That was something to think about. Whether Debbie’s hallucination or delusion or whatever was real or not, it obviously had a powerful effect on her. For that matter, it was clear that she took it as a vision, something supernatural – and the business about the black fly bites only drove it home to her.

Danny remembered Debbie saying that to Indians, earth, man, nature and spirit were all intertwined and hard to separate, and now he began to get an inkling that, yes, she did see things differently than he did. It needed thinking about. Now. Not later, not next week. "That was obviously quite an experience," he temporized. "I’d guess that you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, trying to make sense of it."

"Oh, yes," she smiled. "I expect to be doing it the rest of my life." She let out a sigh. "You know, Brenda told me one time that she was more than a little sorry when her handcuffs had to come off. She said she felt like she was right on the verge of a great understanding, but that Carole had felt like that for years, too. I always thought that was crazy. Now, I know it wasn’t. Like I said, I wasn’t really in good shape at that point, but I was a little upset at Ellen for untying me. I mean, I kept thinking, ‘Just a little more, I’ve almost got it.’" She shook her head and sighed again. "Now I’ve come to realize that I was deluding myself on that. It came at the right time, but I still wish she’d left me there for a while."

"I have to ask," he shook his head. "If you hadn’t had the vision, would Ellen and the others have left you out there all four days?"

"I don’t know," she sighed. "I’ve asked them all that, and they’re very evasive. The best I ever got was a knowing smile. But they were keeping an eye on me, and I think if I had gotten real hysterical, or got too far gone, they’d have released me. On the other hand, if I was doing all right, and I guess I was, although I didn’t think so at the time, I think they would have."

"How did they know you’d had the vision?" he asked.

"Danny," she shook her head. "They’re kataras. All of them. They knew. That’s . . . that’s one of those katara things I may not be able to tell you. Not that it’s any secret. They knew. The spirits told them."

"How did the spirits tell them?" he asked.

Debbie frowned, started to stay something, stopped, thought for a second, then said. "You’re still having trouble with the idea of spirits, having to accept them on faith, right?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "I guess I am."

"Don’t feel lost," she smiled. "I did, too. That’s part of why I was staked out here for two days. But here’s something that may help you understand. Danny, do you believe in ESP?"

"Not really."

"Danny, what would you say if I told you there’s information and communication all around us, coming at both of us right this instant, all the time, but our bodies just don’t have the receivers to pick it up? Wouldn’t you say that was extrasensory?"

"Well, yeah," he said. "I don’t quite believe it. It’s not there in front of me, I can’t prove it."

She smiled the smile of a cat that’s just opened the door to the canary’s cage as she said, "You’ve never listened to the radio, or watched TV?"

"But . . . " Danny started to say, then stopped, thinking hard. "OK, you’ve made your point," he said. "You ever read anything by a guy by the name of Arthur C. Clarke?"

"I’ve heard the name, that’s all," she replied.

"Science fiction writer, who among other things described three laws about the way things work. One of them is ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Your primitive elk stalker would have thought TV was magic."

"Right," she grinned. "He would have recognized it as powerful magic indeed. But he lived in a world where everything to him was magic, so at least he would have recognized it as magic. Danny, not everything in the world makes sense. Not everything is rational. To the modern white man, a lot in the elk stalker’s world was understandable, describable. Things the elk stalker would not have understood, the white man might easily have figured out. But the elk stalker understood things the white man has yet to pick up on because he lived in his world and his culture the way the white man lives in his own."

"Such as?"

"Oh, hell, you’re not seeing it," she shook her head. "OK, let’s try it this way. Right this second, my spirit elk comes along, throws you on his back and dumps you back in that meadow where the elk stalker was. Forever. Wouldn’t that be an instant survival exercise for you? You’d starve; you’d die pretty quickly, because you don’t know the things that the elk stalker knew all his life. Hell, I would, too. Maybe not as fast; I learned a few things about living in the woods growing up, but I’ve actually learned lots more in the last three years. But I’d never have the same skills the elk stalker had. It doesn’t matter, since he would have about as much trouble getting along in our world. I wouldn’t want to live in the elk stalker’s world, as much as I respect his skills, because I appreciate things like supermarkets and flush toilets and central heating. But I can’t turn my back on his world because of who I am or my background. I mean, it’s like my spirit elk said, ‘What is your name?’ I’m an Indian, Danny. It took me a long time to come to grips with it. I had to learn the hard way that some things in the white culture just don’t work for me, just like some things in the Indian culture probably wouldn’t work for you."

"Being an Indian," he asked slowly and thoughtfully, "has to include things like seeing man, nature and spirit all as the same thing, or at least as different parts of the same thing? And it means that culture and spirituality are thoroughly intermixed, to the point where they’re part of the same thing?"

"Exactly," she smiled. "You can sit there and sort of understand it as head knowledge. In fact, I could actually understand it that way before I spent two days staked out here. That’s what those two days were all about, Danny, making it heart knowledge. That was the point when I started to understand my heritage. I don’t understand it all now, I’m still learning and probably always will be. There are a few parts of it that disgust me. But it’s a part of who I am, and I have to admit to it."

