Adventure Magazine Cover — page 44: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

38 Winter was ending, and at midday the sun made the footing soft, so that mud be- gan to appear on the trail—though every- thing froze hard at night. The villages were fewer—a scattering of choutars around a log church or fort, in a valley. The timber was thinning, except for dense stands on the tablelands. From passing traders, Finns or Arme- nians for the most part, who were coming in from the border with furs, he heard that Otrépiev was still two full days in advance of him. It would be quite useless to take even three horses and try to come up with the fugitives before they reached the river. Toghrul pointed out that they must wait over a day at the next farm until the charger was rested and the kabardas had slept their fill. ‘Why did you think that Otrépiev would strike for the Volga?” he asked Nada. “How? Does a stag not start up from the thicket when the wolf pack gives tongue? He would take the boldest course.” “That would be to cross the river. Whye”’ “On the far side the Nogai tents are as- sembled here and there. The Tatars come in at winter to trade their furs and plunder across the river when the ice is good. He can hide himself among them.” Kirdy knew this very well, but it sur- prized him a little that Nada should know what went on beyond the border. The Nogais had been driven out of Kazan and Muscovy by Ivan the Terrible, not two generations ago, and they were far from peaceful. But the Tsar Ivan had massa- cred tens of thousands of their warriors in that day, and this had earned their hearty respect. The trail brought them to the Volga at last, on a gray day when the sun had disap- peared behind clouds. Kirdy searched the bank of the river that was like a dark valley between white hills. Toghrul agreed with him that Otrépiev had crossed at once. So the horses and the sleigh were led across, and the story that was written in the far bank drew Kirdy for an hour’s searching of tracks. What had happened was clear as a minstrel’s tale. Here a Nogai yurta had been, where one of the tribes had winter quarters. They had penned their cattle behind fences, and HAROLD LAMB had eaten the animals that died of starva- tion—for the Tatars never saved up hay for the winter. Otrépiev’s party had gone into “the yurta, and at least two days ago the whole had moved off—the Nogais loading their felt tents on wagons and driving their cattle. - A storm would hide the trail of the tribe, and once this was lost it would be a long and anxious matter to find trace of Otrépiev again. On three sides of him stretched the steppe, with its treeless expanse of rolling ground, its vast spaces where the blast of the wind was more to be feared than Tatar arrows—its isolated burial mounds where spirits could be heard crying at night. Kirdy knew it well. . Nada, her coat collar turned up over her hair, her slim waist girdled tight, and her hands thrust into the wide sleeves, looked about her and turned to him curiously. “Would you follow the Nogais, who have followed Otrépiev?”’ “Aye,” he said. She pointed to the leaden bank of the sky in the north that seemed to spread darkness over all the world. “It is coming, the snow. Before morn- ing, perhaps before night, it will end the trail. Look at Toghrul!”’ The old man was stamping about by the horses, cursing the Nogai camp that had left not a bit of grazing on this part of the river; his impatience and uneasiness were unmistakable. “Can I get hay at your Wolf’s Throat?” Kirdy asked. ‘“‘Aye, and meat.” ‘“‘Where lies this Wolky Gorlo?” “Yonder.” Nada pointed inland, diagonally away from the track of the Nogais. “Ts it a Tatar yurta?”’ The girl laughed gleefully. “‘Ask the black-haired people!” she cried, dropping into the dialect of the tribes. “Ask—if they come near the Wollf’s Throat!” “In the name of Allah the Compassion- ate!”’ Toghrul’s plaintive cry drifted up to them, ‘‘Are the horses to stand until their bones stiffen?” Kirdy knew that he must go first to the Wolky Gorlo for food and forage for his horse, and then must take his chances at tracking down Otrépiev in the open steppe. “Come!” Nada called to him. COMmiclboook C©