BOOK 1

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SHAMAN

A NOVEL

"In _Shaman_ we live again an all but-forgotten

chapter of American history, replete with

adventure, violence, and eroticism--the compelling and often horrific

account of a collision between two cultures so different that one of

them has to be wiped off the face of the earth."

Gary Jennings

Author of _Aztec_

ROBERT SHEA

AUTHOR OF _SHIKE_

SHAMAN

_Also by Robert Shea_

THE ILLUMINATUS! TRILOGY

(with Robert Anton Wilson)

SHIKE

ALL THINGS ARE LIGHTS

THE SARACEN: LAND OF THE INFIDEL

THE SARACEN: THE HOLY WAR

SHAMAN

Robert Shea

BALLANTINE BOOKS

_New York_

Copyright (C) 1991 by Robert Shea

Map Copyright (C) 1991 by Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. Published in the United States by

Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,

New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random

House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-93215

ISBN: 0-345-36048-6

Text design by Debby Jay

Map by Patrick O'Brien

Cover design by William Geller

Cover painting by Joe Burleson

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: March 1991

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Transcriber's Note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant

spellings remain as printed, whilst inconsistent hyphenation has

been standardised.

Thanks to Michael Shea for giving Project Gutenberg permission to

distribute _Shaman_.

FOR AL ZUCKERMAN

_Friend, Mentor, Agent, Shaman of Letters_

Acknowledgments

I'm most grateful for the help given me by Paul Brickman, Julie

Garriott, David Hickey, the Illinois Historical Society, Jim and Paula

Pettorini, George Weinard, Timothy J. Wheeler, and the Wisconsin

Historical Society. And a special word of thanks to my bonnie wife,

Yvonne Shea, who, having a sharp eye for a fine old book, brought Thomas

Ford's _History of Illinois_ into our home.

"Rock River was beautiful country. I loved my towns, my cornfields

and the home of my people. I fought for them."

--BLACK HAWK

BOOK 1

1825

Moon of Ice

_January_

1

The Lodge of the Turtle

The black bearskin, softened by countless wearings, clasped Gray Cloud's

arms and shoulders, protecting his body from the cold that cut like

knives into his cheeks and forehead. The upper half of the bear's skull

covered his head and weighed heavily on it, as heavily as the awful fear

of the vision quest weighed on his spirit.

His moccasins whispered over the fallen brown grass that covered the

trail. He had walked a long way, and his toes were numb in spite of the

leaves stuffed into the moccasins.

Abruptly the path stopped, and he was facing sky. He stood at the edge

of the bluff looking eastward over the frozen Great River. He gripped

the deerhorn handle of his hunting knife.

For the feeling of strength it gave him, he slid the knife out of the

sheath of hardened leather tied to his waist. The steel blade glistened,

colorless as the sky above him, in the fading light.

_The knife my father left for me_, he thought. _Where are you tonight,

my father?_

The clouds seemed close enough to touch. They rippled like snowdrifts

painted with light and shadow. Upriver the sky was darkened almost to

black, and Gray Cloud smelled snow in the air.

He saw the silhouette of a hawk, wing-tip feathers spread, circling over

the Illinois country across the river, hunting in the last moments

before nightfall.

_Hawk spirit, help me to live through this testing. Help me to see a

great vision and grow to be a mighty shaman._

The tiny spot of black dwindled in the sky, till he could no longer see

it.

_Perhaps it flies over the winter silence of Saukenuk village._

He sheathed the knife. Turning his back on sky and river, he looked

westward over the way he had come. A prairie of waving tan grass almost

as high as his head stretched as far as he could see. Killed by the

cold, the grass yet stood, held up by the stiffness in its dead stalks.

Like a fur cloak, the brown covered the hills that rolled away to the

west.

He could not see his people's winter hunting camp from here; it nestled

back among those hills, sheltered in a forest that grew along the Ioway

River. Looking in its direction, he saw Redbird in his mind. Her eyes,

black as obsidian arrowheads, shone at him. He felt a powerful yearning

just to see her, to speak to her and hear her voice, to touch her cheek

with his fingertips. The thought that he might never see her again,

never go back to his people, chilled him more than the winter cold.

_O Earthmaker, grant that I live to return to Redbird._

He knelt and peered over the edge of the bluff, the bearskin cloak

bunching around him. Gray limestone, wrinkled and pitted like the face

of an old man, swept down to dark masses of leafless shrubbery at the

river's edge. His eyes searched out and then found an especially black

shadow in the bluff wall. If he had come any later on this day, he might

not have been able to find the cave mouth in the dark.

Then he might have had to wait till morning. Or, trying to climb down to

it, he might have missed the way and fallen to his death. A cold hollow

swelled in his belly. It would be so easy to slip.

Enough of what might have been. It was what would be that frightened him

now. He might die, not of falling, but of what he found in the cave.

Or what found him.

Forcing that thought, too, out of his mind, he lowered his body over the

edge of the bluff, dug his toes into footholds and carefully climbed

sideways and downward. In places, the path along the bluff face widened

out and was almost as easy to walk on as a forest trail. But then the

crumbling stone would slant steeply, so that he had to grip hard with

his buckskin-shod feet, feeling as if he were clinging to nothing at

all.

A wide ledge spread before the entrance to the sacred cave. He let out a

breath of deep relief as his feet stepped firmly on the flat stone.

From outside he could see nothing of the cave. But when he entered, he

felt a sudden warmth, as if he were walking into a well-sealed lodge

with a bright fire going. He could smell old fires--and something else.

An animal smell that sent a ripple of cold through his bones. But not a

fresh smell. He thanked Earthmaker for that, because he was sure it was

the smell of bear.

But Owl Carver had been using this cave for his vision quests for

winters beyond counting. And he had never spoken of a bear.

Gray Cloud stood uncertain in the entryway, letting his eyes adjust to

the darkness. He saw round, gleaming shapes clustered against the back

wall, and a motionless figure about as high as a man's waist, with a

sharply curved beak and spreading wings.

Again, seeing these things, he felt the coldness of fear. Now he saw

that the round objects on the floor were skulls, and he knew them for

the skulls of ancestors, great men and women of the tribe. Green and

white stones that had long ago been necklaces glittered around the jaws

of the great dead ones. And the winged figure standing over them was the

Owl spirit, who guided the footsteps of the dead along the Trail of

Souls. Owl Carver had earned his name by carving this statue of the

spirit and setting it here.

From a pouch tied to his belt Gray Cloud took a handful of sacred

tobacco grains and sprinkled them on the cave floor as an offering.

He said, "Give me leave to enter your cave, Fathers and Mothers. You

know me. I am your child."

He hesitated. Only through his mother, Sun Woman, was he the child of

these ancestors who guarded the sacred cave. His father was a pale eyes,

and the pale eyes had no ancestors. Would the ancestors reject him?

There was no sign or sound from the skulls on the floor, but now he

could see farther into the shadows, and he saw that the cave went on

around a bend, and that bend was guarded by another sacred figure. He

peered at the shadowy figure for a moment and decided that it was a

bear, but a bear such as he had never seen before. From head to foot

this bear was white. Owl Carver had said nothing about this statue.

He sighed in his dread, feeling a trembling in his stomach.

It was good for him to be here, he tried to tell himself. He had come

here to learn the shaman's secrets. This was the moment he had dreamed

of ever since the first time he had seen Owl Carver, with his long white

hair and his necklace of small shells of the lake-dwelling megis and his

owl-crested cedar stick, step into the firelight. That long-ago night

Owl Carver had spoken, not with the voice of a man, but with the voice

of a spirit, an eerily high-pitched singsong that frightened and

fascinated Gray Cloud.

The shaman of the tribe was greater than the bravest brave, greater than

any chief. He had the power to heal the sick and to foretell the future.

Gray Cloud wanted to stand high among the Sauk and to go where the

shaman went, into the spirit world. He wanted to penetrate the deepest

mysteries and know the answer to every question.

After he began teaching Gray Cloud, Owl Carver had tried to discourage

him--as a way of testing him, Gray Cloud was sure.

Owl Carver had said, _Many times the people do not want to listen to the

shaman. The truer his words, the less they hear him._

The warning had disturbed Gray Cloud. But he never saw the people refuse

to listen to Owl Carver. And he did not lose his determination to become

a shaman himself.

No one could gain such a great reward without risk. A warrior must kill

an enemy at great peril to himself to gain the right to wear the eagle

feather that marked him as a brave. A hunter had to kill an animal that

could kill him before the tribe would consider him a man.

How, then, could one speak to these spirits of the tribe unless he, too,

had faced death?

But what kind of a death? Would he freeze and starve here in this cave,

his dead body remaining until Owl Carver came and found it? Or would an

evil spirit come and kill him?

Whatever might come, he could only sit and wait for it in the way that

Owl Carver had taught him.

He turned his back on the unknown depths of the cave and seated himself

at its entrance, pulling the bearskin cloak around him for warmth. He

dipped his fingers into a pouch at his belt and took out the bits of

dried mushroom Owl Carver had given him from a medicine bag decorated

with a beadwork owl. The sacred mushrooms grew somewhere far to the

south and were traded up the Great River. One by one he put them into

his mouth and slowly chewed them.

_You do not need to swallow_, Owl Carver had said. _Hold them in your

mouth until they slide down your throat without your knowing how it

happened._

His mouth grew dry as the mushrooms turned to paste. And it was as Owl

Carver had said; they were gone without his knowing when they

disappeared into his body.

His stomach heaved once and he thought with terror that he might fail

this first small test. But he held his breath and slowly the sick

feeling died away.

The last light faded from the sky, and the far horizon across the river

vanished. Blackness fell upon him like a blanket, thick, impenetrable.

It pressed against his face, suffocating him.

The notches in Owl Carver's talking stick, which the shaman had taught

Gray Cloud to count, said that tonight the full moon would rise. It

would make no difference. Gray Cloud would not see the moon in this sky

filled with clouds.

A small spot of cold struck his face, then another and another. His nose

and cheeks felt wet.

Snow.

The snow would fall while he sat here, and he would freeze to death.

He must overcome his fear. He must enter the other world. There, Owl

Carver had promised him, he would be safe. Without his spirit in his

body, he could not be hurt by the cold. But if fear kept him tied to

this world, the cold would kill him.

He heard something.

A thumping and scraping behind him in the cave.

Something heavy shuffling around that bend. He felt his heart beating

hard and fast in his chest.

There _was_ something in the cave. He had smelled it when he first

entered. All the magic in the world could not save him now.

He heard breath being drawn through huge nostrils. Long, slow breaths of

a creature whose chest took a long time to fill with air. He heard a

grunting, low and determined.

The grunting changed to a rumbling growl that made the floor of the cave

tremble beneath him.

Gray Cloud's breath came in gasps. He wanted to leap up and run, but Owl

Carver had said it was forbidden to move once he seated himself in the

cave. Only his spirit was permitted to move.

Perhaps if he did everything exactly as Owl Carver had told him, he

would be safe. But Owl Carver had not told him to expect such a thing as

this.

He must not look up.

The scratching of those giant claws was right behind him now. He could

not breathe at all. There was a bright light all around him, and yet he

could not see anything.

He felt--

A heavy hand--no, _paw!_--weighing down on his shoulder and gripping it.

He did not willingly turn his head, but his head turned. He did not mean

to lift his gaze, but his eyes looked up.

He saw something like a vast white tree trunk beside his head. It was

covered with white fur. Claws gleamed on his shoulder.

He looked up. And up.

Above him, golden eyes blazing, black jaws open and white teeth

glistening like spearpoints, towered a Bear.

Gray Cloud was in the presence of a spirit so mighty that his whole body

seemed to dissolve in dread. He wanted to shrink into himself, bury his

face in his arms. But he had no power over his limbs.

The Bear's paw on his shoulder lifted him, raising him to his feet.

Together they walked out of the cave.

What had happened to the clouds and the snow?

The sky was full of stars that swept down to form a bridge ending at his

feet. The starlight cast a faint glow over the ice on the river, and he

could see the horizon and the opposite shore. Through the dusting of

tiny sparkling lights, he saw the ledge outside the mouth of the sacred

cave. Two steps forward and he would fall over the edge and be killed.

The White Bear, on all fours beside him now, seemed to be waiting for

him. Gray Cloud knew, somehow, what was expected of him. He must put his

feet on the bridge of stars and walk out over empty air. He could not do

it. Terror clawed at his stomach as he thought of standing high above

the river with nothing to support him.

This, too, was a test. The bridge would be safe only if Gray Cloud

trusted it. From now on everything that happened to him would be a test.

And if he did not master each one in turn, he would never be a shaman.

And what would he be, then, if he lived? Only a half-breed boy, the son

of a woman with no husband, the child of a missing father. The boy they

called Gray Cloud because he was neither one color nor the other,

neither white nor red.

This trail was the only way for him. He must walk on this bridge, and if

he fell and died, it would not matter.