"It was a powerful understanding for you, I can see that," he sighed.

"It was," she said. "Like I said, I haven’t gotten over it, and I probably never will. I do know that when Ellen and Ruth and the others talked with me afterwards, somehow the things that they’d been saying started to make sense. Danny, it was here that I learned that I was an Indian, and a little of what it meant to be one. Afterwards, they started to teach me what was involved in actually being one. I’m still learning. That experience out here, that wisdom and knowledge gave me a source of strength to dip into to change my life. But most importantly, I can stand up and say that I’m proud to be an Indian, not ashamed to be one."

"That much I can understand," he smiled. "It’s written all over you."

"I hope it is," she laughed. "Danny, that’s pretty much what I brought you up here to talk about. I wanted you to hear me tell you about what happened here, maybe understand it a little, get a picture of where I’m coming from. I figured we’d head down to Ellen and Ruth’s afterwards, and they could help me explain some of what being a katara is about, what it is we do. I guess, help you get a real definition of the word. But they’re old, they’ll be getting to bed soon, so we probably ought to be getting down there if we’re going tonight."

Danny glanced over his shoulder. The sun was getting low, nearly setting, and it would be in a few minutes. In the last hours, Debbie had dumped a lot on him, and he was still trying to digest it, make sense of it. Some of it had hit him harder than he’d thought, maybe than she’d thought. He let out a sigh and turned back to her. "Do we have to go?" he said. "I’d just like to sit here and get my thoughts in order."

"No, we don’t have to," she smiled, seeming a little relieved. "We can stay as long as you need. That’s why we brought the sleeping bags, and I would have been surprised and disappointed in you if you didn’t need to think about it. We can stay here all night, or head back to Spearfish Lake later and go to Ellen and Ruth’s in the morning, or whatever."

"I don’t know that it’ll take all night," he said, "but I would appreciate the time."

"It’s fine with me, I’m willing to stay here as long as you want. But Danny, if we stay here, please, no partying."

"I realize that; it’s not the place for it," he nodded. "It’s too special to you."

"Tell you what," she said. "I’ll head down to the Tracker and get the sleeping bags, and leave you alone here with your thoughts for a while, and I’ll take my time getting back. I’ll bring a flashlight in case we decide we have to leave after it gets dark. Danny, when I get up here, I’ll try to not run off at the mouth. Ask me something if you need to, but I’ll try not to intrude."

Danny was hardly aware of her as she headed down the hill, leaving him alone, leaning against a tree where he’d sat for the last several hours listening to her tell of her vision quest. He looked down at the grass where she’d been sitting talking with him, and in his mind’s eye could almost see what had been happening here three years ago. It was clearly a powerful, life changing experience for her, and difficult for him to imagine.

While he’d first met Debbie on his return to Spearfish Lake five months before, he’d really only got to know her in the last week, plus a few hours. From the first she’d seemed like an interesting, complex person with a different view of things. In the last hours he’d come to understand that she was far more complex than he’d imagined. For that matter, it was pretty clear that he was nowhere near the bottom, and some things that had been starting to make some sense about her were now pretty fuzzy – but some fuzzy stuff was now clear as day.

Danny knew he was not terribly disciplined as a thinker, and things usually jumped around without a lot of order. This time, he thought he needed to put some order to it, and the best thing he could think of was to go back to the question of last Monday – "Are we just partying, or is it the start of something else?"

Now, it was clear that the question had to be answered. Over the past week, he’d begun to hope that the answer was "something else," for Debbie was an attractive, likeable, exotic, and interesting woman. She was fun to be around, and he’d learned a great deal. But there was a lot more to her than he’d first understood, which had to be why she’d brought him here in the first place.

After working nights all week, he’d cut himself short on sleep this morning in hopes of being able to get back on something resembling a regular schedule for the weekend, and now it was catching up with him. He wished he weren’t so tired; several times, he found himself falling half asleep as he picked at the question of whether to push ahead or turn back.

There were a million questions to ask, more than he could ask tonight, maybe more than he could ask in a lifetime, but somehow, he realized that he was going to have to make a decision on the information he had in front of him. The other questions could come later, in detail, when and if they came at all. Turning back would be a final decision, but pushing ahead – was it worth the effort? A legitimate question.

After a time he realized that she’d returned and was sitting quietly near his side, just letting him ponder without saying anything, it was nearly full dark now, he was yawning, struggling to stay awake. Finally, he grabbed his sleeping bag, unzipped it, and threw it over him, still leaning up against the tree.

Somewhere in there, he fell asleep. He awoke in the middle of the night, still leaning up against the tree, feeling a little sore and stiff – but it couldn’t have been anything like as bad as Debbie had been feeling here a few years ago. He glanced out to the east; it was all dark below the tree line, but the sky was filled with stars, the Milky Way arching high overhead, bright and clear in the clean air following the storm. He realized that Debbie was in her sleeping bag next to him, within inches, sleeping quietly, her face half-buried in her arms. Was she dreaming? he wondered. Of what? Of her ordeal out here, or her spirit elk, perhaps?

