Collection 1999 - Beyond The Great Snow Mountains (v5.0) Read Free Page A

stopped. He kept staring ahead, then listening.
    Something worried him. She was fighting exhaustion now, for they had not only encountered the roughest possible travel, but had kept up a pace far beyond her strength. Yet the Yahgan showed no evidence of tiring and no intention of slowing down. It was plain that he knew that if they were caught, while she might be taken back to the inlet, he would be killed on the spot.
    Cuyu turned now, changing his course to proceed more directly north, but his eyes continued to watch toward his left. Once, through a break in the curtain of trees shrouding the cliff on her left, she thought she saw water.
    Was the fact that they must go down to the water what Cuyu feared? Kubelik, guessing their route or seeing their tracks, might use the boat to come around the point and head them off. It would be pitifully easy, and in a matter of an hour he could render useless their night of struggle.
    The dim game trail they had been following dipped sharply down into a fantastically rugged gorge. Here the moss was scarce, but the trees were laden with snow, and there was an occasional patch of ice. They went down the steep side, passing themselves from tree trunk to tree trunk to keep from sliding or falling all the way to the bottom.
    A brawling stream roared along over stones, and Cuyu dropped on his stomach and drank. Julie followed suit, then got to her feet and looked around.
    The gorge curved sharply right before them, and the course of the stream led down toward the north. While the direction was perfect for them and would make travel easier, it must also lead to the inlet she thought she had seen. Now she comprehended the reason for Cuyu’s hurry. He hoped to get to the mouth of the river before they could be headed off.
    He started again, with only a glance at her, nearly running wherever the path was smooth enough to permit it. At times they had to climb down over great tumbled masses of white boulders, or walk gingerly across slippery rocks, some of them covered with encroaching peat moss from the forest.
    They came out of the trees and into the open delta of rocks and sand where the inlet met the mouth of the San Tadeo River. There was no boat in sight, but they ran now, trying to cover the exposed area as quickly as possible. They reached the woods where the river poured forth, a wide course of dark water rushing down from the mountains, and Cuyu paused to let her catch her breath. For a brief moment he grinned at her.
    “Almos’ to boat…you’ll see.”
    Slowly, they started upstream along the watercourse, and soon, through the branches of the trees ahead, she could see the white of the ketch’s hull. It was only a matter of minutes to reach the vessel. The trim craft was tied up in a deep backwater out of the main flow of the river. A good anchorage, Julie realized, but a difficult one for her to maneuver out of even with Cuyu’s help. The ketch would have to be carefully backed and turned into the river, with most of the backing being into the current.
    Without bothering to pull the boat in to shore, she climbed out on a low hanging branch and dropped to the deck. Cuyu followed as she made her way to the pilot house.
    “You take us away?” he asked.
    She could see that he was more terrified than ever, now that they had reached their destination. Terrified because, unlike the stretches of forest and glacier, this was a place where Kubelik would have to come on any search for them that he might make. She thought of the difficult job of fighting the river’s current with a reversed engine, of how the ketch would slip sideways even as it moved back, and feared what roots or rocks lurked beneath the black waters of the San Tadeo. Sometime toward morning there would be a tide, and that would make her job much easier, but high tide was hours away and she was sure they didn’t have an hour, let alone hours.
    “I can try,” she mumbled. The thought of the miles of gray, whitecapped