The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (3 page)

“It is idle talk…bazaar talk. There is no track. There are only a few mountain pastures and fewer people. All you will find in the mountains are granite and ice, glaciers and clouds.”

“If you were to show me the track, which is important to my future plans, I might permit you to keep your bride, and would let her father go free.”

“Such stories are the talk of fools,” Tohkta said. “They are the idle talk of goatherds.”

To know men, Batai Khan had taught him, is the knowledge of kings. Tohkta looked into the eyes of Chu Shih and saw no mercy, only ruthless ambition. To refuse would mean torture and death. Torture he could stand; what he feared was torture for Kushla, or for her father.

“I do not believe,” Chu Shih said, “that stories of the ancient route are talk. If you wish to go free, you will show me the track. If you do not show me, another will.”

“I will show you what is there, but it may not be to your liking.”

This man, Tohkta told himself, must die. I must kill him or return to kill him. If he lives our mountains will never be free. If need be Tohkta’s people could wait for years before they came again to the oasis towns, and by that time, these might be overthrown, or their ideas changed. Young though he was, Tohkta had learned all things change; the Tochari had learned patience from their mountains.

Chu Shih’s command brought in two more soldiers. Tohkta had a moment of sharp panic when he saw them, wanting to plunge at the door and fight his way free, but he fought down the feeling. He must think of Kushla and her father, who might be killed. Escape they must…somehow.

Out upon the street, the bridge of his wishing fell into the gorge of despair, for they had Tola Beg also. Two soldiers gripped the arms of the old yak hunter, and there was blood welling from an ugly cut on his cheekbone.

Turning, the Chinese colonel strode away. Kushla and Yakub being pushed ahead, Tola Beg and Tohkta followed surrounded by the six soldiers.

The Chinese who had searched them were coastal Chinese, unfamiliar with the customs of mountain Tochari. It was the custom in the hills to wear their hair long and their beards also. Tohkta’s hair was wound about his head under his sheepskin hat, and into the hair was thrust a thin-bladed knife, as was also the custom.

Soldiers loitered before the
Ya-men,
several hundred yards away, but the street led through a narrow avenue of darkness bordered by a double row of tamarisks. In this darkness, Tohkta halted, and when the soldier behind him ran into him, Tohkta turned and drawing his knife, struck upward into the softness of the man’s stomach.

Tohkta’s hand drew Kushla behind him. Yakub, with more courage than Tohkta expected, seized the rifle of the soldier next to him, and then with a rush like a sudden gust of wind, Batai Khan and his riders swept through the tamarisks.

The horses were among the soldiers and all was confusion, pounding hooves, and flashing blades. Several of the soldiers had their rifles slung and Chu Shih was knocked sprawling by the shoulder of the horse of Batai Khan.

Lifting Kushla to the saddle of a lead horse, Tohkta leaped into his own saddle. A soldier slipped a rifle to his shoulder, but Tohkta rode him down, grasping the man’s weapon as he fell. Then they were away in the darkness and riding hard for freedom and the hills.

There was shouting and a wild shot, but the attack had been sudden and with broadswords, the ancient Tochari way of fighting. In the darkness the soldiers had no chance against the charging horses and flashing blades. And it was only now that the force at the
Ya-men
was alerted.

Tohkta glanced back. Behind them there was confusion but no roaring of motors coming to life, yet remembering the eyes of Chu Shih, Tohkta knew pursuit would come soon, and it would be relentless.

F
ALSE DAWN WAS CRESTING
the peaks with gold when they reached the Valley of Rain where Yakub’s last herd was held. This was the only one the Chinese had not seized, for, as yet, they had not discovered it. The people of the oasis were secretive about their pastures, as his people were about the mountain tracks.

Tohkta checked his captured rifle in the vague light. How beautiful it was! How far superior to their ancient guns! Six rifles had been captured, and two men had even taken bandoleers of cartridges. They shared them among the others.

“We must go,” Batai Khan said. “The flock we drive will cause us to move slowly.”

