BOOK 2

1831

Moon of Ripe Cherries

_July_

8

Homecoming

Rejoicing at the sight of Victor, Auguste stepped up to the gangplank of

the paddle wheeler _Virginia_ and paused there a moment to look around.

He couldn't help himself: he smiled broadly. The settlement hugging the

bluff was not home, but it was closer to home than he had been in a long

time.

And this summer, he had decided, he would go back to his true home. He

would end the sorrow of being cut off from his people.

This was the sixth spring since Pierre de Marion had come and taken him

to Victoire, and, as with every spring before it, he missed Saukenuk

terribly. He longed for his mother, for the teachings of Owl Carver, for

the arms of Redbird, whom he had lost almost as soon as he made her his.

For six years--he had learned to count years as white people did--he had

obeyed his father and the promise made with the calumet and had not

tried even to send a message to the British Band. He even felt it was a

wise rule. To communicate with his loved ones would have torn him in

two. But more than a month ago in New York City, strolling in the warm

evening air on the busy cobblestone streets, past dooryards where lilacs

were blooming, he made up his mind that when he returned to Illinois he

would visit Victoire only briefly and then would go back to Saukenuk. He

was twenty-one years old now, and among white people that meant he was

master of his own life.

He gazed up at the bluff. There were more houses up there than when he

had last come out here, two years ago. Some were built on the bottomland

itself, in spite of the danger of flooding.

He saw the palisade and flags and towers of Raoul de Marion's trading

post at the top of the bluff, and felt his joy fading. He would have to

face Raoul's insults and threats, as he had every other time he came

back to Victor. His belly tightened as he remembered, as if it had just

happened, that first encounter six years ago, the burning-ice feel of

the knifepoint slicing into his cheek, his hand gripping his own knife,

Aunt Nicole and Father holding him back.

Seemingly with a will of its own his hand went to the scar and his

finger traced the ridge that ran from eye to mouth.

He brought his gaze down from the top of the bluff and saw a more

welcome sight--Grandpapa, Aunt Nicole and Guichard in a black open

carriage from the estate, waiting to take him up to Victoire. He ran

down the gangplank and strode over to them.

"Auguste! My God, you're beautiful!" Aunt Nicole exclaimed, and then her

face reddened and she looked downward.

He felt that he looked good, though "beautiful," as he understood

English, was not the right word for a woman to use about a man. But he

supposed she admired his new clothes, the fawn-colored cutaway coat and

vest, the ruffled silk shirt, the tight, bottle-green trousers. He

wished he were not already holding his tall beaver hat in his hand, so

that he could tip it to her with the graceful motion he'd learned

watching the dandies on Broad Way.

Grandpapa leaned out of the carriage and hugged Auguste. His embrace

felt strong, and his eyes were bright. Auguste was happy to see him in

good health.

_But where is Father?_

Auguste shook hands with Guichard, who had climbed down stiffly from the

driver's seat.

"Your trunk, Monsieur Auguste?"

Auguste pointed out the big wooden chest with brass fittings that had

been unloaded at the Victor pier along with bales and barrels from the

hold of the _Virginia_.

Guichard approached two buckskin-clad men lounging by a piling. He

pointed out the trunk as Auguste had done.

"For _him_?" said one of the men, glowering at Auguste from under his

coonskin cap. "White men don't wait on goddamn Injuns." He spat tobacco

juice at Guichard's feet and turned away, as did the other man.

Auguste wanted to throw the man who had spat at Guichard into the

river. He had no doubt that he could do it, though like most men who

lived in Victor, the man was armed with knife and pistol. Auguste had

been taught to fight as a Sauk, and he had been a champion boxer,

wrestler and fencer at St. George's School. But he was not going to get

into a brawl in his first minutes ashore. Time enough for that if he met

Raoul.

"Come on, Guichard. The trunk's light enough. We don't need any help."

The old servant taking one end and Auguste the other, they loaded it

into the back of the carriage.

"Good to see you again, Grandpapa," Auguste said as he dropped into the

seat facing Elysee and Nicole, his back to the driver. "Aunt Nicole,

it's you who are beautiful. But where's Father?"

Grandpapa patted him on the knee. "Not feeling well, I'm afraid. He

sends his apologies. We will go to him now, at once."

Grandpapa was trying to make his voice sound unconcerned. But Auguste

heard an undertone of sorrow, the anguish of a father who had lost one

of his children years ago and would soon lose another.

With understanding, grief sank into Auguste's marrow. Father--Star

Arrow--had hung on these past six years, growing sicker and sicker, the

evil in his belly swelling up like a poisonous toad. Now the end was

near.

Auguste found himself looking deep into Aunt Nicole's eyes, full of

shared sorrow.

Guichard flicked the reins, and the carriage started off, turning away

from the dock, passing the warehouses and rattling down the long

dusty-white road that led across the bottomland fields to the bluff. It

must have been a good spring out here; though this was only the

beginning of July, the corn was already up to a man's waist.

Auguste felt he would look better wearing his beaver hat as they rode

along. He put it on his head, pulling the rolled-up brim down with both

hands, and set it in place with a pat on the crown.

"So, you are now a finished graduate of St. George's School?" said

Elysee with a smile. "Monsieur Charles Winans has sent long letters full

of good reports about you."

Aunt Nicole reached over and squeezed his hand. "We're proud of you,

Auguste." Her soft, fleshy hand was warm, and her eyes sparkled at him.

He sensed a feeling in her that was more than the affection of an aunt

for a nephew. She now had eight children, he knew, and every time he

had seen her and Frank together, they had seemed very much in love. But

Aunt Nicole was a big woman. She had room in her big heart, perhaps, for

more than one love.

Embarrassed by what he felt radiating from her, Auguste turned to

Elysee.

"If I learned anything at St. George's, I owe it all to the way you

prepared me, Grandpapa. Anyone who could take a boy who could barely

speak English, and in two years cram enough knowledge into his head for

him to go to secondary school in New York City--such a man is no

ordinary teacher."

"You were no ordinary pupil, my boy," said Elysee, leaning back in the

carriage, his hands resting one on top of the other on his silver-headed

cane. "And Pere Isaac laid down a solid foundation in that head of

yours. Those Jesuits are good for that, at least, black-hearted rogues

though they may be in most other respects."

"Papa!" Nicole gave Elysee a reproving frown.

Elysee quickly patted her knee. "Forgive me, my child. Let me not shake

the faith that sustains you."

"It would take more than your wicked tongue to disturb my faith, Papa,"

Nicole said with a wry smile.

It was amusing to hear Grandpapa and Aunt Nicole bicker about what the

whites called "faith." As the carriage rolled along, Auguste recalled

the many lectures he had listened to on Jesus and the Trinity at St.

George's, which was affiliated with the Episcopal Church. But Auguste

had walked with the White Bear and talked with the Turtle. He _knew_

them as he had never known the white people's God, and what went on in

their dimly lit, waxy-smelling churches had no attraction for him.

He knew that Christians, for the most part, saw his beliefs about the

spirit world as rubbish sprung out of ignorance--or, worse, inspired by

the Evil One. Pere Isaac's efforts to persuade him to walk in the way of

Jesus had prepared him for that. At school he did not speak of things

sacred to him, so as not to expose them to white scorn. When teachers

and fellow students tried to persuade him to take instruction in

Christianity, he was polite and evasive.

And when he felt he was smothering in the noise and crowding and dirt of

the huge city of New York, he would borrow a pony from the lady he

called Aunt Emilie--his father's cousin, actually--and ride out of New

York along a trail that led to the north end of the island of

Manhattan. There in a forest cave he had found, he would chew a bit of

the sacred mushroom Owl Carver had given him and restore his link with

the spirit world by journeying with the White Bear. All through these

six years, _his_ faith had remained strong.

Nicole broke in on his thoughts. "You're still studying medicine?"

"Just a beginning: I've read some books, attended some lectures. I

assisted a surgeon--Dr. Martin Bernard--at New York Hospital. I bought

myself a surgeon's box of instruments--got it in the trunk, there. But

if anybody came down with anything worse than an ingrown toenail, I'd be

scared to do anything about it."

Elysee said, "You can pull teeth, I hope, like any proper surgeon?"

Auguste shrugged. "I do have a turnkey for that. But I've never actually

used it."

"The only person in town who knows anything about treating the sick is

Gram Medill, the midwife," Nicole said. "Tom Slattery, the blacksmith,

pulls teeth. We need a real doctor."

Auguste felt a fluttering in his stomach as he wondered when he should

tell this white family of his that he wanted to leave them. Nicole was

thinking, he realized, that he would stay here at Victoire.

The steel-reinforced wooden wheels of the carriage bumped mercilessly

over the rutted road, and Auguste hoped Nicole wasn't pregnant at the

moment. The fact that his shaman's sense did not tell him reminded him

that he had been too long away from the Sauk. As they began to climb the

road that ran up the bluff, Nicole pointed out to Auguste that the newer

houses were made of boards rather than logs, because Frank had set up a

sawmill and workshop on the Peach River. Frank was now a master

carpenter, with four workers to help him when there was a house to be

built.

"But he'd sell the mill in a minute if printing alone would provide him

with a living," she said. "That's where his heart is."

Elysee said, "Pierre and I offered Frank a regular income, so that he

could give all his time to his newspaper and to printing, but he

wouldn't hear of it. He got a bit haughty when I pressed him, and

informed me that the system of feudal patronage is dead. I assured him

that I was well aware of that, and that is why I am here and not in

France."

"Frank is proud, Papa," said Nicole.

Elysee nodded. "I fear he is too often a proud papa."

Auguste roared, and Nicole, though she blushed, could not help laughing.

"The town grows bigger every year," Auguste said. Nicole nodded

sympathetically; she seemed to have guessed what he was thinking: How

numerous the whites were, as he had seen for himself in the East, and

how inexorably they were filling up this part of the country, like a

river in flood. Last year the New York papers had reported the results

of the 1830 census; the United States was over twelve million, Auguste

had read, a number he could not even imagine. And 150,000 of those were

here in the state of Illinois, balanced against the six thousand Sauk

and Fox. Black Hawk's people, the British Band, numbered only two

thousand. Hopeless.

"Victor had a hundred or so people the year you came here," said Elysee.

"Now there are over four hundred. As you see, the bluff is completely

covered with houses. And we have many new industries and crafts. A

preacher, a Reverend Hale, has put up a church on the prairie to the

east of us. I am not sure whether his work counts as an industry or a

craft. There is Frank's sawmill, as Nicole said. There are also a flour

mill and a brewery, and a mason works at a limestone quarry nearby. And

your father is planning to set up a kiln on the estate, so we can build

a new Victoire of brick."

"How sick is my father?" Auguste asked abruptly, dreading the answer he

would get.

"Ah, Nicole, there are your children waiting to greet us," Grandpapa

cried, as if he had not heard Auguste's question.

Where the road made a sharp turn and started upward on a higher level,

stood a two-story frame building painted white. A sign over the door

read, THE VICTOR VISITOR, F. HOPKINS, PUBr, PRINTING AND ENGRAVING.

CARPENTRY.

Auguste could hear the press clanking away inside the house as they

approached. The three younger children, John, Rachel and Betsy, were

lined up by the door, Rachel holding in her arms a baby that must be

Nicole and Frank's newest. Three of the older ones, Benjamin, Abigail

and Martha, leaned out a window to wave to Auguste from the second

story. Auguste felt proud of himself, being able to remember all their

names and which was which.

As Guichard reined up the horse and pushed the brake lever on the

carriage, the sound of the press stopped and Frank came out through the

open door wiping his ink-stained hands on his leather apron. His

forehead was shiny with sweat. The oldest son, Thomas, followed him,

pushing his hands down his own apron with the same gesture.

Auguste climbed down from the carriage and took Frank's hand, then shook

with Thomas and the three little girls. The baby was Patrick, he

learned. He lightly rubbed Patrick's fine hair.

"No wonder the town's population grows so fast, Aunt Nicole," Auguste

said with a smile. "How many more do you think there will be for you and

Frank?"

But as he spoke, his pleasure at his aunt's handsome family was dimmed

by the thought that if all white families were as fertile as this, there

was no hope at all for the red people.

"None, I hope," said Frank firmly. "We've got too big a tribe as it is."

Aunt Nicole's face reddened again, and Auguste reminded himself that

white women were generally reluctant to talk about pregnancy and

childbirth. Auguste recalled his mother, Sun Woman, speaking of a kind

of tea that would keep a woman from getting pregnant. When he went back

to Saukenuk he could find out more about it. He would surely come back

here to visit, and then he could tell Aunt Nicole about it. If white

women knew about that tea, maybe there would be fewer whites in years to

come, and they would not have such a hunger for land.

As they drove on up the road to the top of the bluff, Auguste saw

Nicole's face brighten, and he turned to see what she was looking at. A

black buggy drawn by an old gray horse was coming toward them, having

just rounded the bend in the road at the trading post palisade. Auguste

caught a glimpse of blond braids under a red and white checkered bonnet.