He took the first step. For a terrifying moment his moccasin seemed to

sink into the little sparks of light rather than rest upon them. But it

was as if the bridge were made of some springy substance, and the sole

of his foot did not fall through it. He took another step. Now he had

both feet on the bridge. His heart was thundering, the blood roaring

through his ears.

How could a bridge be made of nothing but light? How could a man stand

on it?

One more step forward. His leg shook so hard he could barely put his

foot down. His knees quivered. His body screamed at him to go back.

Another step, and this would be the hardest. Now he could see the abyss

below him. He was out over it. He looked down, his whole body quaking.

He breathed in quick bursts, and saw little clouds in front of his face

in the starlight.

Another step, and another. For balance, his trembling hands went out

from his sides. He looked down. The river was solid ice, and the stars

reflected on its smooth black surface. If he fell he would hit that ice

so hard every one of his bones would break.

He teetered dizzily. He looked to the left and the right and saw that

the edges of the bridge were just on either side of him. He could topple

over and nothing would stop him. Where was the White Bear?

Fear would make him fall. Even if this bridge of lights still held his

weight, it was so narrow that he must surely lose his balance and die.

_But if it holds me, I must be meant to live. And if I am meant to live,

I will not be allowed to fall._

It was only his fear that was making the bridge feel so precarious. He

knew that the more he believed, the safer it would be for him.

_Never turn your back on fear_, he remembered Owl Carver saying. _Never

try to drive it away. Fear is your friend. It warns you of danger._

_But what about when I must face the danger and not be warned from it?_

he asked.

_As long as you listen to its warning, fear will not stop you from doing

what you have to do. But if you try to pretend you do not hear it, fear

will trip you and bind you with rawhide cords._

Gray Cloud, still afraid, stepped forward more boldly. Whatever spirits

were making this happen to him, surely they were not showing him these

wonders only then to destroy him.

He was out over the middle of the river, and he heard a deep muttering

behind him.

He turned, and it was the White Bear, as big as an old bull buffalo,

moving with him on its huge, clawed feet. It came up beside him, and he

reached up to touch its shoulder. He knew now that it was a great

spirit, and that it was his friend. He dug his fingers into the thick

fur and felt the warmth and the enormous, powerful muscle underneath.

Joy flooded through him. Where he had been nearly overcome with fear,

strength and excitement had entered. He ran up the rising curve of the

bridge. He felt an impulse to dance, and he broke into the half trot,

half shuffle of the men when they welcomed the harvest of good things to

eat that the women had planted around Saukenuk village. He flapped his

arms like the wild goose.

The bridge, he saw now, did not cross the river, but followed it. He

looked up. The trail of stars ended at the one star in the sky that, as

Owl Carver had pointed out to him, remained fixed when all the other

stars danced around it. And therefore it was called the Council Fire

Star.

The little lights twinkled all around him, like flocks of bright birds,

and his heart was full of happiness. It was all so beautiful, he wanted

to sing.

And he did sing, the only song he knew that seemed right for this

moment, the Song of Creation.

"Earthmaker, you fill the world with life.

You put life in earth and sky and water.

I do not know what you are, Earthmaker,

But you are in me and everything that lives.

Always you have dwelt in life,

Always you will dwell so."

He sang and danced and the White Bear rose up on its hind legs and

strode heavily along beside him.

The light from the Council Fire Star grew brighter and seemed to dispel

the blackness of the sky around it. The star grew until it was a sphere

of cold fire that filled the sky.

He heard a roaring sound and saw that from the bottom of the shining

globe water was pouring. The water gave off a light of its own. His eye

followed its plunge. He was far, far above the earth now. The Great

River was a shiny black ribbon, barely visible, winding over the earth.

Straight as a spear the water from the Council Fire Star was falling

down to the place where the Great River began its winding course.

He exulted. Already he had learned a secret no other Sauk knew, unless

it be Owl Carver himself--the true source of the Great River.

He saw a square, dark opening in the glowing surface of the star. The

path led to it. Still walking on its hind legs, the White Bear pressed

inexorably on toward that doorway, and Gray Cloud walked beside it.

The colors of the rainbow shimmered in the light from the star, and it

pulsed faintly like a beating heart. When he thought of what a mighty

spirit must dwell in this magnificent lodge--perhaps Earthmaker

himself--Gray Cloud's heart was once again full of fear.

He trembled and his steps slowed. He could not come face to face with

such a being. It would be like staring into the sun. His eyes would be

burned out of his head. He felt himself weakening.

The star-studded surface under his feet shook a little. He took a step

and it quivered under his footfall. The White Bear was ahead of him now,

leaving him out here alone among the stars, high above the earth on a

bridge that was beginning to fall apart.

He looked back over the way he had come.

There was no bridge behind him.

Nothing but a blackness. He screamed, waved his arms, staggered.

He started to run forward after the Bear, his only protector, and his

feet were sinking _into_ the bridge. The Bear and the doorway and the

Council Fire Star itself seemed farther and farther away.

He fell to his hands and knees, afraid to stand any more.

But what was the fear trying to tell him?

It was right that Gray Cloud should be afraid, meeting a spirit so much

more powerful than himself. And now he must trust that the spirit would

not hurt him.

With that thought, he felt the bridge growing more solid under his

hands. He pushed himself back to his feet.

He was standing before the doorway. All above him and to the sides

stretched the curving, shimmering, many-colored surface of the Council

Fire Star.

He did not see the White Bear. It must have gone into the star. He took

a deep breath, and taking his fear with him, he plunged through the

doorway.

For a moment light blinded him. The air was full of a fluttering and a

rustling.

His eyes grew used to the light and he saw that he stood at the edge of

a pool full of fish swimming in circles.

They were not fish, he knew, but fish spirits. The spirits of trout and

salmon and bass and walleye and sunfish and pike, all the fish of lakes

and streams that fed his people.

Full of fear of what else he might see, Gray Cloud raised his eyes.

He saw a Turtle.

The Turtle was frightfully big. He was on the other side of the rushing

pool, but still he loomed over Gray Cloud, his head high in the air. His

front feet rested on a blue-white block of ice. Behind him rose a

mountain of ice crystals. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth told

Gray Cloud he was immeasurably old.

"Gray Cloud," the Turtle said. "You are welcome here." His voice was

deep as thunder.

Gray Cloud fell again to his hands and knees.

"Do not be afraid, Gray Cloud," said the rumbling voice.

He looked up again and saw kindness in the enormous, heavy-lidded yellow

eyes. The exposed belly of the Turtle was the pale green of spring

leaves. On his bone-encased chest a bright drop of water formed, like a

dewdrop or a teardrop, but big as a man's head. After a moment it fell

and splashed into the pool. Gray Cloud looked into the bottom of the

pool and saw the blackness of a deep pit in its center. He realized that

it must be from this pool that the stream of water poured down into the

Great River. And the drops of water falling from the Turtle fed the

pool. The true source of the Great River was the Turtle spirit's heart.

Owl Carver had told him of the Turtle. After Earthmaker he was the

oldest and most powerful spirit. He had helped to create the world and

to keep it alive.

Scarcely able to believe that he was actually looking upon the Turtle,

Gray Cloud lifted his gaze and saw that all manner of beasts and birds

occupied the ledges on the ice-crystal mountain. All creation was here.

Trees--maple, ash, elm, oak, hickory, birch, pine and spruce--clustered

on the mountainside, roots somehow drawing nourishment from the ice.

He said, "Father, I thank you for letting me come here."

Instead of answering him, the huge reptilian head swung to one side. He

followed the gaze of the yellow eye.

A man was standing near the Turtle's head on one of the ledges. He was

tall and thin. His eyes were round and blue, his face white. A pale

eyes! What would a pale eyes be doing here in the lodge of the Turtle?

The man had long black hair streaked with gray, tied at the back of his

head. His thin figure was dressed in a blue coat, pinched at the waist

by a black leather belt with a sword and a pistol hanging from it. His

white trousers were tucked into shiny black boots that came up to his

calves. Seeing the sword, Gray Cloud thought this man must be one of the

long knives, the dreaded pale eyes warriors.

The man was looking at Gray Cloud. His face was narrow, with deep lines.

All the pale eyes Gray Cloud had seen had hairy faces--thick mustaches

growing under their noses, and sometimes beards that spread out over

their chests--but this man's face was clean. His nose was large and

hooked like a hawk's beak. Gray Cloud saw that the man was weeping.

Tears were running down his creased cheeks as he stared at Gray Cloud.

The look in those blue eyes, Gray Cloud realized, was not sadness, but

love.

Returning the man's gaze, Gray Cloud felt a warmth in his own chest like

the heat suddenly rising from a fire that has taken hold.

"I have brought you to hear a warning," said the Turtle, his voice

shaking Gray Cloud's very bones. "You must carry my words back to my

children, the Sauk and Fox." As the Turtle spoke, another huge drop

splashed into the pool, to add itself to the Great River.

"Evil days are coming for my children."

Gray Cloud quailed, thinking that he did not want to bring that back to

his people. But perhaps there was some good word he could tell them.

"How may we escape this evil, Father Turtle?" he asked.

"This evil is from the pale eyes."

At this, Gray Cloud turned to stare at the pale eyes man, who looked sad

now, even sombre. Who was this man, and why was he here?

"The pale eyes and my children cannot live on the same land," said the

Turtle. "Because they do not live in the same way. Most pale eyes do not

wish harm to my children, but they do harm by coming into the land where

my children dwell."

Gray Cloud at once grasped what the Turtle spoke of. Generations of Sauk

and their allies, the Fox, had lived in towns at the joining of the Rock

River and the Great River, where in summer they raised corn, beans,

squash and pumpkins. Each fall they would leave their towns and fields

for winter hunting camps in the West. But the pale eyes warriors, the

long knives, had been telling the Sauk and Fox that they must give up

all their land on the east side of the Great River, even their principal

town, Saukenuk, and move forever west, into the Ioway country. And the

war chief Black Hawk had defied the long knives, leading his people each

spring back across the river to farm the land around Saukenuk.

Gray Cloud knew that even the kindliest pale eyes were not to be

trusted. Owl Carver was suspicious of the black-robed medicine man, Pere

Isaac, who talked about the spirit called Jesus and who spent many

afternoons with Gray Cloud, teaching him the words and signs of the

American pale eyes.

The Turtle's voice broke in upon these memories. "Tell my children that

a great clash is to come between them and the long knives. The people

will suffer, and many of them will die."

Gray Cloud gasped as the horror of that sank in. He looked again at the

pale eyes, and now where there had been love he saw lines of sorrow

carved deep into the thin face.

_Is this man, then, a danger to me?_

"Is there no escape, Father Turtle?" he asked again.

"The people must walk their path with courage," said the Turtle. "Black

Hawk will lead them. And he and his braves will show the greatest

courage, such courage that the name of Black Hawk will never be

forgotten in the land where he was born."

The Turtle's golden, heavy-lidded eye seemed to fix itself on Gray

Cloud.

"And you will find your own path. For some of the people the path you

find will be good. But many others will journey in sorrow into the

setting sun. And there they will disappear forever."

Bewildered, Gray Cloud looked from the Turtle to the pale eyes near him

and back to the Turtle again. These things the Turtle had said were

strange, like the words Owl Carver would chant before the council fire.

Must he bring his people a message of suffering and sorrow? Would they

listen?

He wanted to ask more questions but he felt a gentle pressure from the

great body of the Bear beside him, and he knew that his visit to the

lodge of the Turtle was ended.

2

The Spirit Bear

Redbird stood at the edge of the hunting camp, beside the grove of trees

where the band's horses were sheltering from the falling snow. Her tears

mingled with the snowflakes melting on her face. Wherever she looked, a

white curtain hid the land.

Would Gray Cloud die? The thought made her heart feel as if a giant's

fist was squeezing it. Yesterday, at midday, her father had sent Gray

Cloud on his vision quest, and in the most dangerous time of the year,

the Moon of Ice, when the spirits harvested the living, leaving only the

strongest to survive through to the spring. And just as night fell, the

snow had begun. Would the spirits take Gray Cloud?

Tears burned her eyes and she felt dizzy. She had not slept all last

night, and she had waited and watched through the day.

As she stood looking eastward, where Gray Cloud had gone on his spirit

journey, it came to her that he might already be dead. The wind must

have been blowing snow into the sacred cave all night and all day. Gray

Cloud, in a trance, might already have frozen to death. She might be

weeping for a dead man.

She sobbed aloud and put her hands, in squirrelskin mittens, to her

face. The snow on the mittens felt barely colder than her cheeks.

A flash of light, brighter than the sun, blinded her. A tremendous roar

of thunder almost knocked her to the snow-covered ground. Another bright

flash made her cover her eyes in dismay, and in a moment there was

another long, rolling, earth-shaking rumble.

People stood at the doorways of their dome-shaped wickiups, murmuring

to one another. Thunder with a snowstorm. This was the heaviest

snowstorm of the year so far, and a snowstorm with thunder and lightning

foretold some great event. Much snow lay on the rounded roofs of the

wickiups, and some women took whisks of bundled twigs to brush it away

so that it would not break down the framework of poles or melt through

the roofs of elm bark and cattail mats and wet the people inside and

their possessions. The snow was dry and powdery because the air was so

cold, and it brushed away easily.

