The man must have been quite near, near enough to hear the nervous movements of his horse. We faced him in a tense bunch. He was about sixty, a solid, broad-shouldered woodcutter, his big axe held on his right shoulder. He was heavily bearded but both his beard and long hair were neatly trimmed. His approach impressed me. He saw us but his slow, deliberate walk did not falter. His eyes looked steadily ahead and took in the fact that I held his gun under my arm. He gave no sign of fear or alarm. He went to the horse’s head, ran his hand through the mane, turned aside and swung the blade of his axe into the bole of a tree, where he left it.
He looked at me and beyond me to where the girl stood with the American. ‘Who are you?’
Smith answered, moving forward as he did so. ‘We are prisoners escaping. We shall not harm you. We only want food.’
‘Times have changed,’ said the man. ‘At one time you would have found food waiting for you, and no questions asked.’
There was a simple dignity about the man. He looked us all over with easy frankness. He turned his head towards Kristina again and I thought he was going to ask us about her. But he said nothing. Instead he walked around the horse’s head and reached down to the sledge for a long, slim sack which he picked up. His fingers busied themselves with the leather thong around the neck. ‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ he said. ‘I live alone and I am the only man for miles around here.’
From the sack came treasure. A loaf of dark brown bread. Four smallish dried fish. A thick, mouth-watering hunk of salted fat pork. From his belt he took a long hunter’s knife. These were the provisions of a man who was intending to be away from his home for a whole day and it was evident he had not yet eaten. We watched his performance with concentrated attention. Carefully he cut off one slice of bread and one slice of salt pork which he replaced in the sack. He motioned to Kolemenos, positioned nearest to him. Kolemenos took a couple of paces forward and the woodcutter put into his big hands the loaf of bread, the lump of pork and the dried fish.
Kolemenos stood for so long looking down at the food in his hands that eventually I said to him, ‘Put it in your bag, Anastazi, and we’ll share it out later.’
The sound of my voice caused the Russian to turn towards me – and to the gun I was holding. There was an unspoken question in his eyes. I walked over to Smith and we talked about the gun. We agreed the thing would be useless to us. We could not hunt with it because the noise of it would attract attention to us, especially in the well-populated southern areas we were now approaching. Nevertheless, security demanded we should not leave it with the woodcutter. Paluchowicz and Makowski added their opinions and the final decision was that we could not afford to take the slightest risk of the gun being used against us or as a signal to summon assistance.
I faced the Russian. ‘We are sorry, old man, but we have to take your gun with us.’
For the first time he appeared perturbed. He lifted his hands as though to appeal to us, dropped them again. ‘It will not be safe for you to use it,’ he said. ‘I understand the way you feel. Hang the gun on a tree somewhere and perhaps one day I shall find it.’
We turned to go. Once more he looked at Kristina. ‘Good luck to you all,’ he called after us. ‘May you find what you seek.’
We moved on for about an hour without much talk, all of us feeling a nagging sense of guilt at having taken that shotgun, a thing of inestimable value to a man like the woodcutter.
‘Well,’ said Zaro eventually, ‘the old man still has his horse.’ We laughed at that, but felt no better for it.
About five miles from the scene of the encounter I hung the gun on the low branch of a tree overhanging a faint track, having first bound a piece of deerskin round the breech. It was the best I could do.
The food remained untouched until the day’s march ended at nightfall. Kolemenos divided it into eight portions. So small was each lot that I could have bolted mine in a couple of minutes and still remained hungry. But the well-developed instinct of hoarding food against the possibility of even worse trouble prevailed with all of us. We decided to use what we had as an iron ration spread over three days – a little for this night and the two following nights. Kristina listened to our talk and ate as we did, one-third of her small store. She looked very white and tired that night, I remember.