Nicole said, "Auguste, here's a newcomer to our county. I think you'll

enjoy meeting her."

"Ah yes," said Elysee. "Reverend Hale and his daughter, Mademoiselle

Nancy. He came here over a year ago, Auguste, declared the town too

corrupt for his church and started holding services for the farmers out

on the prairie. They built him a church about five miles from town.

Painted white, with a steeple one can see for miles. Its very simplicity

makes it beautiful."

Nicole said, "As much could be said for Nancy."

Curious, Auguste tried to see the face under the red and white bonnet.

Every day, and many times a day, he thought of Redbird and the joy they

so briefly shared, but many of the young white women he had seen in the

past six years had made his heart beat faster. Just last winter he'd

gone with a group of his classmates to an elegant old house on Nassau

Street where he discovered that the body of a white woman, under her

many-layered dress, was in all important respects as interesting as the

body of a woman of his own people. Even though he planned to leave

Victoire as soon as he could, he was eager to meet the new minister's

daughter.

The two carriages pulled side by side, and the drivers, Guichard and the

Reverend Hale, a slab-faced man dressed in black, reined up for the

customary exchange of greeting.

"Reverend Hale, Miss Hale," Elysee said, "may I present my grandson,

Auguste de Marion."

The reverend stared at Auguste for a moment from under bushy brows

before grunting an acknowledgment. Auguste suspected he had heard about

his parentage and was looking for traces of Indian blood.

_Indian._ Auguste had never heard that word before he went to live among

white people. His people were the Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire.

And their allies were the Fox. And besides these there were Winnebago,

Potawatomi, Chippewa, Kickapoo, Osage, Piankeshaw, Sioux, Shawnee--each

a separate people. And besides these, hundreds more, whose names

he did not even know. But the whites had one name for all these

peoples--Indians. And that name, Grandpapa had explained to him with

gentle irony, was altogether a mistake. The explorer Columbus had

thought he had landed in India.

_They do not even respect us enough to call us by an honest name._

But the sight of Nancy Hale drove the bitterness from his mind. Her

braids, emerging from her red and white bonnet and lying on either side

of her white lace collar, were yellow as ripe corn, and her face, while

too long for ideal beauty, was pink and clear. Her mouth was wide, and

her teeth were white when she smiled at Nicole and Elysee. She looked

straight at Auguste for an instant, then she looked down, but in that

moment he saw eyes a vivid shade of blue, like the turquoise stone from

the Southwest he carried in his medicine bag.

"Visiting the members of your flock, are you, Reverend?" Elysee asked.

Auguste noticed that he put the tiniest humorous inflection on the word

"flock."

Hale's thick gray brows drew together as he nodded sourly. "Trying to

bring the Word to that wilderness you call a town."

Here was an unhappy man, thought Auguste, whose life was dedicated to

persuading those around him to be equally unhappy.

"Ah, yes," said Elysee with a broad smile. "Quite a population of sheep

gone astray in Victor."

"In all of Smith County," said Hale.

_It must scandalize him to think that my mother is an Indian woman and

that my father, by the lights of this man, isn't even married to her._

Auguste suddenly wanted to defy the disapproval he felt from the

reverend. He jumped out of the carriage and in an instant was standing

on the road beside the minister's buggy. He swept off his high-crowned

hat with the flourish he'd seen in New York and bowed deeply.

"Miss Hale," he said. "Auguste de Marion. At your service."

The blood rose to Nancy Hale's cheeks.

"My pleasure, Mr. de Marion," she murmured. Her large blue eyes looked

frightened and her flush deepened, but she did not take her eyes away,

and his gaze was locked to hers. His heart beat as hard as it had the

first time he saw the White Bear.

"The Lord's work awaits us in Victor," said the Reverend Hale loudly.

"You really must excuse us." And without waiting for a reply he snapped

the reins of his buggy, and the old horse ambled off.

Auguste stood in the road waiting to see if Nancy would glance back at

him. She did. Even at a distance and through dust he could see the blue

of her eyes.

Elysee said, "Well, Auguste, close your mouth, put your hat back on and

get back up here."

_I'm going to meet her again_, Auguste thought.

He still wanted just as much to go back to his people. He had not

forgotten Redbird. By now, though, she had probably forgotten him. And

so, what harm could there be in getting to know this white young lady a

little better?

Then their carriage was passing the log wall around the trading post. A

shadow fell over his enjoyment at meeting Nancy Hale. He ran his finger

down the scar on his cheek.

"Is _he_ in there?" he said abruptly to Nicole.

Her face paled. "He's down-- You know about what's going on in the Rock

River country, don't you?"

Auguste stiffened. "Has something happened to my people?"

He saw Nicole close her eyes and sigh when he said "my people."

"There has been trouble," said Elysee. "Did no news reach you in New

York?"

_O Earthmaker, let them come to no harm._

Twisting his hands in his lap, Auguste said, "The New York papers only

report what happens on the eastern seaboard." He remembered now

overhearing remarks by some of his fellow passengers on the _Virginia_

about "Injun trouble." But he'd kept to himself on the trip up from St.

Louis.

_We steamed right past the mouth of the Rock River, and I never

guessed!_

Elysee nodded. "Well, your father insisted that no one write you about

it. He feared it would distract you from your studies."

Auguste felt a sudden flash of anger at Pierre de Marion. _He does want

me to forget that I am a Sauk. Not even telling me when my people are in

danger._

He gripped Elysee's arm. "What happened?"

Nicole said, "Frank has a correspondent who writes him regularly from

Fort Armstrong."

The American fort, Auguste remembered, was at the mouth of the Rock

River, six miles downriver from Saukenuk.

Nicole went on, "Black Hawk's band once again crossed the Mississippi to

Saukenuk in the spring, even though the Army has told them over and over

that the land now belongs to the Federal government and they must not

return to it. This time they found settlers actually living in some of

their houses and farming their fields. Black Hawk drove them out. Black

Hawk's warriors destroyed settlers' cabins nearby, shot their horses

and cows, told them to move away or be killed. Now Governor Reynolds has

called up the militia to drive Black Hawk and his people out of

Illinois. His proclamation says, 'Dead or alive.'"

Auguste's heart suddenly felt as if ice had formed around it.

Elysee said, "And Raoul and most of his cronies have gone to join the

militia."

Auguste whispered, "O Earthmaker, keep my people safe." The carriage had

reached the top of the hill and was passing the front gate of the

trading post, shut and locked with a chain. He trembled at the thought

of Redbird--Sun Woman--Owl Carver--Black Hawk--all the people he had

known and loved all of his life, facing the rifles of men like Raoul.

"I must go there now," he said in a low voice.

"You can't," Nicole said quickly. "You can't get through the militia

lines. You'd be shot."

Auguste, fists clenched in his lap, shook his head. "If they are in such

danger, how can I stay away? I _must_ be with them."

Elysee seized his wrist in a grip so powerful it startled him. "Listen

to me. You cannot help them. You simply can't get there before matters

are settled, one way or another. And I am sure that when your chief

Black Hawk sees the size of the militia force, he will go peacefully

back across the Mississippi. The Sauk and Fox have many young men. You

are your father's only son. _He_ needs you now."

Auguste's heart ached as he saw the plea in Grandpapa's eyes. How could

he deny the old man? And his father's need for the love of his son in

his last days.

But the thought of thousands of armed and angry whites going to drive

his people out of Saukenuk smote him like a war club. Grandpapa didn't

know Black Hawk; Black Hawk was not likely to yield peaceably. And

whether or not Auguste could be any use at Saukenuk, he had to be there.

Nicole said, "At least see your father and talk to him before you decide

what to do."

Auguste nodded. "Of course." He saw more pain in her face than he could

bear to look at. He turned to stare out at the hills as the carriage

carried them to Victoire.

Now they could see Victoire, the great stone and log house rising out

of the prairie on its low hill. Elysee and Pierre liked to call it a

chateau, but Auguste had learned that it was nothing like the castles in

the land they had come from. And, much as he had marveled at Victoire

when he first saw it, he had seen still bigger and finer houses in New

York. But it was still the grandest house north of the Rock River's

mouth, and Auguste couldn't help feeling proud when he realized that the

blood of the men who built it flowed in his own veins.

Their carriage rattled through the gateway in the split-log fence.

Auguste saw with pleasure that the maple tree that shaded the south side

of the house was bigger than ever.

Most of the servants and field hands were gathered before the front door

to greet Auguste. He remembered how they had assembled this way six

years ago, when Star Arrow first brought him here from Saukenuk.

Every time he thought of Saukenuk, of his beleaguered people surrounded

by an enemy army, his breathing grew fast and shallow.

But he was frightened, too, by the silence of the house. It whispered of

his father's dying. He must face Pierre's death and suffer with him now.

Auguste wanted to rush upstairs to Pierre and hold him tight. And also

he did not want to go into Pierre's room at all.

Auguste and Elysee climbed the stairway from the great hall of the

chateau to Pierre's second-story bedroom, Nicole following. At the door

Auguste hesitated, and Elysee stepped forward and firmly knocked. A

woman's voice called them in.

As Grandpapa pushed the door open, Auguste closed his eyes. He dreaded

what he was about to see. His heart fluttered anxiously. Would there be

anything, he wondered, he could do for his father?

Now the door was fully open, and he saw the long, thin figure stretched

out under a sheet on a canopied bed. Marchette was sitting with a basin

of water on her knees. She had been wiping Pierre's face with a damp

cloth.

A flash of bright red caught Auguste's eye. On the floor by the bed was

a second basin, partly covered by a towel which, Auguste suspected,

Marchette must have hastily thrown over it. But part of the towel had

fallen into the basin, and blood was soaking into the white linen.

A knot of grief filled Auguste's throat, blocking it so he could not

speak. He rushed to the bed.

Pierre lay on his back, his head propped up by pillows, his long nose

pointing straight at Auguste, his eyes turned toward him. His bony hands

looked very large, because his arms were so thin. Pierre's gray hair,

what was left of it, spread out on the pillow.

Pierre lifted his head a little.

"Son. Oh, I am glad to see you."

He raised his hands, and Auguste, biting his lip, leaned over the bed

and put his hands under his father's shoulders. He held Pierre close and

felt Pierre's hands come to rest on his back, light as autumn leaves.

They held each other that way for a moment.

His father felt so light, as if he was starving to death. Auguste

released him and sat on the edge of the bed. He said the first thing

that came into his mind.

"Did you eat today, Father?"

Pierre's voice was like the wind in dead branches. "Marchette keeps me

alive with clear soups. They are all that I can keep down."

A half-empty bowl of broth, Auguste now saw, stood on a table beside the

bed. Next to the soup lay a Bible bound in black leather, and Pierre's

silver spectacle case with its velvet ribbon.

What would Sun Woman and Owl Carver do for a man this sick? What would

they feed him?

"Maybe I can help you, Father," he said.

"I don't think anyone can help me, son," Pierre said. "It's all right.

Just having you here makes me feel better."

Auguste had learned enough about cancer to be sure that Pierre's

condition was hopeless. Dr. Bernard--any of the other white physicians

at New York Hospital--would say that nothing more could be done except

to make the patient comfortable, give him laudanum perhaps, and wait for

the end.

But that was merely what white medicine had taught Auguste. White

doctors had sharp lancets to draw blood, scalpels to cut into sick

people's bodies, saws to cut off infected limbs. They had huge thick

books listing hundreds of diseases and prescribing treatments for them.

But after spending many hours treating the sick in New York, Auguste had

seen that there were many things the white physicians did not know how

to do, had never even thought of doing. Perhaps greater hope for Pierre

lay in the way of the shaman.

At the very least, Auguste, as White Bear, could speak to Pierre's

soul, could summon the aid of the spirits, especially his own spirit

helper and that of the sick man, to cure him if possible; if not, then

to ease his suffering, help him to accept what was to happen to him and

prepare him to walk in the other world.

With a jolt, the thought hit him anew: _If I stay here with Father, what

of Saukenuk?_

Pierre said, "God has kept me alive because I must talk to you about our

land, Auguste."

Auguste did not like the sound of that. The thousands of acres the de

Marions owned had nothing to do with him, and he wanted to keep it that

way.

Marchette stood up, pushing her chair back. "Perhaps the rest of us

should leave you and Monsieur Auguste alone."

Auguste saw in her face the anguish of a woman who was losing a man she

loved. Auguste had long suspected, seeing the looks that passed between

Pierre and Marchette, and the way her husband, the brown-bearded Armand,

glared at both of them, that there was--or at least had once

been--something between the master of Victoire and the cook.

Pierre raised a tremulous hand. "Au contraire. I want the three of

you--Papa, Nicole, Marchette--to hear what I say. Besides, you are the

three I trust most. I want you to know my wishes, my true wishes,

because after I am gone there are those who will lie about me."

