The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four (5 page)

“Go!” He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Have men bring axes. We must cut the bridge!”

Ibrahim was next. “Come on!” Tohkta said. “We must stop the machine gun!”

The three of them ran. They ran up the narrow trail, and though there was cover it was scant enough. Bullets flew. Tocharis fired back from behind rocks or trees. Men on both sides of the gorge died.

As he went Tohkta gathered up the few men with stolen rifles, and when he could wait no longer they took cover behind a boulder. There were five of them.

“We must destroy the devil gun!” Tohkta ordered them. “We must kill those who use it and any who are close, we must keep firing though we all may die. With that gun, the Hans can take the bridge before we can cut it. Are you ready?”

Together they rose and as one fired up and across the crevasse and into the group of soldiers around the gun. Several fell, and as Tohkta worked the bolt on his rifle, the gunner began to swing the muzzle. Fire sliced toward them and they fired again and again. Bullets bounded into the rock, into Ibrahim, tore Tohkta’s rifle from his grasp and ripped his thigh. But as he fell so did the Chinese gunner, and the two tribesmen left standing shot the next nearest man, too.

Tohkta lurched to his feet. The gun was silent, the crew a struggling mob of the dead and dying. He lifted Ibrahim’s rifle and shot a man who lifted himself from the trail near the gun. The man fell, clutched at the edge of the trail and, as the rock crumbled in his fingers, clutched at the barrel of the machine gun.

A moment later the man was spinning down into the gorge and the gun was falling fast behind him. Tohkta felt like crying out in triumph, but the day had been too expensive in lives and a dozen or more soldiers had poured onto the shelf where the stanchions of the bridge were fastened. Chinese and Tochari defenders alike were firing into each other at near point-blank range.

Then the roar of guns dropped to an occasional shot as tribesmen fled up the trail toward Tohkta. Across the river, at the turn of the last switchback, a slim figure astride a gray horse moved. Chu Shih rode forward. His mount leaped the mound of dead horses and men as if they were a low gate and not sprawled bodies on a narrow trail with a sheer drop on one side.

The soldiers parted as their commander rode amongst them; then, with riflemen in the lead, he started out onto the bridge.

Tohkta boiled with rage. He would never let them cross! He stumbled into a prone position and taking careful aim at Chu Shih’s head squeezed the trigger.

The rifle clicked on an empty chamber. He was out of ammunition!

Down on the shelf there was flickering movement. The form of Batai Khan stood and drew the broadsword from the scabbard across his back. The razor-sharp blade flashed as he brought it down on one of the two ropes that held the right side of the bridge. The blade bit and bit again. Then the rope gave way and suddenly the bridge sagged and swung.

Chu Shih turned in his saddle, the horse rearing as the weakened bridge bucked and twisted like a living thing. There was a shot and Batai Khan jerked. More soldiers came running down the trail, firing their rifles. The first of these skidded to a stop, working the bolt of his gun, and Batai Khan’s great sword struck, disemboweling the man. Suddenly Han soldiers on all sides were firing. The men on the tilting, swaying bridge, the soldiers on the trail, all fired as the ancient Tochari leader turned, his massive body pierced by a half dozen bullets, and brought his blade down on the other right-hand rope.

The ends of the second tether, not cut through, spun and twisted as they unraveled. There was a frozen moment, then the soldiers ran panic-stricken back toward the rock shelf. For a moment the eyes of the Tochari chieftain and the Chinese officer locked, then Batai Khan raised his sword and bellowed,
“Yol Bolsun!”

A single shot brought him down. The sword clattering to the rocks beside him. A single shot from an unknown trooper on the bridge…a shot that did no good at all, for the primitive rope shredded and the floor of the bridge peeled away, hanging twisted almost a thousand feet over the roaring waters.

Chu Shih’s horse fell, sliding, taking four soldiers with it. The officer grabbed for one of the ropes on the high side of the bridge, held for a moment, then tumbled toward the river far below.

Tohkta struggled to stand as two villagers ran past him, axes at the ready. In a moment the villagers reformed their positions along the trail and, with scathing fire, drove the remaining Han soldiers up the switchback trail. Following them down to the bridgehead Tohkta watched as the axmen cut the bridge away. It collapsed with a crash against the far wall of the gorge. On the rock shelf above it lay the body of Batai Khan.