Tohkta watched the yaks and fat-tailed sheep bunched for the trail. The Tochari were men of flocks and herds, and could not easily leave behind the wealth of a friend.

He looked up at the mountain peaks, and in the morning light, streamers of snow were blowing like silver veils from under a phalanx of cloud. Now fear seized at his vitals. They must hurry. If snow blocked the passes, none would escape.

Hours ago they had left the desert and the threat of pursuit by trucks or cars. Only mounted men or those on foot could follow them now. But the Chinese had horses; Tohkta had seen many of them in town and they would follow, he knew that as well. Whether they liked it or not they were leading Chu Shih into the mountains, just as he had wished.

Hunched in their saddles against the wind, they pushed on, skirting black chasms, climbing around towering pinnacles, icy crags, and dipping deep into gorges and fording streams, until at last they came to a vast basin three miles above the desert. Here they rested into the coming night.

Far away to the west lay a magnificent range of glacier-crested mountains, their gorges choked with ice, splendid in the clear air that followed the snow of the morning and afternoon. Though the setting sun lit the peaks and ridges, close over them hung a towering mass of cloud like the mirror image of the mountains below.

Long before dawn they were moving again. Batai Khan pushed onward, fearful of the storms that come suddenly at high altitudes where there was no fodder for man or beast. Pushing up beside him, Tohkta noted that the old man’s face was drawn by cold and weariness. Batai Khan was old…older even than Tola Beg.

“Batai Khan,” Tohkta asked, “now that we are among our mountains we must fight the soldiers. They must not be allowed to return with knowledge of this trail. Their leader, most of all, must be killed.” He explained what Chu Shih had wanted.

“Tohkta,” the old man paused, “you will await them in the pass. You are right and the beasts move slowly; we must have time. These fifty yak and many fat-tailed sheep will mean wealth to your wife’s father and food and comfort for our people. But do not fight so hard that you do not return to us. Let the mountains do their work and if these soldiers come to the Yurung-kash we will be waiting for them.”

“I shall remain with him,” Tola Beg spoke up.

All those with modern rifles stayed beside Tohkta, eager to test them on their former owners. Two others remained, hopeful of obtaining more rifles for themselves. The pass was a natural point for a surprise attack, and so the Tochari set their trap where it would be unexpected, in its narrowing approach.

Though they had little ammunition, each fired several ranging shots to check the sights of their new weapons. They then concealed themselves, all but two, along the walls of rock before the deep cleft that was the pass. There they waited, waited for their enemies to come.

A
ND THEY CAME
, the Chinese soldiers did. But they came slowly because of the great altitude, which bothered horses as well as the men.

Tohkta watched them from far across the elevated basin, and it began to snow once more. One of the horses slipped and fell, but the soldiers helped it up and came on.

How many were there? A hundred or more. But they were not dressed or provisioned for the high mountains. Tohkta could tell this because, though all were mounted, they had few packhorses, and these seemed to carry only weapons and ammunition.

At three hundred yards Tohkta and his hidden men opened fire. Instantly there was confusion. A milling of horses and men. For a moment only sporadic fire was returned, then Chu Shih rode into the midst of them on a tall gray horse and suddenly there was order. Soldiers dropped to the ground and sought cover, the bullets striking the rocks around Tohkta and his men were no longer random; it now seemed that the fire was seeking out each of them as separate targets.

“Be ready!” Tohkta called out as under the covering fire a group of soldiers swarmed forward. “Now, run!”

Tohkta turned and ran himself. Before him, Basruddin spun and fired one last shot before entering the pass. The others followed as rifle fire cracked and whined off the rocks around them. Tohkta had known that they couldn’t stand off a concerted attack, but he also knew that in the thin air of the mountains he and his men could outrun any lowland soldier.

Chu Shih’s men paused in their rush to fire at the fleeing Tocharis, but their breath came too hard at fourteen thousand feet and their shots went wild. At a signal from their leader, soldiers on horseback charged into the pass to pursue the retreating tribesmen, but this was exactly what Tohkta had been planning for.

