Autism, a life-long neurological disorder, was not studied intensively before 1944. Autistic people cannot interact with others, or with their environment, in a way that society considers "normal". Today a autistic person may be helped through behavioural, occupational and medical therapies carefully tailored to the nature and severity of his or her disorder.
In the 19th Century, however, deviations from what was considered "appropriate" conduct were simply ascribed to feeble-mindedness, or to something with a crueler name. Treatments were unheard of, and families kept their "aberrants" hidden, or presented them in ways designed to make outsiders keep their distance. And the later is how art collector Werner August has chosen to handle his daughter Gina's condition.
But Gina exhibits something rarely --VERY rarely -- observed in the autistic: the ability to demonstrate prodigious feats of memory, mathematics, musical virtuosity, or, in Gina's case, artistic expression.
The wealthy Werner (Patric Knowles, once again brilliantly cast) has hired Paladin to take him and the teen-aged Gina to a rendezvous with the celebrated sculptor Elliot Spencer (James Griffith, in an uncharacteristically "sensitive" role), who has chosen to seclude himself in the wild. Werner's not interested in buying statues. He intends to confront Spencer with the fact that Gina is his, and not Werner's, daughter. Furthermore he insists on challenging Spencer to a duel, even providing the weapons -- a handsome pair of antique pistols, apparently chosen just for the occasion by Gina's now-deceased mother.
Paladin, in the interests of "protecting his client" steps in to take Werner's place in the duel, -- and makes a shocking discovery!
"Savages", by the way, is the name Werner gives to a pair of graceful African figures exquisitely rendered by Spenser. It might also be applied to those who regard the behaviourally-challenged as unworthy of interest, and therefore somehow less than human.
