“Victor,” Putnam objected. “Those are my clothes.”
“Well, I need them. And this is no time to argue about it.” I pulled on the pants quickly, shrugged into the shirt and started buttoning it.
Putnam glowered, but he dropped it. Ti Nih and Papa Baapuh were already out the window. Putnam was just starting to climb out when a pair of Red Guards came through the door, spraying bullets from their tommy guns like they were Flit cans and we were pregnant roaches.
Putnam dropped one of them with a quick, over-the-shoulder shot from the pistol. I spread the other one’s guts all over the room with a blast from the shotgun. Putnam dropped out the window and I started to follow. Several Red Guards did a Keystone Cops routine trying to get through the doorway and blazing away before they even knew what the target was. I aided and abetted their confusion by knocking out the light with the other shell from the shotgun. In the darkness, I made it outside.
Ti Nih and Papa Baapuh were each astride a yak, blankets wrapped around them. Putnam jumped up behind Papa Baapuh and I mounted behind Ti Nih. It was snowing pretty heavily as we started out. It was also damn cold. I snuggled under the blanket behind Ti Nih. She hadn’t had time to put on any clothes. She was naked under the blanket. It looked like it was going to be an interesting yak- ride.
The Red Guards added to the excitement. As we reached the edge of the village and started through the wind-whipped mountain pass, the sound of yak hooves and shouting men behind us testified that they were in pursuit. We couldn’t see them. The curtain of snow cut off our vision. But we could hear them and we continued to hear them through several hours of blizzard.
The pass was slippery and treacherous. Any animal less sure footed than the yak would have plunged us into the snowy abyss. Carrying double loads didn’t make it any easier for the beasts of burden either. But they held to the cliffside path with a minimum of guidance and a maximum of prayer from us.
After about four strenuous hours, it started to sound like the Red Guard was getting closer. They’d be on top of us soon if I was any judge. They’d be on us and either take us prisoners, or drive us over the side of the cliff.
I wasn’t about to resign myself to such a fate. I had an idea. I started peering over Ti Nih’s shoulder and casing the terrain as our yaks inched along the icy path. Finally I saw what I’d been seeking and I poked Ti Nih.
“Stop here a second,” I told her. “I’m getting off. Then you keep going. But go slow for a little while. If I don’t catch up with you in ten minutes or so, speed up and get the hell out of here.”
She didn’t ask questions. I dismounted and took the rope which had been slung over the saddle of the yak. Ti Nih started off, slowly following the tracks made by our other yak.
I worked fast. Going back a few paces, I tied one end of the rope to an outcropping of rock riding up from the mountain side of the path. Leaving a little slack so the gale force wouldn’t snap it, I strung the rope out across the path and tied the other end to a tough-looking vine poking through the snow at the very edge of the abyss. By the time I finished, I could see the Red Guard materializing through the snow. They looked for all the world like a troop of ghost-riders dropping out of the sky in slow motion.
The unreal, slow-motion effect was maintained during the scene which followed. The rope caught the lead yak right at the knees and the Red Guard atop him went sailing into the air. His scream lasted a long time as he was propelled over the side of the cliff and into the abyss below.
The second yak plowed right into the one which had stumbled. The two beasts thrashed in the snow and the ones behind them began to pile up and add to the confusion. One yak in the back tried to avoid the pile-up and he and his rider soared into the air and over the edge of the cliff. Two of the scrambling yaks tumbled after them as each tried to outmaneuver the other to maintain a foothold. One Red Guard leapt to safety only to be kicked over the side by the yak coming up behind him. The scene turned into a panic of squealing, thrashing animals and shouting, desperate men.
I didn’t hang around to count the casualties. Bucking the wind, with my nose all but pressed to the yak tracks, I took off after Ti Nih. I was damn glad she hadn’t listened to me before. Both yaks were waiting for me around a bend in the trail. If they hadn’t been, I never would have made it. I’d only been on foot for five minutes when I found them, but between the cold and slipperiness of the trail, that five minutes almost finished me.
I’d say I was back on the yak with Ti Nih for a good half-hour before I was sure there was life in my body again. By then there was no sign of our pursuers. Also, the trail was dipping steeply downward into the crevice between the slopes of ice so that the wind had abated and the cold was no longer quite so piercing. The snow too was falling more gently now. We had passed through the worst of the terrain and left the worst of the weather behind us.
I became more aware of the warmth of Ti Nih’s breasts under my hands as I held onto her. Her round little bottom bounced intriguingly between my thighs as the yak jogged along. Soon the warmth and the motion were having their effect on both of us.
“Victor! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Putnam, riding behind Papa Baapuh on the yak in front of us, had craned his neck and was staring at us.
“Me sit-down get sore from bounce-bounce,” Ti Nih called back to him. “So turn ’round cushion delicate flesh on Steve’s lap.”
“Don’t hand me that!” Putnam was furious. “I can guess what you’re up to. Now you two just cut it out!”
Papa Baapuh’s head was also turned now and he was glowering at us. Ti Nih ignored them both. Her hands had deftly undone the buttons to the pants I was wearing and now, under cover of the blanket around us both, she rose up and straddled me, impaling herself neatly and hotly on the target. My face was buried between her naked breasts. The motion of the yak did the rest.
“Victor! You’re disgusting!” Putnam raged. “In the middle of a blizzard, on top of a moving yak, the Red Guard on our tails, the girl’s father here, and me, who has certain undeniable claims to her fidelity and to your loyalty-—in such a situation, how can you do what you’re doing?”
“It isn’t easy,” I told him truthfully.
“How can you?”
“I’m the man from O.R.G.Y.,” I reminded him.
“Stop it!”
It was too late. Ti Nih squealed and I lunged upwards and we were almost bounced off the yak as we mutually realized our passion. Coming down out of the clouds, there was an instant when I wondered at the fact that Putnam had suddenly fallen silent. Then I saw the reason why.
We had rounded a sharp curve in the trail and emerged on a wide plateau. There was a sprinkling of huts there and perhaps a dozen Tibetan villagers watching us with open mouths.
“What are you staring at?” I wondered aloud.
“What the hell do you think?” Putnam recovered his voice. “It’s one helluva entrance you two made! I don’t imagine copulating couples drop in out of the snowstorm on these people every day in the week.”
Ti Nih giggled. I felt myself getting red in the face. Papa Baapuh was talking to the villagers.
“Them friends,” Ti Nih translated after a while. “Relations even. We okay here. Them take us in.”
The Tibetan villagers were indeed quite friendly to us. Papa Baapuh was both known and respected there. The head man of the village played host to him and Ti Nih. Another family provided a room and food for Putnam and myself. For the first time, we relaxed. Seemingly, we’d reached safety.
However, as it turned out, our feelings of relief were premature. They were justified for that night, but not by the events of the following day. Towards noon of that day, trouble dropped out of the sky and came looking for us.