“Yol Bolsun,”
Tohkta whispered as Kushla came to stand beside him.

“What was that, my love?” she said.

“It means good-bye or good luck…May There Be a Road.” After a moment Tohkta laughed. For even though Batai Khan had destroyed their bridge he had bought them time. Time to live, to raise another generation in freedom, time to plan…if necessary time to escape. This, in its own way, was as much of a road as that once joined by their bridge. He had a vision of a Buddhist’s spinning prayer wheel. Even as they had once been connected to their future by the bridge, now they were connected to the future by the lack of it. A season? A year? A decade? Who could tell, but, as the Tochari know, nothing but the mountains lasts forever.

By torchlight, Tohkta Khan gathered his dead and returned to the village with his bride. The future given them by Batai Khan would begin tomorrow, and there was much to do.

By the Waters of San Tadeo

T
he dozen shacks that made up the village of San Esteban huddled, dwarfed and miserable, below the craggy ramparts that walled them away from the world. The lofty circle of mountains, with their ice-choked ravines and thick tangles of beech forest, formed an enclosing wall as impassable as the mountains of the moon. Only in one direction was escape from the village possible…through the narrow mouth of the inlet, eight miles from the village.

Julie Marrat had thought of all that many times in the last few weeks, and each time she had come to the same conclusion, and each time that conclusion was just as hopeless. There was but one way of escape…by boat.

There were three boats at the inlet, and all of these belonged to Pete Kubelik. One was the schooner that he used for infrequent trips up the coast and to bring in supplies. There were also two fishing boats, not much more than dinghies, far too small in which to brave the sea that lay outside. Yet escape she must, and immediately.

Returning to the bedside, she looked down at the dying man who was her father. Lovable, impractical, and a dreamer with an always restless heart, George Marrat had never been able to remain still. Now, this lonely inlet far south on the coast of Chile had trapped him, and once there he could not leave.

Two things ensured that. One was his own health, which failed rapidly in the cold, dreary world of San Esteban, where the sun rarely shone and the sky was overcast nearly three hundred days of the year. Yet had it been his health alone, Julie could have managed. The other element was Pete Kubelik.

From the moment they drew their ketch up to the jetty and Julie turned to look into the piglike eyes of the big trader, she had been frightened. Right then she asked her father to leave, knowing that this was not a place they should stay.

He was amazed. “Why, Julie? We’ve only just come! We can at least look around, can’t we?”

“No, Father, please! Let’s go find somewhere else.”

Her father had turned to face Kubelik, and the big man’s brown face wrinkled in a smile. “I’m afraid my daughter doesn’t like it here,” he confessed.

“Well,” Kubelik had replied, “it ain’t much of a place for women, that’s true, but there’s gold here, plenty of it!”

“Gold?” Her heart sank at the eagerness in her father’s voice. What would he do if he found it? she wondered. No man ever cared less for money, but in her father’s mind the concept of gold was so much more than money. It was the reward that he was searching for, the last reward that would somehow repair the life that luck had deserted. But, ironically, that life without luck was not his…it was hers. “There’s gold here?”

“Yes, sir!” Kubelik had turned and waved a hand at the long spit of black sand that pointed into the inlet from a nearby island. “We’ve washed many a good stake out of that beach! Best beach placer I ever saw! Was that why you came here?”

Had there been anxiety in the big man’s voice? Julie had looked at him again, and felt such revulsion that she could scarcely stand to be near him.

Plodding along beside her father, Kubelik had dwarfed him with his huge body. His face was round and moonlike under the thick black beard. Wrinkles ran out in a network of tiny lines from the corners of both eyes, eyes that were small and cruel. His hands were dirty, the fingernails black and broken. And then, for the first time, she’d seen the gun. It was in a holster under his sheepskin coat.

Not until later did Julie wonder that none of the others came near them. An Indian woman standing in the door of a driftwood cabin hurriedly stepped back and closed the door when Julie started toward her. Despite the inhospitable gesture, Julie had not been alarmed, taking it for granted that the woman was naturally shy.

By midnight, when they moved into the inner room at Kubelik’s station and to bed, they had met only one other man. He was a pasty Austrian named Rudy, and seemed to be Kubelik’s shadow. He rarely spoke, but whenever Kubelik and Rudy shared a look, Julie realized there was some silent communication. She saw other people moving among the shacks, but they did not come near the store.

