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

towering mass of cloud like the mirror image of the mountains below.
    Long before dawn they were moving again. Batai Khan pushed onward, fearful of the storms that come suddenly at high altitudes where there was no fodder for man or beast. Pushing up beside him, Tohkta noted that the old man’s face was drawn by cold and weariness. Batai Khan was old…older even than Tola Beg.
    “Batai Khan,” Tohkta asked, “now that we are among our mountains we must fight the soldiers. They must not be allowed to return with knowledge of this trail. Their leader, most of all, must be killed.” He explained what Chu Shih had wanted.
    “Tohkta,” the old man paused, “you will await them in the pass. You are right and the beasts move slowly; we must have time. These fifty yak and many fat-tailed sheep will mean wealth to your wife’s father and food and comfort for our people. But do not fight so hard that you do not return to us. Let the mountains do their work and if these soldiers come to the Yurung-kash we will be waiting for them.”
    “I shall remain with him,” Tola Beg spoke up.
    All those with modern rifles stayed beside Tohkta, eager to test them on their former owners. Two others remained, hopeful of obtaining more rifles for themselves. The pass was a natural point for a surprise attack, and so the Tochari set their trap where it would be unexpected, in its narrowing approach.
    Though they had little ammunition, each fired several ranging shots to check the sights of their new weapons. They then concealed themselves, all but two, along the walls of rock before the deep cleft that was the pass. There they waited, waited for their enemies to come.
             
    A ND THEY CAME , the Chinese soldiers did. But they came slowly because of the great altitude, which bothered horses as well as the men.
    Tohkta watched them from far across the elevated basin, and it began to snow once more. One of the horses slipped and fell, but the soldiers helped it up and came on.
    How many were there? A hundred or more. But they were not dressed or provisioned for the high mountains. Tohkta could tell this because, though all were mounted, they had few packhorses, and these seemed to carry only weapons and ammunition.
    At three hundred yards Tohkta and his hidden men opened fire. Instantly there was confusion. A milling of horses and men. For a moment only sporadic fire was returned, then Chu Shih rode into the midst of them on a tall gray horse and suddenly there was order. Soldiers dropped to the ground and sought cover, the bullets striking the rocks around Tohkta and his men were no longer random; it now seemed that the fire was seeking out each of them as separate targets.
    “Be ready!” Tohkta called out as under the covering fire a group of soldiers swarmed forward. “Now, run!”
    Tohkta turned and ran himself. Before him, Basruddin spun and fired one last shot before entering the pass. The others followed as rifle fire cracked and whined off the rocks around them. Tohkta had known that they couldn’t stand off a concerted attack, but he also knew that in the thin air of the mountains he and his men could outrun any lowland soldier.
    Chu Shih’s men paused in their rush to fire at the fleeing Tocharis, but their breath came too hard at fourteen thousand feet and their shots went wild. At a signal from their leader, soldiers on horseback charged into the pass to pursue the retreating tribesmen, but this was exactly what Tohkta had been planning for.
    Tola Beg and a strong young boy had made their way up the steep walls of the pass and together they had found a precariously balanced boulder that the yak hunter had spotted years before. With their shoulders braced against the cliff behind them and their feet on the huge rock they waited. They waited until they heard the sound of firing stop and the sound of horsemen entering the pass. Then they pushed.
    Nothing happened.
    They eased up and Tola Beg looked at the boy and