It was Rex who broke their sombre train of thought “Say, boys,” he cried, with his ringing laugh, “who’d want to be on a mucky little street like Broadway, when they could see stars like this!”
De Richleau let the horses have their heads. They were fine beasts, well fed and full of spirit. An hour’s hard driving would not harm them for further service, and it was vital to get well away from the town as quickly as possible.
The three friends wasted no time in discussion. Rex asked which way they were heading. Simon told him they were making for the forests of the north, and he seemed satisfied.
The road lay chiefly along the west bank of the frozen Irtysh River; in places it left the course of the stream, and ran for long straight stretches beside the local railway, which linked up Tobolsk with the small towns of the north. The road was wide, and in far better repair than that on which they had travelled from Turinsk; since it must be the less important of the two, this struck the Duke as curious, but he did not puzzle himself to find an explanation. He was only thankful that this enabled them to make far better progress than he had hoped.
After an hour they pulled up to rest the horses. The place was wild and desolate. Sombre forests stretched away on either hand, an almost uncanny silence brooded over the shadowy darkness, broken only the faint soughing of innumerable boughs as the night breeze rustled the pine tops. The moon was not yet up, and the starlight barely lighted the narrow ribbon of road.
They had been fortunate in meeting no one since they had left Tobolsk. The one straggling village through which they had passed had been destitute of life, its roofless houses and charred remains one of the many grim monuments that mark the years of bitter conflict throughout the length and breadth of Russia.
It was decided that they should press on all through the night, but at an easier pace to save the horses. Their prisoner started groaning, and showed signs of returning life. They tied his hands and feet securely, and put him in the bottom of the sleigh. Rex, having purloined his boots, took over the reins from De Richleau. Simon and the Duke curled up under the rugs to get what sleep they could.
The going for the next hour was difficult; heavy forests came up to the road on either hand, and the feeble starlight barely penetrated to the tunnel of darkness through which they drove. Later, when the forests fell away from the roadside, and the moon got up, its reflection on the snow made the whole landscape as bright as day. Rex was able to increase the pace considerably without straining the horses. In spite of the ever-increasing distance from Tobolsk, the road remained surprisingly even and well kept.
At a little before dawn they passed through the town of Uvatsk. It was shrouded in darkness, and fortunately the population still slept. De Richleau had stripped the sleigh bells from the harness on their previous journey, and except for the hoof-beats of the horses on the hardened snow, their passage was almost noiseless.
A few miles on the farther side of Uvatsk, Van Ryn drove the sleigh some way up a track at the side of the road. The place was thickly wooded, and when he was assured that they were well hidden from any chance passer-by, he stopped the sleigh and woke his companions.
The three set about preparing a meal. Simon and De Richleau had never allowed the rucksacks to leave their possession, and on inspection they found that they had enough food to last them for four or five days if they were careful; by that time they might hope to put a considerable distance between themselves and Tobolsk. After that they must trust to securing supplies from isolated farmhouses. The horses were a more difficult matter. The Duke had seen to it that the nose-bags were well filled the previous afternoon, but they would need to buy or steal fodder by the following day. If possible they must secure relays by exchanging their horses for others at some farm; if they could not arrange something of the kind their pace would be bound to suffer.
Their principal embarrassment was their prisoner. If they kept him they must feed him, and he would be a further drain on their supplies. He would have to be constantly watched or he might find some way of giving the alarm.
For the present they untied him; he was too stiff from his bonds to run away, and Rex had already secured his boots. They were careful also to remove his rifle from the sleigh.
The camping ground they had chosen for their meal was some twenty yards off the track, under the shelter of some bushes; the horses were unharnessed and hobbled.
De Richleau had a fair supply of “Meta” fuel in his pack, so they boiled water for tea. While they were waiting, the Duke spread out a map and pointed to their approximate position.
“Here we are, my friends,” he said, “half-way between Uvatsk and Romanovsk. We have covered something over a hundred miles since we set out fourteen hours ago. That is good going, particularly as we have reason to suppose that our pursuers will not look for us in this direction. But what now? It is over a thousand miles to the frontier. How shall we make that, with stolen horses, an escaped prisoner, and a Red Guard whom we must carry with us?”
Simon laughed his little nervous laugh into the palm of his hand. “We’re in a real muddle this time,” he said.
“Well, I’ll say we’ve taken the right road,” Rex laughed. “Romanovsk is just the one place in all the Russias I’ve been wanting to see for a long, long time.”
“Let us be serious, Rex,” De Richleau protested. “We shall need all our wits if we are ever to get out of Russia alive.”
Van Ryn shook his head. “I’m on the level. You boys wouldn’t know the fool reason that brought me to this Goddam country.”
“Oh, yes, we do,” said Simon promptly. “You’re after the Shulimoff treasure — Jack Straw told us!”
“Did he, though! He’s a great guy. Well, the goods are under fifteen miles from where we’re sitting now, in the old man’s place at Romanovsk; it ’ud be a real shame to go back home without those little souvenirs — we’ll split up on the deal!”
“I should be interested to hear how you learnt about this treasure, Rex,” said the Duke; “also how you were caught. Tell us about it now. We must give the horses at least an hour, they’re looking pretty done.”
“It happened this way.” Rex pushed the last piece of a ham and rye bread sandwich into his month, and leant back against the trunk of a near-by tree.
“Last fall I went to take a look at some of those one-eyed South American States — tho’, come to that, they’re not so one-eyed after all. Of course, as kids in the States, we’re always taught to look on them as pothole places — run by Dagoes, half-breeds, and dirty-dicks, and just crying out for real intelligent civilization as handed out by Uncle Sam — but that’s another story. On the way home I stopped off for a spell in the West Indies.”
“Cuba?” suggested De Richleau.
“Yes, Havana.”
“A lovely city. I was last there in 1926.”
“Sure, it would be a great town if there weren’t so many of our folk there — it was like Coney Island on a Sunday!”
“You were there when? November, I suppose?”
“That’s so. The American people treat Havana like Europe does Monte Carlo. Every little hick from the middle-west has to go to that place once, or he cuts no social ice in his home town at all. The bars are open night and day, and drinks about a tenth of the price they’d pay in a speakeasy back home, which isn’t calculated to make ’em behave as tho’ they were at the King’s garden party. I should have cleared out on the next boat if it hadn’t been for a Dago with a Ford!”
Simon smiled. “You don’t look as if you’d been run over!”