And then the fires went out. The roaring died. For a moment the hills were filled with the echoes of the dying flames, and then there was only the sound of the giant fans now blowing cold air onto the giant copa-ibas. Then that sound, too, died away, and the only sound left was that of the mountain wind.
Chiun and Remo stood silently for the space of seven slow heartbeats. Then Chiun raised a bony finger and pointed to the farthest left burner.
"There," he said. "Two men."
After another heartbeat, Chiun pointed to a second spot, closer to the mouth of the copa-iba valley.
"And there. The other man, the big clumsy one."
"Stay here, Little Father," Remo said. He started moving in a long, fast glide toward the two men.
Remo knew he was not the only one moving through the moon-clouded dark. Ahead of him, he could hear the pair of men trying to get away. And off to his left, he could hear the sound of the big man moving as quickly and quietly across the snow as he could.
In seconds, Remo had closed the distance between himself and the two men to just a few dozen yards. So, to Remo's surprise, had the big man. For a moment then, everyone but Remo stopped moving, and the mountain was as quiet as mountains ever get on cold, windy winter nights.
The light of the moon rebounded off the powdery white snow, and the edges of the valley were surprisingly bright. Remo could feel the temperature dropping, as warm air stopped rising out of the copa-iba valley. If the trees really needed a tropical climate to live, the cold would soon destroy them. Cutting off the gas-fired heating machines was their death sentence.
The big man was to Remo's left. He had stopped moving, and now he stood upright, stock-still, only a few yards from the other two men. They too stopped momentarily. Then the big man called out.
"Allo. Allo there," he roared in a voice loud enough and deep enough to match his six-foot-six and 250 pounds. "You will please to stop. We must talk."
The words were bellowed in a heavy French accent.
The man closest to the big man quickly slapped a rifle to his shoulder, and rapidly and surely squeezed off two rounds at the big man. But he was too late. The big man had seen the motion begin and had dived for cover behind the framework supporting one of the blowers.
The bullets cracked and whined through the frigid night air, but they missed their target. The big man started to stand up again, and this time the man was waiting for him. The rifle cracked again; again the big man ducked. But this time he did not escape unharmed, because as he pulled himself back into cover — successfully avoiding the bullet once more — he hit his head against one of the platform's steel support bars. The resulting crack set the whole structure echoing and re-echoing. The big man cursed loudly, moaned softly, and fell face forward into the snow.
Remo was confused. He had assumed all three men were working together, but' it was obvious now that the big man was on a different team from the other two.
The man with the rifle walked forward quickly to deliver the finishing touch of a bullet into the temple of the unconscious giant.
Without knowing who was who, Remo decided against letting him do that. He moved from behind the tree, in whose shadow he had been standing and walked lightly across the snow until he was standing between the two men, both of them with guns.
They were wearing heavy jackets, and ski masks, with cutouts around the eyes and mouth, covered their faces.
"Hi, fellas," Remo called out. Both men spun around to face him. Their rifles came up to their waists and were aimed at him.
"I'm doing a tree survey for the federal government," Remo said. "You seen any?"
"Who the hell?.." said the man closest to the unconscious giant.
"I told you. I'm a surveyor. Just want to ask you a few questions."
"You're never going to hear the answers, buddy," the man said.
"That's not nice," Remo said. He was moving closer to the other rifleman now. Behind him he could sense that the first rifleman had raised his weapon to his shoulder. Then Remo could feel the tension waves fill the air as he closed his finger around the trigger. Remo could feel the finger ever so gently squeezing the trigger.
Remo jumped across the two feet of ground separating him from the nearer gunman and waltzed him around like a grammar-school boy at his first dance. It took less than a heartbeat do so.
The other gunman was very good. He had lined up the shot exactly right. The only problem was that in the time between when he had started to pull the trigger and the time the bullet had reached its destination, the target had changed. The bullet never reached Remo, but buried itself instead in-the right side of the other man's head.
As the dead man fell away from Remo, his finger tightened in a convulsive spasm on the trigger of his gun.
It fired with a loud crack in the cold, clear night air. As Remo watched, in growing disgust, the bullet from his gun bored a hole in the direct center of the other gunman's forehead. First Remo could see the black dot where the hot bullet had singed through the woolen ski mask; then he could see the spreading redness of blood on the woolen fabric. And then the man toppled forward into the snow.
"Goddamn," Remo said in exasperation. First he had two who could talk to him and now he had none. "Nothing ever goes right for me anymore." He walked over to the other man to touch him with a toe, just on the odd chance that he might not be all the way dead.
Behind the heater blower, he heard the big man getting to his feet and stumbling around.
He moved out from behind the machine, saw Remo, and pulled a Bowie knife from his belt, holding it in front of him in an attack position.
"Try not to pick up ze gun," he growled at Remo. "I sliver your throat before you do."
The man was a bulky, bull-like giant. Even leaning forward, he was taller than Remo, and his shoulders were as broad as a doorway. He wore a light lumberman's wool shirt, with a sweater underneath it. A knitted stocking cap perched lightly on top of his head.
"Put that thing away," Remo said, waving at the knife. "I save your life and you pull a knife on me."
"Hah," said the big man. "And another hah. I not need any squeak-pip to save me from anyzmg."
"Squeak-pip?" Remo said.
"What you doing here?" the big man said.
"I work here," Remo said. "Who are you?"
"I Peer LaRue. I a tree-yanker, the very best there is. And one damn good mechanic too," he said. "Now you talk."
"You work up here for this company?" Remo asked.
Peer LaRue nodded.
"So do I," Remo said. "Well, not really. I work for the government. They sent me up here to study trees. I count them like."
The big man laughed. "Very funny. You one good storyteller. You have fun with Peer LaRue. Now you tell me who you are, and then we go talk to my boss-man, okay, yes?"
"No, okay, no," said Remo. "I told you, I count trees."
"You want to play games with me, we play the games," LaRue said.
"Tomorrow we'll talk," Remo said. "Look, these two guys are dead and that's annoying. I'm not feeling good. And Chiun wants his thirteen trunks. And nothing's going right, and I don't want to chit-chat. You want to talk, we'll talk tomorrow. Trust me, it'll be better that way."
He turned and started to go. Peer LaRue jumped toward him from behind. Remo took the man's knife away and threw it deep into the trunk of a big spruce about ten feet up from the ground, catching the back collar of Peer LaRue's shirt, and pinning the squirming, roaring, very angry tree-yanker to the tree.
Oscar Brack was sitting in an overstuffed chair in front of the roaring fireplace when Remo got back to the A-frame at Alpha Camp.
He looked up as Remo came in through the front door.
"Well, well, well," he said. "The tree reclamation technician. How's it going? You find any trees to reclaim?"