Slipping out of his snow cave, he found two branches of the right length and brought them back into the cave, stripping the foliage to leave the bare poles. These he warmed over a fire, taking his time and bending them slightly from time to time. When they were sufficiently thawed, he bent each into an oval and tied the ends. Then with rawhide strips he had saved, he made a webbing and thongs to cover his toe and instep.
For two days he stayed in the snow cave, improving his snowshoes and simply waiting. The search continued, and from time to time he heard planes and once a helicopter, flying very low over the treetops. There had been much snow, and whatever tracks he had made had long since been covered. On the third evening he came out of his cave, collapsed it, and started off through the woods with a swinging stride, wearing his snowshoes.
Avoiding trails, he kept to the mountainsides, alert for any sound, any search parties. The temperature had fallen, and it was piercingly cold. His body had gradually grown somewhat accustomed to it, although he was careful not to work up a sweat and to avoid falls.
He covered something over twenty miles, as nearly as he could judge, and came to another surfaced road. No tire tracks broke the surface of the snow. For a moment he hesitated. To cross the road meant leaving a trail and the snow was not falling so steadily, yet there was no other way. He crossed the road and went up into the trees.
Despite being well covered, with only slits for his eyes, his face was nevertheless stiff with cold. It had been long since he had been warm, and he was running low on food. He would have to make a kill soon. Meat, and especially fat, was essential.
So far, he had been traveling through thick forest and more often than not at night, yet he had made goggles of bark with narrow slits for vision. These he could tie on to prevent the glare that causes snow blindness.
He was plodding into the forest when he turned to look back. He had heard no sound, but a car had stopped and a man had gotten out to study the tracks. The man looked up and looked right at him. Joe Mack stood within the very edge of the woods, but apparently he was visible, for the man lunged for his car. His intentions were obvious, and Joe Mack whipped an arrow from his quiver. As the man turned, he notched his arrow and let fly. The man’s rifle was coming up when the arrow hit him.
He staggered, grasping at his throat, the rifle discharging as it fell into the snow. Joe Mack ran closer and then stopped and bent his bow a second time, for the man was struggling to sit up. The distance was less than twenty yards now, and the arrow went true.
Quickly, he withdrew his arrows, losing the head from one of them but returning the other to his quiver. Inside, the car was warm. There was a pack and, on the seat, a pistol in a holster. There were cartridges also. These he gathered up. There was an emergency kit of food, and that he took. Suddenly, he stopped.
Stooping, he picked up the dead man and loaded him into the car. Then he put the rifle in the car, too. Its motor was still running. Taking off his snowshoes, he got in behind the wheel and drove off. Somewhere ahead, there would be a village.
He drove steadily. No other cars. The hour was late, and thinking of that, he turned to the dead man beside him and then stopped the car. It needed only a minute to take the wristwatch from the dead man’s wrist and the money, little though it was, from his pocket. He would leave the car and the dead man, and perhaps they would believe he had been robbed by hooligans.
The village, when he came to it, after driving nearly thirty miles, was a mere cluster of houses and sheds. It was obviously some sort of a way station, but there was no power line here. Driving the car into the shadows of a shed, he got out of the car and took his snowshoes, the food supply, and his pack. Then he walked away into the night and the swirling snow.
Tomorrow they would find the car. Hopefully, they would not at once think of him. If there were an autopsy, something he doubted, they would find his arrowhead. Leaving the road, he struck off toward the northwest and into the forest.
All was white and still; snowflakes fell steadily and might cover any trail he left. In any event, it had to be chanced. He headed off into the night, moving at a steady pace.
He now had enough food for a day or two, and he had a pistol. He would use it only in dire necessity. The rifle he had not wanted, as the report of a gun might attract undue attention, and he could hunt as well with his bow and arrows.
An hour after daylight he built a snow cave and crawled into it. Almost at once he was asleep.
The man he had killed had known who he was. Furthermore, he had not hesitated to shoot. A bullet could have disabled or killed him. What worried him was that the man had not hesitated, which implied that he knew who he was and was himself probably involved in the chase.
They were closing in. That was the only way to understand what had happened. They were closing in, and they knew he was in the vicinity. The answer to that was to get out of it as last as possible.
The food he had taken from the car lasted three days, and at the end of that time he killed a deer. He was in the taiga now, and had seen no sign of human life since abandoning the car. He made camp in a snow cave and broiled a venison steak. As he was now moving away from the coast, his shelters in snow caves would be coming to an end. The snow was not so deep further inland.
As evening came, safely in his snow cave, he built a small fire with a reflector to push heat back into the cave, and he pondered.
Alekhin, being driven in another black Volga, came to Topka late on the same afternoon. Peter Petrovich was awaiting him at the office of the collective.
“I have no idea how long it had been there,” he said. “It has been bitter cold, and nobody was stirring around except from the house to the barn. Anyway, the man had been dead for some time.”
They walked across to the car. There was no blood on the car seat, and the body was on the passenger’s side of the car. His rifle had been fired, but there was no cartridge case in the car. The emergency food his men carried was gone, and so were his pistol, his wristwatch, and his money.
“Thieves,” Peter Petrovich said. “They will steal anything they can get their hands on.”
Alekhin opened the dead man’s clothes to look at the wound. It was round and not too large. It could have been made by a bullet, but something was warning him it had not.
On a table in the house he took off the dead man’s coat and shirt. There was a protuberance on the dead man’s back. Through a slit made by his knife, Alekhin saw an arrowhead.
Peter Petrovich was astonished. “An arrow! It cannot be! We have no savages here!”
“You have one. You have the American.”
“The American? You are laughing at me. How could he exist out in the taiga? It is cold, bitter, bitter cold!”
“He exists. He has been here.”
Alekhin thought about it, turning it over in his mind. Evidently, the dead man had seen Makatozi, but had missed his shot.
This had been a good man, one of his best. He had been driving to the coast, heading for Aldoma to interview a man they had taken who might know something.
The man’s pistol was gone and the ammunition for it, yet the rifle had been left.
“You mean this American has been here? You believe he did this?”
Alekhin ignored him. The American had a bow and arrow and did not need or want the rifle. He had killed this man with an arrow, then had bundled him into the car and driven him here. It was true, this road went nowhere except to swing in one great circle or to drive back to Nel’kan. And the American was going north again.
Why had he gone east at all? To meet someone? To get into warmer weather for a few weeks? Had he wished to drive to the coast, he could easily have done so, and the chances were he could have driven on into Nel’kan without anyone the wiser.