His thoughts returned to the American. Where could he go? What would he do? He must have food. He would need warmer clothing.
He would steal. But from whom? Some isolated miner, trapper, or scientific station? A theft would draw an immediate report, and then they could concentrate their search.
Zamatev walked back to his table and sat down heavily. Soon, they must have him soon. It was impossible for him to remain unseen.
Why did the telephone not ring?
Some fifty miles away, not far from where the Tsipa River flowed into the Kalar, Joe Mack was huddled in a thick grove of mixed Japanese stone pine and larch watching a shack built against a cliff. Two men lived there, and one of them had just started off with an empty backpack. He had taken a path to the south, and from the way he had waved good-bye he had expected to be gone for more than a few hours. He was probably going to town.
The other man watched him go; then, taking some tools, he went into the portal of a mine tunnel.
Joe Mack waited an instant longer, and then using a carefully plotted route he went down the slope, keeping under cover until within fifty feet of the house.
He waited, trying to breathe evenly. He must make the attempt, even at the risk of discovery. An instant he poised, then he was across the open space and into the house.
A quick glance around. Warm clothing on hooks. He reached under one coat and took a thick sweatshirt. Quickly to the shelves. Rows of canned goods. He selected a dozen cans, taking them from the front row and moving others into their place so their loss would not be detected. He made a sack out of the shirt and put the cans in it.
There was much here he could use, but he wasted no time. Another quick glance around.
A hunting knife! It was under a table, lying upon some chunks of firewood.
He caught it up, took a quick look, and was out of the door and across the open space. There he paused and glanced back. No one in sight. The earth was packed hard, and he believed he had left no tracks. Carrying his sack, he climbed higher. When he had reached a point from which he could watch, he squatted on his heels and opened the first can.
Fish, of a kind he did not know. He had not eaten in two days so he ate with care. A bit, a nibble, then a bite. He drank a little of the oil in the can. Then he waited, but his stomach did not react. After a while he ate a little more, then drank from a trickle of water running from a crack in the rock. Crawling under some fallen boughs, he slept.
In the first light of morning, he finished the fish, then began to study the river. From where he sat he could see that the river he had been following flowed into a larger stream that flowed off to the northeast.
Putting the remaining cans in his pockets and inside his shirt, he donned the heavy sweatshirt. Then keeping under cover he went down the mountain to the river.
It was the Tsipa, but this he did not know. It was a river, and he crouched in the willows along the bank and watched it.
No boats, no travel, nothing.
For a half hour he waited, picking out the log he would use to cross.
When enough time had passed he went into the water and pushed off. The stream was not wide, but crossing was slow. Then, suddenly, he heard the put-put of a small motor!
A boat was coming up the river.
Five
To go back was impossible. He could only go across and downstream, and the log offered scant cover. He slid into the water, and grasping the stub of a branch, he clung to the log, keeping his nose and mouth barely above water.
The steady put-put of the motor continued. He dared not raise his head to look, and he tried not to guide the log too much. Steadily the motorboat drew closer. By the sound it was an outboard motor.
His heart began to pound with slow, heavy beats. He breathed deeply, prepared to submerge if need be. Up to this point he was sure he had not been seen, nor had he left any evidence of his passing since the first hour or so of his escape. Consequently, any search for him must cover a wide area and could not be concentrated. If he were seen by someone who could report him, all that would be ended.
If the unknown man in the boat so much as glimpsed him, that man must be destroyed. That the man might be armed and might shoot on sight, he understood.
Was this someone searching for him? A hunter? A fisherman? Or some traveler returning to his home?
The log was between himself and the boat, yet the top of it cleared the water by no more than six inches. Suddenly the sound of the motor seemed to change. The boat was coming nearer, nearer.
He took a deep breath and went under the water. The boat came nearer, then passed so close he felt the surge of water from the propeller. Carefully, he let his head rise above water. The boat was going on upstream, and he steered the log more crosswise of the slight current to give him cover until he could get to shore.
It was a low shore of willows, and he crawled up on the bank, shivering, glad to have the sun’s warmth. He lay there for a few minutes, letting the sun dry away some of the water that soaked his clothes.
He had lost his staff but found another, a stout stick that he improved a little with the stolen knife.
Restless and eager to be moving on, he walked away from the river, heading east. He left the willows and poplar of the river bottom and worked his way through a larch forest, mingled with some fir and pine of an unfamiliar kind. There were thickets of chokecherry, which he remembered from boyhood days, and groves of aspen.
He took his time, speed being no longer an essential. Now he must prevent discovery and think of survival. At noon, in a tight grove of fir, he ate his second can. It was also fish.
Here and there he found a few chokecherries, but the fruit was so thin around the pits that it offered little except the tart sweetness of the taste.
Slowly, his clothes dried out.
He moved carefully, for at any time he might come upon a hunter or a prospecting party. Hunters he hoped to avoid, but a party of prospectors might provide what he wanted most, a map.
A prospector in Siberia was unlikely to be alone. He would probably be one of a party sent out by the government, and he would be well provided with maps of the terrain over which he was working.
When he had walked for two hours and covered what he believed was about five miles, he sighted the larger river, flowing toward him. He walked on, keeping under cover. He found animal tracks but nothing human. The river lay between two mountain ridges, and when the shadows began to grow long he turned and climbed higher on the flank of the nearest ridge. Warm air rises, and it would be warmer halfway up the ridge than at the bottom.
On the slope where he found his bed he also found some ptarmigan berry, or what the Indians knew as kinnikinic. He ate some of the berries, which were nourishing but rather tasteless. From under the bushes he gathered some of the dried leaves, to make a tea.
From birchbark he prepared a dish, and kindling a small fire he boiled water for his tea, making sure the flames did not touch the bark above the water level. The tea was bitter but tasted good.
He had built his fire of dried sticks that gave off almost no smoke, and he had built it under a fir tree where the rising smoke, little though it was, was thinned by passage through the thick boughs.
Keeping his fire small and using a rock for a reflector, he huddled close and began to examine his situation more closely.
He was a hunted man in the largest country on earth. Most of the area where he now moved was a wilderness. His travel would be on foot, hence slow. Winter was going to overtake him, and travel in winter, in his condition, was unthinkable.
His situation had been improved by his stealing the knife and the sweatshirt, but only a little. He needed a weapon that could kill game at a distance and was silent. Well, his people had solved that question long ago with the bow and arrow.