The snow was already halfway up Redbird's laced deerskin boots. She felt

the bitter cold numbing her feet and legs. What must it be like for Gray

Cloud?

She saw him as vividly as if he were standing before her. How very tall

he was, almost as tall as her brother, Iron Knife. But Gray Cloud's

frame was slender, not broad and powerful like Iron Knife's.

She saw Gray Cloud's tender mouth curving in a tentative smile, his

sharp nose giving strength to his face, his large eyes glowing. His skin

so much lighter than any other man's in the British Band of the Sauk and

Fox.

And--she asked herself--was it not partly because of the mystery of Gray

Cloud's father that she found herself drawn to him? Pale eyes fascinated

her, the few she had met, Jean de Vilbiss the trader, the black-robed

medicine man called Pere Isaac.

Every summer, when Pere Isaac visited Saukenuk village, he took Gray

Cloud aside, teaching him strange words, showing him how to understand

the meaning of marks on paper and how to make such marks. How she envied

Gray Cloud, and wished that Pere Isaac would teach her those things,

too.

Redbird wondered why pale eyes were so different and why they had so

much power. No Sauk craftsman could make anything like the steel swords

that pale eyes warriors carried, whence they were called long knives.

The steel tomahawks that the pale eyes traded for furs could shatter a

stone-headed Sauk tomahawk into fragments. A pale eyes fire weapon, of

course, was something every warrior of the Sauk and Fox tribes yearned

for.

But what interested Redbird most were the steel sewing needles and iron

cooking pots and calico dresses and wool blankets. She wondered why

Earthmaker had given the knowledge of how to make such things to the

pale eyes, but not to the Sauk and Fox. Her people wore the skins of

animals, scraped and pushed and pulled and tanned with the animals'

brains and women's urine until they were soft and pliant and could be

worn comfortably next to the skin. But the clothing of the pale eyes was

more comfortable, and easier to keep clean. And more colorful. Sauk and

Fox shirts and leggings and skirts, unless painted or decorated with

dyed quills, were usually the brown or tan of animal skins. The best

deerskin garments were worked till they were white. The dresses and

shawls and blankets the pale eyes traders offered were of many

colors--blue and yellow, red and green, with flowers and other pictures

and designs on them. Redbird often spent long moments staring at the

good calico dress her father, Owl Carver, had gotten for her from the

pale eyes traders, just delighting in the tiny red roses printed on its

pale blue background.

For a moment, lost in thought about the pale eyes, she had forgotten

Gray Cloud's danger and her own pain. Now it came back to her like a war

club crushing her chest.

Soon it would be night again. Gray Cloud had been in the cave a whole

night and a whole day, while the snow fell. And the snow was falling

still. If someone did not rescue him, he would surely die.

She would go to her father, Owl Carver, and demand that Gray Cloud be

brought back from the sacred cave.

She turned and pushed her feet through the fresh snow, hurrying past the

round-roofed, snow-covered wickiups of the British Band's winter camp in

Ioway country. A dog burst out of Wolf Paw's doorway and floundered

through the snow, its short pointed ears flattened, barking at her. Wolf

Paw's dogs were a nuisance, barking and snapping at anyone who passed

near his dwelling.

The dog stopped barking, and she heard footsteps squeaking in the snow.

She stopped and turned. Wolf Paw himself was standing before his wickiup

beside the tall pole from whose top hung six Sioux scalps he had taken

last winter.

Wolf Paw glowered at her, arms folded under a bright red blanket. Three

short black stripes near one edge were the pale eyes trader's guarantee

that the blanket was of highest quality. Despite the snow, Wolf Paw's

head was uncovered, all shaved except for the stiff-standing crest of

red-dyed deer hair in the middle. Three black and white eagle feathers

were tied into it.

Redbird did not like Wolf Paw. He never let people forget that he was

the son of the great war chief Black Hawk, whose wickiup lay only a

short distance from his own. He never smiled, and she knew very well

what he was thinking when he looked at her.

She turned without a greeting and walked on, kicking the snow as she

went. But the sight of Wolf Paw had reminded her that though Owl Carver

was her father, she still had only a woman's influence. The spirit

journey of Gray Cloud was a matter for men.

Owl Carver loved her and was good to her, but if she tried to interfere

in his holy calling, he would be furious. He would never agree to bring

Gray Cloud down from the cave before he came down on his own. Such a

thing was against the way of the shaman.

She was still wondering what she dared say when she came to her family's

wickiup and found Owl Carver standing beside it, hands clasped behind

his back, staring eastward toward the Great River.

As she shuffled through the snow toward him, he turned and held out his

hands. When she reached him, he put his hands on her shoulders. She

peered into his face, hard to see now that night had fallen, and tried

to read it.

Owl Carver's face was flat. His long white hair was bound at his

forehead with a beaded band and fell from there to his shoulders,

spreading like a white shawl. His necklace of little round, striped

shells of the water creatures called megis rattled in the wind.

She trembled inwardly in his presence. The shaman of the tribe could

both heal and kill.

"How can he live in this blizzard?" she said, almost weeping.

"Did you not see the lightning, my daughter, and hear the thunder? Do

you think that merely betokens a young man freezing to death? Hear

me--once in a thousand years a man comes among us who is capable of

being a Great Shaman. Of being to other shamans, like myself, what

Earthmaker is to the lesser spirits of beasts and birds. But to be

known, and to discover the greatness of his powers, such a man must be

as greatly tested. I saw in Gray Cloud a man beyond the ordinary."

Owl Carver's willingness to talk made Redbird feel bolder. "Surely Gray

Cloud has been in the sacred cave long enough, my father. Will you not

go now and bring him down?"

He pushed her away, staring at her. "Earthmaker decides what is enough.

A man must _suffer_ to be worthy of the power his spirit guide bestows

on him. When I first began to walk the shaman's path, I wandered far

away into the great desert of the West and nearly died of hunger and

thirst. I did not suffer as much as Gray Cloud is suffering. But that is

because he can be a much greater shaman than I, if he lives. If he does

not live, he is like a foal born lame in the springtime. The wolves must

get him. It is Earthmaker's way."

Frightened though she was, Redbird forced herself to speak up. "There is

suffering that even the strongest cannot bear."

Owl Carver took a step toward her, his eyes round with anger. "Remember

what the law of the Sauk and Fox decrees for anyone who disturbs a man

on a spirit journey, even to help him. They take you to the Great River.

In the summer they would throw you in with rocks tied to you. In this

season they chop a hole in the ice and they push you in. The current

flows swiftly under the ice. It carries you away from the opening, and

you drown there in the cold and dark."

Redbird shrank back. Owl Carver had felt her pain when she first came to

him, but now he was angry. She sensed that behind that anger there

lurked fear. Fear that she might risk her life for Gray Cloud.

"Your mother has been calling for you," he said. "Go and help her with

her work."

Afraid to say any more, Redbird hurried past him and lifted the heavy

buffalo skin that covered the doorway of the family's wickiup. She

looked over her shoulder once and saw that her father was once again

looking toward the river where Gray Cloud had gone. Owl Carver held his

hands behind his back, knotting them together.

He was afraid for Gray Cloud, too. As she sensed that, her heart sank

further.

Entering the wickiup she saw, silhouetted against the light of the low

fire in the center, a figure rising up big as a buffalo, her half

brother, Iron Knife. Redbird took his hands in greeting.

"Gray Cloud will be well," Iron Knife said in a low, gruff voice.

Iron Knife was always kind to her. She was grateful for his words, but

she knew they were no more than a well-meant wish. Though Iron Knife was

the son of Owl Carver by his first wife, he had not a trace of the

shaman's ability to foretell events. Iron Knife could see only with his

eyes, hear only with his ears. His mother had died giving birth to him,

and there were those who said the spirits had chosen to give him no

gifts because he had killed his mother. Redbird had even heard that

while in mourning Owl Carver had predicted that Iron Knife would one day

be killed by a man whose mother had also died giving birth to him. No

one dared speak of these things in Iron Knife's presence.

Redbird knew she had more of the shaman in her than Iron Knife. She

knew, as her father did, that right now Gray Cloud was in terrible

danger.

"Where have you been?" Wind Bends Grass called out from the shadows. She

and Redbird's sisters were already bedded down for the night on

buffalo-robe pallets along the wall of the wickiup. Wind Bends Grass and

her two little girls, Wild Grape and Robin's Nest, slept together for

greater warmth.

"I was down in the woods, seeing to our horses," Redbird lied. She had

been near the horses, but only to watch for Gray Cloud.

"I needed you here," Wind Bends Grass said crossly. "I was stringing

beads for a new sash for your father, and your sisters are too small to

help me."

_Does my mother want me to string beads while Gray Cloud freezes to

death?_

"The snow was heavy on the horses' backs," Redbird said. "They needed

someone to brush them off."

"Nonsense," said Wind Bends Grass, sitting up. "You were waiting and

worrying for that pale eyes boy. And meanwhile Wolf Paw came again to

speak to your father today. How can you refuse the son of the mighty

Black Hawk and think of marrying that boy who has no father? His mother

lay with a pale eyes and got Gray Cloud. The pale eyes lived with her

only five summers and then ran away. He would have run away sooner, but

our people held him prisoner because of the war."

Redbird heard muffled giggles from the bedding beside her mother. Her

little sisters thought the story of Gray Cloud's parentage funny. Wind

Bends Grass struck with her hand at the two shaking bundles.

"Wolf Paw already has a wife," Redbird said.

"He is a _man_," said Wind Bends Grass. "A brave. He can make two wives,

three wives, _four_ wives happy."

Rage at her mother for belittling Gray Cloud when he might be dying

boiled up inside her and almost choked her. She bit her lip and held

back the angry words. She hurt too much to want to quarrel.

She took off her fur cap, wet boots and mittens and laid them near the

fire. Keeping on her buffalo-hide cloak, her doeskin dress and leggings,

she lay down on her own pallet, padded with blankets and prairie grass.

Curling up her legs, she wrapped the heavy cloak around herself.

The wickiup was quiet, except for the popping of burning twigs.

Redbird knew that her fear for Gray Cloud, deepening as the night

deepened, would keep her awake. She decided that when they were all

asleep, she would go back to the wickiup of Sun Woman and watch with

her.

She lay staring at the blackened ceiling that arched over her head.

Partly obscured by drifting smoke, the curved poles cast deep shadows in

the flickering light. Iron Knife had laid fresh branches on the fire.

Smoke stung her eyes.

Sometimes she thought she saw spirit messages above her in the patterns

of the twigs interwoven with the larger poles, and in the cracks in the

sheets of bark that lined the inside of the wickiup. But tonight her

mind was too absorbed in Gray Cloud's fate to try to read the patterns.

Over the breathing of the others she could hear the voice of the wind

humming across the roof. From time to time it would rise to a howl, and

the framework of the wickiup would creak and crackle under the strain.

Even though there was a fire and the wickiup was tightly sealed, Redbird

felt the cold seeping up from the earth. Its icy fingers touched her

body through the buffalo robe. Her dread for Gray Cloud turned to

heart-pounding panic.

_If I feel the cold, here in my warm wickiup, what must it be like for

him?_

After the snow stopped falling, the cold of this night would be the cold

that killed without mercy. Such a deepening cold often seemed to follow

a great snow. After a night like this, women would find rabbit and deer

lying in the drifts near the camp. The animals trying to get close to

warmth had overcome their fear of people, but the cold had leeched the

life from their bodies. Even the strongest animals might die. Only

people, to whom Earthmaker had given the knowledge of how to shelter

themselves and make fire, could withstand this death-dealing cold.

Her fists clenched on the blanket. Her heart filled up with anger. Anger

against the cold, against her mother, who despised Gray Cloud, against

Owl Carver, who had sent him to almost certain death. Against the

spirits, who had permitted this. Out of her anger blazed up a fierce

resolve.

_I will not let you take him from me._

If everyone else accepted Gray Cloud's death, she did not. She would go

to him. She would go to Sun Woman and gather what medicines she might

have, anything that would keep the cold from draining the last bit of

warmth and strength out of Gray Cloud.

_Have you not been told what the tribe decrees for anyone who disturbs a

man on a spirit journey, even to help him?_

Her anger turned to fear, and she lay there, not wanting to move,

knowing that if she threw off the blankets and stood up, she would be

taking the first step on a path that might be her death.

But then she thought of that terrible wind, sharp as a pale eyes' steel

knife, shrieking around Gray Cloud's body. If she did something now, he

might live; and if she did nothing, he was sure to die.

She had loved Gray Cloud for as long as she could remember. To be

without him--she could not bear to think of it.

She had heard tales of women who died fighting beside their men. Yes,

better to die with Gray Cloud, to walk the Trail of Souls into the West

with him, than live a long life grieving for him.

