Novel 1986 - Last Of The Breed (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online Page A

cabin. He finished his tea and then stood up.
    Vanyushin looked up at him. God, but the man was big! Not tall, just big. He was broad and thick and not with fat. Yet he moved as smoothly as a skilled ballet dancer. Vanyushin had known such men before, but not often. What they had was power.
    Alekhin’s eyes swept the cabin again. “Snug,” he said, “but no place to spend the winter.”
    “No, I’ll come down to Chita for that. I might even go to Irkutsk.” Vanyushin stood up, too. “Sorry I couldn’t help you.”
    Alekhin’s eyes swept over the old clothing hanging from nails in the log wall. Some of the pieces were quite dusty. If something was taken from there, how long before it would be noticed?
    “You have helped,” Alekhin said. “And thank you for the tea.”
    He went outside and looked up at the hills and smiled. Now he knew.
    Alekhin did not often smile, but now he knew not only the American’s direction but something of the kind of man he was. He had stolen food so cleverly that Vanyushin had not realized, and very likely some article of warm clothing. The knife had been his only false move, but that was necessity. A man can survive with a knife. A really good man needs nothing else. Of course, he might be wrong, but Alekhin was sure. His every instinct told him Makatozi had come this way.
    A few hours later he was seated in Colonel Zamatev’s office.
    “East? The man’s insane! It’s too far! It will be too cold! Why not to China? That’s the logical way, the easy way.”
    Alekhin stared at Zamatev from heavy-lidded eyes, eyes that seemed without expression, without emotion. “He is a man of the woods, a wilderness man. You would never catch him.”
    Zamatev felt a flash of anger. Alekhin presumed too much on their years of working together. How dare the Yakut say that to
him
? What had come over him?
    “He is an Indian. To catch an Indian you must think like an Indian.”
    “Bah! He is a civilized man! An officer in his country’s air force! He is a graduate of a university!”
    “He is an Indian.” The Yakut put his hand on his heart. “I feel it here. Whatever else he has become, he is still an Indian.”
    “So? You understand him then? What will he do now?”
    “He will try to escape. He will live like an Indian. If trouble comes he will die like an Indian, but first he will try one more thing.”
    “What thing?”
    The Yakut looked at Colonel Zamatev, and not without satisfaction. “He will kill you,” he said.
    Chapter 6
----
    O N THE DAY Alekhin drank tea in Vanyushin’s cabin Joe Mack was squatting under a stone pine some fifty miles away. The stone pine was one of a considerable grove on a ridge overlooking the Kalar River.
    The last of the stolen cans of fish had been eaten, and he had several snares set under the brush not far away. Now he was watching the river.
    As a possible escape route it did not seem a likely choice: the current was strong and he would be going upstream against it. His best chance was to follow along the mountainside, letting it guide him without the danger of encountering anyone on the river or its banks.
    Thus far he had been lucky, but that could not last. The food had not been enough, but he was used to hunger. Many times as a boy in the mountains he had lived upon what he had hunted, trapped, or gathered from the forest. He must prepare to do so again.
    Progress along the mountainside would be slow, but he could keep under cover, and he doubted he would encounter anyone up in the forest.
    Animal tracks were everywhere, mostly those of deer or elk, but wolf tracks were common as well, and twice he came upon the tracks of large bear.
    His improvised snares yielded nothing in the time he could allow, so he retrieved his shoelaces and went on along the mountain. From time to time he found partridge berries, picking a few as he went along. They did little to appease his hunger but were pleasant to taste and gave him the illusion of eating something