“You said you are an Indian? But you have gray eyes.”
“My grandfather was a Scotsman, a Highlander. Some of my ancestors fought beside Bonnie Prince Charlie. There were others riding with Crazy Horse when he defeated Custer.”
“Ah! I have heard of him!”
“Most people have. He was a great fighting man, and many of my people admired him until they began reading the white man’s books about him. We fought him and he fought us. He was a soldier, as I am. He did what he had to do, as I do and have done. A soldier is given a mission to perform, and he does his best to carry it out.”
“An Indian is different only in that he chooses his mission. Nobody ever made an Indian hunt scalps. He hunted them for honor, for prestige in his tribe. When I was a small boy, old warriors came to visit us who had known Custer. He was admired by them. They had no use for weak men.”
“Later, some warriors claimed to have killed him. The truth was they did not know him. Before that last march he cut his hair, and they were looking for the long hair. Nobody knew who killed him or when. The old men who came to visit us believed he was killed early in the fight.”
Joe Mack paused. “So few realize that was not the first fight. Only a few days before, the Sioux fought the great General Crook to a standstill. The Sioux believed they won. Crook thought he did, but Crook’s men had to withdraw. Many were wounded; most of their ammunition was gone.”
“In that fight the Sioux were better armed, and they outnumbered the soldiers. The Sioux had new Winchester and Remington rifles, repeating weapons far better than the single-shot Springfields the army carried.”
“There were Shoshone Indians fighting on the side of the white man, but that was often the case. The Shoshones were old enemies of the Sioux. They did not fear us individually, but they feared us as a people.”
“We know so little of your Indian wars, and most of the stories are sensational rather than factual.”
Joe Mack agreed. “It is so with us, also. Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries.”
The fire crackled. “It is cold,” Natalya said. “This night will be the coldest so far.”
He glanced at her. “Do you know anything of the country between here and the Bering Strait?”
“You would be foolish to go that way. It is miles upon miles of forest, mountain, and swamp, with many freezing rivers to cross; then there is the tundra. And on the tundra there is no place to hide. Miles upon miles of wide-open country. Your best chance is toward Manchuria.”
“Perhaps.”
“Talya is right. That way you have no hope. There are few villages and fewer people, except along the seashore. Those you find will be native peoples or government men, those who man the radar installations or the few airfields. As she says, there is no place to hide.”
“You may be right.”
“You still intend to try?”
“I do, and for all the reasons you suggest. If it does not make sense to go that way, they will be inclined to believe I went elsewhere.”
Joe Mack brought fuel to the fire. The wind was picking up, and it was cold. Stepping away from the fire, one felt it at once. A large space could not be heated at all, a small space with ventilation for the carbon monoxide might. He must remember that.
She made a pallet for him near the fire and one for herself across from it. Her father would sleep between the fire and the outer wall, but closer to the fire, with a reindeer hide hung a few inches behind his back to act as a reflector of heat. There could be warmth beside the fire and ice forming on the wall.
They talked, but he was silent, listening. His thoughts were already reaching out to the northeast, toward the Bering Strait and the miles he must cross. When the worst of the cold was over, he would start. He would not wait for spring. With warm weather there would be travel.
He watched her face in the flickering light from the fire. She was beautiful, and she seemed so slender as to be fragile, but she had been strong with Peshkov. She was not afraid.
“You have known nothing but this?”
She looked around. “At first, when I was young, we lived in a town. It was a small town but very nice. I liked it. In the summer we had flowers, and there was a church.”
“You went to the church?”
“It was not safe. If one went to church, one was investigated or called in for a scolding. Sometimes a minister would come to our house and talk to us. He was a Lutheran, a man who lived in the village and worked in a mill. I remember him well.”
“He was a good man,” Baronas said.
“What did you do?” Joe Mack asked Baronas.
“I was a gardener. A farmer in a small way. I raised barley and rhubarb. Rhubarb was very popular as a medicine, as well as food.” He looked up from gazing into the fire. “I learned how to raise it, and I learned a little more about gardening. Some things grow very well here, but the season is short. Often the frost comes early and all is lost.”
“I have never gardened. In the mountains we raised some corn, and sometimes I helped with that.”
The wind was rising.
“There was a sailor I knew once,” Baronas said, “and on such a night he would repeat what was said by the wives of deep-sea fishermen and seafaring men. When the winds moaned and the great seas broke against the rock, they would say, ‘God have pity on the poor sailors on such a night as this!’ ”
“Amen,” Joe Mack said.
“Ssh!” Natalya lifted a hand. “Someone comes!”
Sixteen
Their voices were stilled. Wind moaned around the eaves, and the fire crackled. A stick fell, sparks flew up. Joe Mack smelled the good smell of wood smoke and waited, ears straining for a breath of sound.
It came. A crunch of feet on the gravel outside. One man only. Joe Mack relaxed, watching the door, as they all were. The latch lifted. The new arrival stamped his feet to free them of mud before entering; then the door opened.
It was Yakov.
He carried no weapon. He came closer to the fire and took off his mittens, stretching his hands to the fire. “It is cold,” he said, “cold.”
His eyes found Joe Mack. “So? It is not easy, what you did. To come here, to find this place.”
Nobody spoke, all seemed to be waiting for something. Joe Mack looked over at Baronas. “Should I go? If you have something to discuss — ?”
“No. You are one of us now. Please stay.”
Yakov looked up at Baronas, rubbing warmth into his hands. “It is no use. He is no longer in Nerchinsk. He was taken from the prison in the night.” He poked a small stick into the fire. “We were too late,” he spoke almost in a whisper, “too late!”
“But he lives?” Baronas asked.
“He lived then,” Yakov said, “and when he was taken from the prison he was able to walk. I do not know where they have taken him. We must wait.”
He glanced at Joe Mack. “They look for you. The job has been given to Alekhin.”
“Alekhin!” Baronas exclaimed. “That is bad, bad!”
Yakov shrugged. “He is only a man.”
Nobody spoke. Outside the wind whispered. Then Natalya asked, “Yakov? Have you eaten?”
He smiled. “Not today. Yesterday, a little.”
“Sit where you are. I shall fix something.”
“Meanwhile there is tea,” Baronas said. Glancing at him, he said, “You must be tired.”
Yakov indicated Joe Mack. “The country is alive because of him. You must be important.”
Joe Mack shrugged, accepting a cup of tea for himself. “I have escaped. They do not like that.”
Yakov thrust another stick into the fire. “You have not escaped. Siberia is a prison. It has walls of ice. Nobody escapes from Siberia.”
“I shall.”
“You are a good man in the forest,” Yakov admitted. “You left no mark of your passing that I could see, but I am not Alekhin.”
“He is good, then?”
“The master. No one is better, no one nearly so good. He is a ghost in the forest, and he can see where nothing is. No one has ever escaped him, no one.”