In spite of the natural preoccupation with food, progress remained good as we pressed south over a succession of low ranges. The farther we went the more the signs of human settlement increased. Our method was to approach the top of each hill warily and scout from there the country ahead. Frequently we saw people moving about in the distance. We swung off course to avoid roads along which went telephone poles – always the mark of an important route – and which carried a fair amount of lorry traffic. On other occasions we heard men calling to one another and the clatter of tractors. There was often the sound of a not-far-distant factory hooter.
Daylight travelling was getting hazardous. One day after the last of the woodcutter’s food had gone, we sat down to review our situation. This was a day, I recall, when Kristina had been unable to keep up with us. Several times she had slipped away and held us up. There had been good-natured grousing. She was away from us now as we discussed plans for covering the dangerous terrain between us and the border.
‘What is the matter with the little girl?’ asked the Sergeant suddenly.
I turned rather sharply on him. ‘There is nothing the matter with her that a day’s rest won’t cure. Don’t forget she is a woman. All women become unwell. Have you forgotten?’
Paluchowicz’s face was a study of consternation. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said slowly. Nor had the others, apparently. ‘The poor child,’ murmured Makowski.
Mister Smith spoke up. ‘Obviously we shall have to revert to night marches very soon. We might as well start the new scheme now, and Kristina can have her rest. Slav, you are the youngest of us. You have a quiet word with her and tell her we won’t start until she feels quite fit to go.’
I moved away from them and met her as she came out from among the trees. ‘Kristina, we are all going to rest for a day and then start travelling at night.’
‘Is it because of me?’ There was a bright pink spot in each cheek.
‘No, no. It will be safer at night.’
‘I have been holding you back today. I am very sorry. But I could not help it, Slav. I am very tired today.’
‘I understand. Please don’t worry.’
She turned away. ‘You are very kind, Slav. You are all very kind. Thank you.’ And I led her back to the others. And everybody was immediately talkative in an elaborately casual way. Then she sat down beside Mister Smith and said, ‘Tell me some more about what the women wear in America.’ He smiled and talked. She listened without saying a word, her chin on her knees.
The new arrangement was pleasant. We slept warm during the heat of the day and had the light of the moon to guide us through the cool of night.
It was in bright moonlight that hunger forced us for the first and only time to raid a village. The scattered lights of houses about a mile and a half away stopped us on the crest of a rise. Clear to us came a single, thin squeal of a pig.
Zaro made a sucking noise through his lips. ‘My mother used to make beautiful pea soup with a pig’s tail in it.’
Kolemenos touched my shoulder. ‘Let’s go and find that pig.’
We weighed the risks. We had to eat. Smith offered the strongest opposition, then gave in. The pig-hunting party was selected – Kolemenos, with the axe, I with the knife, and the Lithuanian Marchinkovas. The others were to skirt the village off to the right from where we stood and make for a clump of trees showing up sharp on the skyline about a mile away, there to await us. It was understood that if they heard any commotion in the village which might indicate we were in trouble, they were to get away from the neighbourhood as quickly as possible.
The big Latvian and I set off, Marchinkovas following us a few yards behind. We
made a beeline in the direction from which we thought the squeal had come and came to an orchard of young trees on the fringe of the village. Grass grew thickly among the trees.
At the edge of the orchard we left Marchinkovas on sentry duty and started a hands-and-knees crawl towards a small, barn-like wooden building at the other end. Kolemenos whispered close to my ear, ‘I smell pig.’ We came up off our knees in the shadow of a pile of cut logs. ‘Don’t touch them,’ urged the big man, ‘or they’ll all roll down with a hell of a clatter.’ We looked up to the roof of the building to make sure it was not after all a human dwelling place. We were reassured. There was no chimney.
I crept forward and flattened myself against the side of the building with my ear pressed against the wood. I could hear the pig moving around in rustling straw. He had scented me, too, and was snuffling at me inches away on the other side. Kolemenos ran from behind the wood-pile and joined me. We felt along for a door. There was none. ‘It must be around the other side,’ I hissed at him. The other side was the side of the village and its few lighted windows.
