The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Four Read Online Free PDF

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