Bogeys, he thought. At the river. Early risers.
He slipped his feet into canvas boots and took a pistol from a drawer, then went out through a trap in the cabin floor. The air had bite, and the wind that shook the trees was cool. Above, the sky was lighter, and a sparrow was singing as the woods woke.
He made his way to the riverbank. When he got there the sun was just appearing over the hills on the other side, and its first brightness struck on a shiny piece of metal on a tree limb near him. Tarp hung back behind a massive pine and looked at it. There was a long strip of red ribbon and then, below it, a disc of silver.
Bogey’s been and gone, he thought.
He took it from the limb and held it in his hand. It was a medal as big as the bottom of a coffee cup. On one side was a man’s head in deep relief, on the other the hammer and sickle and a quotation from Lenin in Cyrillic characters. Below it were his name and the date and For service to the struggle for the people.
Tarp looked up and down the riverbank. He knew that somebody was watching out there, probably from the other side of the river.
He threw the medal as high and as far as he could. It went up, glinting in the morning sun, trailing its ribbon-like blood, and then turned over and arched down and down and fell with an inaudible splash in the deep, swirling water where he had caught the salmon, where it sank at once and was gone.
Then Tarp turned his back and went toward the cabin for breakfast.
Copyright
© George Bartram, 1984
George Bartram has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1984 by Pinnacle Books.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.