She listened to the sounds of the sleepers, Iron Knife's rumbling snore,

Wind Bends Grass's heavy breathing that sounded like her name, the

rustlings and murmurings of Wild Grape and Robin's Nest.

Owl Carver still had not come in, and he might stay out there most of

the night. She dared not wait any longer. She would have to face him.

Silently she pushed off her coverings and stood up. She quickly put back

on her fur cap, boots and mittens.

The deepened cold bit into her cheeks like a weasel's teeth. While she

had lain in the wickiup the snow, which had been falling continually for

a night and a day, had stopped at last. The clouds overhead were

breaking up, and she could see the full moon, round and bright as a pale

eyes' silver coin. The Moon of Ice. It seemed frozen in place in the

black sky. Stars glittered, little chips of ice. With her first indrawn

breath the insides of her nostrils seemed to freeze, the air burned in

her nose and throat. Her heart quailed for Gray Cloud.

The black figure of Owl Carver stood just where she had left him. How

could he stand the cold this long?

Owl Carver turned to her. "Where are you going?"

"To Sun Woman's wickiup, to watch with her."

She hated Owl Carver. He was the one who had sent Gray Cloud on this

spirit journey, and now would do nothing to save him from death.

As if sensing her agony, he said, "The spirits will watch over Gray

Cloud."

She wanted to believe him, but she could not. She had begged him to help

Gray Cloud, and he had commanded her to be silent. Now she had no more

to say to him. She turned from Owl Carver.

He could have forbidden her to go to Sun Woman. But he would not do

that. There was an understanding between Redbird and her father that she

could not put into words. She knew that when he looked at her, he was

torn between pride that she, the oldest of his children by Wind Bends

Grass, possessed the same gifts he did, and sorrow that she was a woman,

and could never be a shaman. And she knew that of all his children, he

loved her best.

The snow, blown off the roofs of the wickiups, piled up in long drifts

on their western sides. The east wind battered Redbird as she plodded

through the winter camp toward one low, rounded black structure that

rose out of the snow a bit apart from the others, on the north side of

the camp.

The skinned quarters of small animals hung frozen from a rack outside

Sun Woman's doorway. Redbird went up to the flap of buffalo hide and

called, "It is Redbird. May I come in?"

Redbird heard Sun Woman undoing the sinew laces that held the flap down.

She bent and entered.

In the firelight within Sun Woman's wickiup, Redbird saw agony in the

tightness of the older woman's wide mouth and the clenching of her

strong jaw. Gray Cloud's mother was built big, with broad shoulders and

hips and large hands, but there was a helplessness now in the way she

stood staring into the fire. Hanging from the curving bark wall behind

her were her craft objects, a medicine bundle of deerskin, the carved

figures of a naked man and a naked woman, clamshells to mold maple

sugar, a horse's tail dyed red, a small drum and a flute.

Redbird spoke in a rush. "If he dies I do not want to live." She feared

that if she tried to address Sun Woman properly, her voice would be

choked by sobs before she could say what demanded to be said.

She should not even suggest to Gray Cloud's mother that he might die.

And she should not even hint to his mother of her love for Gray Cloud,

when neither Sun Woman nor Owl Carver had spoken to each other of plans

for their children. The band would be appalled at such rudeness.

"Forgive me for speaking so to you," she said timidly.

Sun Woman smiled, but Redbird saw that there was much sadness in the

smile. "You know you can."

"Yes, you are different," Redbird said.

_Even though the pale eyes killed your husband, you took a pale eyes

into your wickiup._

This had happened more than fifteen winters ago, and Redbird knew it

only as a story that her mother and other women liked to repeat while

they did their work together. Sun Woman's husband, a brave named Dark

Water, had been killed in a quarrel with pale eyes settlers. In spite of

that, when Gray Cloud's pale eyes father came to live with the Sauk, Sun

Woman had come to love him.

"I am different, too," said Redbird. She wondered if Sun Woman knew how

different she was. Most women lived from season to season, while Redbird

sometimes thought about what the tribe might be doing, where they might

be, ten summers from now.

Only two kinds of people thought the kind of long thoughts that came

often to Redbird--chiefs and shamans. She sometimes imagined what it

would be like to be a shaman. To live in accord with the gift Earthmaker

gave her. She thought so often about it that it became a longing within

her, even though she knew that such a thing could not be.

This, Redbird thought, was the most she could hope for--to become a

medicine woman, like Gray Cloud's mother. A medicine woman had an

important place in the band, but she was not listened to, as the shaman

was.

Sun Woman reached out and laid her bare hand on top of Redbird's, which

was still in a mitten. "That is why I would be pleased if you and my son

shared a wickiup."

Redbird was startled and, amidst her fear and grief for Gray Cloud,

delighted. Truly, no mother ever spoke like this before words between

parents had been exchanged. And to know that Sun Woman would accept her

as her son's wife--wondrous!

But Gray Cloud might already be dead. "How can we talk and smile so?"

she cried. "He is up in the sacred cave, and the snow fell all last

night and all day today."

Sun Woman shook her head. "When I gave the boy to Owl Carver, I gave up

the right to say what was to be done with him. Like Owl Carver, Gray

Cloud belongs to the spirits now."

"But the spirits--" Redbird waved her hands helplessly. "They protect as

they like and they let death strike as they like."

A shadow of pain crossed Sun Woman's face. "Do you say such things to

hurt me?"

Redbird was shocked. "No!"

"Do you think I feel no pain?"

Redbird felt tears filling her eyes, burning them. She wiped her face.

"I know you do."

Sun Woman brought her face closer to Redbird's, took Redbird's chin in

her hand, and said, "I do not show pain because I do not want to make

others suffer with me. But you know what I feel."

Sun Woman opened her arms, and Redbird pressed her body against the

bigger, older woman's. She felt Sun Woman's strength flow into her and

she knew that she had found more comfort here than she ever would in the

arms of her own mother.

In the firelit wickiup, Redbird looked around her, thinking that this

was where Gray Cloud had been a baby. She looked at the bench where she

knew he slept every night. Where he must sleep again.

"Do you have anything to give a person who has been very cold for a long

time?" Redbird asked urgently.

"Ah." Sun Woman went to the back of the wickiup and came back with a

bundle of long, dark red peppers.

"These peppers are grown far to the south, where the sacred mushroom and

the bright blue stones come from. The longer you boil them, the hotter

the water will get. He is to drink the water, but not swallow the

peppers. If he is very cold, give him one pepper to chew on. That would

bring the dead back to life. If you meet him before I do, this is how

you can help him."

_She thinks I mean to try to meet him when he comes back._

"I will go to him," Redbird said abruptly.

Sun Woman stared at her. "You must not. If you interrupt his spirit

journey it might kill him."

"He has been in a cave for a night and a day, and this is the second

night, colder than any night I can remember. My father watches for him,

but he does not come. He could still be sitting in that cave. He has no

fire. He has no food or water. The wind blows in from the river. The

snow here at the camp is so deep that in some places the drifts are over

my head. The cave could be full of snow. When he is suffering all this,

how can you say that _I_ am a danger to him?"

Sun Woman sat cross-legged on the rush mat floor and stared down at her

hands folded in her lap. After a silence she looked up, and her grave,

dark eyes held Redbird's.

"You are a good young woman, and you love my son. But you must

understand that the greater danger to Gray Cloud is not from the cold.

If you try to wake Gray Cloud's body when his soul is gone from it, his

spirit will never come back to his empty body. It will set its feet on

the Trail of Souls and walk west, to the land of the dead."

Sun Woman's eyes shone, and the shadows and firelight gave her the face

of an angry spirit. Redbird drew back.

"I will not do that," she said. "I promise you." But if she saw that

Gray Cloud would surely die anyway, of freezing, would it not then be

best to take the risk of waking him?

And what if he did wake on his own, but was too frozen to climb out of

the cave and walk back to the camp by himself? Then he would need her

help.

She decided that if she got to the cave and his spirit was still out of

his body, she would do everything to help him short of waking him. She

would build a fire near him. She would cover him with warm cloaks, try

to warm his body if she could do that without disturbing him.

She boiled the peppers in a small tin pot set on stones over Sun Woman's

low fire. After she had filled a skin with the pepper water, she rolled

tinder and a pale eyes fire striker into a blanket. She put her hand on

Sun Woman's snowshoes, leaning against a wall of the little wickiup, and

Sun Woman nodded silently.

Redbird paddled over the snow with her head down, watching the long

shadow she cast under the full moon on the sparkling white surface.

Ahead, the leeward sides of the wickiups were rows of snowdrifts, all

the same size. When she looked over her shoulder, their windward sides

were like black holes in the snow. She could see her family's wickiup,

but Owl Carver was no longer standing outside watching. She lifted her

round wickerwork snowshoes high with each step. Even though she could

walk over the snow, she would be exhausted, she realized, long before

she pushed her way to the sacred cave.

Dogs barked. Fear made the back of her neck tingle, and she stood

motionless. They might be Wolf Paw's dogs. But they did not come after

her.

She heard no sounds of voices, or of people moving. She felt safe enough

to keep walking.

But a feeling grew on her that someone was following her. She stopped

again and listened and looked around. The wickiups were silent under

their glistening blue-white hummocks. Being able to sense when she was

being watched was one of the gifts she, like her father, possessed. But

her eyes and ears did not confirm what her inner sense told her. She

decided fear was confusing her, and she walked on.

She left the camp behind. On her right was gently rolling, snow-covered

prairie. On her left were the woods that grew along the Ioway River. She

saw the shadows of the horses among the trees, heard them snort and

stamp their feet. Beside the woods ran the long trail leading to the

bluff where the sacred cave overlooked the river. This close to the

trees, she hoped, the snow would not be so deep.

A shadow appeared on the snow beside her. A bolt of terror stabbed her.

A powerful hand seized her arm. She felt paralyzed, like a rabbit about

to be torn apart by a wildcat. She did not try to pull away. She could

feel that the grip on her arm was too strong.

She turned slowly.

The moon was behind the man who held her, shadowing his face, but she

could make out the glitter of piercing eyes, a stern mouth with strong

lips under his brown fur turban.

"Where are you going?" Wolf Paw's fingers hurt her arm.

No words came to her. Frantically, she tried to think of some excuse for

walking out so late on a night like this. He could have her killed, she

thought, and terror made her feel like sinking into the snow.

But then she remembered some of the lore Sun Woman had taught her.

"My father sent me--to look for a certain herb whose power is greatest

when the moon is full."

He barked disdainfully. "Gathering herbs when the snow is up to your

knees?"

"It grows under the snow."

He brought his face so close to hers that his black eyes seemed to fill

the world.

"You cannot lie to me, Redbird. I see what you are doing. You are going

to _him_."

"No, no, I am looking for herbs."

"What is _this_?" With his free hand he tore away the blanket roll she

had tied to her back and threw it into the snow. "And _this_?" He jerked

on the water skin so hard that the strap broke, and he threw that down,

too.

"Do you need those things to help you find herbs?" he shouted.

Trembling from head to foot, she felt herself starting to cry. She hated

herself for showing such weakness in front of Wolf Paw. If she was to

die, she wanted to be strong.

To her surprise, the sense that she was being watched from a distance

came back again. There was someone else out here in the frozen darkness

besides herself and Wolf Paw.

"It is death to interfere with a spirit quest," Wolf Paw growled. "The

shaman's daughter of all people should know better than to break a holy

law."

Her fear made her feel as cold, as breathless, as if she were already

plunged into black, freezing water, swept along, an enormous weight of

ice between her and the air.

"I have done nothing."

"You meant to. That is as bad."

She saw the hunting knife at Wolf Paw's belt. She could make a grab for

it, try to stab him.

No, he was one of the tribe's mightiest braves. He would be too quick

and strong for her. And, at least, up to now she had done no harm to

anyone but herself. To try to murder the son of the war leader would be

a great crime.

His grip on her arm still cruelly tight, he gestured back behind him

toward the snow-covered camp. "Think of your mother's weeping over what

I caught you doing. Your father, his heart torn in his chest. But he,

the shaman, would have to say that you must be killed."

Hopelessness crushed her. Now she would never be able to help Gray

Cloud. He was going to die. And she was caught by Wolf Paw and would be

dishonored before the whole tribe and then killed.

She hung her head.

"But it is true, Redbird, you have done nothing," Wolf Paw said more

softly. "I am the only one who knows that you were about to break the

law."

_Sun Woman knows. But Wolf Paw will never learn that from me._

"I do not want you to die, Redbird," said the low voice from the figure

towering over her.

She looked up at him. Was he going to be merciful?

He said, "It makes me angry that you throw your life away for that

fatherless pale eyes boy. To wed the son of Black Hawk would bring you

honor."

She understood now. He was going to offer to spare her life, if she

would marry him and give up Gray Cloud. He did not understand that she

would rather be dead twice over than spend her life mourning Gray Cloud

and married to Wolf Paw.

