"L'Amour, Louis - Last_of_the_Breed16" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Amour Louis)

Last of the Breed
Chapter 16

Their voices were stilled. Wind moaned around the eaves, and the fire crackled. A stick fell, sparks flew up. Joe Mack smelled the good smell of wood smoke and waited, ears straining for a breath of sound.
It came. A crunch of feet on the gravel outside. One man only. Joe Mack relaxed, watching the door, as they all were. The latch lifted. The new arrival stamped his feet to free them of mud before entering; then the door opened.
It was Yakov.
He carried no weapon. He came closer to the fire and took off his mittens, stretching his hands to the fire. "It is cold," he said, "cold."
His eyes found Joe Mack. "So? It is not easy, what you did. To come here, to find this place."
Nobody spoke, all seemed to be waiting for something. Joe Mack looked over at Baronas. "Should I go? If you have something to discuss--?"
"No. You are one of us now. Please stay."
Yakov looked up at Baronas, rubbing warmth into his hands. "It is no use. He is no longer in Nerchinsk. He was taken from the prison in the night." He poked a small stick into the fire. "We were too late," he spoke almost in a whisper, "too late!"
"But he lives?" Baronas asked.
"He lived then," Yakov said, "and when he was taken from the prison he was able to walk. I do not know where they have taken him. We must wait."
He glanced at Joe Mack. "They look for you. The job has been given to Alekhin."
"Alekhin!" Baronas exclaimed. "That is bad, bad!"
Yakov shrugged. "He is only a man."
Nobody spoke. Outside the wind whispered. Then Natalya asked, "Yakov? Have you eaten?"
He smiled. "Not today. Yesterday, a little."
"Sit where you are. I shall fix something."
"Meanwhile there is tea," Baronas said. Glancing at him, he said, "You must be tired."
Yakov indicated Joe Mack. "The country is alive because of him. You must be important."
Joe Mack shrugged, accepting a cup of tea for himself. "I have escaped. They do not like that."
Yakov thrust another stick into the fire. "You have not escaped. Siberia is a prison. It has walls of ice. Nobody escapes from Siberia."
"I shall."
"You are a good man in the forest," Yakov admitted. "You left no mark of your passing that I could see, but I am not Alekhin."
"He is good, then?"
"The master. No one is better, no one nearly so good. He is a ghost in the forest, and he can see where nothing is. No one has ever escaped him, no one."
There was talk between them then, but his few words were not enough. When they spoke slowly and directly to him, he could understand if the words were simple. Much he had learned from the miners' children returned to him, and Stephan Baronas was a patient teacher. But when they conversed among themselves, he could catch only a word from time to time. Yet it was warm and comfortable, and he did not wish to move.
The comfort was a danger. He must return to the chill of his own camp, where he would not be so much at his ease as here, where the very cold would serve to keep him alert.
Twenty-nine people, they had told him. He had met no more than half a dozen, and there was little moving about. He knew there was discussion of his presence and argument between those who feared the trouble he would attract and those who valued the meat he could contribute.
Joe Mack got to his feet. "I go," he said, and went out without looking back.
Outside in the dark the wind was raw and cold. The earth was frozen. It was unlikely anyone was watching at this hour and in the cold, but he was wary. When he arrived back at his camp in the rocky hideaway, he built a small fire and prepared his bed. He must make warmer clothing or he would freeze. Yet cold as it was, his health was good, and he lived on the meat he killed. It was a wild life he was living now, but a life to which he was born. He banked his fire and rolled in his bearskin and stared up at the rock overhead. Soon he must be going. He was a danger to them here. A little longer, to learn more of the language, just a little longer.
His eyes had closed, and now they opened again. Was that truly why he was staying on? Or was it that he needed people more than he had believed?
An icy wind whined through the trees, and a branch cracked in the cold. He pulled his bearskin snug about him and tried to hide his head from a trickle of wind from somewhere. He needed to warm the stone before sleeping, to warm it with his fire; this he must do before he slept at night. He reached an arm from the warmth of his bed to push another stick into the coals of his fire. He thought of the rocky cliffs along which he had traveled, of the rivers he must cross and the forests he must travel. And then he thought of Alekhin, the man tracker, of Alekhin who was out there somewhere, out there looking for sign, trying to find him.
He had believed they did not know where he was, but over the past weeks he had seen several parties of soldiers, searching. By chance? Or had he left some clue, some indication of his passing?
Alekhin was good. He must be doubly careful.
For two days he remained away from what he had come to think of as the village, but on the third day he killed a goral and took its meat to share.
He went to the house of Baronas, but there was no one there. Disappointed, he turned to go; then he added some fuel to the fire and left the meat he had brought. He walked away into the forest.
He was deep in the forest, walking on damp leaves among the birch trees and the larch, when he saw her.
She was standing in a natural aisle among the birch and the larch. Her hood was thrown back, and a vagrant shaft of sunlight touched her blond hair. She was, he realized, a beautiful woman. Not that it mattered to him. The days were passing into weeks, and soon he would be leaving.
She came down through the forest to meet him and paused a few feet away. "You have not been to see us."
"I built up your fire, and I left meat."
"Thank you. We found the meat and knew it was you." She paused. "We were not gone long." She hesitated again. "There was a meeting."
He waited, saying nothing. Somewhere, something stirred among the dead leaves.
"The meeting was about you. Peshkov wants you to leave. So does Rusinov. They are important men among us. My father spoke for you, and so did Yakov.
" 'Where would he go?' Yakov asked. It is the dead of winter. '
" 'No matter,' Peshkov argued. 'He is a danger to us all.'
" 'And we all eat meat he has killed,' my father said."
"I shall go soon."
"Where will you go? Where can you go?"