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!”
Thirteen
Peshkov stared at Joe as he muttered a few words to Talya. He was a powerfully built man with thick eyebrows and rather protuberant eyes. He had a way of lowering his head and glaring from under his brows.
Joe Mack understood the sense of the words and suddenly realized why the language had a familiar sound. Had those Lithuanian miners’ children he had known been speaking Russian? If so, he might recall a few words.
Peshkov spoke to Talya, speaking rapidly, irritably. Her reply was quiet but firm. Of this exchange he understood nothing, but he knew trouble when he saw it, and he stood where he was, making no move to leave.
Finally, obviously angry, Peshkov strode away, muttering.
“Trouble?” Joe Mack asked.
“He’s a disagreeable beast,” she said, “but we need him. He is one of our best hunters.”
“He does not like me.”
“He likes nobody. He would like to take command, but it is my father to whom the people look.”
“And to you, I think.”
She shrugged. “Peshkov wants to give the orders. He also wants me,”
“I suspected as much.” Joe Mack turned to go. “If you have trouble I will handle it. ”
During the week that followed he saw nothing of Peshkov, but nothing of Talya, either. He killed a wapiti and brought in more than three hundred pounds’ of meat. His traps yielded well, and in his cave he made two packs, one for Wulff and the other to be sold for whatever the furs would bring. There was, he understood, a black market in furs.
Now, with time in which to do so, he prepared his skins carefully, as he had been taught to do. Each time he met any of the people of the commune he tried his Russian upon them. It was true, as he soon became aware, that the miners’ children had been speaking Russian, and a few words came back to him now. Occasionally he would hear a word spoken by one of the village people that he recognized. In school the children had talked English, but among themselves they reverted to the tongue spoken at home.
In the third week he left the stream where he had been trapping and went up the mountain to the north and set his snares in the headwaters of several small streams there. It was an area that did not seem to have been trapped, far from the village and where he found no tracks of men or any sign that anyone had ever been there before.
His take was rich. From the first setting of the snares he had success. Squirrels, Baronas had told him, were much in demand, and he found them in numbers. He also caught ermine, blue fox, and marmot, whose fur was much sought after. Several times he saw tracks of large bear; from their paw prints it was obvious they were some type of grizzly.
Squatting beside a stream one late afternoon, he considered his position. If he could sell furs he might accumulate a little money to pay his way, if need be. He was progressing with his learning of Russian. Meanwhile he had learned that many of the aborigine population, and he might pass as one, spoke little if any Russian. The Koriak, Yakut, and Lamut peoples had only a smattering of the language. Before spring he must concoct a story he could tell, a cover story that would be plausible enough to be accepted. At least until they had time to think, and by that time he could be gone.
Kyra Lebedev was a beautiful woman who made every effort to appear plain. She had discovered long ago that beautiful women did not advance as rapidly as the less beautiful. Good looks were an asset in a man’s march to success, but not so with a woman. Men suspected you had no brains, and other women were jealous. Success was important to her, and she had quickly taken the measure of Comrade Shepilov. He was an intelligent man, but he was lacking in energy. He wanted success and expected it to come to him. He advanced steadily until suddenly he found himself moving forward alongside Arkady Zamatev.