The spirituality, the supernatural, he realized in his half-wakeful enlightenment, that was a big stumbling block. His background didn’t give him a lot of belief in it, Indian, Christian, or anything else, and there had been some times he’d wondered about that. He knew people who said they had a lot of belief in the supernatural, in God, in Jesus, or whatever. And, perhaps they did, but it was difficult to identify with, since no one in his immediate family seemed to feel that way, as far as he knew, except for Garth and Michelle. He really didn’t know them all that well anymore, and wondered how much of Garth’s interest in spirituality was involved in just going along with her.

He wished he could talk this one over with Marsha and Amy’s grandfather, dead several years now. He’d been the pastor of a big church down in Camden, very personable, and Danny had known him and liked him through most of his years growing up. He always knew a lot about being a Christian, about God and Jesus and things like that, and he said he believed it. But now, Danny sort of wondered, too – it seemed, and maybe it was just this half-awake hilltop in the night, that there was just a touch of insincerity there, of hypocrisy – like maybe he didn’t believe it all. But he was dead now, and it would be hard to ask him.

Damn it, there were those who believed, whatever it was they believed, and there were those who didn’t. And their belief was heart knowledge, like Debbie had said. Maybe the good Reverend Doctor Austenfelter had been full of head knowledge but a little limited in heart knowledge, but there was no question that Debbie had a core of heart knowledge, gained the hard way, at least some of that right here. He didn’t know whether to envy her or pity her, but at least it would be nice to believe in something, rather than believe in nothing.

What is your name, Danny? Danny Evachevski, actually Daniel Clark Evachevski. What the hell does Evachevski mean? No idea – the name was Polish and had come down through his father’s father, but most of his ancestry was German, a little English, a touch of . . . Indian, maybe, on his father’s side? Actually, his father’s mother, now that he thought about it, was supposed to be half Indian or a quarter Indian, no one was quite sure, and it was family legend, anyway, so there was no idea how much of that to believe. There was no one he could ask, now, except maybe his father, and it didn’t matter on this question, anyway. In any case, an American heritage, which is to say a mixed up melting pot. A huge difference in heritage from Debbie’s anyway, one that involved a lot of Europe, and ships bringing people to the new world in the last century, and at the most, two centuries, not walking across the Bering Land Bridge ten or fifteen thousand years ago.

What is your name, Danny? Are you doing what you were put here to do? Probably not, at least not up to near this point; much of the last ten years had been a waste, a failure, a humiliation. Maybe he’d learned some things out of it but it was best behind him.

What is your name, Danny? It wasn’t a question he could ask himself easily, since he wasn’t even sure he understood the question. Maybe it was one that had to be asked out of faith, out of belief, out of heart knowledge, rather than head knowledge.

This is getting pretty damn esoteric for you, Danny, he thought. You are too tired to be sitting up here, staring out into the night and pondering the imponderable. The question is whether pushing ahead with Debbie is a hopeless cause. You don’t know and you’re too damn tired to figure it out. Get some sleep, idiot.

With that thought in mind, he stiffly leaned forward from the tree where he’d been sitting upright for hours, laid the sleeping bag out and threw it over him the best he could, lying within inches of Debbie. He put out his hand, found the warmth of hers and was asleep within seconds.

The next thing he knew, it was morning. His hand was still lightly touching Debbie’s, he could see it clearly in the light of a very early day. It was the height of summer, not far from the summer solstice, and he knew from his nights on the railroad that it must have been very early.

Not surprisingly, he realized that he had been dreaming, and the dream seemed to hang on through his half-wakefulness until it slipped away. Like most of his dreams, it was in fair detail that vanished within seconds of waking, but this time he remembered a lot of the framework, more than normal.

"Good morning, Danny," he heard Debbie’s soft voice from inches away. "Sleep tight?"

"Reasonably," he said, trying to hold onto the dream in day memory. "I was awake a lot. How about you?"

"I think I can say it was the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had up here," she smiled.

"Debbie, I had a dream," he admitted.

"You did?" she smiled even wider, showing interest. "Can you tell me?"

"Uh . . . yeah," he said, realizing that the core of the dream had vanished into God knows where, as they always do. "At least a bit of it. Debbie, I was your primitive elk stalker, in a clearing in the woods. I can’t even tell you if it was day or night, but there was this huge elk I was sneaking up on, with a naked, long-haired woman sitting on his back, and her hair, well, it was light, sort of like the tail of a comet. Both of them seemed, uh, ghostly, and I guess I realized they were spirits." He shook his head and let out a sigh, then continued. "I mean, considering what we had been talking about, I guess my mind was pretty well primed."

"Maybe so," she smiled. "Did you shoot?"

"I . . . uh, I can’t remember," he said honestly. "I don’t even know if I got to the point where I could try a shot. It seemed, well, incomplete."

"Did you make anything out of it?" she asked.

"You tell me, you’re the katara," he snorted. "I’m no Indian, but it seems pretty obvious to this sorta Polish guy. Let’s head on down to Ellen’s."

"Did you figure out what you needed to figure out?" she smiled.

He smiled and asked, "Didn’t that pretty well say it?"

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