She was about to tell him so when she heard a rumble, almost like

thunder, from the trees nearer the camp. With much whinnying and

cracking of shrubbery, all the band's horses burst out of the woods and

ran, floundering and kicking up clouds of snow, out on the prairie.

"Be still," Wolf Paw cautioned in a low voice, "until we see what

frightened them." He stood with his head high, listening.

Whatever it was, she was grateful that it had taken Wolf Paw's mind off

her.

She heard a crashing in the forest, branches breaking, snow crunching.

Something large was coming toward them.

She turned. Through the trees she saw a bulky, hunched figure. It seemed

to be a large animal, but it was walking on its hind legs. It came

forward slowly, a step at a time. Its forelimbs swung at its sides. It

was a little taller than a man.

It looked very much like a bear. A new fear, greater than the fear of

what Wolf Paw might do, assailed her.

A bear in coldest winter, when all of that people withdrew to their dens

and slept? Once in a while, she had heard, a very hungry bear would

awaken and forage for food and then go back to sleep again. Such a bear

would kill anything it met. She tensed herself to run, though she knew

she could never outrun a hungry bear.

The shambling tread of the bear, or whatever it was, had brought it

closer, and she saw that it was all white, glittering in the moonlight

like a snowdrift.

She glanced at Wolf Paw and saw his eyes glisten as they widened. The

look on his shadowed face was one she never thought to see on him--fear.

He sucked in a shuddering breath. The hand that had held her arm

suddenly released her.

No wonder Wolf Paw was afraid. This was a white bear, a spirit bear. Its

eyes, reflecting the moonlight, seemed to glow.

Wolf Paw uttered a terrified, inarticulate cry. She turned to see him

racing over the snow. Were she not so frightened herself, she might have

laughed to see how his knees flew up, first one, then the other, as

white clouds sprayed from his snowshoes. Strong as he was, he could

never outrun a bear. Especially not this bear.

As for herself, she was surely doomed. She thought, _May this be a

better death than drowning under the ice_.

And she turned to face the spirit bear.

3

Claw Marks

The white bear was out of the forest now. Redbird had seen bears run,

and she knew it could cover the distance that separated them in a few

bounds.

It did not seem to be looking at her, and she wondered if it saw her. It

sparkled in the moonlight. Its breath came in huge frosty clouds,

obscuring its head. Did spirit bears breathe?

She looked around again to see where Wolf Paw was. He had become a

small, dark spot against the white at the edge of the village. His

snowshoes had carried him far quickly. She, too, would have run, if she

could run like Wolf Paw.

She did not think Wolf Paw a coward. His courage was well known. Facing

a being like this, the bravest man in the world would run.

_It doesn't seem to see me. Maybe it is best to stand still._

She trembled from head to foot, unable to decide what to do. She felt

dizzy, as if she might collapse into the snow. The bright light that

seemed to come from the bear dazzled her.

But would a spirit bear attack people in the night and kill them? Devils

and cannibal giants would, but she had never heard of a spirit doing any

such thing.

She was learning to be a medicine woman, and a medicine woman must deal

unafraid with the beings of the other world. Talk the bad spirits out of

a sick person's body and call upon the good spirits to aid in healing.

She took a deep breath. Whether this be a good spirit or a devil, she

would stand here holding herself proudly. Wolf Paw, if he looked back,

would see the maiden he had threatened standing in the place he had run

from.

The white bear took a step toward her.

In spite of her fear, she made herself look at the spirit as it came on.

It walked so slowly. Perhaps, after all, she could run away from it.

Under the pointed snout she saw eyes that seemed to glow out of a

shadowed face.

It was a man she was facing.

She saw that its path was taking it past her. It--he--did not seem to

see her at all. But he was close enough now for her to see the face

under the bear's skull. The large, round eyes, the long, thin features

ending in a pointed chin, the bony beak of a nose, the down-curving,

tender mouth. His face was covered with a mask of frost.

Gray Cloud.

How could she have forgotten that when he walked out of the camp

yesterday he had worn a black bear's skin draped over his arms and

shoulders? Snow and frost had turned the fur white. The night and her

terror had tricked her into thinking she saw a white bear spirit. Wolf

Paw, the seasoned warrior, had been tricked and terrified, too.

Gray Cloud was alive!

A scream tried to force its way out of her chest, but her windpipe was

so tight that all she managed was a gasp.

Joy blazed up in her like a summer campfire.

But no--he could not be alive and look like that. What she was seeing

must be the ghost of Gray Cloud, or his dead body walking. The cold and

snow had killed him there in the sacred cave, and this shuffling, frozen

husk was all that was left of him.

"Gray Cloud," she whispered, unable to speak aloud, "talk to me."

If he walked right past her without seeing her, he must be still on his

spirit journey. She had always heard that the bodies of men on a spirit

journey remained motionless, sitting or lying down. But she was certain

that Gray Cloud was not fully awake.

She stood staring at him, her mouth open, as he shambled on past her.

She slowly turned to follow him, and now she was facing into the

moonlight and seeing the shadows of the snow-covered wickiups. He was

walking in that frighteningly slow, measured way toward the village.

Wolf Paw was nowhere to be seen.

The feeling came to her again of other eyes upon her. Besides Wolf Paw,

besides the strange creature Gray Cloud had become, someone else seemed

to be out here in the snow-covered field with her. She shuddered.

She looked around to see if she could guess where the secret watcher

might be hiding. Someone might be crouching behind one of the long

snowdrifts that rippled across the prairie like waves on a lake. Or in

the trees by the river.

She must not let herself be caught out here. She picked up the blanket

roll and water skin that Wolf Paw had thrown into the snow and padded on

her snowshoes after the lumbering white figure. She must hurry and try

to get to a place where her presence would be unnoticed, or if noticed,

not questioned.

Her legs ached. She did not have the strength to run. Gray Cloud had

left a trail of two shallow furrows in the snow where he had pushed his

legs through and the snow had fallen in behind him. On her snowshoes she

pressed on behind him.

Even though the snowshoes helped her, her legs ached. She wanted to

throw down her burdens of blanket roll and water skin, but they were too

valuable for her to let them be lost out here. Merciless pain shot up

from her shins through her knees to her hips. Still, the miseries felt

by her body could not touch the joy of her spirit. Gray Cloud lived.

A wall of fur coated with white snow loomed up before her. As Gray Cloud

lumbered along, she quickly stepped to the side and hurried around him.

She turned for a closer look at him. His steaming breath obscured his

face. He stopped. He swayed, and the bear's skull fell back from his

lolling head. She screamed, a sound that rang distantly in her ears.

Gray Cloud dropped to his knees, then fell forward on his face, sending

up a great puff of powdery snow that glittered in the moonlit air.

The silence after his fall was as stunning as thunder. Redbird felt

tears stream from her eyes--and freeze at once on her cheeks. That he

should have lived through two nights of blizzard and cold, that he

should come down alive from the sacred cave, only to die within sight of

the village under her very eyes, was more than she could stand.

"Oh, no!" she whispered. "He must not die."

She fell to her knees beside him.

He lay face down, half buried. She put her hands under his shoulder and

pushed to raise his head. He was heavy, but her fear and her love for

him made her strong enough to move him. She lifted his upper body and

turned him on his side, and she saw the beloved features, frost-white.

Hope made her heart beat faster as little clouds of warm air puffed from

his nostrils. But his breathing was ragged and shallow. She had to get

him in out of the cold. Gasping with the effort, she rolled him over on

his back.

She would have to try to drag him to the village.

Sobbing with near-exhaustion, she sat by his head, shoved her hands

under his shoulders and tried to stand, pulling him up with her.

All at once there was no weight on her arms. Someone else was there,

lifting Gray Cloud.

She looked up, thankful, yet afraid she might see Wolf Paw returned to

do them harm.

No, it was Iron Knife.

Seeing the broad face of her half brother, a cry of relief burst from

her throat.

"Oh, Iron Knife! It is so good you are here."

He smiled grimly, grunting as he hauled Gray Cloud to his feet. Gray

Cloud's eyes were shut, his mouth hanging open.

"Lucky for Wolf Paw that Gray Cloud came when he did," Iron Knife said.

"I was getting an arrow ready for Wolf Paw." He jerked his head at the

bow slung over his shoulder.

"Even the son of Black Hawk?" She vividly remembered Wolf Paw's threats,

but the thought of Iron Knife murdering him horrified her.

"Do you think I'd let him drown my sister?" Iron Knife put an arm around

Gray Cloud's shoulders, bent down and picked him up under the knees,

bearskin cloak and all. Blowing a cloud of steam out of his mouth, he

straightened, cradling Gray Cloud in his arms. Though Gray Cloud was

nearly as tall as Iron Knife, he was much lighter.

It was Iron Knife, she realized, whose eyes she had felt on her after

Wolf Paw ran away.

They started off for the camp. She heard the voices of men and women

raised, calling to one another. Wolf Paw must have given the alarm.

"How did you know I was out here?" she asked. "You were sleeping when I

left the wickiup."

"Father woke me," Iron Knife said, striding stolidly along, his

calf-high outer moccasins of buffalo hide breaking through the snow. "He

knew what you were going to do. He told me to go after you, to see you

came to no harm."

As they plowed steadily onward, Redbird saw figures moving about in the

village. They must be terribly sleepy, she thought. Dawn was still a

long way off. Still, more and more people were running back and forth

among the wickiups. They were crowding in this direction, coming to meet

Gray Cloud and Iron Knife and Redbird. A mass of people, dark against

the moonlit snow.

In the front rank walked Owl Carver himself. The sacred necklace of

megis shells swung on his chest. In one hand he held his medicine stick,

a cedar staff decorated with feathers and beads, topped with the carved

head of an owl. His long white hair spread out over his shoulders.

She could hear a murmuring of voices, and above them, the shaman, her

father, singing:

"Let the people welcome him.

He has walked the spirit trail.

He comes back

From the sky,

From the water,

From under the earth.

He comes back from the seven directions.

Let the people welcome him."

Owl Carver was dancing as he approached them, a slow, heavy shuffle

alternating with sidesteps, his upper body rising and falling. His

hands, one holding his medicine stick, the other a yellow and red gourd

rattle, were lifted high over his head. The necklace of small black and

white shells bounced on his chest.

Iron Knife, carrying Gray Cloud, came to a stop before Owl Carver.

Redbird, not wanting people to know how she cared for Gray Cloud, drew

away from Iron Knife and tried to melt into the crowd.

Taking a few more steps, Owl Carver placed himself facing east, with

Iron Knife and Gray Cloud on his right. He danced in a sunwise circle

around them, from east to south to west to north, bobbing his head and

singing.

"The Great Wise One has sent him.

He has walked the spirit trail.

He brings wisdom

From the sky,

From the water,

From under the earth.

He comes back from the seven directions.

The Great Wise One has sent him."

Nine times Owl Carver danced around Gray Cloud and Iron Knife in the

circle that represented the sun, the horizon and the cycles of life and

the seasons.

Then in his normal voice, not breaking step, he said, "Bring him to my

medicine wickiup."

He turned abruptly and danced through the crowd that had gathered. The

people parted to let him through and they stared at Gray Cloud's body in

Iron Knife's arms.

The people who had followed Owl Carver had stamped down a path through

the village. No longer needing Sun Woman's snowshoes, Redbird bent and

unstrapped them from her feet. She was suddenly so exhausted by her

efforts and by the fear and sleeplessness of two days that she could

hardly stumble along behind Iron Knife. She felt that at any moment she

might faint.

The light of the full moon, shining down from directly overhead and

reflecting on the snow, seemed to make the whole village almost as

bright as day. Sighing, Redbird looked up and saw Wolf Paw staring at

her from beside the path.

His black eyes pierced her like arrowheads. Under his sharp nose his

mouth was tight.

She nodded her head at him, hoping he would understand that she was

saying that they should keep each other's secrets.

"Redbird!" A hand seized her arm roughly, and pain shot through up to

her shoulder.

Her mother, Wind Bends Grass, glared at her furiously.

"Why did you leave our wickiup?"

Redbird felt that if she stopped walking to talk she would never be able

to move again. She pulled her arm free. Her sisters, clinging to either

side of her mother, stared up wide-eyed at her as if she herself had

returned from a spirit journey.

Her mother walked beside her, scolding her in a shrill voice, but her

words meant nothing to Redbird. She only wanted to see Gray Cloud

brought safely to the shaman's wickiup.

Someone else took her arm, squeezing it gently, and she looked up into

Sun Woman's face. Tears streaked the strong cheekbones.

"You saved his life," Sun Woman said, so softly only Redbird could hear

the words.

"I did nothing," Redbird protested. Silently, Sun Woman took the

snowshoes, the water bag and the blanket roll from her.

Owl Carver stopped at the doorway of the medicine wickiup. He danced

from one foot to the other, shaking his staff.

He nodded at Iron Knife, and motioned him to carry Gray Cloud into the

dark interior.

Redbird followed. The owl-headed stick barred her way.

"Go with your mother," Owl Carver said softly. "You have done enough

this night."

