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even larger beasts with it, although," he added, "this was a large bear."
The wind blew down the narrow valley, whining around the eaves and rustling
the branches of the evergreens. They told him of their life and of the risks
they ran and that despite the various prisons of one kind or another, all
Siberia was considered a prison. "Many of those sent here in exile did not
wish to leave, even when they could. They stayed on, and many have raised
families here.
"Many of us prefer the deep woods. We are not bothered here. As I have said,
some know we are here, but not exactly where, and we bother no one. Out of
sight, out of mind, as the saying is."
He got to his feet. "Come! It is time to go. We will share your burdens,"
It was cold in the outer air. Joe Mack shivered and looked along the icy
gorge. Then he followed Natalya and her father. His name, he had said, was
Stephan Baronas. Leaving the canyon, they took a dim trail up through the
trees. It was sheltered from the wind, so though it was cold, there was less
wind chill.
The village, when they came to it, was a mere cluster of huts in the deep
forest. No effort having been made to establish a clearing, there were just
the huts, some of them mere dugouts faced with logs, scarcely to be seen until
within a few feet, for trees and brush masked their faces.
"This Wulff you spoke of, is he a district official of some kind? Is he close
by?"
"He is miles from here, in Aldan. One of us was caught selling furs. Now if
we deliver furs to him he says nothing. It is a trouble to meet his demands."
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The place they stopped at was a dugout faced with logs. It was tight, warm,
and almost impossible to see. They had hidden themselves well.
"But how do you live?"
"We hunt and gather. Here and there in the woods we have patches of corn. We
grow vegetables and barley, always far from here. It is very difficult, but we
manage. Actually," he added, "we live better than many of the people in the
villages."
"Share meat with the others," Joe Mack suggested. "In the morning I will hunt
again."
"That is good of you. Will you spend the night with us?"
"The night, but then I must find my own place. I would not intrude," he
added.
The night was very still, yet he slept badly. He had become accustomed to the
open air and the sounds of the trees, of animals moving. Here it was too
still, too comfortable.
Did they have another way out? He knew better than to ask, but was restless
at not knowing. To be caught in such a place ... it was a trap. Or could be.
He found that he liked Stephan Baronas. He was a quiet, pleasant man, yet he
seemed to have strength of character. As for Talya, she was quietly beautiful.
Both moved well in the forest. They were learning to live with it, he
decided, learning to move with the wind, to accept the wilderness and not
fight it. And that was the key to survival.
At last he slept, and when dawn came Talya's moving about awakened him. He
sat up quickly. "I was tired," he said. "I did not realize how tired."
Coffee was on, and it tasted good. He sipped the coffee and tried not to
watch Talya as she moved about. Her father joined them.
"I shall find a place," Joe Mack said, "but first I will set out a line of
traps. Snares and deadfalls," he added, at their questioning looks. "I trapped
to pay my way at school," he explained. "In the mountains of America there are
many wild animals."
It was pleasant not to have to think about moving on, and for the moment not
to worry about being discovered. Baronas talked well, and as he talked his
English returned to him. He spoke, he said, Polish, French, and German, as
well as Russian. "The language of the Lithuanians is closer to Sanskrit than
to any other, and we were an Indo-European people. Most of us were
Protestants, Lutherans, or Calvinists."
"It would help," Joe Mack suggested, "if I could speak Russian."
"We will teach you," Baronas replied, "if there is time."
Joe Mack found his own place in a thick stand of birch mingled with aspen.
Here and there were clusters of larch and pine. As usual in aspen forests the
deadfalls were many, but as he worked his way deeper into the forest, planning
to build a shelter from the dead timber, he found a crack in the rock of the
cliff that lay behind the aspen. It was scarcely wide enough to edge through,
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but he had long since learned never to trust first appearances. He had edged
back about eight feet when he stopped in midstep. Before him there was an
ominous black hole that seemed to extend on into the mountain. Tossing a piece
of rock, he heard it bound from side to side and finally end, far below, in a
splash. He was starting to edge back when he noticed a shelf of rock going off
to his left. It was all of four feet wide and ended in a much wider shelf.
Preparing a torch, he edged back into the crack, and lighting the torch he
saw a wide area of bare flat rock under an overhang higher than a man's head.
It was a cave-shelter, opening on that crevasse in which he had heard water,
but the cave was partly sheltered by the rock wall and partly by a thick stand
of larch. It was a fine hiding place, an excellent shelter, and it needed
exploration.
He spent the afternoon setting snares along some small creeks where he saw
the tracks of small animals. The weather was cold and the water was icy. He
worked along several small streams that flowed toward the river in an area
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