Auguste took Pierre's hand, so big and yet so weak, in his own strong,

brown one.

"Father, you must believe that you will live."

Auguste heard the others move closer to the bed. Nicole went to stand at

the foot. Elysee seated himself in an old spindly-legged armchair

brought over from France, his cane across his knees.

Pierre pointed a skeletal finger above his head to a shelf mounted on

the white-painted plaster wall, where an Indian pipe lay, its bowl

carved of red pipestone, its stem polished hickory.

"Take down the calumet," Pierre said. "Let me hold it."

Auguste took the pipe reverently, with a hand at each end of its

three-foot length. Two black feathers with white tips fluttered from the

bowl as he put the pipe into Pierre's hands. From the moment he touched

the pipe, Auguste's hands were shaking as much as Pierre's. Only he and

Pierre understood how much power was in this pipe--power to bind men

for life to whatever they promised when they smoked the sacred tobacco.

Pierre let the pipe lie on his chest, his fingers touching it lightly.

"This pipe was given me a few years after you were born, Auguste, by

Jumping Fish, who even then was one of the civil chiefs of the Sauk and

Fox. It is the sign of an agreement between our family and the Sauk and

Fox, fully understood and freely entered into by both sides."

Auguste looked in wonderment from Pierre to Elysee, and Grandpapa nodded

solemnly.

Elysee said, "We had spent years exploring the more unsettled parts of

the Illinois Territory, and we had decided that here was the land we

wanted as our family seat in the New World. In 1809 we bought this land

for a dollar an acre at the Federal land office in Kaskaskia. Thirty

thousand dollars. The Federal government claimed that the Sauk and Fox

had signed a treaty a few years earlier with Governor William Henry

Harrison, selling fifty-one million acres, including all of northern

Illinois, to the United States for a little over two thousand dollars, a

shockingly paltry sum."

Pierre said, "But we knew that the Sauk and Fox disputed that claim."

Auguste said, "Yes, Black Hawk says Harrison cheated the Sauk and Fox.

He says the chiefs who signed the treaty were drunk and could not speak

English or read or write it, and did not know what they were agreeing to

when they made their marks. He says that anyway those chiefs had no

permission from the tribe to sell any land."

"Exactly," said Elysee. "And we wanted to live in peace with the Sauk

and Fox. And that was why your father went to Saukenuk. We hoped to make

reasonable payments for the land we would live on to those from whom it

had been taken."

Pierre said, "I was still there with your mother, by my own choice, when

war broke out in 1812, and then they required me to stay with them. You

were already two years old. After the war, and after I left them, I sent

the Sauk and Fox chiefs what they asked for--thirty thousand dollars,

partly in coin and partly in trade goods, knives, steel axes, tin pots

and kettles, blankets and bolts of cloth, rifles and barrels of

gunpowder, bags of bullets. So, we paid for this land twice over.

Despite that, I think it is far more valuable still than all the money

we spent for it. The chiefs recognize our right to live on the land and

use it. And Jumping Fish gave me this calumet, and I gave him a fine

Kentucky long rifle with brass and silver inlay on the barrel and

stock."

Auguste nodded eagerly. "Yes, yes, I've seen it. Jumping Fish uses it to

shoot the first buffalo every winter to start the hunt."

"And I gave Black Hawk the compass your war chief still treasures, from

which I received my Sauk name."

"Yes."

Auguste looked across Pierre's bed and out the windows, of costly clear

glass shipped from Philadelphia, that gave a view south across

grass-covered prairie. Once all that prairie belonged to my people, he

thought.

As if knowing his thoughts, Pierre said, "I did not say the Sauk and Fox

sold us the land. I said they recognized our right to use it. Do you

understand?"

Auguste nodded, repeating what he had so often heard Black Hawk say in

the tribal meetings. "Land is not something to be bought and sold. So we

believe."

Pierre closed his eyes wearily, his fingertips still resting on the

calumet that lay across his chest. Auguste grieved. The father who had

left him when he was a little boy and then come back for him was leaving

him again, slipping away. Marchette wiped Pierre's face with a damp

cloth.

Nicole's lower lip trembled as she said, "My big brother. You've always

been here for me."

Elysee's face was crumpled by an unbearable sadness. He wishes, Auguste

thought, that it was him lying there dying, instead of his son.

Pierre opened his eyes and lifted his head to look at Auguste. Auguste

gently pressed his hand against his father's balding brow.

"Rest, Father, rest."

"Not till we are done. You know that your grandfather turned the estate

over to me when I was forty years of age. Now I must pass it on. Until

recent years I had thought that the land would go to Raoul when I died.

"But the enmity between me and Raoul has grown deeper and deeper. A few

times he and I and Papa have met together, trying to come to terms. Each

time, the words that passed between us were more cruel. Then, a year

ago, he even boasted to me that he killed three Sauk Indians who were

taking lead from that mine he has been working, which they believe to be

theirs."

Auguste gasped.

_Sun Fish and the others! That must have been what happened to them._

Pierre said, "What is it?"

"I think I know those three. One of them was my age, and a friend of

mine." His hatred for Raoul burned fiercer than ever.

Pierre said, "For a long time now there have been no words at all

between Raoul and me."

Auguste said, "It was my coming here that turned you against each

other."

Nicole spoke up. "Not you. Raoul has had a grudge against Pierre for as

long as I can remember."

Elysee said, "Yes, Raoul has many quarrels with me--over land and how it

is to be used, our paying the Sauk and Fox for it, the Fort Dearborn

massacre. Yes, you are part of it, Auguste, but there is much more

besides."

Auguste shook his head. "But before I came, Father and Raoul were

speaking to each other and the question of who would get the estate was

settled. And it still can be. Father, after you are gone I will go back

to my people. You can tell Raoul that, and there will be peace between

you."

With pain that tore all through him like lightning burning through a

tree, Auguste realized that he had committed himself to stay here as

long as his father lived. His Sauk family and loved ones were in

terrible danger four days' ride from here, and he wanted to be with

them. But he couldn't leave Pierre now. His fear for Sun Woman and

Redbird and the others in peril, his shame at not going to help them,

would be a terrible torment, but he would have to endure it. He could

not leave his father to take his first steps on the Trail of Souls

alone.

Pierre reached out suddenly and seized him by the wrist.

"You must not leave, even after I am gone. You must stay here as my

heir."

Auguste gasped as the enormity of what Pierre was saying hit him. Heir!

He tried to stand up, but Pierre's grip held him fast. Just as this

huge house and all the land around it would hold him captive, forever

parted from his people.

"No!"

"Listen, please, Auguste. I cannot will the land to Raoul."

Auguste lifted his free hand pleadingly.

"You can't will it to _me_. I know nothing about managing farms and

raising livestock. Nothing about business. Raoul has been trained from

childhood to do all the work of this estate. I can't do it, and I don't

want it."

He looked around the room, hoping the others would help him persuade

Pierre that what he wanted was impossible. Nicole and Marchette were

both wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Elysee leaned forward in his chair, his

eyes intent on Auguste.

Pierre said, "Once the land is your responsibility, you will do what is

right with it. I know you will. I want to turn the estate over to you

now, as Papa did with me, while I am still alive. I would be here to

help you, for a little while. Your grandfather will advise you, as he

has advised me all these years. There will be others to help you.

Nicole, her husband, Marchette, Guichard."

Auguste said, "Grandpapa, tell him I can't do it."

Elysee, who had been sitting slumped and miserable in his

fragile-looking armchair, roused himself and said, "I knew your father

was going to propose this to you today, Auguste. This is what he wants.

It is no mere whim. He has been thinking about it for a long time. And

it is not impossible. You have shown yourself capable of learning

quickly. I can only promise you that if you take up the burden your

father offers you, I will be at your side to help you every way that I

can."

For a moment Elysee's words made Auguste's resolve waver. Thirty

thousand acres, he thought. And the United States stole fifty million

acres from my people. Should not one Sauk get some of it back?

But he had some idea of the crushing responsibility a huge estate would

entail. It was absurd to think of himself occupying such a place.

"But Raoul is also your son, Grandpapa," he said. "Don't you want him to

inherit your land?"

Elysee shook his head. "Raoul is a murderer many times over, who has

escaped punishment only because Smith County is on the frontier, where

there is no law. He hates Indians with a passion that is close to

madness. He is a crude, violent, greedy man. He shames our family. He is

far less worthy than you."

Auguste felt anger boiling up under his dismay. Father and Sun Woman and

Owl Carver and Black Hawk had promised him he would live among whites

only for a time and then go back to the Sauk. They had all smoked the

calumet, making that agreement sacred. He had lived for that homecoming,

through these six years. He freed his wrist from Pierre's grip and held

out his hands, pleading for understanding.

"But I can't stay here with white people for the rest of my life."

Pierre said, "You are not the same person you were when I took you out

of the forest. You have been educated. You may yet become a doctor."

"Yes, and I want to be a doctor for my people."

"You can do more for them if you stay here, my son. The Sauk will need

friends among the whites who have knowledge and wealth and power."

Auguste shook his head violently, as if to drive out Pierre's words. "I

will never be happy, living as a white man. I must go back to my people.

I beg you to let me go."

But even as he spoke he realized with a sudden pang that these loved

ones, Pierre, Grandpapa, Nicole, were his people too.

Pierre's sunken eyes blazed at Auguste. "I have already written my new

will, Auguste. There is one copy with the town clerk, Burke Russell, and

one copy in your grandfather's keeping. It names you my sole heir. To

all that I possess, the entire de Marion estate. If you accept what I am

offering you, you will have to fight Raoul. It will all be upon your

shoulders. I can only beg you with these last breaths to take what I

would give you. You must decide."

A voice inside Auguste screamed, _You must not do this to me, Father.

You will destroy me._

He stood looking down at his father with his arms hanging at his sides,

his shoulders straight, his head bowed. He could not say no so finally,

so bluntly, to his dying father. He needed time to work his way free of

this trap.

"Father, you know we Sauk never decide quickly. When it is a very

important decision, we think, we go on with our work, we walk the

sunwise circle, we wait in silence for the answer to come. You must give

me time."

Pierre closed his eyes and his head fell back to the white pillows. "You

have as much time as I do," he whispered. "But only that much."

Auguste turned away from the bed. His eyes met Nicole's. He saw sympathy

for him in her face, but only another shaman could know the pain he was

feeling inside.

9

Bequest

White Bear crouched over the brown blanket he had brought down from his

room and unrolled it. Bare-chested and barefoot in white sailcloth

workman's trousers he had bought in New York, he took from the blanket

roll his powerful necklace of megis shells and hung it around his neck.

Next he opened his soft leather medicine bag.

Propped up against the big old maple tree on the south side of Victoire,

Pierre lay on his mattress with his head and shoulders resting on

pillows. His cotton blanket, all he needed on this warm September day,

was tucked around his chest, leaving his arms free. He had begged to be

taken outside; the weather was so fine. As soon as the servants had

carried him out and left him and White Bear alone, he had fallen asleep.

These days, Pierre slept most of the time, as a baby would. But a baby

slept to build up its strength, Pierre because he was losing strength.

White Bear--he did not think of himself as Auguste now--laid out the

objects from his medicine bag on the unrolled blanket and contemplated

them. They represented the seven sacred directions. First, East. He

picked up a sparkling white rock and placed it on the east side of the

tree. The color of East was white and therefore was White Bear's own

color. Next was South. He took up the green stone on which the mound

builders had long ago carved the figure of a winged man. This he laid on

the earth next to the mattress on Pierre's left side. The ground under

the maple tree was bare, and an early morning rain had left it damp and

soft.

Now West. The spirits of men and women went West when they died, and the

color of West was red. He set the red stone, with dark honeycomb

markings that looked as if they had been painted on its highly polished

surface, on the ground at Pierre's feet. By the north side of the

mattress he placed a black stone, itself from the North, that Owl Carver

had engraved with an owl image. The fifth direction, Up, was blue, and

he put a blue stone, the color of Nancy Hale's eyes, on the pillow

beside Pierre's head. He set a piece of brown sandstone for the sixth

direction, Down, beside Pierre's blanket-covered feet.

Now for the seventh sacred direction--Here. He picked up the last and

largest item from his medicine bag--the claw of a grizzly bear that had

been killed by Black Hawk himself many years ago. After White Bear had

come back from his first spirit quest with the prediction that Black

Hawk would do deeds of courage and that his name would never be

forgotten, the war chief had made him a gift of the grizzly claw. White

Bear laid the saber-shaped claw on Pierre's chest, over his heart, with

the brown tip toward the cancerous lump in Pierre's belly that was

killing him.

He went back to his blanket and took out a dried gourd painted black and

white. Slapping the gourd against the palm of his hand to make it

rattle, he danced in a circle around Pierre and the maple tree, sunwise

from east to south to west to north and back to east again, keeping

Pierre on his right, singing softly, almost to himself:

"Earthmaker, you made this man,

Now we ask your help for him.