That inner room had been Pete Kubelik’s suggestion. She had wanted to return to the boat, hoping that her father could be talked into leaving, but Kubelik laughed at her and waved her objections away with an impatient hand. He would take it as an insult, he said. By all means, they should stay. Entranced by his stories of the coast, her father listened, and they remained. And in the morning, their boat was gone.

She had just gotten out of bed when she saw through the small window the empty pier where the ketch had been left. Fear gripping her heart, she awakened her father. George Marrat’s face went pale, and for the first time, he was afraid.

They rushed down to the beach, but the ketch was nowhere to be seen.

Kubelik had come from the house, rubbing his eyes. “What’s the matter. Something wrong?”

“Our boat’s gone!” Marrat exclaimed. “Lord, man! What will we do? What could have happened to it?”

“Wind, maybe,” Kubelik suggested, “or some thief. No use standing here. Come in an’ let’s fix breakfast. Then we can take one of my boats an’ look around.”

Yet when her eyes happened to meet those of Kubelik, his had been triumphant.

Her father, despite his interest in the gold, was genuinely worried. He knew the mountains were impassable, that the forests were undergrown with thick moss, laden with moisture, and a man could sink to his waist in trying to struggle through. And by the end of the day, they realized that the boat was gone and they knew they would not find it.

“How about taking us to Puerto Montt?” Marrat had suggested. “You have the schooner, and we can’t stay here. I have money in the bank back in Santiago. Take us out, and I’ll pay your price.”

“All right,” Kubelik had said thoughtfully. “But you’ll have to wait until I’m ready to go for supplies. A week or so, maybe.”

Yet when the week had passed, he said nothing about leaving. Her father had been placer mining on the beach and caught a severe cold. By that time, they had moved to a small shack, refusing to accept more of Kubelik’s hospitality.

“I’m sorry, Julie,” George said. “When I get well, we’ll get out of here and I’ll make it up to you.” He coughed, the breath rattling deep in his lungs.

“Get some rest,” she said. He nodded and relaxed, breathing more easily. She sat there in the dark, a twenty-six-year-old woman who had failed in life, failed in marriage, who had fled back to her father, a ne’er-do-well adventurer, and ended up here, in a narrow fjord at the end of the earth.

Her grandfather had been a Chilean who migrated north with his son to fish the waters of British Columbia and Alaska. Her father had spent much of his life in Canada, and she was born there, schooled there, and had been wed there.

Like many young girls, Julie had thought that marriage would change her life, and indeed it had. But she discovered that the qualities in a man that had appealed to her when she was being courted were not the qualities that made a good partner for life.

Her husband had been a dashing young bohemian who could quote enough Spencer, Marx, or Freud to prove any point. Unfortunately, for all his obsession with the working man, he could not seem to hold a job. What she had mistaken for intensity turned out to be self-obsession, and the wild ways that she once thought were delightfully liberated proved to be simple self-indulgence.

After six months he had disappeared to prowl the bars and jazz clubs of San Francisco by himself, and she fled back to her father in shame. Julie hid herself away from the world on her father’s boat, ashamed because she had not been wise enough to choose the right man and hadn’t been strong enough to confront that man about their problems.

George Marrat had never questioned her. Although he had made many a poor choice himself, and life had dealt him many a blow, he still met the morning with a smile and fixed his eyes on the horizon. He planned a trip south to show his daughter his homeland, to take her mind off her problems. They would prospect on the southern coast. If they could find a cannery and take on a crew, they would fish the southern waters as he had in Ketchikan and Port Albion.

But now they were here in this dismal settlement. And George Marrat was very sick. Julie put her father to bed and hurried to the store for medicine.

Pete Kubelik shook his head. “Medicine?” he said. “Ain’t got much. Aspirin, an’ some cold tablets. Anything more I can do, let me know.”

He came around the counter and leaned against it. Despite her fear, she forced herself to stand still, but couldn’t look him in the eye.

“You know,” he said, “we could get along, you an’ me. Gets mighty lonesome here, of a winter.” In the corner, Rudy stifled a whispering laugh.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kubelik. I couldn’t do that. When Father gets well, we will leave.”

“Suppose he doesn’t get well?”

Cold fear welled up within her. “Oh, he will,” she said firmly. “He often has touches of cold like this. He’ll get well, and then we’ll leave.”

