fashion?”
Joe Mack grinned suddenly, and the man’s face lit up again. “Tourist the hard way,” he
said.
For a moment the man puzzled over that, and then he smiled again. “Why you here? This
is far-off place.”
Joe Mack was puzzled. The man was no soldier, yet he carried an AK-47 and gave every
evidence of being ready to use it. His clothes were nondescript, his manner as guarded
as his own. Was this man also a fugitive?
“It is better I travel in far-off places,” he spoke slowly again. “I eat what the land provides.”
The man’s eyes searched his. “I am Yakov,” he said.
“I am Joe Mack,” he replied.
“Where you live?”
“In America. Until I return there I live as I can, where I can. Soon winter comes. I have no home for winter.”
“Ah?”
Yakov was ten feet away, and the AK-47 did not waver. There was no way he was going to cover that ten feet and lay a hand on that gun without catching four or five slugs, and the man was no fool.
“Why you not go down there?” Yakov waved toward the distant village.
Joe Mack took a chance. After all, what was Yakov doing up in the mountains with an
AK-47? “They would put me in a house with bars.”
“Ah! An American? A prisoner? In Siberia? Russia is not at war with America!”
“No?” Joe Mack lifted an eyebrow. “Tell that to Colonel Zamatev. ”
Instantly, the man’s manner changed, “Zamatev? You spik Zamatev?”
For the first time the muzzle of the gun lowered. “Where you spik Zamatev?”
“West of here, many miles. I was his prisoner.”
“You escape? He look for you?”
“He looks.”
Yakov was silent, obviously thinking. He pointed to the crude sheepskin vest. “You
make?”
“I did.”
Yakov indicated the bow staff. “What that?”
“A bow. I am making a bow. Then I shall make arrows. I need to hunt.” Joe Mack lifted
the sling, and the AK-47 covered him again. “The bow will be better than this.”
“How you kill sheep?”
Joe Mack indicated the sling. He took from his pack a piece of the smoked and dried
mutton. He extended it to Yakov. “You like? It is sheep.”
Yakov accepted it, and Joe Mack went to the pack for another piece. They chewed in
silence.
“You no look American.”
“I am an Indian, a Red Indian.”
“Ah! I see Indian in film. Cinema.”
“I’m no cinema Indian,” Joe Mack replied irritably.
Yakov looked around at him. “Soon cold, very cold.” He hesitated. “I am escape also. I
escape three years past.”
“Three years?” Joe Mack studied him with quickened interest. “How do you live?”
“I live.”
He hesitated, as if thinking. “My father,” he said, “was Lithuanian. He is exile to Siberia. My mother is Tungus woman.” Yakov looked at him. “Tungus are reindeer people.”
He got up. “I think better we go.”
Joe Mack got up. “I travel alone.”
Yakov spoke over his shoulder. “Cold come, you die. It needs much food to last the
cold. Better you come with me.”
Reluctantly, warily, Joe Mack followed. Yakov led off at a fast pace, turning back
along the path he had come. After a moment he broke into a trot, glancing back once to
see if Joe Mack followed.
For an hour they ran, and then Yakov slowed and began to walk, “The Kalar,” he
pointed.
The river crossed in front of them, about a quarter of a mile away. Now Yakov moved
with a caution that equaled his own as they worked their way through the trees to the
riverbank. There, artfully concealed, Yakov had a canoe.
In a small cove, hidden among reeds, they waited, listening, At a word, Yakov dipped
his paddle deep and Joe Mack followed suit. In less than twenty minutes they were across and hiding the canoe at a place known to Yakov; then he led off through the brush.
At a clearing, he stopped. “East is Olekma. Big river. Very dangerous for cross. Too many peoples, boats. Sometimes nobody, so better you wait.”
He drew a diagram in the clay, a diagram of a route and landmarks still farther east. “Here” — he put a finger on the map — “is people like me, like you. If they like you, you stay the cold. If they do not like, you go.”
He got to his feet. “I go back now. It is far to go. You spik my name.” He shrugged. “I do not know. It is a woman who spik yes or no.” He waved a hand. “You go.”
Joe Mack stood and watched him go, but Yakov did not look back. Again he looked at the
crude map drawn in the clay; then he rubbed it out.
Yakov, a strange one. He had ferried Joe Mack across the river, set him on his path and then returned to doing whatever had been on his mind. Whatever it was required an
AK-47.
A woman who says yes or no? What manner of woman? He had read of beautiful Russian
women, but that was in Tsarist days. The only Soviet women he had encountered had been Russian athletes whose femininity was doubtful, to say the least. He had seen others
in photographs, but with the clothes they wore it was hard to say if they were attractive.
In any event, that was a bridge he did not propose to cross. Somewhere to the eastward
he would find shelter and somehow endure the winter.
Yakov had taken him across the river, and for that he was grateful. Now he must survive, and that night by the campfire he worked at his bow, tapering it slightly, testing it from time to time by bending it over his knee. And that night it was cold, so very, very cold. Merely a taste of what was to come.
In the morning he made arrows, choosing the light wood with care, straightening and smoothing them. After two days he started on, his arrow shafts carried in a crude quiver until such a time as he could make better.
Ahead somewhere was the Olekma River, and he knew the name. Often he had sat with
flyers who knew or had studied Siberia.
He knew that four of the greatest rivers in the world poured out of Siberia — the Ob, the Yenisei, the Lena, and the Amur. He knew that the United States was more than 3,000,000 square miles, but that Siberia was more than 5,000,000, and there were vast areas still almost unknown except to native peoples.
From obsidian, found the second night after leaving Yakov, he chipped out arrowheads
that were masterpieces of the art. As he worked he studied the country. No matter where he stopped he must ever be alert, watching the country, noting every subtle change of air or wind.
Yet now, for the first time since, leaving home as a small child to attend school, he was lonely. Not for people, but for something else, he felt some indescribable yearning, some reaching out from within him, some strange wanting.
He looked now across the vastness that lay before him, from the bare and icy mountains
that arose around him, across the forest to the bare knife ridges that hacked the sky, and he felt that longing again.
If tonight he should die, who would remember? Who would inter his body? Burn his flesh? He would be left to the wolves and the gluttons, to the vultures and the ants. He would have come and gone and left nothing behind by which he could be remembered. He had no wife, no son, no daughter.
He was what a Sioux had been bred to be, a warrior. Of the four virtues expected of a warrior, he had two, bravery and fortitude. Did he have generosity? And wisdom?
When he was a boy and killed meat, there were no others with whom to share it. Yet when he had left for school he had given his favorite horse to a friend. At the university, except for those with whom he played football or went out for track, he walked alone. He was, because of his extensive reading and his grandfather’s guidance, an apt and ready pupil. He learned quickly and was diligent as well. He knew women were attracted to him, and he danced well, but he was not drawn to any particular girl. He kept much to himself, and with each vacation he vanished into the mountains. He felt no enmity toward the white man. They had superior weapons and better strategy, and he recognized that fact. The white man occupied the land, but the Sioux had taken the Black Hills from the Kiowa, and they in turn had taken it from others.
He was fiercely proud and walked tall, proud of being an Indian and proud of his place
in the white man’s world. He had known from childhood that he would be a soldier; the