He led the way off the trail and under the cedar’s branches. It was a neat little place, naturally sheltered and with a natural reflector for the fire in the great root mass.
“Always look,” Yakov said. “A man in the forest, he watches always and sees many places like this. He remembers, so if he comes that way again he knows where there is a camp.”
Soon he had a fire going and tea bubbling in their small pot. From under a fallen tree he ripped a slab of bark for Baronas to sit on, others for her and for himself.
“If you need fire, always carry tinder: an old bird’s nest, dry shreds of bark, something to start the fire. There are always dry branches, long dead, on the trunks of trees. Deadfall trees often do not touch the ground, and the bark on the underside is dry.” He looked at her again. “Soon I must go. You will be alone. You must see all and think very much. Always you must camp before dark, so you can see. Build a small fire and get close.”
He added sticks to their fire and poured tea for each of them. He grinned at her. “Bears are smart. There is nothing to eat in the winter, so they sleep. There are no berries, roots are deep under the snow, and no small animals run about, so they sleep. Very smart.”
“You have to go?”
He nodded. “I must meet four other men far from here. We are helping a man escape from the Sovetskaya Gavan prison.” He looked at her. “I cannot be late. They need me. You understand?”
“Of course.” She said it and she did understand, but inside she was frightened. To be left alone in all these mountains! What would she do? What could she do?
Yet wasn’t this where Joe Mack was? Wasn’t this where he had been for months and months? What was it Yakov said? Watch and think.
“We will be all right,” she said.
He took a map from his case, sheltering it from the few flakes of snow that drifted down into their shelter. “Here we are. You see? You cross a divide here and another divide over here; then you find this river going northwest. It is the Vagou River. It goes to near Iman, on the border.
“I will try to get back. But I do not much know this border south of Iman. Do not look for me. I will find you. But if I am killed, you speak to your friend Bocharev. He is a good man. Maybe he can help. I do not know.”
He stood up. “We had better go now. I will find a place for tonight, and then I will go away.”
He donned his snowshoes and waited for them to do likewise. Then he led off. When they reached the trail again, they looked back. No tracks remained. Already the trail was white and smooth, as if never touched by the foot of man or beast.
Hours later and a thousand feet higher, he found an overhang partly shielded by cedars. “For tonight,” he said, “a good place.” He glanced at her again. “In the morning I will be gone. I do not like to leave you, but they are waiting for me. All is timed. The prisoner will be at a certain place for a few minutes. We will help him escape then. If I am late, all will be wasted. I do not know how we could get in touch with him again. Maybe never.”
“I understand.”
“Of course,” Baronas said. “We will be all right.”
The camp was a snug one, but it was cold, bitterly cold. They were higher now, nearly four thousand feet above the sea. The Sikhote Alin Mountains were at no place in the southern part of the range higher than five thousand feet, but on the ridges in the middle of winter the cold could be intense.
Talya could see that Yakov was worried. He kept looking from her father to her, and several times he walked out in the snow, muttering to himself.
“Do not worry,” she said, over their tea, “we shall be all right.
“But it is winter!” he protested. “It is cold! And where you are going is far, far through the wilderness!”
“It will be all right,” she said, and wished she felt she was being honest. She was sick with dread at being left alone, or almost alone, in all that vast forest.
“I had only planned to tell you of the order for your arrest,” he explained. “Then I planned to go at once; now I must go very fast or I shall be late.”
Long they talked as the night drew on and her father slept. He explained again and again how they must travel, what they had to fear, how they must camp. “Do not think of time,” he warned. “Short marches are best for you. Camp early, so you can be snugged in well before dark. In the darkness you can find nothing. Start early, but do not exhaust yourselves. Most people who freeze do so only because they have burned up their stores of energy before stopping to rest and have nothing left to fight the cold. Do not become exhausted.
“I have some dried meat, and I will share with you. I can get more.”
He fed sticks into the fire. “It is more than one hundred miles,” he said. “A long way.”
“We will be all right,” she repeated, wishing she believed it.
At daylight he was gone, but he looked back several times and left with reluctance. Natalya stood on the edge of the woods and watched him go off along the trail to the north, as dim a trail as lay before her and her father.
He was sitting by the fire when she returned. “He is gone, then?”
“Yes, Father.” She had made up her pack, purposely doing so while he slept, so that he would not realize she was carrying most of the weight. “We must push on, too.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” He shouldered his pack, and after a long searching look at him, she led off. She was frightened. He did not look at all well this morning. The cold, the rationed food, and the climbing were hard on him.
Shortly before noon they stopped and she made tea. The sun was out briefly, and they felt warm even in its feeble rays. She kindled a small fire and talked of home, of Joe Mack, and of the trail.
“The main ridge of the Sikhote Alin seems to parallel the coast,” she said, “but Yakov told me there was another ridge running off to the northwest that reaches almost to Iman. We will reach it soon and follow it until we can descend into the basin of the Vagou.”
He made no reply, staring off across the snowy ridges and the treetops, covered with snow. “This is very hard for you, Talya,” he said at last. “Somehow I have been a poor father to lead you into this.”
“You have been the best of fathers,” she replied, “and one day we will look back upon this as only an interlude.”
For three days they walked, but on the third day he said, “Talya, I think we should stop early today. I am afraid I need to rest.”
The weather was warmer by a few degrees, and the place they found was nestled among some cedars, a place where a bank had caved away. At its base, shaded by the cedars, they built their fire. They had tea, but the last of the meat Yakov had given them to add to their meager supplies was gone but for three thin strips.
“Save it for yourself,” her father said. “I’ll drink some tea, but I’ve no appetite tonight.”
Morning came with softly falling snow. She built up the fire and said, “Father?”
When he did not move, she got slowly to her feet and went to where he lay, his blue eyes open to the snow.
“Father?” she pleaded.
Her father was dead, and she was alone.
Thirty-Three
On the morning of the day that Bocharev came to the cabin above Plastun Bay, Peshkov returned to the village.
It was a chill, bleak day, and he plodded down the path, finding no footprints in the snow. Nor did smoke arise from any of the chimneys. Hunching his shoulders against the cold, he went first to the Baronas cabin.
He knocked, expecting no answer, and then he opened the door and stepped in. It was cold inside, and the ashes on the hearth were long dead.
He stared around him, angry that they were gone, yet feeling oddly deserted, too. One by one he went to the other dugouts, caves, and shacks.
Nobody. All were gone.
To hell with them! Served them right if they’d all been taken away to prison! Especially that woman, that Natalya.