“Of me? What of me?”
“Of how lovely you are, how wasted all that beauty is in this lonely place. You should be in America.”
“I believe I would like it. I have thought of it; long before you came, I thought of it. It has been a dream.”
“I could come back for you.”
“Here? To Soviet Russia? To Siberia? You are mad.”
“I shall come back, anyway.” He spoke quietly, and startled, she looked at him. “I have been attacked. I have been taken from my country, brought here a prisoner. I have been threatened, and he who threatened me, he who had me captured, has not faced me alone, man to man.”
“But that’s absurd! He never will, of course. Things are not done that way.”
“He may have no choice.”
She looked at him, amazed. Was he mad? “If you are lucky enough to escape, and the odds are a million to one that you will, you had better stay away.”
“I do not have your standards. I do not have even those of my country. I am a Sioux. At heart I am a savage.” He waved a hand around. “This forest? Do you think it strange to me? The forest is my home. I am a part of it, just as are the tiger, the bear, and the wolf. I belong there and have always known it. I was born out of my time. I should have ridden with Crazy Horse. I should have sat in council with Red Cloud or John Grass, but better still I should have been out there leading war parties against the Crow, the Shoshone, or whoever our enemy was.
“Always, I have known this.” He bared his chest. “See these scars? I underwent the trials of the Sun Dance. Rawhide strips were buried in my flesh, and I was hung by them until they tore loose. It was once a custom of my people; it is so no longer, but for me it was necessary.
“Once, long before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, where General Custer was defeated, a warrior named Rain-in-the-Face was arrested by Tom Custer, General Custer’s brother. Not only arrested, but physically overpowered by Tom Custer, who was an unusually strong man. Rain-in-the-Face never forgave him. It is said that during the massacre he cut out Tom Custer’s heart and ate it.”
“How awful!”
“Perhaps. But he never forgot, and I shall not.” He was silent for a few minutes, and then added, “Captain Tom Custer was a very brave man. Few have ever been awarded the Medal of Honor, our highest military decoration. Tom Custer won it twice.”
“To eat a man’s heart? It is awful!”
“To our thinking, yes. But to Rain-in-the-Face it was the highest tribute he could pay a brave man. By his thinking he had to count coup upon the body of Tom Custer. Whether Rain-in-the-Face actually killed him we do not know. Some deny the heart-eating episode, but to Rain-in-the-Face it was the greatest honor he could pay him because to eat the heart of a man or animal meant you wished to obtain some of his strength and his courage.”
He shrugged. “I do not even know whether I believe it or not. It does not matter. Given the kind of men they were, it could have happened. It was what Rain-in-the-Face would have done. In the heat of battle he would have sought out Tom Custer to kill him, and Tom Custer would have been expecting him. Be sure of that.
“Rain-in-the-Face may have hated Tom Custer, but he respected him, too. As for Custer, I doubt if he hated Rain-in-the-Face but he did know him as a fighting man.”
“And you call yourself such a savage?”
“Colonel Zamatev sat behind a desk and wrote an order that forced me down at sea and destroyed the plane I was flying, and he had me captured and brought to him. This was not only a blow against my country, but an insult to me, personally.”
He smiled, but without humor. “I just want to see if he can do it, man to man, alone in the forest somewhere, or even on a dark street where there are just two of us.”
“You are very foolish. If you should escape, stay away and be safe.”
“Foolish to you, foolish to me, also, in some ways. But it is the way I feel. The way I am. I have told you I was a primitive and content to be so.
“Oh, I should like to face him across a table at some diplomatic function. Nothing would suit me better. The possibilities of that are slight. So if I escape, I shall come back.”
She shook her head in wonderment. “My father will not believe this.”
“I think he will. He will not approve, but he will understand. I do not belong in this century, Natalya. I do not even belong in the last. I have always known this.
“I walk in the shoes of the men of today. I fly their planes, I eat their food, but my heart is in the wilderness with feathers in my hair.”
“You do not hate the white Americans?”
“Why should I? My people came west from the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, and we conquered or overrode all that got in our path. We moved into the Dakotas, into Montana and Wyoming and Nebraska. The Kiowa had come down from the north and occupied the Black Hills, driving out those who were there before them. Then we drove them out.
“We might have defeated the Army. We fought them and sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. Only at the end did we get together in large enough numbers, like at the Battle of the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn. We might have defeated the armies, but we could not defeat the men with plows. They were too many.
“But that was long ago. The United States is our country, too, and if we do not make the most of it, the fault is ours. Many of us have. Indians are in politics, in the arts, in business, everywhere. Many of them have Anglo names and so are not known to be Indians by those who simply hear of them without knowing them.
“Many Indians like the old life, only now they ride a pickup instead of a pony.”
“You are a strange man,” Natalya said. “I do not think I understand you at all.”
“I am an anachronism. I do not mind. From boyhood I dreamed of the old ways and wished to live the old life. My old grandfather understood, and he often said he would have liked to have lived in Scotland in the days when the clans had power and before the lairds went to living in London and turning their pastures to raising more sheep and fewer clansmen. He was a fierce old man, but a great one.”
He went to the shed where fuel was stored and returned with an armful. “Tomorrow I’d better cut wood for you.”
They talked quietly then and of many things, mostly inconsequential things. But at the end, Joe Mack added, “If I had a son I’d not raise him as I was raised. The world has changed and is continuing to change, and we must be prepared for it. I can dream of riding a pony over the Dakota prairies, but I fly a plane and have helped to create even more advanced types. One must deal with reality.
“Civilization is simply an organization that man has developed in order that he may live in peace with his neighbors. Laws are the framework of the structure, and if a man adopts a pattern of lawbreaking, he has no place in the organization at all.”
He brushed fragments of bark from his sleeves, left by the wood he had brought to the fire. “It will be a bitterly cold night, and I have far to go.”
“Father will be home soon.”
“It is good, this – sitting by the fire with you.”
She lifted her eyes. “Yes, it is.”
“I wish it could go on forever.”
“I would like that.”
“I cannot stay on. They will find I am here.” He paused. “I have had trouble with Peshkov,” he explained. “He is a bitter, vengeful man, I believe. I must leave.”
“It is a pity.”
He got to his feet again. “Could you travel a long way in good weather?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the Sikhote Alins?”
“I’ve heard them spoken of. They are mountains, are they not? Along the Sea of Japan?”
“There is a place there called Plastun Bay. You would like it there. It is warmer than here.”
“What are you saying?”
“Get your father to take you there. I’ll come for you.”
“But that’s impossible! That coast is guarded! There is radar! Any plane inside the buffer zone will be shot down.”