I found the door on the other side. It opened by a simple latch and creaked and groaned for lack of oil as I sweated to inch it open. Kolemenos squeezed in after me into the blackness. I moved over to the far side where I had heard from outside the pig moving about. By feel I discovered a small gate leading to a penned-off corner. I jumped as the pig grunted a foot away from me and brought its snout against my leg. Kolemenos came from behind me, slipped his powerful arms gently around the animal and gave a tentative heave to test the weight. ‘Too heavy to carry,’ he said.
There was only one alternative. We had to persuade the pig to come with us. ‘Make friends with it,’ I whispered. ‘Tickle its belly. Then get behind it and be ready to give it an occasional push.’ Kolemenos got to work and I got to work. The pig grunted with pleasure. I took it by the ear and started towards the door. Kolemenos encouraged it from behind. There were breath-taking seconds of indecision before it moved. We went out, shutting the door after us, got into and through the orchard, crouching low and murmuring endearments to keep the animal in the right frame of mind to stay willingly with us. A white-faced Marchinkovas met us at the top of the orchard and fell in behind us to cover our retreat.
With the luck of desperate men we made it. About a hundred yards from the rendezvous with the others, Kolemenos dispatched the pig with one swift axe blow. It died soundlessly. I felt a sharp pang of regret. It had been a very trustful pig. We worked fast, gutting the carcase in the moonlight and crudely cutting it up into pieces that could be carried by the seven men. The others had seen us and now came up. There were congratulations all round. It had been a nerve-racking hour or more for those who waited.
The killing had taken place only about three-quarters of a mile from the village and the signs could easily be found in the morning. There was an extreme urgency about putting as much distance as possible behind us before daylight. We were jogging along most of the hours before the sun began vaguely to show in the east. We climbed a rock-strewn hill and when we had almost despaired of finding a hide-out stumbled finally on a dank cave with a narrow opening well screened by dwarf trees.
As the sun came up we had a clear view across a plain to a long ridge a couple of miles away in the direction from which we had come. There were no signs of life, but we took great care not to expose ourselves. The meat-heavy sacks were dropped well inside the cave. Anxiously we deliberated what to do with the pork. In this June warmth it would not long remain eatable and we knew it must be cooked quickly. The solution again must be to gorge as much meat as we could while it was fresh-cooked. There was no alternative to the risk of lighting a fire.
The fire was set going with the driest wood we could find well back inside the cave. Kristina turned the long stake on which the joints of pork were spitted. The fire spluttered and hissed as the sizzling fat dropped on the burning wood. A delicious smell of roast pork and wood smoke filled the cave. Meanwhile Zaro and Marchinkovas were away with the metal mug searching for water. They were away for so long that we became worried. When they returned Zaro explained that they had walked about half-a-mile before they found a thin trickle of water among the rocks and then had had to sit patiently waiting while the mug filled.
Throughout that day we cooked and ate and slept, maintaining one man on sentry duty in approximately two-hour shifts. By mid-afternoon I was in the throes of the most racking stomachache. Smith, Paluchowicz and Makowski were also rocking in agony, holding their clasped hands across their stomachs. All of us suffered in greater or lesser degree from the effects of loading our digestions, idle for days, on the rich fattiness of half-cooked pig-meat. Towards evening the cramping pains eased and we drove ourselves to eat more.
Someone, I have forgotten who, put up the suggestion that we should try to smoke the meat we were to carry with us so as to preserve it. Dusk was falling as we piled on the bright flames green juniper boughs. The smoke billowed up causing an epidemic of coughing and streaming eyes. For a couple of hours we smoked the lumps of meat until it turned a patchy brown. Then we packed it in our sacks and set off on the night march. As we left the cave I was doubled up by another spasm of pain and felt I should have to retch. The trouble persisted at intervals for many hours.