She could not tell whether he was praising or reproaching her.

_Will he live?_ she wanted to ask. But his solemn face forbade her to

speak.

She turned away from his remoteness and faced her mother's anger. Her

heart was still full of terror for Gray Cloud, but she knew that the

instant she lay down she would fall into an exhausted sleep.

* * * * *

It seemed that no time had passed when Wind Bends Grass shook her awake.

"Your father calls the people together," she said in a voice still hard

with anger.

Redbird's eyelids felt as if they were made of stone. She forced herself

to sit up, and then with immense effort got to her feet.

She was still fully dressed, even in her fur cloak and mittens. She had

collapsed in the wickiup without removing anything. The wickiup was now

empty. Her mother and her sisters had gone ahead without her.

Her heart hammered in her chest. Owl Carver might be calling the people

to tell them that Gray Cloud was dead.

Outside, the air was still deathly cold, but the sun was a bright yellow

disk rising above the distant gray line of trees that marked the bluffs

overlooking the Great River. The light made her blink, and she turned

away from it. She stumbled in the direction all the other people were

going--to the medicine wickiup in the center of the camp circle.

She found that the open area before the wickiup was crowded, and she

could not get close. The spaces between nearby wickiups were also filled

with people, all waiting for Owl Carver to speak.

She seated herself between two women, both of whom had small children on

their laps. Redbird knew one of the mothers, Water Flows Fast, a stout

woman with a round, cheerful face and shrewd eyes.

Water Flows Fast said, "You are the daughter of Owl Carver. You should

go up and sit close to him." Redbird sliced her hand flat across her

body to say no. She knew Water Flows Fast to be a keen observer and a

gossip, always looking for signs of trouble in other people's families.

The less Redbird said to her, the better.

Redbird looked over her shoulder and saw that now there were many more

people packed in behind her. Everyone was talking at once, and the

hundreds of voices beating upon her ears made her head hurt. About five

hundred people were here, everyone in this camp, which was one of four

that made up the British Band of the Sauk and Fox tribes that would come

together in Saukenuk after the winter snow and ice melted.

The medicine wickiup was built on a low hill in the center of the camp,

and when Owl Carver appeared, everyone who was standing sat down.

Redbird's eyes devoured Owl Carver's face, trying to read in it whether

Gray Cloud was alive or dead.

Another man emerged from the medicine wickiup to stand beside Owl

Carver. His head was bare even on this terribly cold day, and he wore

his hair in the manner of a brave, his dark brown scalp shaved except

for a long black scalplock that coiled down the side of his face. His

eyes were shadowed and sad-looking, and there were heavy blue-black

pouches under them. His cheekbones jutted out and his mouth was wide,

curving down at the corners where it met deep furrows that ran from nose

to chin.

Redbird's heart beat faster as she saw that to honor this moment he had

attached a string of eagle feathers to his scalplock and wore strings of

small white beads around the rim of each ear. He stood with his arms

folded under a buffalo robe, skin side out, painted with a red hand

proclaiming that he had killed and scalped his first enemy while still a

boy.

His sombre gaze fell upon Redbird like a stone striking her from a great

height. She felt as if the war chief of the British Band knew every one

of her secrets. She ducked her head and looked down at her mittened

hands in her lap.

Owl Carver raised his arms, and the people fell silent.

"I have called on Black Hawk, our war chief, to see Gray Cloud, and he

has heard great prophecies from Gray Cloud's lips," the shaman cried in

a high, chanting voice.

Then Gray Cloud had lived through the night!

Owl Carver blurred in Redbird's sight, and if she had not already been

seated, she might have collapsed. Relief made her heart swell up in her

chest, feeling as if it might burst.

The people around her murmured in surprise, pleasure and curiosity.

The shaman stretched out his hand. "Sun Woman, stand before the people."

Nothing happened for a long moment. Then Owl Carver beckoned

insistently. There was another silence. Then Black Hawk's hand emerged

from under his buffalo mantle, and he crooked his finger.

A tall woman wrapped in a buffalo robe rose from among the seated

people. People sighed happily and called out a welcome to her.

Sun Woman turned to face the crowd. To Redbird she seemed calm and

unruffled, even though she had hesitated about standing up.

"This woman brought her son to me and asked me to train him as a

shaman," Owl Carver declared. "I did not want to, because he is not a

pure Sauk. She said to me, only try him for a little time and see what

he can be. I tried him for a little time and I saw something in him. I

saw sleeping powers!"

The people murmured in wonder. Water Flows Fast and the woman with her

whispered to each other, darting curious glances at Redbird, who

carefully kept her face as impassive as Sun Woman's.

"I tested him and saw that his dreams could foretell the future, that he

could send his spirit walking while his body lay still, that he could

talk to the spirits in trees and birds. I saw that he had the power to

be a shaman and more ..."

Owl Carver paused and stared at them fiercely.

"And so I sent him up to the sacred cave, knowing that he might meet

spirits so powerful that to encounter them destroys the souls of men.

"And Gray Cloud went into the sacred cave, and he met the great spirits,

and he journeyed with them," Owl Carver cried. People gasped.

"He has met the White Bear. He has spoken with the Turtle, father of the

Great River. He has brought back a message for Black Hawk," said Owl

Carver. "The Turtle told Gray Cloud that Black Hawk might tell others as

he saw fit." The rumble of voices rose at this, and then quieted as Owl

Carver raised his medicine stick.

"After the Turtle created our Mother the Earth, he mated with her, and

all tribes were born in her womb," Owl Carver said. "They lived there in

a warm darkness, but they had to go forth and find their way out of our

Mother. Then there came to our ancestors an elder spirit, the White

Bear, who led them out the womb of our Mother.

"When they were in the light, they found themselves in the midst of a

ring of fiery mountains. Our people are called Osaukawug, or Sauk, the

People of the Place of Fire, because that fiery place is where we first

walked in the world. There was nothing to eat. There was nothing around

the people but stones and fire. And they were hungry and greatly afraid,

and they were angry at the White Bear for leading them out of our Mother

to this place.

"But the White Bear showed them a way through the fiery mountains and

over many fields of snow and ice, until he brought our ancestors to this

good land where there is fish and game, where the grasslands are green

and the woods are full of berries and fruit. And our friends the Fox,

the Yellow Earth People, came to be our allies and to unite with us. And

the Turtle opened his heart and the Great River flowed forth. Our

ancestors hunted and fished in the land where the Rock River flows into

the Great River. On the Rock River they built our village of Saukenuk,

where they would dwell in the summer and their women would grow the

Three Sisters, corn, beans and squash, in the fields around the village.

And there at Saukenuk, as our ancestors died, they were buried.

"The White Bear told us we should spend our summers in that land east of

the Great River. In the winter it should be our custom to cross to the

west of the Great River and hunt here in the Ioway Country. And here by

the Great River we Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire, have lived

ever since."

Redbird felt warmth on her back through her buffalo robe. The sun had

risen higher.

Owl Carver called out in his high voice of prophecy, "The White Bear has

come again. He has led Gray Cloud on his spirit journey. Now Gray Cloud

is a true shaman. He still must be trained to use his powers, but his

powers no longer sleep. And in sign that he is a shaman with another

self, he shall have a new name. Let him be known to all the people as

White Bear!"

Redbird heard cries of assent from the people around her.

Owl Carver crossed his arms before his chest to show that he was

finished speaking, and turned to Black Hawk.

"So let it be," said Black Hawk in his harsh, grating voice. "Earthmaker

has willed that the British Band shall be blessed with a mighty new

spirit walker. Let his name hereafter be White Bear."

_If I could make a spirit journey_, Redbird thought, _I too could stand

before the people and advise them_.

She came to a sudden resolve. _One day I will._

"Now you shall see our new shaman," Owl Carver declared. He stepped back

and pulled aside the buffalo-fur curtain that covered the door of his

wickiup.

A tall young man came out, stooping to pass through the doorway and then

standing straight before the people. Redbird's heart beat faster, and

she half rose to her feet.

His slender body, despite the cold, was bare to the waist. Redbird

gasped as she saw what was on his chest.

Five long, deep scratches, side by side. The blood had dried and turned

black. Five long black marks down the middle of his pale chest, running

almost from the base of his neck to the bottom of his rib cage.

Cries of awe and wonder arose from the people. They had all seen such

marks, sometimes scratched in the bark of trees, sometimes on the

half-eaten bodies of animals found in the forest in summer.

The claw marks of a bear.

And now his name was White Bear. She whispered it to herself. Her eyes

saw nothing but the shining slender form, and her ears heard nothing but

the sound of his name.

4

Master of Victoire

Raoul threw himself into the lake, the giant Potawatomi chief Black

Salmon roaring behind him. The water resisted his legs like molasses.

Black Salmon seized Raoul's neck, cutting off his breath. Strangling, he

was helpless as the Potawatomi dragged him back to shore.

The huge Indian's whip tore into Raoul's back. Raoul felt the skin

ripping and the blood running. He was nothing but a helpless lump of

bleeding flesh, paralyzed with pain.

Other Potawatomi had torn Helene's clothes off. The warriors danced

around her on the beach as she cowered, white skin, shining blond hair,

trying to cover herself.

The Indian bucks were naked, too, and flaunted their erect purple cocks,

big as war clubs. One of them darted into the circle and bit a piece out

of poor Helene's shoulder. Bright red blood flowed down her arm.

Raoul ran to save his sister. He broke away from Black Salmon and fought

his way through the Potawatomi warriors around her. She lay on her back

on the sand, twisting her body from side to side in pain. Hideous bite

wounds all over her body lay open like red mouths silently screaming.

One breast was covered with blood.

The Indians fell upon Raoul. They had their scalping knives out and they

threw him down on the ground beside Helene. Black Salmon caught up with

him and whipped him till every inch of his body was slashed. The

redskins tore away the last few rags of Raoul's clothing.

A circle of grimacing dark faces painted with yellow and black stripes

closed in on him. They bared sharp teeth like snarling dogs. They were

going to eat him alive.

Raoul's father and Raoul's brother, Pierre, faces marble and calm,

appeared in the midst of the Indians. They looked down at Raoul's agony.

Just curious.

Raoul tried to cry out, "Papa! Pierre! Help us! They're killing us!"

No sound came out of his mouth but a useless little wheeze. He had lost

his voice.

"You should not have angered them," Papa said.

One of the savages, holding high a long, thin skinning knife, seized

Raoul's balls. He brought the knife down, slowly.

Raoul kept trying to scream at his father and brother. Again and again

he forced air through his aching throat. Nothing came but a silly

squeak. Then a groan, a little louder.

Pierre reached out a marble hand to him. Thank God!

Just as their fingers touched, Pierre jerked his hand away and

disappeared.

Raoul felt the Indian's blade like cold fire slicing through the sac

between his legs. At last he let out a full-throated scream.

"Raoul!"

His body cold and wet with sweat, he sat up in darkness. He felt arms

clutching at him and fought them off.

"Raoul! Wake up."

Panting, he said his name in his mind. _I am Raoul Francois Philippe

Charles de Marion._ He repeated it over and over again to himself.

He was sitting in bed in the dark, someone beside him. Not an Indian,

and not his long-dead sister Helene. He gasped again and again, as if he

had run a race.

He tried to pull his mind together. His heart was still pounding against

the wall of his chest, his hands trembling, his skin ice cold. That

terrible dream! He hadn't had it in a year or more.

"Lordy, what a nightmare you must have had! You did a right smart of

hollerin'."

In the dim light seeping in through cracks in the shuttered window,

Raoul saw a woman with long blond hair sitting up beside him, staring at

him with pale blue eyes.

Clarissa. Clarissa Greenglove. He looked down at her. A warmth began to

creep back into his body, rising first in his loins, as he remembered

what they had done together the night before. Five times! No--six! Never

before had he done it that many times in one night.

He was still panting in the aftermath of the horror, but the sight of

her naked body was helping him get the dream out of his mind.

Never done it with such a good-looking woman.

She looked down at herself and drew up the sheet to cover her breasts.

"Don't do that," he said, and pulled the sheet down again, none too

gently.

He began to rub her breast with the palm of his hand, feeling the nipple

get bigger and harder. She closed her eyes and gave a little murmur of

pleasure.

How she'd enjoyed it last night! She'd sighed and groaned and whimpered

and screamed and licked him and bit him and twisted her body from side

to side like a soul in perdition. Her frenzy had fired him up like never

before. No wonder he'd been able to mount her so many times. And

somewhere near the end of it all she'd sobbed into his shoulder for what

seemed like an hour. He figured that was a tribute to what he had done

to her. The sheets were still damp with their sweat, and the air in the

little bedroom was thick with the musky odors of their secret juices.

But the redskins were still stalking in his brain, and he was still a

little frightened. He didn't want to sit here in the dark.

"Light a candle, will you?" he said. "The striker's on that table."

She hesitated. "Can I get dressed first?"

"Hell no," he laughed. "What difference would that make after last

night? I know you outside and in, Clarissa."

She giggled and got out of bed while he sat hugging his knees watching

her.

