Baronas, a short, heavyset man named Botev and his partner, Borowsky. When they had disappeared from sight, Talya said, "I've coffee on. Will you come in?"
When he was seated with a cup in his hand, she said, "You have done well with the trapping."
"As a boy I knew little else. It was a way of my people."
"I do not know your people. "
"We were a nation of warriors," he said simply. "We had conquered more territory than Charlemagne. Perhaps, had the white man not come, we could have conquered it all." He paused. "There were, of course, the Blackfeet. They were warriors, also."
"You were defeated by the white man?"
"By our own ignorance and by our customs. The Indian thought of a battle as a war. He did not think in terms of campaigns. It was a handicap. Also, there was the matter of supplies. We had no extended plan. The white man thought in campaigns, of a series of battles until an enemy was defeated. He did not fight for glory, but for victory. The Indian could not adjust, not in time.
"Nor was he accustomed to fight in winter. When the white man attacked his winter camps he was not prepared and was driven into the snow."
They were silent, and then she said, "And when spring comes, what will you do?"
"Return to my country."
"It must be beautiful, your country. We hear much of it, and I would like to see it, but I would be afraid of the gangsters."
He chuckled. "I lived there many years and I never saw one. There are thieves, dope smugglers, the rats that always live on the fringes of what we wish to be a civilization. They are something that exists and must be coped with, just as you do here in Soviet Russia. "
He paused. "My country is beautiful, much of it. We have our sore spots, as do all countries, but that is where I belong."
"Maybe I can go there sometime. I would like that."
He looked at her. "You could go. If you could leave Russia they would welcome you. Maybe Russians will be free to travel someday, too. All things change. We would welcome Russians as visitors. In the old days many Russians settled in America and became good farmers, good citizens."
He got up. "I have much to do. May I come for coffee again?"
"When you wish."
At the door he paused. "It is better, I believe, if no one knows exactly where I live, except for you and your father, if you wish to know."
"Perhaps."
A rough voice interrupted. "So? You have a visitor!"
It was the man Peshkov.
"Yes," Joe Mack said.
Peshkov scowled. "I do not know you."
Joe Mack suddenly felt good. "Oh, but you will! You will!"