At this stage of the journey I knew we must be within a week’s travel of the border. The knowledge made us edgy, silent and exaggeratedly watchful. We spent up to an hour scouting the position ahead before crossing a stretch of open ground or one of the many shallow streams across our route, despite the fact that the chance of discovery at night must have been remote. I had the feeling that we were moving among hostile people and that the odds were that we must at some time run into some of them. More imminently than the frontier I feared the crossing of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Already we were near enough to have heard in the far distance the passing of trains. Mister Smith shared my fears.
‘The railway will be heavily patrolled,’ he said anxiously.
‘We will cross at night,’ I replied.
It was difficult to sleep during the day. There was no need to post sentries. Everybody was alert. Only Kristina seemed to enjoy peace of mind. Her trust in us was absolute. She slept while we worried and, knowing that the trail must become progressively more arduous, I was glad to see it. She was vastly entertained one early morning to see in the distance a train of camels, loaded with cotton, moving slowly on their way less than two miles away from our hiding-place on a scrub-covered ridge. She had never seen camels before Commented Zaro, ‘From reindeer to camels – now I have seen everything.’
From high ground we saw the Trans-Siberian Railway through the clear air of a June morning five miles distant from us. Lying near the track and separated by four or five miles were two small villages; on the outskirts of each, hard against the side of the tracks, was a signalman’s or maintenance man’s stone house. On our side of the railway, the northern side, was a protective belt of trees, beyond which could be seen some kind of fence, both obviously having the common purpose of preventing snow from drifting and piling up on the line. All day long we watched. Several long trains passed in both directions. About midday a Red Cross train steamed west. An hour or so later a heavy freight train chugged from the east and we nudged each other at the sight of the heavy guns it was carrying on low-slung bogies. Some of the others dozed off from time to time during the day but the American, like me, was too restless and nervous to rest.
The advance towards the railway was made immediately after dark, with Paluchowicz and Makowski out on each flank as a special security patrol. The girl stayed close beside Smith while Kolemenos, Marchinkovas, Zaro and I fanned out a few yards ahead. It took us about an hour and a half to reach the screen of trees and we waited squatting on our haunches there for the two Poles on the flanks to edge their way in to us. They had seen nothing suspicious, they reported.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Marchinkovas will come ahead with me to the railway.
The rest of you will follow on to the edge of the trees where you can see us and wait until we signal you on.’
The fence offered no difficulties. At the foot of the embankment there was a ditch. We climbed into and out of it. We crawled slowly up on to the tracks and lay there listening. I put my ear to the nearest metal rail. There was no sound. I stood up for a second, faced the trees and flapped my arms. I lay down again beside the Lithuanian and spent palpitating minutes awaiting the arrival of the rest of the party. Straining my ears for any warning sounds along the line, I heard every move of the approach of the others. I thought sickeningly they were making enough noise to be heard a mile away. It was the girl who came and crouched beside me. ‘All right?’ I whispered. ‘Yes.’ I looked round. Everybody was there. I looked across the shining steel rails and listened for a few more seconds.
‘Come on,’ I jerked my arm, jumped to my feet and leapt forward, taking Kristina with me by the elbow. There was an agitated scramble down the embankment on the far side and then we were running like crazy fools. We had covered about a hundred yards when someone shouted, his voice sharp with panic, ‘Down, down!’ I glanced over my shoulder and saw the lights of a passenger train. I dropped, pulling the girl down with me. We all went down and hugged the ground as the train thundered by. It had been a near thing. If anyone on the train had seen us I am quite sure we should have been ruthlessly hunted down.
The morning found us after hours of hard travel basking in sunshine on the secluded bank of a clear-water river. It teemed with fish, but we might as well have been onlookers at an aquarium because we knew no way of catching them. We lay about for a while and then Smith said he thought it better if we got over the other side as soon as possible. Unlike the rivers of the Baikal Range, the waters of this one moved slowly and were warm. The swim across was pleasantly refreshing.