He is a chief whose people need him.

He still has far to walk.

Lift him up, Earthmaker.

Give him back his life."

When White Bear had danced the circle nine times, he put down the gourd.

He had brought out from the chateau a kettle of freshly brewed

willow-bark tea and a porcelain cup. It would ease the pain in Pierre's

stomach and give him strength. Whenever Pierre ate solid food, blood

would come trickling out of every opening in his body and he would grow

weaker and paler. He was slowly bleeding and starving to death.

Smelling the tea as he poured it into the cup, White Bear remembered how

he'd met Nancy Hale when he was collecting the bark yesterday along the

bank of Red Creek. She'd been blueberrying. It was the fourth or fifth

time he'd encountered her over the summer on the prairie near Victoire.

The meetings weren't accidents; not for either of them. But he felt so

uncertain about what he would do when Pierre died that he could only

talk with Nancy about things of no importance.

He looked up to see his father's eyes open. They had sunk so far back in

the skull-like face that they seemed like embers glowing in caves.

White Bear blew on the steaming cup and held it to Pierre's lips. He

drank the tea down in small sips.

Pierre smiled faintly as his eyes traveled over his land. The nearby

ground, covered with grass cropped short by sheep and goats, sloped down

to the split-rail fence that surrounded the chateau's inner yard. To the

west White Bear could see the two flags flying over Raoul's trading post

on the bluff overlooking the river, and beyond that part of the river

and the dark west bank, the Ioway country. In the other directions were

orchards, farmlands, pastures, and the prairie, yellowing with fall,

rolling on to the edge of the sky.

When Pierre had drunk most of the tea, White Bear put down the cup. He

gathered up his sacred stones and put them back in his medicine bag.

Pierre said, "You did a Sauk ritual for me just now, did you not?"

"Yes," said White Bear. "It was meant to heal you. Or, if not, to give

you strength to bear the pain."

"I do feel better today," Pierre said. "But I must also have a certain

rite of the Church if I am to pass over into God's love. I sent a week

ago to Kaskaskia for your old teacher, Pere Isaac. He should be here any

day. I have been a great sinner, White Bear."

It gladdened White Bear's heart that his father called him by his Sauk

name.

"You are a _good_ man, my father," he said in the Sauk tongue.

Pierre raised his head, and White Bear saw that the effort pained him.

The burning, sunken eyes turned on White Bear.

"Son, I must have my answer now. Earthmaker let me live all summer,

that you might have time to decide. Now you must tell me."

"Can you not let me go back to my people, Father? Why do you ask me to

stay here and fight for something I do not want?"

"I see what Raoul has become, and I do not want him to be the master

here. I am proud of you and ashamed of him. I want you to be the future

of the de Marions, not him. And what of this land that we have loved

together, the land that Sun Woman's people have cherished for

generations? Shall it fall to Raoul?"

White Bear remembered what Owl Carver had said to Pierre at Saukenuk:

_If your land keeps you from doing what you want, then it owns_ you.

"Why couldn't you will the estate to Nicole? She's a de Marion."

"Nicole cannot do battle with Raoul when she has eight children to care

for. Her husband is an excellent man, but not a fighter. White Bear, you

are the only one."

"I still think as a Sauk, Father. Among the Sauk one man may not own

land. And to claim so much would be a great crime."

"In you the heritage of the de Marions and the Sauk claim to this land

are indissolubly united. You will be doing this for the Sauk as well as

for me and for yourself. I believe that it was God's plan that I father

you, that you spend the first fifteen years of your life among the Sauk

and then these past six as a white. Now you have a chance to be rich and

to have power. You can learn how to use your wealth to protect your

people. You can do much for them if you stay here and fight for what I

give you."

Standing over his father, White Bear lifted his head and gazed up at the

great stone and log house on the hilltop. He wondered whether he was not

being foolishly stubborn, refusing Victoire and the land the chateau

governed.

Pierre looked sad and weak and very old. All summer long White Bear,

heartbroken, had watched him suffer and diminish. He knew he could do

nothing to cure his father, and that his refusal to give him the answer

he wanted to hear was prolonging his pain. White Bear felt he would

agree to anything, if only it would give peace.

Looking into his father's pleading face, he saw that Pierre was using up

his last strength. White Bear could not let the final word Pierre might

hear from him be no.

White Bear could no longer separate his own anguish from Pierre's.

He drew a deep breath in through his nostrils. "Yes, Father. I agree. I

will take what you offer me."

The look on Pierre's face was like a sunrise. White Bear saw a warm,

pink color flowing back into the pallid cheeks.

Pierre took White Bear's hand. His touch felt cool, but his grip was

firm.

"Thank you, my son. I will walk the Trail of Souls with a happy heart."

_Yes, you will go in peace, but I must stay to fight and suffer_, White

Bear thought. But he was glad that he could make his father happy. He

leaned back against the tree and watched huge white clouds drift over

the distant river.

"Let us make this a sacred agreement, son," Pierre said. "Bring the

calumet and let us smoke together."

"Yes, Father." White Bear sighed and stood up. Slowly, as if he were

dragging chains, he walked up the grassy slope to the front door of the

house.

As he passed through the great hall he saw Armand Perrault, seeming

almost as broad as he was tall, staring at him. Armand's eyes were as

small and full of hatred as a cornered boar's. Feeling a chill,

realizing this man was one of those he would have to fight when the time

came, White Bear nodded to him as he went up the stairs to Pierre's

room. Armand stood motionless.

A short time later White Bear was back at Pierre's side with the

feather-bedecked calumet and a lit candle protected by a glass chimney.

From his own room he had brought down the deerskin pouch holding his

small supply of Turkish tobacco, purchased in New York. It would serve.

All tobacco was a sacred gift of Earthmaker.

He dribbled the moist brown grains through his fingertips into the

pipe's narrow bowl and packed the tobacco down gently. Pierre's faded

blue eyes, the whites a sickly yellow color, watched him closely.

He held the candle flame to the tobacco and drew in a series of rapid

puffs, feeling the smoke burning his mouth. When the pipe was well-lit,

he turned it and held the mouthpiece to Pierre's lips.

Pierre took a long puff, held it in his mouth and let it out. White

Bear's heart lurched with fear as Pierre began to cough. Holding his

throat with one hand, Pierre gestured with his other hand for White Bear

to draw on the pipe.

The sight of beads of blood on his father's lips horrified White Bear.

He took a corner of Pierre's blanket and wiped away the bright red

drops. Then he took the pipe from his father's hands.

Grieving for the freedom he was giving up, he pulled the hot smoke in

till it filled his mouth. He let its bitterness sink into his tongue as

bitterness sank into his heart--the realization that this promise would

cut him off forever from Redbird, from Sun Woman, from Owl Carver, from

the life he longed to return to. He let the smoke out with a long sigh

and laid the pipe down. He felt as if his life was over.

But he felt some relief, too, because he was no longer torn by

indecision. Now Pierre and he were content to talk of small things--how

full the corn bins were this year, what White Bear had seen and heard in

New York City, whether it would rain again tomorrow.

Pierre's voice grew softer and softer, and gradually he drifted off to

sleep. His grip on White Bear's hand was still strong. White Bear let

his head rest against the tree trunk and returned to a favorite

childhood pastime, trying to see animal shapes in the clouds.

He was not surprised when the Bear appeared at his side. The huge head,

covered with fur white as the clouds, pushed past him, poking its black

nose into Pierre's shoulder. Somehow White Bear knew that Pierre would

feel no fear when he awoke, even though he had never seen the Bear

before.

Pierre's eyes opened, and he looked up at the Bear and, as White Bear

had expected, only sighed and smiled.

"Eh bien, je suis content." And Pierre got to his feet as easily as if

he had never been sick.

Pierre did not say good-bye, but White Bear had not expected him to.

They had said their good-byes already. White Bear remained where he was,

sitting with his back to the maple tree.

With his left hand lifted to rest on the high hump at the Bear's

shoulder, Pierre walked down the slope. White Bear saw, rising from the

rim of the hill, the arc of a rainbow.

Pierre walked the rainbow path with the long, vigorous stride of a young

man. The Bear accompanied him with a rolling gait, looking like the

biggest dog that ever lived walking beside a hunter. White Bear smiled

to watch them.

They climbed the archway of color that leaped out over the Great River

until at last they disappeared in the dazzling disk of the sun.

White Bear's head fell back against the bark of the tree, and he closed

his eyes.

When he opened them again, his father was lying beside him, still

holding his hand. But Pierre's grip was without strength. He lay with

his head sunk in the pillow, his mouth fallen open, the whites of his

eyes showing between half-closed lids. He was not breathing.

White Bear's tears came hot. He heard a voice--his own voice--rising in

his chest.

"Hu-hu-huuuu ... Whu-whu-whuuuu ..." It was the sound mourners made at

Sauk funerals.

He wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth, sobbing

and keening in the way of his people. Soon he would have to get up and

go into the chateau and tell people Pierre de Marion was dead. He must

be the first to bring the news to poor Grandpapa. But for a while he

would sit alone with his father and wail for him.

Sitting on the ground under the maple tree, he looked down and was not

surprised to see marks in the bare, damp earth. The prints of wide pads

twice the size of a man's feet. At the end of each print, deep holes

left by five claws.

* * * * *

Raoul did not think he could put up with much more of this funeral. He

had to wait till it was all over before he could make himself master of

Victoire, and he wanted desperately to act now. He tried to calm himself

by remembering the Indians he'd stalked and killed at Saukenuk last May

and June.

Raoul and the fifty men he'd recruited to represent Smith County in the

state militia had arrived at the Rock River in style, carried up the

Mississippi from Victor to Fort Armstrong, at the mouth of the Rock

River, on Raoul's new steamer _Victory_. Paid for with the profits of

the lead mine, the _Victory_ was propelled by two side paddle wheels,

and it could make the St. Louis-Galena round trip in exactly a week.

They'd come to hunt Indians and Raoul had made sure they did, camping in

the woods on the south side of the Rock River opposite the Indian

village and shooting at redskins whenever they had a chance. It pleased

Raoul to think they'd gotten half a dozen, maybe more.

Finally fed up with talking, General Gaines had ordered a general

assault on Black Hawk's town at the end of June. The militia were eager

to slaughter every Indian in Saukenuk, and they'd swept in.

And the damned, sneaking redskins were gone. Seeing themselves

outnumbered, they'd slipped out of the village, down the Rock River and

across the Mississippi the night before. The Smith County boys, along

with the other militiamen, were in a fury of frustration. They had to be

content with the poor-second satisfaction of burning the Indian town to

the ground.

To Raoul's great annoyance, instead of pursuing Black Hawk, Gaines sent

a message to the chief asking for yet another parley. Black Hawk and

some of his braves came back across the river to talk peace. Just like

he hadn't shown the whole world what a coward he really was, the

stubborn old Indian had marched up to Gaines's tent walking like a

peacock, with feathers in his hair.

_Hang the redskinned son of a bitch_, was what Raoul thought. Instead,

Gaines just made him sign another fool treaty--as if the Indians ever

honored any treaties--and even promised to send them corn because they

hadn't had time to plant any.

The disgusted militiamen called it the Corn Treaty. Old Gaines must be

almost as big a coward as Black Hawk.

Raoul and the Smith County boys hung around the Rock River, sniping at

Indians in canoes till their provisions ran out; they flagged the

_Victory_ down on her next northbound trip and rode her home.

Home, where what was going on made Raoul madder than ever. Pierre was

dying and the mongrel--from the same tribe Raoul had been fighting down

on the Rock River--was strutting around as if he already owned Victoire.

That would end today. If Raoul could pull it off.

Raoul eyed Nancy Hale, standing only a few feet from him among the two

hundred or so mourners in the great hall of Victoire. What would she

think, Raoul wondered, when he played his hand today? He pictured what

the tall blond woman would look like naked under him in bed.

Oh, he'd make her sweat and moan and thank him for it.

But first, of course, he had to succeed today. He had to drive the

mongrel away before he could court Nancy. Whether her preacher father

approved of him or not, he couldn't turn away one of the biggest

landowners in Illinois.

And that's what he'd be, after today.

He didn't see how he could fail. Surely the servants and the townspeople

wouldn't take the mongrel's part.

Still warming himself by staring at Nancy Hale's straight back, Raoul

thanked God he'd never been quite able to bring himself to marry

Clarissa.

He felt a twinge of unease as he recalled that taking up with Nancy

would mean kicking Clarissa out of his bed, and _that_ might mean

trouble with Eli. To his relief, Eli had accepted Raoul's not marrying

Clarissa, even after she bore him two kids. But that was only because

Eli figured it would happen eventually, maybe after Raoul got control of

the estate.

Well, once he had the estate, he comforted himself, he could see that

Clarissa and their two out-of-wedlock boys were well taken care of.