"It's cold out here," she whined.

"Well, hurry and get that candle lit and get back in bed." The March air

whistled in through chinks in the log walls and shutters, and even

though the inn's chimney ran up through this room it didn't seem to

help. He guessed that downstairs in the taproom someone had let the fire

die.

Clarissa's pale, rounded shape as she moved through the shadows made

him feel stronger by the moment. The women he'd had up to now--many of

them right here in this bed--had been older and well-used, and he hadn't

enjoyed the look of their bodies that much. Clarissa was just the right

age, old enough to be filled out, young enough to be slender and firm.

He guessed she must be sixteen or seventeen. Raoul had been bedding

women since he was sixteen, for seven years now, and he'd never had a

better night than this last one, with Clarissa.

Then why, after such a shining night, did he have _that_ dream?

As the oil-soaked cotton ball flared up and Clarissa held a candlewick

to the flame, the nightmare came back to him, and out of the roiling

images of red limbs and painted faces and blood and torn white bodies,

he dragged the reason for what he had dreamed. When he remembered it, he

slumped a little, his delight in waking up next to a pretty young woman

wiped away.

He heard again the stunning, infuriating words that had tumbled out of

Armand Perrault's bushy brown beard.

_I overheard your brother, Monsieur Pierre, talking to your father this

morning. He spoke of how he has always felt that he had abandoned his

Sauk Indian wife and their son, when he came back here and married

Madame Marie-Blanche. Now that he is a widower, he says, he wants to "do

right by her and the boy."_

This thing about having a Sauk woman and a son--Pierre had never said

anything about that.

To call some Indian whore a _wife_!

_My brother, the master of Victoire, a squaw-man! Father of a mongrel

son!_

Armand had remarked sourly to Raoul, "It seems Monsieur Pierre is a

great one for doing _wrong_ by women."

Raoul knew what he meant. He'd heard the rumor that after Marie-Blanche

had died, Pierre, a little crazy in his grief, had taken Armand's wife

to bed a time or two, to comfort himself.

But that was nothing compared to what Pierre was threatening now.

_Indians living in our home! A squaw in the bed where Pierre slept with

good Marie-Blanche!_

How could Pierre do such a thing, after what the Indians had done to

Helene? After Raoul had spent two years beaten and enslaved by Black

Salmon? How could Papa permit it?

Clarissa turned, holding out before her a lighted white candle in a

little pewter dish. She didn't seem so shy now about letting him see her

naked. He let his eyes linger over her melon-shaped breasts, narrow

waist, the brown puff of hair where her long legs joined her wide hips.

He'd often felt a hankering for Clarissa since he'd hired her father,

Eli Greenglove, to help him run the trading post. But he'd thought it

unwise to get mixed up with her. Eli was a dangerous man. Last night

that hadn't seemed to matter.

After Armand had brought him the bad news, he'd turned to Kentucky

whiskey--Old Kaintuck--and to Clarissa, dancing with her to Registre

Bosquet's fiddle in the taproom to take his mind off this sudden insult

Pierre had flung at him. Late in the evening he'd stumbled upstairs

behind Clarissa to his bedroom in the inn, his hands up her skirts,

feeling the satiny skin of her legs.

And then down on the bed, and--whiskey and all--six times!

But this morning his pleasure in her was spoiled by this treachery of

Pierre's.

A squaw and a redskinned mongrel. Raoul wouldn't want Indians on the

estate even as servants. Now Pierre was talking about these savages

living in Victoire as part of the family.

He felt a sudden, stinging bite down near his rear end, under the

covers. Angrily, he slapped at himself. Damned fleas and bedbugs. Levi

Pope's wife made a piss-poor job of laundering the bedding for the inn.

_If I had a wife I'd make sure she kept the bugs out of my sheets._

Clarissa set the candle down on the table and climbed back into bed. She

ran her hand over his back.

She brought her face close to his, and he decided that, though he liked

her arms and legs and hips and breasts, he didn't care for her weak

chin, her washed-out blond hair and light blue eyes and the brown stain

on one of her front teeth.

She said, "You've got scars all over your back. Somebody beat you. Your

paw?"

"My papa?" The thought made him smile. "No, the old man's not that

sort."

_But he's the kind of man who might forget about me for a while. Who

might let me be captured by Indians in 1812 and not manage to find me

and ransom me till 1814._

_The kind of man who might actually let my brother bring Indians into

our home._

The scars. The scars reminded him every day of Fort Dearborn, August

1812. The memories left scars inside. Memories of being ten years old,

cowering in an Indian encampment with the other white captives from Fort

Dearborn while the warriors with their clubs and tomahawks approached,

grinning.

It hadn't happened the way he dreamed it. The Potawatomi had pulled a

man, an army private, to his feet, while he begged for his life, and

dragged him over to the campfire. In an agony of terror Raoul had

pressed against Helene, seated beside him on the ground. She put her arm

around his shoulders and held him tight.

His sister Helene had seen her husband's throat cut and his scalp

slashed away that very morning, when the Indians fell upon the

retreating soldiers of Fort Dearborn and the civilians fleeing the tiny

village called Checagou. But somehow Helene kept herself calm and strong

after witnessing Henri's terrible death. Raoul knew it was for his sake.

Raoul had shut his eyes, and heard the clubs thud into the head and body

of the soldier at the campfire, heard his screams, heard the silence of

death when the screams stopped. A man's life had ended, just like that.

Raoul trembled, hiding his face in Helene's side. Around him the other

prisoners, men and women, sobbed and prayed.

The Indians took another soldier. They tied him to a stake and cut away

bits of his flesh with the sharpened edges of clam shells. They worked

at him for hours, until he bled to death.

The warriors came back for their next victim, sauntering among the

prisoners, eyes aglow, painted faces like masks of monsters, stinking of

the whiskey they'd been drinking all night. This time he was sure they

were coming for him.

But they took Helene.

He had never forgotten her last words to him, spoken serenely as the

Potawatomi seized her arms.

"I am going to join Henri. Pray to the Mother of God for me, Raoul."

The Indians dragged Helene into the woods. They took another woman as

well.

The Potawatomi squaws, seated around a nearby campfire, chattered among

themselves. They laughed whenever one of the women in the woods

screamed. Raoul could not believe that any of those sounds were coming

from his sister's throat.

The helpless white prisoners covered their faces and prayed and

wept--and the men cursed.

He had hated himself for not trying to help Helene, but he was too

frightened to move. Too frightened even to cry out. Brooding about it

now, nearly thirteen years later, he told himself once again that if

he'd tried to help Helene the Indians would have clubbed him to death.

He told himself that he had been only ten years old. That did not make

any difference to the shame he felt when he remembered that night. He

should have gone to her. He should have fought to the death for her. He

could never forgive himself.

_Why didn't we all fight and die? Wouldn't it have been better to attack

the Indians barehanded and be killed than to let that happen?_

But neither could he forgive Papa and Pierre. His father and brother had

left Raoul in Helene's care at Fort Dearborn, where her husband, Henri

Vaillancourt, ran the trading post of Papa's Illinois Fur Company. When

it became apparent that a second war between England and the United

States was about to break out, Papa declared that land prices in

Illinois were now as low as they would ever be, and he set off in search

of likely land to buy for a family seat. Pierre had gone to the Sauk and

Fox Indians on the Rock River to talk about trade and land purchases

with them. Raoul had been happy enough to be left with Helene, who had

been a mother to him as far back as he could remember. His own mother,

Helene had gently explained to him, had gone to Heaven when he was born.

When Raoul heard no more screams from the woods, he knew Helene had gone

to Heaven, too.

The next morning, as the Indians began the march back to their village,

dragging their bound captives, Raoul had seen Helene's naked body, with

stab wounds in a hundred places, lying face down, half submerged in Lake

Michigan's surf. He saw a round, red patch on top of her head. Later he

saw a brave who had tied to his belt a long hank of silver-blond hair,

surely Helene's, a circular piece of skin dangling down.

The Indians had chosen not to kill Raoul, perhaps because at ten he was

too young to be a satisfying victim, but old enough to work. And so

Black Salmon had taken him for his slave. It made no difference whether

he worked well or poorly; Black Salmon let not a day go by without

whipping him, and fed him entrails and hominy grits. Only after Raoul

had endured two years of slavery did his father, Elysee, find him and

ransom him from Black Salmon.

And when Raoul was older he came to understand the full horror of what

the Indians had done to Helene. They must have raped her over and over

again. And he hated himself and Pierre and Elysee all the more for

letting it happen.

But most of all he hated Indians.

Indians living at Victoire? He had to kill that notion of Pierre's right

now. He would put on his clothes and saddle Banner and ride up to the

chateau and set his father and brother straight.

But would they understand? Pierre, with his oh-so-tender conscience, who

had lived with the damned Sauk and Fox for years and slept with one of

their dirty squaws? Elysee, buried in his books? Raoul remembered their

marble faces, as he had seen them in his dream.

They'd never understood him.

"Where did you get them scars?" Clarissa asked, interrupting his

thoughts as she ran her fingers lightly over the hard ridges on his

back.

Raoul told her about Black Salmon. "He liked whipping me even better

than he liked whiskey. And when he got hold of whiskey he liked beating

me even better."

"Poor Raoul! And such a little boy." Clarissa's face drew down with

sympathy. "I'm powerful sorry for you." She pulled him to her.

He lowered his head to her breast and drew the nipple into his mouth,

pressing it with his teeth. They lay back together, and he enjoyed the

feel of the soft, feather-filled mattress and pillows billowing up

around them.

By God, if he didn't feel himself getting big and hard to do it again.

Proudly he threw back the sheet and let her see what he had for her. She

smiled up at him, welcoming, her pale blue eyes shining in the

candlelight.

He could use her to help him forget a little longer about Pierre and his

redskin wife and son.

A sharp rapping at the bedroom door brought an end to his new surge of

desire.

Clarissa gasped and pulled away from Raoul, dragging the bedclothes

toward her.

Raoul put his finger to his lips and called out, "Who's there?"

"It's Eli," said a voice through the door.

Raoul's heart began hammering again, as hard as when he woke from his

nightmare.

"Oh, Lord, my paw," whispered Clarissa.

She sounded frightened--but only a _touch_ frightened, and Raoul eyed

her suspiciously. Her eyes were wide, like a child trying to deny

mischief after being caught red-handed. Could Eli and his daughter have

planned this?

Did Eli know that Clarissa was in here? Raoul had been too drunkenly

careless to worry about who was watching when he took her upstairs last

night.

Feeling a quaking in his stomach, Raoul walked over to the door. "What,

Eli?" He hoped his voice sounded strong. He no longer took pleasure and

pride in his nakedness.

"Thought you should know about something I heard over to the fur store,

Raoul."

"Who's minding the furs now?" The place was full of bundles of pelts,

beaver, badger, fox, raccoon, skunk. And valuable trade goods. Indian

bucks walking in and out all the time, this time of year. Raoul had been

happy to turn most of the fur trade work over to Eli. He couldn't

stomach dealing with Indians.

"I left Otto Wegner there. Raoul, there's Injuns out digging in your

lead mine."

At once Raoul forgot his fear of being caught with Clarissa. In its

place he felt a rage so powerful his body seemed to fill up with boiling

oil. Indians, more Indians! Worming their way into his family, and now

stealing from his mine.

"Came looking for lead, did they?" he growled. "We'll give them lead.

Round me up a couple of good marksmen and I'll meet you down in the

taproom."

He heard no sound for a moment, and wondered what Eli was doing and

thinking on the other side of the plank door.

Then Eli's voice came, "I'll be a-waiting for you, Raoul."

_That gets him away from here for now._

But if Eli and Clarissa were planning to try to push him into a

marriage, he knew he wouldn't get out of this that easy.

Pierre bringing an Indian wife and son home, Clarissa trying to trap him

into a marriage--he began to feel as if he had walked into some kind of

an ambush.

And Indians at the mine.

He eyed Clarissa, who sat with a pillow between her bare back and the

rough-hewn log wall, sheet and blanket pulled up to her shoulders. He

walked over to her to make sure he could not be heard from outside.

"I'm going to have to ride out to the mine, and I'll be taking your

father with me," he said, keeping his voice soft. "Wait till you hear us

ride away, then get out of here. And make sure nobody sees you."

She was still wide-eyed. "Oh, Raoul, if he was to catch me with you he'd

beat me worse'n that Injun ever beat you."

Raoul leaned forward and put his hand, gently but firmly, on her throat.

"If he ever finds out from you that you and I were together," he said

softly, "I'll beat you even worse than that."

* * * * *

In the taproom on the first floor of the inn, Eli, a short, skinny man

whose thinning blond hair was turning gray, gave no sign of knowing that

Clarissa was in the room upstairs. Where did he think she was? Raoul

wondered. Maybe he knew, but was biding his time.