Kubelik grinned at her, his teeth yellow and broken. “Well, maybe,” he said. “
If
I decide to take you up the coast. Then again, I may just keep you here, sort of company for me.”

“That’s ridiculous!” She looked up at him for the first time. “You couldn’t get away with anything like that! What about the authorities?”

“The Chileans? The army? The police?” He laughed with genuine amusement. “They don’t come here. Know why these folks don’t come near you? Because I told ’em to stay away, that’s why. Know why they stay here? Because they can’t get away, either! They are pilin’ up gold for me. Me an’ Rudy, here!”

He chuckled. “Why, the government thinks this place is abandoned. Nobody ever comes here, at least,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “nobody that goes out again.”

Two days later her father died.

He died suddenly, in the night. Only for a moment was he rational, and seemed to realize there was little time left. He called her to him. “Julie…” His voice was hoarse. “I…” He fumbled for words. “I know what happened to the boat. He…Kubelik…he towed it away. He hid it over at Rio San Tadeo. One of the others told me, that last day, workin’ on the spit.”

“It’s all right, Dad,” she said gently, “we’ll manage!”

The long gray miles of cold sea and the towering cliffs that flanked it filled her with horror. In all the world, there could be no more desolate place than this coast north of Magellan. “We’ll manage,” she whispered, but she knew he was dying.

They buried her father at the foot of a huge rock three hundred yards up the canyon from San Esteban. Several of the villagers were out for the funeral, but had she ever hoped for help from them, she gave up now. They were a thin, woebegone group, obviously afraid of Kubelik, who towered above them.

There were six men in the village, she discovered, four of them Chileans and two Yahgans, natives from the Beagle Channel area. The four women were all Yahgans but one, an Ona woman from Tierra del Fuego.

After the funeral, she talked with them while Pete Kubelik and Rudy ignored her. They had the only weapons among the group, and aside from the pistol which he always carried, Kubelik possessed two shotguns and a rifle. He had killed a man only a few days before their ketch arrived.

Recalling Kubelik’s anxiety over their discovery of the place, she realized that was his greatest fear. Here in his little kingdom, he ruled supreme while they slaved for him and lived in abject fear of his rages. As he controlled the only means of escape as well as the only source of food, tobacco, and liquor, he was firmly in the saddle.

“But what about the boats?” she said to Aleman, one of the villagers. “Couldn’t you steal one and get away?”

“Not a chance!” he told her. “His schooner has an auxiliary engine, and he’d have us before we made a dozen miles. Besides, where could we go on the supplies we’d have? We are a long way from the nearest port.”

During the afternoon preceding her father’s burial, she tried to recall exactly what the chart had pictured. The inlet was in the southeast corner of the Gulf of San Esteban, and the Rio San Tadeo was to the north. Although the chart indicated little of the nature of the country back of the coast, she knew it was rugged mountain and glacier. Of the beech forests, she knew only by hearsay, but they were pictured as dark, fearsome places, well-nigh impenetrable.

It was raining when they finished the funeral service. She started away when the grave had been filled, but Pete Kubelik overtook her. “Get your stuff, whatever you got,” he ordered, “an’ move over to my place.”

It didn’t take much to bring her to tears, but she intentionally pushed her sorrow and terror to the forefront. “Oh, not now! Please!” She sobbed hysterically, fell to her knees moaning, “My father…my father…”

She made the most unappealing spectacle of herself possible. Finally, in disgust, he shrugged it off. “All right, tomorrow, then,” Kubelik said, and trudged away.

She was rolling up her father’s jacket when she found the knife. Evidently, he had planned to use it himself, yet it was no knife she had ever seen aboard the boat. That meant he had acquired it since coming ashore, either finding it or getting it from one of the others.

The thought filled her with excitement. Perhaps…if one of the men had given the knife to her father, she might have a friend out there. How could she know who he was?

Holding the coat so anyone peeking through the window could not see the knife, she examined the blade. It was bright and gleaming, and obviously had not been lying out in the weather.

The knife gave her courage. At least she could kill herself. The thought of killing Kubelik came first, but she dismissed the idea at once. He was too big, too strong, and he wore too many thicknesses of clothing. She would never have strength enough to drive the knife home.

Then she remembered the tobacco. Her father had come ashore prepared to trade, carrying a small sack filled with plugs of tobacco, some large packages of smoking tobacco, and a few cartons of cigarettes. In this place, it was a veritable fortune.