It galled Raoul to be so dependent on a man like Eli, to be--he hated to

admit it to himself--afraid of him. A heap depended on Eli's playing his

part today in helping him get control of the estate. Today, Eli would be

leading the Smith County boys, ones who'd been at the Rock River last

June. Having been offered a good day's pay, they would do a little more

Indian fighting.

Raoul felt as if he were going to burst. He couldn't stand this waiting,

while the priest droned on in singsong Latin at the linen-covered table

that had been set up as an altar before the fireplace. Let the fight

begin, for God's sake.

_Indians are all cowards at heart. When I take over here, Pierre's

precious little red bastard will slink away, like Black Hawk did last

summer._

A chill spread across Raoul's back as he asked himself: What if Auguste

doesn't slink away? He might try to rally the servants and some of the

townspeople to fight for him.

They wouldn't fight for a mongrel bastard. People hated Indians. Look

how many men rushed down to the Rock River to fight Black Hawk.

But many people had loved Pierre. This hall was filled, and there were

more people outside who couldn't get in because there wasn't room. All

of them paying their last respects to Pierre. And they knew that Pierre

wanted Auguste to take his place. Would any of them fight to see that

Pierre's will was done?

He felt colder still as he considered the odds. Just about every man in

Smith County had his own rifle or pistol. And Raoul and the men he'd

recruited for today were far outnumbered. He wished he had hired more

men. But too many and the secret would be out, and then Auguste would be

ready for him.

Raoul tried to calm himself. Everyone in Smith County might be armed, he

reasoned, but not everyone wanted to use their weapons. A lot of men

wouldn't fight unless their backs were to the wall. It was the ones who

were willing to fight who got to give orders to the rest. The men Raoul

had picked, Eli and Hodge and the rest of them, were born fighters.

There'd be those who would condemn him, he thought, for seizing the land

the very day of his brother's funeral. It was indecent, he admitted to

himself. But he had no choice. He couldn't allow Auguste to get his feet

planted firmly. He couldn't allow Pierre's will to be read aloud.

He felt even better when he remembered that with Pierre dead the

servants would be taking their orders from Armand. He looked around the

hall for the overseer. There he was, near the door, most of his face

buried by his thick brown beard. Armand's wife, Marchette, was standing

next to him. Sporting a black eye, Raoul noticed with amusement.

Armand Perrault was one who didn't love Pierre.

That sanctimonious hypocrite Pierre. First the squaw, the mongrel's

mother. Then he marries Marie-Blanche, and as soon as she dies, he's

putting it to the cook.

Raoul took a deep breath of relief when he saw that Pere Isaac had

finally finished with the funeral mass. The old Jesuit was again

sprinkling holy water on the black-painted coffin, heaped with wreaths

of roses and chrysanthemums that lay on trestles in the center of the

hall. Frank Hopkins, Raoul knew, had built that coffin of oak planks.

Old red-nosed Guichard came up to Raoul. "Your father requests that you

be one of those who carries your brother's coffin to the wagon."

Raoul felt a momentary jolt of fear. Help pick up Pierre's coffin and

carry it, when he was about to dispossess Pierre's son? If he laid a

hand on Pierre's coffin, God might strike him dead. Or Pierre's ghost

would rise up against him.

He shook his head. Fool's thinking.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Guichard."

He was angered to see Auguste standing opposite him when he went to the

head of the coffin. It was infuriating to see Pierre's features in that

brown-skinned face. The half-breed was wearing a green clawhammer

jacket, with a black silk band around the left arm.

His arms and back strained as they took the weight of his corner of the

coffin. A chorus of grunts arose from Raoul, Auguste, Armand, Frank

Hopkins, Jacques Manette and Jean-Paul Kobell as they hoisted the coffin

to their shoulders. They trudged out the door with it and slid it on the

bed of a flower-bedecked farm wagon. Guichard helped Elysee climb up on

the wagon. A snap of the old servant's whip started the two horses

moving, as black ribbons tied to their harnesses fluttered.

Raoul walked alone, following the cart the half mile south along the

bluffs to the burial ground. Some of the hands had cut a track through

the shoulder-high prairie grass for the funeral procession to follow.

The fiddler Registre Bosquet marched right behind the wagon playing

hymns, and the servants sang in French.

Raoul cast his eye back over the long line of people following the

coffin. His glance slid past Nicole and Frank and their passel of kids.

With a feeling of satisfaction he saw two of his key men walking near

the end of the procession, Justus Bennett, the county land commissioner,

and Burke Russell, the county clerk. One copy of Pierre's will was in

Russell's keeping, and Raoul had already told him what to do with that.

Russell's wife, Pamela, was walking beside him, a handsome woman with

chestnut hair that she didn't braid as most women did but allowed to

fall in soft waves under her broad-brimmed hat. Strongly attracted to

her himself, Raoul wondered how a bespectacled weakling like Burke

Russell had ever been able to attract such a fine-looking woman. And

what she'd do if she had a sporting proposition from an equally

fine-looking man.

They were at the cemetery now. Raoul liked this hillside rising out of

the bluffs, where Pierre's wife, Marie-Blanche, lay overlooking the

bottomland and the river. The graves of about a dozen others who had

worked and died at Victoire were surrounded by a low split-rail fence.

Tall cedar trees shadowed the white gravestones. The flat markers with

their rounded tops, names, dates and inscriptions were chiseled by

Warren Wilgus, the mason who'd recently moved into the area. Auguste had

already made arrangements to have Pierre's headstone carved.

The sight of a solid limestone cube in the center of the cemetery gave

Raoul a twinge of guilt, as it always did. It was the first stone to

have been placed in the cemetery, and was a memorial to his mother,

Estelle de Marion, who was buried not here but in Kaskaskia, where she

had died in 1802 giving birth to him.

_It wasn't my fault!_

Helene was also remembered, though not buried here. The Indians had

thrown her poor, mutilated body into Lake Michigan. Her memorial marker

stood next to Maman's stone. A carved angel spread his wings over

Helene's name and dates, "HELENE DE MARION VAILLANCOURT, Beloved

Daughter and Sister. 1794-1812. She sings before the throne of God."

Below that were inscribed the name and dates of her husband, Henri

Vaillancourt, whose body also had never been found.

Raoul carried inside himself his own inscription for Helene: _Murdered

by Indians, August 15, 1812. She will be avenged._

And one act of vengeance would take place today, when the half-Sauk

mongrel, whose presence was an affront to Helene, was thrown off this

land.

It gave Raoul an uneasy feeling to be working with Auguste, lifting

Pierre's coffin off the wagon. It might be bad luck. But the time to

strike had not yet come, so he had to walk beside Auguste carrying the

coffin to the newly dug grave. There, crouching in unison, the six

pallbearers laid the coffin on a cradle of two ropes, each end held by

two servants, over the oblong pit. Bending to let his burden down hurt

Raoul's back, and he glanced over at Auguste, hoping to see him having

trouble. But the mongrel's dark face was impassive.

When Raoul saw Elysee shuffling through the gate, leaning on his

silver-headed walking stick, he felt a new tingle of dread. How would

his father greet the move he was going to make? Except for a few brief

and bitter meetings at which he and Papa and Pierre had tried and failed

to settle their differences, he had not spoken to his father in six

years. Armand often brought infuriating news of the old man's growing

fondness for the mongrel, making Raoul hate the redskinned bastard all

the more. Elysee would hardly be happy with what he did today, of

course. But would Papa try to fight his only surviving son? If he did,

Raoul would have to fight back, and then he might be punished by God.

_Nonsense. God doesn't side with Indians. What I am doing is right,

because Pierre was seduced and deluded._

But it wouldn't hurt to try to get in good with the old man. Raoul

walked quickly over to him.

"Take my arm, Papa."

Elysee looked up at him, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed, his face

blank, his skin wrinkled parchment.

_The old man's had his share of grief. Too bad he couldn't find reason

to be happy with me. But that's his fault._

In a low, hoarse voice Elysee said, "Thank you, son. It was good of you

to come today."

Raoul sensed an accusation.

"Why wouldn't I come to my own brother's funeral?"

"Because you hated him," Elysee said softly.

At least the old man didn't seem to suspect that he had another reason

for being here today. Containing his anger, Raoul helped his father walk

to the grave. There he left Elysee with Guichard and went around to

stand facing north, where he could see the chateau.

His nagging fear eased a little. So far he had seen no sign that he

would meet with any opposition. It was hard to believe that the mongrel

and his supporters could be planning anything in secret. Still he knew

his heart would not slow down till this was all over.

Pere Isaac stood at the head of Pierre's grave, next to Marie-Blanche's

tombstone. A faint breeze from the river didn't disturb his gray-black

hair or his beard, but rustled the tassels of the purple stole around

his neck, the winglike sleeves of his white surplice and his

ankle-length black cassock.

Trying to hold still as his heart pounded and his hands trembled, Raoul

watched Pere Isaac shake holy water over the coffin, which now lay at

the bottom of the grave. The priest gave his sprinkler to one of the

boys assisting him, opened a prayerbook bound in black leather and began

the graveside prayers.

_Will this never end?_

Raoul stood with his head bowed. He puzzled over what Elysee had said

about hating Pierre.

_Papa always loved Pierre more than me. Thought I was some kind of

savage because I don't have all those French ways like him and Pierre.

I'm the most American member of this family, and he should be proud of

me._

_I didn't hate Pierre. It was just this damn business of him caring more

about redskins than about his own people._

_And he wasn't there when I needed him._

Raoul found himself wishing he could talk to Pierre one last time, try

to make him understand why he felt as he did and had to do the things he

did. Looking down at the coffin in the grave, Raoul thought back to the

last time he had seen Pierre. In early spring after the last of the snow

melted on the ground, out riding Banner on the prairie, alone, he'd come

upon Pierre, also riding alone. They had stared at each other and passed

without a word.

_I didn't know then that was my last chance to speak to him._

Raoul's eyes traveled over the people standing by the grave. Auguste

stood between Elysee and Nicole, looking down into the pit. It pleased

Raoul to see that apparently Auguste had no idea what was about to

happen to him.

But how could he be _sure_ Auguste was unprepared?

Raoul looked over the heads of the mourners, and his heart beat faster

with anticipation. There, across the flat prairie land, he saw tiny

figures surrounding the chateau.

Raoul's fingernails dug into his palms as he clenched his fists to hold

himself together. What if the secret had gotten out? If Auguste knew

what was about to happen, he would surely have prepared some kind of

counterattack. Indians were damned sly.

Pere Isaac closed his prayerbook and put it into his coat pocket.

"This man whom we consign to American soil was, like so many of us, born

on the other side of the ocean," he said. "He came of one of the oldest

and noblest families of France, fleeing the Godless revolution that

tormented their homeland, which was also my homeland. The de Marions

gave themselves soul and body to this new land where they had to make

their own way. Here titles and ancient lineage meant nothing."

_Get on with it, dammit!_

"God saw fit to try them sorely after they came here to Illinois. The

mother of the family died in childbirth. A daughter died a horrid death

at the hands of Indians, and a son"--he gestured at Raoul, who stared

back at him, keeping his face expressionless--"held captive, a slave, by

Indians for two years."

It was good that Pere Isaac mentioned that. It would prepare people to

accept what was about to happen.

"Pierre de Marion was a good man, but he was also a sinner, like all of

us. He fell into the sin of lust, and that sin bore fruit. But Pierre

did not hide his sin as so many men have. He reached out to his son

through me and helped him. Eventually he acknowledged his son and

brought him out of the wilderness to be educated for civilization."

Raoul looked across the open pit at Auguste. The half-breed's red-brown

face was flushed an even darker color, but still he stared fixedly down

into the grave.

_Time to start._

It was an immense relief to begin to move. First, he had to get back to

the chateau ahead of the funeral procession and join his men there.

Slowly, so as not to attract attention, Raoul drew back from the

graveside.

* * * * *

Auguste's feet felt heavy and confined in his cowhide boots as they

crunched over the short stubble. He walked alone on the newly cut track

back toward the great stone and log house. He could hear the sound of

spades biting into the mound of dirt beside Pierre's grave and clods of

earth thudding onto his coffin.

Auguste led the procession of mourners. The others let him walk apart,

to be alone with his grief. Behind Auguste, he was aware, were Nicole

and Frank and Nancy Hale and Pere Isaac, and then a long line of

servants and farm hands and village people. Near the end of the

procession Registre Bosquet played a sprightly tune, as was the custom

among the Illinois French, a way of saying that life goes on. In the

rear was the cart that had carried Pierre's coffin, with Elysee and

Guichard.

As Auguste walked, he brooded about Pere Isaac calling him the fruit of

sin. Why did the priest have to dishonor his mother and father so? In

the eyes of the Sauk people he was no "bastard," as he knew some pale

eyes called him. Still, he was glad that the priest said Pierre had done

the right thing in bringing him here. Perhaps people would remember

that, when Raoul tried to take the estate away from him.

As he surely would.

