Pitt stiffly ros
e out of his seat and came around behind Stokes. "Hang on, I'll get you out of here."
Within ten minutes, Pitt had kicked open the crumpled entry door and carefully manhandled Stokes'
deadweight outside, where he gently laid him on the soft ground. It took no small effort, and he was panting heavily by the time he sat next to the Mountie to catch his breath. Stokes' face tightened in agony more than once, but he never uttered so much as a low moan. On the verge of slipping into unconsciousness, he closed his eyes.
Pitt slapped him awake. "Don't black out on me, pal. I need you to point the way to Mason Broadmoor's village."
Stokes' eyes fluttered open, and he looked at Pitt questioningly, as if recalling something. "The Dorsett helicopter," he said between coughs. "What happened to those bastards who were shooting at us?"
Pitt stared back at the smoke rising above the forest and grinned. "They went to a barbecue."
Pitt had expected to trudge through snow in January on Kunghit Island, but only a light blanket of the white stuff had fallen on the ground, and much of that had melted since the last storm. He pulled Stokes along behind him on a travois, a device used for hauling burdens by American Plains Indians. He couldn't leave Stokes, and to attempt carrying the Mountie on his back was inviting internal hemorrhaging, so he lashed two dead branch poles together with cargo tiedown straps he scrounged in the wreckage of the aircraft. Rigging a platform between the poles and a harness on one end, he strapped Stokes to the middle of the travois. Then throwing the harness end over his shoulders, Pitt began dragging the injured Mountie through the woods. Hour followed hour, the sun set and night came on as he struggled north through the darkness, setting his course by the compass he'd removed from the aircraft's instrument panel, an expedient he had used several years previously when trekking across the Sahara Desert.
Every ten minutes or so Pitt asked Stokes, "You still with me?"
"Hanging in," the Mountie repeated weakly.
"I'm looking at a shallow stream that runs to the west."
"You've come to Wolf Creek. Cross it and head northwest."
"How much farther to Broadmoor's village?"
Stokes replied in a hoarse murmur. "Two, maybe three kilometers."
"Keep talking to me, you hear?"
"You sound like my wife. . ."
"You married?"
"Ten years, to a great lady who gave me five children."
Pitt readjusted the harness straps, which were cutting into his chest, and pulled Stokes across the stream. After plodding through the underbrush for a kilometer, he came to a faint path that led in the direction he was headed. The path was grown over in places, but it offered relatively free passage, a godsend to Pitt after-having forced his way through woods thick with shrubs growing between the trees.
Twice he thought he'd lost the path, but after continuing on the same course for several meters, he would pick it up again. Despite the freezing temperature, his exertions were making him sweat. He dared not allow himself to stop and rest. If Stokes was to live to see his wife and five children again, Pitt had to keep going. He kept up a one-way conversation with the Mountie, fervently trying to keep him from drifting into a coma from shock. Concentrating on keeping one foot moving ahead of the other, Pitt failed to recognize anything strange.
Stokes whispered something but Pitt couldn't make it out. He turned his head, cocked an ear and paused. "You want me to stop?" Pitt asked.
"Smell it. . .?" Stokes barely whispered.
"Smell what?"
"Smoke."
Then Pitt had it too. He inhaled deeply. The scent of wood smoke was coming from somewhere ahead. He was tired, desperately tired, but he leaned forward against the harness and staggered on.
Soon his ears picked up the sound of a small gas engine, of a chain saw cutting into wood. The wood smell became stronger, and he could see smoke drifting over the tops of the trees in the early light of dawn. His heart was pounding under the strain, but he wasn't about to quit this close to his destination.
The sun rose but remained hidden behind dark gray clouds. A light drizzle was falling when he stumbled into a clearing that touched the sea and opened onto a small harbor. He found himself staring at a small community of log houses with corrugated metal roofs. Smoke was rising out of their stone chimneys. Tall cylindrical totem poles were standing in different parts of the village, carved with the features of stacked animal and human figures. A small fleet of fishing boats rocked gently beside a floating dock, their crews working over engines and repairing nets. Several children, standing under a shed with open sides, were observing a man carving a huge log with a chain saw. Two women chatted as they hung wash on a line. One of them spotted Pitt, pointed and began shouting at the others.
Overcome by exhaustion, Pitt sank to his knees as a crowd of a dozen people rushed toward him.
One man, with long straight black hair and a round face, knelt down beside Pitt and put an arm around his shoulder. "You're all right now," he said with concern. He motioned to three men who gathered around Stokes and gave them an order. "Carry him into the tribal house."
Pitt looked at the man. "You wouldn't by chance be Mason Broadmoor?"