July 1921

John Brandon, now called Yevgeny Roskovski, was dressed completely in animal skins and furs on a trapping and hunting trip deep in the forest 300 kilometers northeast of Irkutsk, still carrying his beloved .30-40 Krag. He liked the Krag and when the platoon was issued Springfields, he had kept it. Enough ammunition had been carried on the sled with him to last for years if he was careful. His leg wound had finally healed and now caused very little pain. The people of the village, themselves outcasts from the civil war, had convinced Lieutenant Brandon two years ago that there was no going back. The Reds were still hunting down and executing anyone who had helped the Whites in any way. His status as an American soldier would not mean anything except a quick execution. If he was captured and the Communists discovered his real identity, the entire village would be wiped out.

During his convalescence, Katrina coached him constantly on the details of his new life. Brandon was now speaking Russian well enough to pass in the linguistic polyglot of languages spoken in the village. Katrina became his wife shortly before their daughter Maya was born. With the help of a few of the villagers, Brandon had built a sturdy, three-room log cabin. He was a skilled woodsman, hunter, and fisherman when he was living in Minnesota and those skills came in very handy here. He was by far the best supplier of meat for the village. Some of the villagers joked about the treasure they had found under the snow at the battle for the train. To Brandon, that event seemed like ancient history. He loved Katrina and Maya. He would love to take them back to Minnesota and often found himself dreaming of ways they could get back to America. He was the last of the Brandon line. His parents depended on him to continue the family’s bloodline.

Instead, the Brandon line was beginning in Siberia. The village became John’s world. He now could think in Russian. He was Yevgeny Roskovski. When a son was born, he would be Peter Roskovski. As long as the Roskovskis remained in their remote village, they had as much freedom as people anywhere. Only very occasionally did any officials of the Communist Party travel anywhere near his village. There was no money and no tax collectors. The census takers didn’t care. It was easier to estimate a census from offices in Irkutsk. Occasionally, furs were sold for cash money but most transactions within the village used a well-understood barter system.

Lieutenant John Brandon became a very small shadow that occasionally emerged only to be chased away by the needs and risks of living in a subsistence economy at the mercy of the weather. A cold or dry summer and the land failed to yield its meager return for the village’s labor. A warmer than usual winter and the furs were substandard, and the river ice was not firm enough to allow trappers much time to service their traps along the river banks.

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