Tola Beg and a strong young boy had made their way up the steep walls of the pass and together they had found a precariously balanced boulder that the yak hunter had spotted years before. With their shoulders braced against the cliff behind them and their feet on the huge rock they waited. They waited until they heard the sound of firing stop and the sound of horsemen entering the pass. Then they pushed.

Nothing happened.

They eased up and Tola Beg looked at the boy and they pushed together then released and pushed again. Suddenly the boulder was rocking and Tola Beg pushed hard, pushed with all the strength he had in his old body and with all the strength he had in his mind. Something gave inside of him, something in his back, but he pushed on through the blossoming pain and then the boulder was rolling. It dropped from sight, and Tola Beg could feel its impact further down the mountain, then he heard the roar of other rocks falling with it and the screams of men and horses.

T
OHKTA
, I
BRAHIM
,
AND
B
ASRUDDIN
turned and threw themselves back into the maelstrom of dust and flying rock that now choked the pass. They had seen little of it, for they had been running for their lives not only from the soldiers but from the landslide that nearly took them as well. It had only been the fast thinking of Ibrahim that had saved them, for as soon as they cleared the pass he had forced the running tribesmen into a corner of the hillside protected from the crashing torrent of rock.

Now they pushed their way back through the slide, and while Ibrahim mercilessly stripped the dead and wounded soldiers of guns and ammunition, Tohkta and Basruddin poured fire into the oncoming Chinese. Their lines wavered and fell back, the impact of this double ambush overcoming even Chu Shih’s leadership. As soon as the soldiers had taken cover Tohkta and his followers fled back through the pass to where the others had brought up the horses.

Under a sky dense with cloud they started down the rocky slope. The men were excited by their victory, but Tohkta saw the look on the face of Tola Beg and knew that he was in pain. In the trees far below the pass they waited to see what the Han Chinese soldiers would do.

Chu Shih was taking no chances. After some time had passed there was activity around the mouth of the pass: a scouting party who had, no doubt, worked their way carefully through the rockfall alert for additional trouble. Then they watched as a squad moved into position on the hillside beside the entrance to the pass and set up a position with a machine gun unlimbered from one of the packhorses. Then, the area totally secure, mounted troops began to file out into the area controlled by the gun. Soon they would be ready to continue the pursuit.

Tohkta and his men filtered silently back into the trees. They had been very successful, counting many enemy dead or wounded, and Tola Beg was their only casualty. The old man had torn something in his back and could barely ride, being in constant pain.

B
Y AFTERNOON
they were back up out of the trees and on a vast tilted plateau of snow and barren rock. The trail left by Batai Khan and his party was easily visible. The old warrior was pressing along as quickly as was possible, but Tohkta could tell that they were not far ahead. At the far edge of the plateau, just beyond their sight lay the beginnings of the trail down to the bridge. Remembering that trail and the bridge itself, Tohkta was suddenly frightened. However quickly his grandfather had been able to move the animals, once on the narrow trail their pace would slow to a crawl, and at the head of the bridge the beasts must be carefully managed or they would balk and panic. It might have been better to have turned them out into one of the mountain valleys on this side of the river, but as Tohkta galloped his horse along the path left by the horsemen and animals, he could see that was not the course that the old chieftain had taken.

Batai Khan was counting on the gorge of the Yurung-kash to protect the village. Since the beginning of time the approach to the bridge had been their village’s greatest defense. The descending trail was exposed in every way, while the trail to the bridge from the side of the village wound between trees and rocks, the cover allowing the tribesmen to pour rifle and arrow fire into any attacker unlucky enough to start down the path.

Even though Tohkta had managed as successful an ambush as he could imagine in the pass, Chu Shih’s management of the situation had been impressive. He had acted with courage, and once the officer had realized the danger he had carefully covered his men with the machine gun and then organized his column before proceeding. Even on the exposed approaches of the bridge trail Tohkta feared the effect that the rapid firer would have. Chu Shih must not be allowed to cross the gorge to their village and pastures, but he must not be allowed to return to report of this mountain route either. Something had to be done and it had to be done soon.