Auguste knew, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that it was only a

matter of time before Raoul would strike at him.

He felt himself wishing for Black Hawk and Iron Knife and the other Sauk

warriors, even Wolf Paw, to be here to stand by him. And Owl Carver and

Sun Woman to advise him. Now he wished he had not agreed, at his

father's insistence, to have no contact with the band. While he was

being educated, being cut off from them had helped him become more

quickly a part of the white world. But now that Pierre was gone he felt

so terribly alone.

A chill fell over him like a cold downpour. Looking up, he saw men

standing just outside the fence that surrounded the chateau, strung out

in a line along the west side, where the gateway was. He had noticed

them as he was leaving the graveyard, but had thought they must be

hands, with field work of some sort important enough to keep them from

the funeral. Now he was close enough to see that they were carrying

rifles. Auguste recognized Raoul himself standing squarely in the

gateway. How had he gotten over there? Auguste had thought he was with

the funeral procession.

A cold hollow opened in his stomach as he grasped what was happening.

_The moment my father is buried. What a fool I was to think Raoul would

wait awhile._

He heard people murmuring behind him.

"Oh my God," Nicole said. "Not now."

"Auguste!" It was Nancy's voice, shrill with fear. He shook his head,

trying to tell her that he would not turn back, and kept on walking.

In a moment, thought Auguste, he might be joining his father on the

Trail of Souls. He heard footsteps behind him crunching on the dry

grass. It was a comfort to know that there were others near him,

although he knew no one could really help him.

He had no idea what he would do. He asked Earthmaker to show him how to

walk this path with courage and honor.

Keeping his stride firm and steady, Auguste went around the fence to

approach the gate, glancing up at the maple tree under which Pierre had

died.

As Auguste got closer, Raoul threw open his jacket, showing his

gilt-handled pistol holstered on one hip, his huge knife, the one that

had scarred Auguste, sheathed on the other. His eyes were shadowed by

his broad-brimmed black hat, and the black mustache hid his mouth. His

face was a mask.

When they were about ten feet apart, Raoul spoke. "Now that my brother

is in the ground I can speak plain to you. It's over for you here.

You're Pierre's natural son, and this is his burying day, so I won't

kill you unless you force me to it. I want you off de Marion land right

now. I want you out of Smith County by sundown. Get back to the woods

where you came from."

_You cannot know how happy it would make me to do just that, Raoul._

Auguste stood with his feet planted firmly on the stubble. He did not

try to think. He would rely on the spirits for help. He waited for the

knowledge of what to do to come to him.

He felt people coming to stand beside him. He heard the creaking of

wagon wheels and the soft clip-clop of horses' hooves as the cart

carrying Guichard and Elysee rolled past the funeral procession and drew

up alongside him. He glanced at the people standing beside him, to his

right Frank and Nicole, their children behind them, to his left Nancy

Hale and Pere Isaac.

Auguste went colder still as he saw Eli Greenglove, who had been

standing by the gate in the fence around the chateau, walk across the

open space, the tail of his coonskin cap bobbing. Greenglove carried a

long Kentucky rifle. Auguste had heard many a tale about Greenglove's

deadly accuracy. The Missourian took a position to one side, between

Raoul and Auguste.

_He won't even need to be a good shot to kill me from that distance._

Words came suddenly to Auguste's mind. He spoke loudly, so everyone

could hear, and he felt good that his voice was strong. He looked Raoul

in the eye as he spoke.

"I am proud to be a son of the Sauk people. But my father told me I was

his heir. It is in his will. He gave me this house and all this land.

You have no right to force me to leave."

Raoul laughed and slapped the pistol and the knife. "These give me the

right." He waved a hand at the men standing in a line along the fence.

"And them."

Frank Hopkins cleared his throat and spoke. "Raoul, maybe there's no

law around right here and now to make you honor Pierre's will, but there

are courts in Illinois, there's a legislature, there's a governor."

Raoul made a sound halfway between a laugh and a grunt. "Take your

half-breed friend to the governor. John Reynolds wants the Indians out

of Illinois as bad as anybody does. He was there with the militia on

Rock River last June. Hell, go to the President. I'd like to see what an

old Indian killer like Andy Jackson would say to you."

All too true, Auguste thought sadly. He had learned in New York of

Jackson's "removal" policy, aiming to drive all the red people to the

west side of the Mississippi. The work of the white chiefs was to take

land from Indians, not help them keep it.

Pere Isaac said, "To rob the orphan is a sin that cries out to Heaven

for vengeance. If you came to me in confession I could not give you

absolution."

"My conscience is clear," Raoul said. "Victoire is my rightful heritage.

Do you know that this Indian boy you feel so sorry for isn't even a

Christian? I am, Father. A Catholic."

"A very bad one," said Pere Isaac. "I have known Auguste since he was a

small boy. He behaves more like a Christian than you do."

A woman's voice, Nancy Hale's, rang out over the field. "Raoul de

Marion, if you won't listen to your own priest, you'll still have to

face my father. When he hears what you've done he'll preach against you

and he'll stir people to make you do the right thing."

Raoul's face changed. He looked pained.

"Now, Miss Nancy. It isn't proper for a lady like you to concern herself

with what happens to trash like this. You know well and good that your

father may have a low opinion of me, but he has an even lower opinion of

Indians. He won't side with this Indian bastard."

Suddenly Nicole rushed past Auguste.

"You're the one who's trash, Raoul!" she cried, and ran across the

intervening space and swung her hand to slap her brother. Raoul grabbed

her arm and pushed her away roughly. Frank rushed to her side to hold

her, his ink-stained fingers digging into her sleeves.

"I wouldn't want to fight with you, Nicole," said Raoul with a cruel

grin. "I believe you've got the weight advantage on me."

"You're a murderer and a thief, Raoul," she shot back. "And the day will

come when people will have enough of you and drive you out of this

county."

Waves of heat and cold ran through Auguste's body, and when he clenched

his fists he felt the sweat on his palms. He had to speak out. He owed

it to his father to fight, somehow, for this land. But how could he

drive away some twenty armed men?

A sudden thought came to him. "Raoul, I challenge you to fight me for

the land. With pistols or knives or barehanded. Any way you want it."

Raoul grinned, white teeth appearing suddenly under the black mustache.

"You've gotten big in the last six years, but I'm a better shot than you

are, and I'd slice you to bits with my knife. In a barehanded fight I'd

bite your ears off and ram 'em down your throat. We don't need a fight

to prove what anybody can plainly see."

"If you won't fight me you're a coward as well as a thief."

Raoul's eyes narrowed, and his shoulders hunched forward, as if he was

about to attack.

"Dueling is also a grave sin," said Pere Isaac. "And it is against the

law of this state. I forbid you to fight."

Raoul laughed and lifted his empty hands. "Too bad, mongrel. The father

won't let us fight."

Auguste turned to Pere Isaac. "How can you take from me the only way I

have of fighting for this land?"

"If God wants you to have it, He will see that you get it without doing

wrong," said Pere Isaac calmly.

The face of Black Hawk appeared in Auguste's mind, and suddenly he

understood the wrath that had always seemed to smoulder just below the

war chief's skin. This must be how Black Hawk felt when the pale eyes

told him he could no longer come to Saukenuk. That was why Black Hawk

had been leading his people back to Saukenuk year after year. He would

not give up.

And neither would Auguste.

_I must fight. I promised my father I would fight for this land. I

smoked the calumet with him._

He remembered Pierre's words: _Now you have a chance to own land, to be

rich and to have power. You can learn how to use your wealth to protect

your people._

And he was losing that chance. As he saw these rich acres being torn

away from him, more and more he felt himself wanting them.

But how to fight for the land? To charge Raoul's pistol and the rifles

of his men would simply mean death. Surely that was not what Pierre

wanted for him.

An unfamiliar voice said, "Is this really how you settle land disputes

in Smith County?"

Auguste turned to see David Cooper, a lean, hard-eyed man he had met

several weeks earlier when Cooper had visited Pierre to pay his

respects.

Raoul said, "Don't you like the way we do things here, Cooper?"

Cooper's cold expression did not change. "Just requesting information,

Mr. de Marion. That's all."

Cooper had brought his family to Victor from some place in Indiana three

years ago, buying a choice piece of bottomland from Pierre. Auguste had

learned that he was a veteran of the War of 1812.

Justus Bennett, the county land commissioner, who Auguste knew to be one

of Raoul's creatures, said, "Mr. Cooper, I've been reading law most of

my adult life, and I can assure you Mr. Raoul de Marion has as sound a

case under common law and English precedent as I've ever seen."

Auguste doubted that anyone here knew what that meant, impressive as it

might sound.

_The whites know how to twist any law to their advantage._

Cooper said nothing further.

These people might feel sorry for him, Auguste thought, and resent what

Raoul was doing. But he'd get no help from any of the men who were

standing around behind him. Raoul and his men were armed and determined,

and the rest of the people here were not ready to give up their lives to

help a half-breed.

But Auguste had taken advantage of Raoul's distraction with Cooper and

Bennett to cut the distance between himself and his uncle in half. If he

could get close enough to Raoul he might have a chance to get at him

with his knife. He'd worn the deerhorn-handled knife today only because

his father had given it to him.

As he hesitated, he heard footsteps in the grass and turned to see his

grandfather walking toward Raoul with slow but firm steps, thumping his

walking stick on the ground.

"No, Grandpapa!" Auguste called out to him.

"This is my son, I very much regret to say," said Elysee. "And I must

administer correction."

Auguste started to follow Elysee, but Raoul dropped his hand warningly

to his pistol.

"Don't come any closer, half-breed."

"I was with Pierre when he wrote his final will," said Elysee. "And I

have a copy of it. I know his mind was sound. He gave the whole

estate--except for the fur company, which we have always agreed would be

yours--to Auguste."

"You gave the fur company to me when you divided the estate between me

and Pierre years ago," Raoul said. "So my own good brother left me

nothing. Thirty thousand acres of the best land in western Illinois go

to a mongrel Indian, and you say his mind was sound? The more fool you."

"You are un bete!" Elysee shouted. "You are proof that there is no just

God. If there were He would have taken you and let Pierre live."

"Monsieur de Marion!" the priest cried. "Think what you are saying. On

this day of all days."

Raoul said, "I've always known that you loved Pierre and not me, Papa."

"You make it impossible to love you!" Elysee answered. "Now listen to

me. Victoire is my home. I built this place. Those I love are buried

here. I command you, leave at once. Get off this land."

Raoul, a head taller than the old man, took a step toward his father.

"If you wanted it to be yours, you shouldn't have given it to Pierre.

You have nothing now, you old fool."

Elysee swung the stick at Raoul's head. The thump resounded over the

field, and Raoul staggered back, his broad-brimmed hat falling to the

ground.

Raoul bared his teeth, drew back his fist and smashed it into his

father's face. The blow knocked Elysee hard against one of the upright

logs of the gateway. He cried out and fell heavily to the ground. He lay

moaning and jerking his head from side to side in agony. The priest

rushed to him, dropping to his knees.

With a scream Nicole threw herself down beside her father.

A red curtain swept over Auguste's eyes, blinding him momentarily. When

he could see again he saw only the face of one man, Raoul, looking down

at Elysee with triumph and contempt.

Knife in hand, Auguste threw himself at Raoul.

Raoul's pistol was out. His dark eyes gleamed with triumph as he pointed

the muzzle at Auguste's chest.

_He was hoping I would attack him_, Auguste realized, knowing he would

never reach Raoul before the pistol went off.

A sudden movement to his side caught his eye. In a glance he saw Eli

Greenglove swinging a rifle butt at his head.

10

Dispossessed

Auguste woke.

He was in a room he had never seen before. A plain black cross hung high

on one white plaster wall. He lay on a bed with a straw-filled mattress,

on top of the quilt. He wasn't wearing his coat. Or his pale eyes'

boots.

Pain throbbed in his head, and with each pulse his vision momentarily

blurred.

He rolled his pounding head on the pillow and saw Nancy Hale sitting

beside him. Her long blond braids glistened in the pale light that came

through the oiled paper window.

The way she was looking down at him startled him. The blue of her eyes

burned like the blue center of a flame. Her lips seemed fuller and

redder than he'd ever seen them, and they were slightly parted. This was

the way she had been looking at him while he lay unconscious, he

realized, and he had seen it only because he had awakened suddenly and

taken her by surprise.

"What happened?" he asked.

"That man of your uncle's, Eli Greenglove, hit you with his rifle. Your

uncle said he'd kill you next time he sees you awake. So we took you out

here to my father's parsonage."

"How long have I been asleep?" he said.

"A long time. Hours. I'm awfully glad to see you wake up, Auguste. I

didn't know if you ever would. Greenglove hit you hard enough to kill

you."

He remembered Elysee lying on the ground, writhing. Rage boiled up

inside him again as he thought of Raoul striking Grandpapa down.

"How is my grandfather?" He tried to sit up, and the room started to

rock and pitch. The pain pounded on his head like a spiked war club.

