Sitka (33 page)

The room was filled with excited whispering; he was enraged to see with what excitement the news had been greeted. Here and there was a solemn face, but all too many had been made happy. Some of the smiles were from loyal Russians who were pleased to see him thwarted. This was nonsense ... merely an attempt by LaBarge to delay sentence ... yet, suppose it were true?
 
The thought was an unpleasant one; he knew even his powerful friends would sacrifice him if it became necessary ... but how would a prisoner know if such a treaty had been ratified?

Even as he denied the possibility he answered the question himself. It was with prisoners as with the army: many times they knew things in the rank and file before the colonels of regiments knew. It was the grapevine, that word of mouth telegraph that could not be shut off or stopped. Perhaps—

“Sentence will be passed tomorrow afternoon,” he commanded abruptly, rising to his feet. “Return the prisoner to his cell.”

When he awakened it was night. Returned to his cell he had fallen across his bunk and slept like a man drugged, but he now lay wide awake, listening to the night sounds, for his was the hunter’s brain, always tuned to the little sounds, the creeping sounds. He got up and walked to the narrow window.
 
Out there were the stars, the same he had watched long ago from the Great Swamp.
 
Was he a fool to trust in a man so far away? Outside a night bird called, and a wind talked gently among the pines and whispered of far-off mountains, a wind that came from distant glaciers, caressed the restless waters and blew into his small window.

There was a rustle in the corridor, a rustle of movement. He turned quickly, knowing that sound. A key grated in the lock and the door opened, and in the instant before it swung wide he caught a whiff of perfume.
 
“Jean? ... Jean!”

She was in his arms then and they clung to each other, clung with a strength that hurt. “Jean! Oh, Jean! I’ve been so frightened!” Helena drew back suddenly, the guard was still in the door, but he had politely turned his back. “Jean, is it true? Has the United States bought Sitka?” “Helena”—he spoke softly so the guard would not hear—“I don’t know anything more than you. It was a bluff.

“Of course,” he added, “I know Rob. I know he has made this thing go through if anyone could, and when I saw those American ships out there, just lying there waiting ... well, what could I lose?”

She hesitated, fearing to tell him. “Jean, Rob Walker has been writing to me, and they have tried everything to find you and free you. It was because of that that I am here, but at the last minute it all came to nothing. The treaty was not ratified.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t believe that. If the treaty was written, if a price was agreed upon, then Walker would get out the vote. No, Helena, if that treaty was written and submitted to the Senate it was ratified.” “But it wasn’t, Jean! You mustn’t depend on that! You must escape!” “No. I think Zinnovy wants me to attempt an escape .... if I do I’ll be shot and his problem is solved. Don’t you realize he would expect you to see me? That he might deliberately make it easy believing you would bring me something, a weapon? No, I’ll stay. If Count Rotcheff can help, then—“ “Jean?” Her throat found difficulty with the words. “Jean, Alexander has been dead for nearly a year. He died before I returned to Sitka.” “Dead?” The word did not make sense. If he was dead then she was free ... free.
 
Free ... they could be together. They could belong to each other. Nothing would stand between them. Only tomorrow he would be returned to Siberia ... or hanged.
 
The improvised courtroom was jammed. The clerk took his place. Opposite Jean, Helena sat where her eyes could see his, and beside her were Prince and Princess Maksoutof. The crowd was large, and contained many familiar faces. His eyes stopped a full second.

Barney Kohl ... his face was solemn, but there was an obvious bulge at his waistband. Beside him was the square, tough face of Gant.
 
Suddenly, Jean was filled with excitement. They had escaped then ... none of them were known to Zinnovy, and they were here. That meant they had been able to hide out after the attack on the Susquehanna.

His eyes searched the crowd ... Ben Turk ... beside him was Shin Boyar. There were several other men he did not know but he was sure they were Americans; they looked like Frisco seamen, right off the waterfront. And they were scattered, scattered in a perimeter around the room. Kohl was seated right behind a guard.
 
Boyar was beside another. That meant they intended to break him out, which meant shooting unless they had a plan, a good plan.

Baron Paul Zinnovy came into the room. He walked to the desk and seated himself.
 
He was cool, composed, sure. If he noticed the strange faces in the crowd he gave no evidence of it.

The clerk got to his feet. “Jean LaBarge, stand and receive sentence!” Jean LaBarge got to his feet, and Baron Zinnovy looked over the papers he held in his hand. He smiled at LaBarge, finding pleasure in the moment.
 
Suddenly there was a rustle of movement at the door, a shoving, a whisper, a shout, and then the door pushed open and a man in civilian clothes entered followed by a line of American bluejackets.

The man passed LaBarge by without speaking and stopped before Zinnovy, whose face had turned ashen.

“Baron Zinnovy? I am Brigadier General Lovell H. Rousseau, United States Commissioner to accept the Territory of Alaska from the government of Russia.” A Russian officer walked from the. door to a place beside the general. He stood at attention and bobbed his head. “Captain Alexei Petchouroff,” he said.
 
“Special Emissary of His Imperial Majesty the Czar of all the Russias!”

Baron Paul Zinnovy leaned back in his chair, his face without expression.

Captain Petchouroff extended an envelope to Zinnovy. “My orders, sir, and yours.

You are to return to Okhotsk to await His Imperial Majesty’s pleasure.” Zinnovy got to his feet. “Of course, but we have a trial here, and—“ Petchouroff waved a gesture of dismissal. “In honor of this great day, His Imperial Majesty has declared a general amnesty. A pardon for all on trial and all awaiting trial in Russian America. They are free, and you are freed of this disagreeable duty!”

Jean LaBarge turned to meet Helena as she ran to him from across the room, and then the crew of the Susquehanna moved in around him.

The morning was bright and clear. Brigadier General Rousseau and General Jefferson C. Davis, backed by a solid square of two hundred American sailors, soldiers and marines, stood at attention. Across from them stood one hundred Russian soldiers in their gray, red-trimmed uniforms. The music began, and officers on both sides mounted the steps of the Castle where Prince Maksoutof awaited them. They turned and faced the square, Captain Petchouroff descending to a place beside General Rousseau.

As the Russian flag was lowered, Princess Maksoutof sobbed gently. Among the Russian civilians several were openly crying.

The American flag climbed the staff and out on the bay the guns of the U.S.S.

Ossipee boomed a salute.

Behind the gathered civilians Jean LaBarge stood beside Helena, and as the flag climbed the staff, Jean whispered, “Do you know what I’m thinking of now? I’m remembering a boy who grew up back on the Susquehanna, a boy who was smaller than any of us, but bigger in a lot of ways than any of us would ever be. In the future they may forget, or they may say cruel things about him. But what he did was not small, and there will always be a few who will not forget.” Helena squeezed his hand. “What about the other boy?”

“He now has”—he took her arm gently—“all he could ever want.” They stood together, watching the flag flutter at the masthead, and listened to the dull boom of the guns out on the bay, and heard the echoes thrown back by the mountains, while on the ageless slopes of Mount Edgecumbe the sun made a moment of glory.

“I think of myself in the oral tradition—of a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way I’d like to be remembered—as a storyteller. A good storyteller.”

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
 
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books.
 
His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio Publishing.
 
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties—among them, four Hopalong Cassidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.

[13 Jun 2002] Scanned by pandor

checked against a DT for errors.