"Winnebago with a bundle of beaver pelts come in this morning," Eli

said. "Said that for an extra cupful of whiskey he'd tell me a thing I

might like to know. I obliged, and he told me riding over here yesterday

he'd seen smoke rising from the prairie. He went for a look-see and it

was three Sauk bucks carrying galena out of the mine and smelting it

down."

Eli had rounded up three big men to ride out with Raoul. Levi Pope, a

tall, hatchet-faced Sucker, an Illinois man, carried a Kentucky rifle

that almost came up to his shoulder. Otto Wegner, a veteran of the army

of the King of Prussia, was six foot three with broad shoulders. He wore

his brown mustache thick and let it grow back over his cheeks to join

his sideburns. Hodge Hode, like Eli, was a Puke, a Missourian. Huge as a

grizzly bear, he dressed in fringed buckskins. Under his coonskin cap

red hair, wild and knotted, hung down to his shoulders, and his red

beard hid three quarters of his face. Besides their long rifles, Eli,

Levi, Hodge and Otto had pistols stuck through their belts, powder horns

slung over their shoulders, hunting knives sheathed in pockets in the

front of their buckskin shirts.

Raoul let them each have a glass of whiskey, his good whiskey, Old

Kaintuck from a canvas-wrapped stone jug, not the terrible-tasting corn

liquor he dispensed from the barrel in the taproom. Then the five of

them went out to mount their horses in the courtyard of the trading

post. Raoul rode his chestnut stallion, Banner.

_My domain_, Raoul thought proudly, as he looked around. Surrounding the

trading post was a palisade twenty feet high made of logs set

vertically, with a catwalk running all around it and a guard tower in

each corner. From a pole atop the southwest tower flew the flag of the

United States, thirteen stripes and twenty-four stars, and below it the

flag of the de Marions' Illinois Fur Company, an arrow and a musket

crossing behind a beaver pelt.

Dominating the buildings inside the palisade was a blockhouse, limestone

at ground level, with an overhanging second story of logs and rifle

slits all around. Raoul had built it to fortify the trading post against

his memories of Checagou. Pierre and Papa might have thought it foolish

expense and effort, but where had they been when he needed them?

Near the east side of the blockhouse was the inn they'd just left, a log

house, food and drink on the ground floor and lodgings above. On the

west side, the fur store. Over in the northwest corner was the magazine,

a windowless cube of limestone blocks, surrounded by its own little

palisade the height of a man. Here were stored the bags and barrels of

gunpowder that passed through the trading post.

They rode out through the gateway, arched over by the name DE MARION,

formed out of small bits of log by Raoul's brother-in-law, Frank

Hopkins, carpenter and printer. Raoul glanced down at the town of

Victor, built on the steep slope below the trading post. From here he

could see mostly half-log roofs and clay-lined log chimneys following

the road that zigzagged across the face of the bluff. The houses all

faced west, with their backs to the limestone slope. North and south

from the base of the bluff stretched miles of bottomland along the

Mississippi River. The spring floods that left the bottom some of the

richest farmland in the world also made it necessary to build almost

everything on the bluff above the high-water line.

Raoul pulled Banner's head around and led his little troop at a trot

along the ridge that ran east. Now Victoire came into view, the chateau

his father and brother had built on the edge of the prairie, its first

floor, like that of the blockhouse, of stone, its upper two stories of

square-hewn timber. Some day, he thought, as he rode past the hill

crowned by the great house, he would enter Victoire as master.

They rode on, passing big log barns and animal sheds Raoul had helped

build. They followed a narrow trail through fields planted in corn and

wheat, through orchards, the trees as yet only a little higher than a

man but already yielding apples and peaches. Farther out still, cattle

and horses grazed on grassland that rolled eastward like the waves of

the ocean.

Five miles from the Mississippi they came to the boundary stone with an

M carved on it that marked Victoire's easternmost extent. From there

Raoul could see, a good ten miles or more away, the sign of the Indians,

a long finger of gray smoke leaning northeastward among the fluffy white

clouds. The mine entrance was at the bottom of a ravine carved in the

prairie by the Peach River, and the smoke doubtless meant the Indians

were smelting lead.

After a long ride they reached the little river. The five men reined up

and tethered their horses downwind from the smoke; an Indian, it was

said, had a sense of smell as keen as a dog's. Raoul led his men to the

edge of the ravine.

They walked quietly along the ravine until they sighted Indians down at

the bottom. Sauk or Fox, Raoul saw, recognizing their shaven heads with

tufts of hair in the center. One of the bucks was standing at the mine

entrance holding a skin sack that appeared to be full of chunks of

galena, lead ore. The other two were adding logs to the smelter's fire.

Their six horses--three for riding and three for carrying lead--were

standing at the edge of the river about ten feet from the smelter.

The Indians' smelter was simply a square pit dug in the hillside, lined

with rocks at the bottom and filled with logs and brushwood. They were

melting down the galena, letting it flow through the rocks into a

slanting trench that led to a square mold dug in the earth. Raoul

counted five pigs of lead already formed, cooled and stacked beside the

mold. They'd probably been at this ever since the end of winter,

thinking the mine was so far from town that no white man would notice.

Lead was selling at seventeen dollars per thousand pounds at the pit

head up north in Galena, the new boom town named for the ore, and if

these Indians had been working since the snow melted, they might have

robbed Raoul of as much as two hundred dollars.

Raoul thought he recognized the two bucks at the smelter. Last fall they

had come to him as he was bossing the crew he'd put to work expanding

the mine before he shut it down for the winter. The Indians had claimed

it was their mine. He had told them to be off, and when they hadn't

moved quickly enough, he and his men had cocked their flintlocks. Should

have killed them then.

Raoul gripped the gilded butt of the cap-and-ball pistol that hung at

his waist and slid it out of its holster.

"Get them!" he called, standing up suddenly. He stretched out his arm,

sighted along the barrel of his pistol and fired at the nearer Indian

standing by the smelter.

Four rifles went off at once. Raoul was enveloped in the bitter smell of

gunpowder and a cloud of smoke. The Indian Raoul had aimed at jerked,

fell to his knees, then collapsed face forward beside the smelter. The

other one at the smelter ran for his horse and leaped on its back. They

must have all aimed at the same one, Raoul thought, cursing himself for

not thinking of pointing out targets for each man.

The third Indian had disappeared. The skin sack of galena lay beside the

mine entrance.

"Dammit," said Raoul. "If that redskin on the horse gets away there'll

be raiding parties coming here. Whoever digs here'll have to have eyes

in the back of his head."

"I'll put an eye in the back of _his_ head," said Eli as he poured

powder from his measure down the muzzle of his rifle. He grinned at

Raoul--two upper front teeth missing and one lower. Did he know about

Clarissa? Raoul still couldn't tell.

The other men were also reloading. Raoul pushed powder and shot down the

muzzle of his pistol, then took a percussion cap out of a pouch at his

belt and pressed it onto the nipple in the breach. By the time he was

ready to fire, the Indian was galloping down the riverbed and had

disappeared around a bend.

Hodge Hode, Levi Pope and Otto Wegner ran for their horses. Eli stayed

where he was, smiling down at the rifle in his hands as if he were

holding a baby.

"If we all chase after the one on horseback," Eli said, "the one that's

hiding will run off in the other direction."

"True enough," said Raoul. By this time Hodge, Levi and Otto had ridden

off.

"Another thing," Eli said. "Our boys is on the wrong side of the ravine.

When the Injun comes out, he'll come out on the south side. By the time

they ride down and in, and up and out again, he'll be a mile away."

"So what do we do?" asked Raoul.

"It's all flat land hereabouts."

Before Raoul could demand an explanation of that, he saw the fleeing

Indian on his mount scramble out of the ravine and ride southward, just

as Eli had predicted. Raoul glanced at his men as they came to a halt,

puzzlement showing in their gestures. Hodge fired at the Indian, who

rode on unharmed. Though Raoul would not have known what else to do, he

despised his two men for their uselessness.

Soon the Indian, riding hell-bent south, was a tiny dark silhouette

against the yellow prairie. Eli raised the barrel of his Kentucky long

rifle. It was an impossible shot, Raoul thought, but he said nothing.

Eli seemed to be aiming slightly high, not straight at the redskin.

Raoul heard the Puke suck in a deep breath through his missing front

teeth.

The rifle boomed. The muzzle flash made Raoul blink, and a cloud of

blue-white smoke drifted across the canyon.

A long time seemed to pass with nothing happening. But maybe it was only

a heartbeat or two. Then the dark, distant figure threw up his arms and

toppled sideways from his horse. The horse kept running and was gone

over the horizon a moment later.

"Right through his noodle," Eli said. "I couldn't of made that shot if

he hadn't been riding due south. Too hard to get a lead on him _and_

arch the bullet just right."

Eli made it seem just a simple matter of skill, but Raoul felt as if he

had just seen a miracle.

The faces of the other men, as they climbed down from their horses,

showed as much awe as Raoul felt.

"Pretty good shooting, for a Puke," said Levi Pope.

"Better'n any Sucker could do," Eli returned genially.

Raoul said, "Otto, go get that Indian's body and bring it back here."

Otto Wegner turned at once to remount his horse. Raoul liked the way the

Prussian obeyed every order instantly.

But Hodge Hode glowered at Raoul. "Waste of time. Coyotes and buzzards

have a taste for Injun meat."

Annoyed at being questioned, Raoul said, "I don't want anybody to know

what happened to these redskins."

As Otto rode off, Eli, pointing to the mine entrance, said, "We got one

still alive. At least one."

"I'll take care of him," said Raoul.

Eli, Hodge and Levi looked at him, surprised.

Eli's fine shot had not only awed him; he felt it, uneasily, as a

challenge. The law was absent in Smith County, which was the way Raoul

liked it. Gave an edge to a man who could handle a rifle as well as Eli.

But now, to make sure his own word remained the closest thing to law in

these parts, Raoul felt he had to equal Eli's accomplishment.

He checked the load in his pistol. He gripped the hilt of the

thirteen-inch knife at his belt and loosened it in its sheath. A

blacksmith in St. Louis had made it for him, assuring him it was an

exact replica of the knife designed a couple of years ago by the famed

Arkansas frontiersman Jim Bowie.

Raoul's mouth was dry. His heart was beating so hard he thought his men

must be able to see his woollen coat quivering. His hands were cold and

sweaty.

"Ain't but one way out of that mine, is there?" said Eli. "If we go in

four abreast he can't get past us, and it's a hell of a sight safer."

"I'll take care of him," Raoul repeated. Every word Eli said against his

going into the mine alone made him even more determined to do it. He

needed to keep Eli in line, especially if it should turn out that Eli

knew about him and Clarissa.

"He might have a rifle," said Eli. "Might shoot you when you walk in

there."

"If we all go in, one of you might get shot," said Raoul. "This is my

property."

_And fighting for it will make it more truly my property than any

government grant could._

But that Indian in there--what was he armed with? Rifle, knife, bow,

tomahawk? How strong was he, how fast, how skilled in fighting hand to

hand?

_I'm a fool to put myself through this._

"Could be more'n one in there," said Eli.

Raoul felt the blood run hot through his veins as he thought of Pierre's

bastard son, of Black Salmon, of the Potawatomi who raped and murdered

Helene. His men had killed two Indians today, but there was a third

waiting in that mine, and Raoul de Marion meant to be the death of him.

Ignoring Eli's warnings, he moved toward the black square of the mine

entrance.

He walked slowly, pistol at waist level. He needed his knife out, too,

he decided. Even though he was right-handed, it would be better to have

a second weapon ready than have his left hand empty. He drew his knife,

taking heart from its well-balanced feel.

He stepped under the logs he'd set last fall to brace the entrance.

Should he light a candle? No, that would make him an even better target.

He tried to pierce the blackness with his eyes; it was thick as a wool

curtain.

This was foolish, he thought. If they all went in together, the way Eli

said, a couple of men could carry candles, and they could flush out the

Indian in no time. This way, he was going to get himself killed. If the

Indian had a rifle, Raoul was dead for sure. He felt an urge to back out

and call the others to help him. He stood there a moment, legs

trembling.

No. He had to kill his Indian by himself. He had to show Eli and the

rest.

He forced his feet to slide forward as silently as he could manage. His

hesitation had given his eyes a chance to get used to the dark. He tried

to remember the layout of the mine. In the dim light from the entrance

he made out the downward slope of the long tunnel. About twenty feet in,

another tunnel branched off to his left. His eyes ached as they tried to

find the enemy hiding somewhere ahead of him.

He could see nothing but black walls lined with logs to brace the

ceiling, a floor littered with chunks of rock. As he moved forward, the

tunnel got narrower, the ceiling lower. He could almost feel the weight

of the rock and earth above him; these logs could suddenly give way and

the prairie come down on him like a boot on a bug. He began to be more

afraid of the mine than he was of the hidden Indian.

He came to the branch tunnel and peered into it.

With a high-pitched shriek the Indian sprang at him.

Raoul glimpsed a steel tomahawk edge coming at his head. He jerked the

pistol's trigger and jabbed with the knife in his left hand to parry the

axe blade.