Excerpt of Beyond The Great Snow Mountains by Louis L'Amour
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When the burial was complete, she rode with her son into the hills.
The Go-log tribesmen, sharing her sorrow for their lost leader, stood aside and allowed
her to go. Lok-sha had been a great man and too young to die.
Only in the eyes of Norba and his followers did she detect the triumph born of realization
that nothing now stood between him and tribal control. Nothing but a slender woman, alien
to their land, and Kulan, her fourteen-year-old son.
There was no time to worry now, nor was there time for grief. If ever
they were to escape, it must be at once, for it was unlikely such opportunity would again
offer itself.
It had been fifteen years since the plane in which she was leaving China crashed in the
mountains near Tosun Nor, killing all on board but herself. Now, as if decreed by fate,
another had come, and this one landed intact.
Shambe had brought the news as Lok-sha lay dying, for long ago the far-ranging hunter had
promised if ever another plane landed, he would first bring the news to her.
If the fierce Go-log tribesmen learned of the landing, they would kill the survivors and
destroy the plane. To enter the land of the Go-log was to die.
It was a far land of high, grass plateaus, snowcapped mountains, and rushing streams.
There among the peaks were born three of the greatest rivers of Asia--the Yellow, the
Yangtze, and the Mekong--and there the Go-log lived as they had lived since the time of
Genghis Khan.
Splendid horsemen and savage fighters, they lived upon their herds of yaks, fat-tailed
sheep, horses, and the plunder reaped from caravans bound from China to Tibet.
Anna Doone, born on a ranch in Montana, had taken readily to the hard, nomadic life of the
Go-log. She had come to China to join her father, a medical missionary, and her uncle, a
noted anthropologist. Both were killed in Kansu by the renegade army that had once
belonged to General Ma. Anna, with two friends, attempted an escape in an old plane.
Riding now toward this other aircraft, she recalled the morning when, standing beside her
wrecked plane, she had first watched the Go-log approach. She was familiar with their
reputation for killing interlopers, but she had a Winchester with a telescopic sight and a
.45 caliber Colt revolver.
Despite her fear, she felt a burst of admiration for their superb horsemanship as they
raced over the plain. Seeing the rifle ready in her hands, they drew up sharply, and her
eyes for the first time looked upon Lok-sha.
Only a little older than her own twenty-one years, he was a tall man with a lean
horseman's build, and he laughed with pure enjoyment when she lifted the rifle. She was to
remember that laugh for a long time, for the Go-log were normally a somber people.
Lok-sha had the commanding presence of the born leader of men, and she realized at once
that if she were to survive, it would be because he wished it.
He spoke sharply in his own tongue, and she replied in the dialect of Kansu, which
fortunately he understood.
"It is a fine weapon," he said about the rifle.
"I do not wish to use it against the Go-log. I come as a friend."
"The Go-log have no friends."
A small herd of Tibetan antelope appeared on the crest of a low ridge some three hundred
yards away, looking curiously toward the crashed plane.
She had used a rifle since she was a child, killing her first deer when only eleven.
Indicating the antelope, she took careful aim and squeezed off her shot. The antelope
bounded away, but one went to its knees, then rolled over on its side.
Excerpted from Beyond the Great Snow Mountains by Louis L'Amour.
Copyright© 1999 by Louis and Katherine L'Amour Trust. Excerpted by permission of Bantam
Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may
be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
