Louis L'Amour - Last of the Breed

Alekhin did not care in the least, but he said, “I hope none of them have families.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“They will die,” Alekhin said coldly. “You have just condemned them to death.”

Rukovsky stared at him. The man was not only arrogant, he was insane!

Alekhin’s eyes held contempt. “You! What a fool you are! Whatever you wanted to accomplish is finished. You are finished.”

Alekhin turned his back and walked away before he could reply. Rukovsky stared after him. Alekhin was Zamatev’s man, and one did not lightly cross Zamatev. Nonetheless—

He glanced around. His men were scattered along the rocky face of the mountain, scattered among the fir and the cedar, their weapons ready, moving forward and upward in an uneven line. There were scattered spruce trees along the slope and several patches of Dahurian larch. Rukovsky paused to take in the wild, barren beauty of the place.

He was a man who read much, who thought much, a man who loved good music and who had been reared in an atmosphere of art and artists. His youngest sister was in the ballet and already accepted as one of the best.

He wished suddenly that she could see this: the vast gray mountain splashed with patches of snow, the dark columns of the spruce, and his soldiers advancing. He turned to look across the canyon. It had widened, and he needed his glasses now to make out the men. They were on bare rock, as here, but were approaching a wide bank of old snow. The snow ran down to the very edge of the canyon, some lopping over the abyss.

Captain Obruchev was in command of that group, a fine officer and a good friend.

Alekhin had disappeared! Irritated, Rukovsky looked around. Where could the man have gotten to?

He was an impudent fool! Yet he had been warned that Alekhin was no respecter of authority. He simply did not care. He wanted nothing they could give him and was afraid of nobody. Zamatev used him, needed him for this sort of thing, and had often said that Alekhin, when he wished, could simply vanish into wild country and lose himself. Just as this American seemed to have done.

He slapped his gloves against his thigh, irritated. He glanced around him, then started forward, his own eyes searching.

What exactly did a man look for, a tracker like Alekhin? Surely, there was nothing Alekhin could see that he could not.

But he could find nothing on this barren, rocky slope. He looked ahead, and along the ridge he saw jagged, serrated rocks with occasional towers, almost like battlements in some places. Directly before him, there was a grove of wild, wind-torn trees looking like a clutch of hags with their wild hair blowing in the wind. Only there wasn’t any wind, just those ragged trees.

He stepped carefully, for a misstep on this broken rock could give a man a nasty fall.

What did Alekhin mean that he was finished? That his career was at an end? Hell, if all went well he would be a general before the year was out! He knew he was in line for promotion and knew that the right people had been spoken to and were interested.

He smiled, mildly amused. After all, so little had changed since the time of the Tsars! Only the names had changed, and instead of the old nobility you had the Party members, and in place of the Grand Dukes you had the Politburo. Only, the Grand Dukes had usually had less power.

Gorbachev had more ability than most of the Tsars, and hopefully he would do something to build Russia internally before it came apart at the seams. But it was hard for any man to move against the sheer inertia of entrenched civil servants who did not want change and feared to lose their privileges.

Wild and treacherous as these mountains were, they possessed a rare kind of beauty. He was glad he was momentarily alone. To truly know the mountains, one should go to meet them as one would meet a sweetheart, alone.

Alone as he was now. Colonel Rukovsky looked off across incredible distances behind him. Far below he could see a helicopter setting down. Three trucks were tailing up the very bad road, looking no larger than ants, although he knew the tops of their radiators were as high as his head.

Whatever else the American’s escape had done, it had brought him here to this unbelievable beauty, which otherwise he might never have seen.

A cold wind blew along the mountain, and he shivered. There were ghosts riding this wind, strange ghosts born of this strange, almost barren land. Far to the west and against the horizon was the Verkhoyansk Range.

He paused, hearing a bird in the brush near the larch. It was a nutcracker; he remembered them from his boyhood.

What had Alekhin meant, saying he was through? It was absurd, but the words rankled. They stuck like burrs in his thoughts, and he could not rid himself of that dire warning.

He was near the haglike trees he had seen, and close up they looked even wilder. One of the trunks was battered and beaten, struck hard by something until the bark had been shattered into threads. Suddenly he remembered a brother officer, a hunter of big game, who had told him of wild rams battering such trees, butting them again and again in simple exuberance and lust for combat.

He paused again to catch his breath. The altitude was high and the air was thin as well as being crisp and cold.

Far off, he thought he heard a shout. Looking around, he could see nothing.

Then, high up on the mountain, Alekhin appeared, pointing. Rukovsky ran forward, looking across the canyon.

His men were lined out, moving in their skirmish line across that vast field of snow above the canyon’s edge.

Then, from somewhere down in the gorge, came a shot.

Colonel Rukovsky saw then a sight he would never forget. His men, twenty-odd of them, were on the field of snow when the shot sounded in the depths of the canyon. An instant of trembling silence when the sound of the shot racketed away along the rocky cliffs, and then horrified, he saw that whole vast field of snow start to move!

There was an instant of frozen stillness as the snow moved, and then his men scattered, some running forward, some running back, a few crouching in place looking for something they could grip. And there was nothing. The whole mountainside seemed to be moving, and then, with a thunderous roar, the snowfield gathered speed and swept toward the rim of the gorge.

Spilling over the lip, it fell like a Niagara of snow into the vast depths below!

One moment he saw his men, swinging arms wildly, fighting to stem the tide; then over they went, and far away as he was he seemed to hear their screams, screams that he would never forget. And one of those who fell was Captain Obruchev, engaged to his sister.

After the roar of the avalanche, silence.

Major Joseph Makatozi crouched beside a giant spruce, looking up the canyon. He was sheltered from the wind, always a major consideration, and his coat made from the hide of a mountain goat was warm. The pelage of the mountain goat-is the finest, softest, and undoubtedly the warmest of any animal. Being white, it blended well with the occasional patches of snow. His pants were made of the same material.

From beside the spruce, he had seen the patrol start across the snowfield. This was war, and they were hunting him to kill or capture. And capture meant eventual death.

He watched them move out on the snowfield with exasperation. What could their commander be thinking of? Certainly, he was not a Siberian, but any Russian accustomed to mountain travel should know better than to walk across a slope that was obviously unstable.

He found himself almost hoping they would make it across, but if they did they would be in a position to see into his hanging valley, and they might even see him in his hideout above it. Certainly, a man with a good glass would be able to pick him out. And he was, for the time being, tired of running.