Nancy put a hand on his shoulder, and he lay back against the pillow. He

shut his eyes momentarily to get his equilibrium back.

"We don't know--he may have broken his hip. But try not to worry,

Auguste. Nicole and Frank took him back to their house."

That searing gaze of a moment ago was gone, but there was still a warm

light in her eyes.

He heard a footstep on the other side of the bed. He turned, bringing

back the ache in his head full force, to see the tall figure of Reverend

Philip Hale standing in the doorway of the small room. Hale, dressed in

a black clawhammer coat and black trousers with a white silk stock

wrapped around his throat, stood with his arms folded, gazing at Auguste

with pursed lips and a deep crease between his bushy eyebrows.

"You can thank the Lord's mercy you're not hurt worse, young man. I

suppose you'll want to be on your way soon."

"Father!" Nancy exclaimed. "He just came awake. He might have a

fractured skull."

"I think I'm all right," Auguste said. He tried to sit up again. He

managed it, but he felt suddenly dizzy and sick to his stomach. He put

his hand over his mouth. Nancy picked up a china chamber pot from the

bedside and held it for him, but after a moment the spasm of nausea

passed and, gingerly, he shook his head at her. His first afternoon at

Victoire, when he had thrown up his dinner before everyone in the great

hall, flickered through his memory.

He looked up and saw Hale staring at him with even deeper distaste.

Clear enough that the reverend didn't like to see Nancy's care for him.

_Grandpapa's hurt, and I'm the only one around here with medical

training._

Auguste lifted his head again, determined to get up in spite of the

pain. "I must go to my grandfather. He may die if he isn't cared for

properly."

A spear of horror shot through him. His medicine bundle, containing his

precious stones and the bear's claw, was still at the chateau. All his

spiritual power was collected in that bag. Whatever the risk, he must go

back and get it. And he wanted the bag of surgical instruments he'd

brought back from New York.

"I'll be out of here as soon as I can stand, sir," he said. "I have much

to do."

"No!" Nancy cried. "Auguste, you're not well enough to go anywhere. And,

Father, I told you what happened at the funeral. We've got to help

Auguste. If you speak, people will listen."

"I don't know the rights and wrongs of it," said Hale, looking

irritated, presented with a problem he did not want to try to solve.

Auguste said, "My father wanted me to inherit Victoire. There are

witnesses. There are two copies of his will, if Raoul hasn't already

destroyed them."

Reverend Hale glowered at Auguste. "What if Raoul de Marion's men come

looking for you?"

Suddenly, as when facing Raoul at the gateway to Victoire, Auguste felt

terribly alone. Nancy would do anything she could for him; after seeing

her loving look when he awoke he was sure of that. But there was little

enough she could do. Especially because of the way her father so

obviously felt about him.

"I'll be gone as quick as I can, Reverend Hale."

"If they come here while Auguste is here you'll have to tell them he's

not here and refuse to let them in," said Nancy firmly.

"Lie to them? I'm not a Jesuit."

"Father! Would you let Auguste be killed?"

The word "killed" set a storm of frightful thoughts whirling through

Auguste's head. Raoul's pistol had been pointed right at his chest. And

Greenglove had tried to brain him. They wouldn't stop until they had

killed him. Only then would Raoul be secure in his possession of

Victoire. Dazed and hurting though he was, Auguste had to get out of

Smith County if he was to live another day.

Hale turned and went back to his own room, shaking his head.

"Your father is no friend to me," said Auguste.

Nancy's face was like a lake whose surface was troubled by a wind. "He's

very strict. He didn't go to your father's funeral because it was a

Catholic service. But if anything happens he'll do the right thing. You

can count on him for that."

Auguste said nothing. But he didn't share her confidence.

Early that evening, Auguste, Nancy and Reverend Hale were sitting in

the front room of the Hales' one-story house. They had eaten a rabbit

stew with potatoes, onions and beans from the Hales' garden and hominy

grits on the side that Nancy had pounded from corn. They washed it down

with fresh-squeezed apple cider.

"I allow no spiritous liquors in my home," said Reverend Hale.

Now that it was dark Auguste wanted desperately to be off to see

Grandpapa at Nicole and Frank's house. The old man had been badly hurt.

He might be dying.

By candlelight Hale read the Bible aloud to Nancy and Auguste. It was

his nightly custom, Nancy explained.

Auguste heard the soft clip-clop of a horse's hooves and the creak of

carriage wheels and raised a hand to alert the others.

Putting a finger to her lips, Nancy went to the door. She opened it a

crack, then pulled it wider and went out.

"Who is it?" Hale called anxiously.

His heart pounding, Auguste was on his feet, looking for a weapon or for

a place to hide.

No answer came from Nancy, but a moment later she came back, one arm

around another woman's shoulders, supporting her. A blue kerchief

covered the woman's head.

"Who is this?" Hale said again.

"Bon soir, Reverend Hale. Forgive me for disturbing you."

It was a moment before Auguste recognized the battered, swollen face of

Marchette. One of her eyes had been blackened this morning, but now

there were ugly bruises around both eyes, her whole face was swollen and

her lips were cut and puffed.

Heartbroken at the sight of her, Auguste rushed to the cook and took her

hands in his.

"Marchette! What happened to you?"

"I cried very much when you and Monsieur Elysee were hurt today,

Monsieur Auguste. Armand did not like this, and he beat me. It _looks_

very bad, but he did not beat me hard, Monsieur. Whoever Armand beats

hard, dies. But I resolved to do something for you. Monsieur Raoul, he

had barrels of Kaintuck whiskey carted up to the chateau. Many guests

and servants got very drunk. After a while Armand was lying on the floor

beside the table, so then I went to fetch your things. Your trunk was

unlocked, and I gathered up your clothes and books and put them in it

and locked it. I had Bernadette Bosquet, the fiddler's wife, she is my

friend, help carry your trunk down to the carriage."

Auguste felt as if a sudden bright light had flooded his room. His

medicine bundle had been in the trunk. And his surgical instruments.

They were safe.

He jumped up from the table. A throb of pain went through his head, and

he felt dizzy and had to cling to the table for support. Marchette's

eyes widened in alarm, and she put her hands out to him.

Recovered after a moment--and feeling much better now than he had a few

hours ago--he took Marchette's hands in his.

"I can't tell you how much this means to me, Marchette. There were

things in my trunk--sacred things--very important to me. Very precious.

I thank you a thousand times."

Her swollen lips parted in a half smile. She reached into a pocket in

her apron and brought out a large pocket watch gleaming a dull gold.

Then she took out a familiar oval silver case with a velvet ribbon.

"These were your father's, monsieur. I believe he would wish that you

have them."

Auguste opened the case and saw the round lenses for only a moment as

his eyes blurred. He put his hand over his face and held it there until

he no longer felt like weeping. Then he looked at the engraving on the

watch--"Pierre Louis Auguste de Marion, A.D. 1800"--and his eyes filled

up with tears. This, he thought, should go into his medicine bundle with

the other sacred objects.

"Where were Raoul and Greenglove when you took my trunk and things in

the carriage?"

"Before Armand got drunk, Monsieur Raoul made him look through Monsieur

Elysee's room for the paper that says you are to inherit the estate.

Armand found it and gave it to your uncle, and he threw it into the fire

while Armand and Eli Greenglove watched and laughed. Then Monsieur

Raoul, he got into a most furious argument with Eli Greenglove about

Greenglove's daughter. They nearly fight, but I think they are afraid of

each other. They are both great killers. So finally they went down to

town. Monsieur Raoul agreed to bring his woman, Greenglove's daughter,

and the two boys to the chateau."

"Disgraceful!" snorted Reverend Hale. "Publicly living in sin."

"I wonder why he didn't bring them to the funeral?" Nancy said.

Auguste thought he knew why. Clarissa Greenglove had been a pretty,

full-bosomed girl when he first arrived at Victoire. But in the years

during which she had borne two boys to Raoul, she had turned into a

lank-haired, snuff-sniffing slattern. Years ago Raoul had said he was

going to marry Clarissa, but he never had. And Auguste had seen Raoul

bending a hungry look on Nancy throughout the funeral mass this morning.

The thought of Raoul laying even a hand on Nancy angered him. It would

anger Eli Greenglove, too, for a different reason.

Eli Greenglove, it was said, could shoot the wings off a fly one at a

time at fifty yards and was wanted in Missouri for over a dozen murders.

He might take orders from Raoul, but it would not do for Raoul to offend

such a man. So if Eli persisted, Raoul probably would take Clarissa into

the chateau.

Auguste felt a sinking in his stomach as he touched his fingers lightly

to his throbbing head. He was alive now only because Greenglove had

chosen to hit him instead of shooting him down--or instead of letting

Raoul have that pleasure.

"Will you stay the night, Marchette?" Nancy asked.

"No, I must go back to the chateau before Armand wakes up. Otherwise he

will beat me worse."

"I'm going with you," said Auguste.

"No," said Nancy. "They'll kill you."

Auguste looked across the table at Nancy, staring at him with round blue

eyes full of the yearning, now mixed with fear, that he'd seen in them

earlier. "Pale eyes," the Sauk term for her people, did no justice to

her eyes, the color of the turquoise stone he kept in his medicine bag.

Her blond hair made his blood race. His fingertips tingled with the

desire to touch the white skin of her cheek.

Though Nancy's very differentness made him desire her, he knew that he

and she could never belong to each other as completely as he and Redbird

did. He could have a deep and lasting union with Redbird, a union that

would make him feel whole.

But it had been six years since he had seen Redbird, and no woman of the

Sauk would go without a man for that long.

_My mother did_, he reminded himself.

But Redbird had probably given in to Wolf Paw and married him. After

all, she hadn't had a word from White Bear in all that time.

Marchette's urgent tone refocused his thoughts. "Monsieur Raoul, he

stood up on the table and held up a bag full of Spanish dollars--he

said there were fifty--and said he would give it to the man who shoots

you. And there were many men who cheered at that and boasted they would

be the one to win the silver."

Auguste pictured men scattering out all over Smith County, hunting for

him. He could almost feel the rifle ball shattering his skull.

"I can't hide in your house forever, Nancy. Sooner or later they'll come

looking for me, and I don't want to bring that down on your heads."

Reverend Hale said nothing, but Auguste saw relief in his square

face--and grudging respect. But Hale's respect, he thought, would do him

little good when he lay dead on the prairie.

Nancy's full lips quivered as she said, "You'll go to the chateau and

let them shoot you?"

Auguste realized that his hands were cold with fear, and he rubbed them

together to warm them. Hale's house was about ten miles across the

prairie from the Mississippi. Could he cover all that distance without

being seen and shot?

"I'm not going to the chateau. I'll just see that Marchette gets there

safely. Traveling at night, she should have someone go back with her.

Then I'll go on to town. To Nicole and Frank's house. To Grandpapa. I

must see him." He turned toward the cook and felt a stabbing in his gut

at the sight of her bruised face. She'd suffered that out of love for

his father, he thought, and for his sake too.

"If you're seen you'll be shot," said Hale.

_Don't you think I know that?_ he wanted to scream at the minister. What

choice did he have? He was like a rabbit surrounded by wolves. He forced

calm on himself and spoke with sarcasm.

"Surely you know, Reverend, that Indians are good at getting about

unnoticed."

He felt his fear turning to a rising excitement as he recalled the

lessons of stealth and cunning he'd learned as a child of the Sauk.

"But what will you do then?" Nancy asked. "How will you get back here?"

Auguste hesitated. Remembering that he was a Sauk had moved his thoughts

in a new direction.

_I have been dispossessed. Just as my people have been dispossessed._

Nancy was waiting for him to speak.

"Raoul told me to go back to the woods with the other Indians. Even

though the advice came from him, I think that is just what I should do."

Nancy gasped as if he had struck her. There was silence in the cottage

for a moment.

"How will you get back to your people?" she said. "How will you find

them?"

He smiled, trying to get her to smile back at him. "I know exactly where

they are. They've crossed the Mississippi to their hunting grounds in

the Ioway Territory. I spent the first fifteen winters of my life there

with the British Band."

Auguste remembered his dream of becoming a shaman. It had come back to

life a bit with his effort to heal Pierre. Among the pale eyes there was

no room for magic. But now he felt he could go back to his own people

and find magic again.

Hale said, "An unwise decision, it seems to me. You've been educated.

You've had an opportunity to learn about white Christian civilization.

Your uncle can't take that away from you, and you should not throw it

away."

Auguste said, "Reverend, you know what I'm leaving behind. But you don't

know what I'm going back to."

Nancy started speaking rapidly, as if she was trying to hold back tears.

"Well, what about these things of yours that Marchette brought here?

There's no way you can carry a trunk on foot even as far as Nicole and

Frank's house. Would you like us to keep your things here for you?

Perhaps someday, after you've settled with your tribe"--she swallowed

hard--"you could send for them."

Auguste heard the anguish in her voice but decided to take her words at

only face value. "Yes, I'd be truly grateful if you'd keep them for me.

The only thing I want to take now is my medicine bundle."

Reverend Hale pursed his lips and snorted, but Auguste ignored him.

Auguste thought a moment. "And I can use the surgical instruments. And

at least one book."

"Let it be a Bible," said Hale. Auguste made no answer to that.

As Eli Greenglove struck him down, Auguste remembered, he had been

charging at Raoul with his knife in his hand.

"What happened to my knife?"

"I picked it up," said Nancy in a clipped tone. She stood up and went

over to an elaborately carved oak sideboard, a handsome piece of

furniture that seemed out of place in this simple cabin, and took

Auguste's knife out of a drawer. She handed it to him and he slipped it

into the leather sheath at his belt.

"Thank you, Nancy. My father gave that to me a long time ago." Their

eyes met, and he felt a warmth spread through him. It was going to be

hard to leave her.

Nancy remained standing. "Let's go out to the wagon and see what

Marchette has brought. I can help you carry your trunk in."

Marchette and Reverend Hale both said at the same time, "I can do that!"

The coincidence made everyone laugh nervously.

"No," said Nancy firmly. "Marchette, you're hurt and tired. Father, why

don't you see what consolation you can offer this poor, mistreated

woman. Auguste's trunk can't be that heavy. Come on, Auguste."

Before either Hale or Marchette could answer, Nancy had Auguste out the

door. He glanced back into the room just before the door closed and saw

Hale's fists clenched on either side of his open Bible.

Auguste stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust from the lamplight

inside to the darkness out here. A fat moon hung overhead; he judged it

would be full in two nights. With this much light he'd be in even more

danger tonight. The white-painted steeple of Reverend Hale's little

church, next to the cottage where he and Nancy lived, gleamed in the

moonlight.

Beside him in the dark Nancy whispered fiercely, "I don't _want_ you to

go."

Sadly he said, "I know." He took her hand and squeezed it. Perhaps it

was a mistake to do that, but he could not stop himself.

"Come away from the house," she said.

Now he could see the wagon Marchette had come in, the horse tied to a

fence post beside the Hales' garden on the south side of the house. The

horse shifted from foot to foot and burbled its breath out through its

lips.

Holding tight to his hand, Nancy led him around to the rear of the

house, beyond which rows of corn stood, their tassels silvery in the

moonlight.

"You and your father grow all this corn?" Auguste asked.

"It's our land, but a neighbor does the work. He sells it in Victor and

we share the proceeds." She led him into the corn, brushing past the

crackling leaves. The concealment of the leaves and stalks made him feel

closer to her than ever. He wanted to reach out to her.

But the corn evoked another feeling, as well.

_She can't know it, but this field reminds me of the corn bottoms around

Saukenuk. It makes me want to go back all the more._

When there were leafy stalks all around them, hiding them from the

house, she turned to him again and said, "Please, Auguste, I don't want

you to go away for good." Her eyes were bright in the moonlight.

Her nearness was thrilling. He wanted to forget the worries that made

him hesitate, and take her in his arms.

"You don't want me to stay here and risk getting killed," he said.

"You could go to Vandalia," she said. "Tell Governor Reynolds what

happened. If he can't do anything for you himself, maybe he can help you

find a lawyer who will fight Raoul for you in the courts."

How innocent she was, he thought bitterly. "It was Governor Reynolds who

called out the militia to drive my people from Saukenuk. It's just as

Raoul said, he would be the last man to want to help an Indian fight for

land with a white man."

"Your father sent you to school in the East because he wanted a

different future for you than just spending your life hunting and living

in a wigwam. You'll be throwing all that away."

He felt a flash of anger at her. She did not understand the Sauk way of

life at all. She was just repeating what her father had said.

He remembered the way Nancy's eyes had shone each time they met on the

prairie last summer. He had known then that if he spoke to Nancy of

marriage, she would want it no matter how much it enraged her father.

But marriage with Nancy would be a coming together of two strangers, of

people whose worlds were utterly different. In the past six years he had

learned much about her world, but that did not mean he belonged in it.

And she knew next to nothing of his.

It hurt to hold himself back; he felt powerfully drawn to her. But what

he was feeling was impossible. Impossible to fulfill.

"I can use my schooling to help my people make a better life for

themselves. The gift my father gave me is a gift I will give to the

Sauk. And it may be worth more than the land Raoul has stolen from me."

"I don't want to lose you," she sobbed. She threw herself against him

and wrapped her arms around him. Her tear-wet cheek pressed against his.

Her face was hot, as though she had a fever. She wanted him; he felt it

now, just as he had seen it hours ago in her unguarded eyes.

"I've never cared for a man as I care for you, Auguste," she said.

"Everything you say may be true, but if you go back to your tribe I'll

never see you again."

It hurt Auguste to admit it, but it was almost certain that they would

never meet again.

"If you want to--you could come with me." Even as he spoke, he was sure

it would never work. Did she not dismiss the way of the Sauk as "hunting

and living in a wigwam"?

And suppose Redbird _had_ waited for him? What would he do with Nancy

then?

"No," she said. "If I went with you my father would hunt us down and

Raoul would help him. And besides--" She hesitated.

"What else?"

She shook her head. "I'm too afraid. Indians frighten me. Not you. Real

Indians."

_Real Indians?_

Anger pulsed in his head. He wanted to pull away from her then, but she

wouldn't let him go. Her arms tightened around him, and her body moved

against him.

"Auguste, do you know where it says in the Bible, 'Adam knew Eve, his

wife'? I want to know you--that way."

Her soft words thrilled him, and he forgot his anger. He felt exalted,

and he held her tightly. He had wanted Nancy ever since he met her last

June. All summer long, desiring her, he had fought his desire.

He pressed his mouth on hers, crushing her soft, full lips. She was

pulling at him now, pulling him down. Pulling him to lie with her

between the rows of corn.

_I must not do this._

Abruptly he steadied his feet and drew his face away from hers.

The vague shape of a future different from the one he planned shimmered

in his mind. They could have each other here and now, and he could give

up his decision to return to the Sauk. He might flee temporarily to some

nearby county, find work, study until he could begin practicing

medicine, marry Nancy, perhaps even try to win back the estate in the

pale eyes' courts.

He would become, more or less, a pale eyes. It would be the end of him

as a Sauk.

And the White Bear arose in his mind, as clearly as if he had suddenly

stood up here among the corn stalks.

The White Bear said, _Your people need you_.

"Auguste, please, _please_," Nancy whispered. "It isn't wrong. It's

right for us. There's no other man but you who's right for me. I don't

want to end up a dried-up old spinster who never knew the man she truly

loved."

She slid down the length of him, falling to her knees in the furrow. She

pressed her cheek against the hard bulge in his trousers, sending a

thrill through his whole body.

"Please."

He wanted to let himself sink to the ground with her. He shut his eyes

and saw the White Bear more vividly in his mind. It seemed to glow.

He held himself rigid, fighting the pressure inside him that made him

want to give in to her. He told himself he could give Nancy this moment

of love she wanted and still go back to the Sauk. If he did not take her

now as she wanted to be taken, he would regret it bitterly later.

But if he did this with her it would tie them in a bond that would be

wrong to break. If he gave her what she wanted and then left, it would

hurt her, might even kill her.

He took a step backward, then another. His legs felt as if they were

made of wood; he could barely move them.

Nancy let him go, put her hands to her face and sobbed, kneeling between

the rows of corn.

He stood there a moment, feeling helpless. Then he went to her, took her

arms and helped her to stand up.

"I do love you, Nancy," he said. "But if I knew you as Adam knew Eve, I

would still have to leave you. And it would hurt both of us much more."

Sobs still shook her body. He did not even know if she heard him. But

she let him lead her out of the cornfield, around the locked and silent

church, and back to the wagon where his trunk lay. As they walked she

pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve, wiped her face and blew her

nose.

His heart felt heavy as lead. Sure as he was that this was the right

thing to do, he was almost as sure it was wrong.

When they got to the wagon, he was still holding her arm. Gently she

pulled free of him.

"You're a good man, Auguste. I'm afraid I'll always love you. Whether

you want me to or not."

"Are you all right?" he asked. He wanted to make her happy, and he felt

terribly helpless.

"I will be," she said.

* * * * *

As he rode in the wagon back to the chateau with Marchette, the back of

Auguste's neck tingled. He pictured silent hunters crouched out in the

prairie, their Kentucky long rifles ready, their thoughts fixed on fifty

pieces of silver. His eyes moved restlessly over the low hills around

them. The nearly full moon was sinking before them in the west, a

lantern at the end of their trail. In some places the prairie grass

closed in around the horse and wagon, high as the horse's rump and the

wagon's wheels, and it looked to Auguste as if they were pushing their

way through a moonlit lake.

The loudest sound he heard was the steady singing of choruses of

crickets more numerous than all the tribes of man. Somehow it seemed

they always sang louder this time of year, as if they knew that frost

and snow were coming soon to silence their song.

The chateau's peaked roof rose black against the stars. Before they

reached the orchards, Auguste put his arm around Marchette and gave her

a kiss on the cheek. Jumping down from the wagon, he tied to his

shoulders with rawhide thongs the pack that held his medicine bundle,

his instruments and his book.

"Good-bye and thank you, Marchette," he whispered, and darted off into

the tall grass.

"God keep His eye upon you," she called softly after him.

Watching for Raoul's lurking hunters, he was soon past the chateau and

slipping along the edge of the road that led through the hills to town.

He froze. He saw a light ahead of him, a swinging lantern moving away

from him. Loud voices carried to him on the still night air.

Those must be some of Raoul's men. He was frightened, but he needed to

know what Raoul was doing. Staying well in the shadows of the trees that

grew along the edge of the road, he moved quickly and silently until he

was close enough to make out words.

They staggered along, praising Raoul's generosity with Old Kaintuck.

Auguste saw three of them in the lantern's yellow glow, each carrying a

rifle.

He bit his lower lip, and fear formed a cold hollow in his chest. If

these men saw him they would shoot him on the spot.

Or try to. He doubted they could hit anything, drunk as they looked.

With that thought, his tense muscles eased a little.

The men crossed a narrow ridge that connected a hill with the bluff on

which the trading post stood. Auguste flinched, startled by a whoop and

a wail, followed by the crash of a body falling through shrubbery and a

heavy clattering--probably a rifle--against rocks.

From the ridge came a burst of drunken laughter. Two of the men mocked

their comrade who had rolled to the bottom of the hill. They wouldn't

help him climb back up. Sleep it off down there, they told him. Curses

floated faintly from below, then there was silence.

"What if that Indian is lurking around here?" said the man carrying the

lantern. "He might come upon Hodge in the dark and scalp him or

something."

Auguste thought, _How I would love to_. He recognized the Prussian

accent of the man speaking. It was Otto Wegner, one of the men who

worked at Raoul's trading post.

The other man said, "Hell, if the Injun ain't dead from the way Eli

conked him with that rifle butt, he's halfway to Canada. He knows he'll

get his red hide full of holes if he stays around Smith County."

"As for me, I do not shoot unarmed Indians," said Wegner. "Fifty Spanish

dollars or not. I have my pride. I served under von Bluecher at

Waterloo."

"Waterloo, hah? Well, ain't you a hell of a fella! Raoul'd skin you

alive and wear you for a hat if he heard you talking like that."

"He would not. I am his best rifleman--after Eli Greenglove. He knows

my value. And my honor as a soldier is worth more to me than fifty

pieces of eight."

Crouching in the shrubbery, Auguste shook his head in wonder. There was

some sense of right and wrong even among Raoul's rogues.

But that hadn't stopped Wegner from being one of the men who backed

Raoul with his rifle this morning.

He waited for the men to cross the ridge. He heard no sound from the one

who had fallen; he had probably taken his comrades' advice and gone to

sleep.

When the lantern swung out of sight around a corner of the trading post

palisade, Auguste darted forward. Keeping low, he made a wide circle

through the wooded slope above Victor. He scrambled down to the road

where the Hopkins house stood. A long-eared black dog barked and ran at

him when he passed one of the houses along the road. His heart stopped

as he waited for doors to fly open and rifles to fire at him. But he

kept walking, and the dog stopped barking when he was beyond the house

it was guarding.

Hoping none of the neighbors would hear him, he knocked loudly at the

Hopkins door to wake them up.

Frank Hopkins, holding a candle in his hand, stood in the doorway in a

long nightshirt. "What the devil is it? We've got a sick man in here--"

He peered closer. "My God, Auguste! Get inside, quick."

He reached out, dragged Auguste through the door and shut it quickly

behind him.

"I thought you were out at the Hales'." They stood in Frank's

ground-floor workshop. The iron printing press towered shadowy in the

candle's glow.

"I came to see Grandpapa. And--Frank, I'm going back to my people. I

need your help."