"Yes, the lead mine, for instance," Frank said. "A perfect place."

"Oh, they can't have killed all those people," Nicole said.

_Please, let Marchette and Clarissa and Nancy and Reverend Hale be

alive._

She desperately wanted to pray. She wanted to believe that a loving God

was looking down on Victoire and Victor, protecting her friends and the

people she had grown up with.

For the next hour or more Nicole thought of nothing and did nothing but

bite cartridges and dump powder, ram home bullets, put one rifle into

Frank's ink-stained hands, take the other rifle and load it. Her mouth

was sore from biting the heavy paper. Her arms and hands ached from

making the same movements over and over. The incessant shooting all

around her deafened her, the stink--and, worse, the taste--of gunpowder

turned her stomach, and her hands were blacker with the stuff than

Frank's ever were from his printing press.

Frank was firing less and less often. He leaned against the log wall,

wiping his arm across his forehead.

"We've kept pouring lead into the courtyard. That's driven them under

cover. But they broke holes in the corner tower walls, and they're

shooting back at us from there." An Indian yelp caught his attention,

and he peered out again.

"Now, would you look at that!" he said. Nicole put her head next to his

at the rifle port.

A blizzard in the trading post courtyard. Flecks of white filled the air

between the inn and the blockhouse. She saw brown arms shaking slashed

mattresses and pillows out the windows. Feathers floated up to the

gunport. More feathers slowly drifted down to dot the fresh June grass

with white. She heard yells and laughter from the inn.

_They'd cut me open as soon as they'd cut open a pillow, and think that

was just as funny._

"They're getting drunk," Frank said. "On all the liquor in Raoul's

tavern. Must be looting the town too."

_They'll burn our home. Everything will be gone, the beds and the

dishes, the mirrors, the bureaus, the spinning wheel, the clock, the

plates and silverware, our clothes, our books and old letters,

children's toys, the spices, the cradle I rocked all our babies in. The

machines and carpentry tools, and, oh, please, God, not Frank's printing

press!_

_Stop it, Nicole. You're blessed! Blessed that they attacked at dawn

when all the children were in the house and not scattered all over the

countryside, and now they're safely in here. Blessed that your husband

is standing here beside you and not dead on the palisade parapet like

Burke Russell._

But even as she thought of things to be thankful for, she remembered

what might happen to them in the next few hours.

An Indian charged out of the front door of the inn. He was waving a

curving Navy cutlass. He ran at the blockhouse, screaming. His steps

wavered, though, and Nicole guessed he must be full of whiskey.

Still she was terrified. What if everyone missed him and he somehow got

in and others followed?

"Look out," Frank said, and gently nudged her away from the port. He

pushed his rifle out and fired.

"I hit him, but he isn't falling."

Getting back into the routine, Nicole took Frank's rifle and loaded it.

Rifles were booming all along the front of the blockhouse as men tried

to stop the Indian with the cutlass. Frank's second rifle went off.

"He doesn't want to die," said Frank. "He's full of bullets." She heard

pain in his voice, and as she handed him his freshly loaded rifle,

Nicole saw that his upper lip was beaded with sweat. She hurt for him.

He hated killing, and now he was forced to try again and again to kill

this man.

Frank aimed and fired again. "There. I got him. He's down."

Frank pulled his rifle in and handed it to Nicole. As she started to

reload it, he leaned against the wall. Slowly his knees bent and he slid

down till he was sitting on the floor. She put the rifle down and

crouched beside him, stroking his arm, her heart aching.

He covered his mouth with his hand. His body jerked, but he managed to

hold in the vomit. After a moment, breathing heavily, he took his hand

away from his mouth.

"Oh, Jesus! What am I doing?"

Nicole put her arms around him, and his head fell against her breast.

"Excuse me, Miz Hopkins," said a voice above her. She let go of Frank as

David Cooper squatted down beside them and laid his hand on Frank's

knee.

"Hopkins, you're all right. I was with Harrison at Tippecanoe Village,

and when the Indians came at us out of the woods, I don't believe more

than half the men fired their rifles. There's really few men find it

easy to kill. There's times we got to."

Frank wiped his eyes and laid a hand on top of Cooper's. "Thanks."

Cooper said, "If you still feel bad, just think about what they'd do to

your wife and kids if they got in here."

Frank put a hand on the floor and pushed himself to his feet. "Yes, as

long as I think about my family I'll be able to shoot." There was a

bitterness in his voice, and Nicole felt she knew what he was thinking.

How cruel the irony, that love for his family could make him into a

killer.

"Here they come again!" a woman down the line shouted.

Again and again Nicole heard the rapping of bullets into the log wall

near Frank's head as he fired steadily at Indians charging from the

trading post buildings they had captured.

Frank turned from the rifle port to hand Nicole an empty rifle and take

a loaded one. An arrow flashed through the narrow opening, missing his

head by inches.

_Thank you, God!_

The defenders kept up a steady fire until the Indians withdrew again

into the captured buildings. Nicole and Frank took turns watching

through the rifle port. What was happening to their home at this moment?

The lull stretched on. Nicole went downstairs to look for her children,

began picking her way through the crowd sitting on the floor of the

blockhouse hall.

Stretched out on a bench was a woman whose name she didn't know, a

newcomer to the settlement. The right side of her checkered dress was

soaked with blood from shoulder to waist. Moaning faintly, the woman

seemed half conscious.

"Arrow," said Ellen Slattery, who was pressing a folded cloth against

the woman's shoulder.

Nicole shuddered and patted Ellen's back and went on. She saw Tom and

Ben manning ground-floor gunports. Abigail, Martha and John were playing

around the cannon, pretending to shoot it at the Indians. The three

youngest, Rachel, Betsy and Patrick, were with a group gathered in the

stone-walled rear room Raoul used as his office. They were singing

hymns. Pamela Russell, she saw, was also with the hymn singers, tears

running down her face. As Nicole went over to the fireplace to join the

women molding bullets, she heard:

"My God, how many are my fears,

How fast my foes increase!

Their number how it multiplies!

How fatal to my peace."

_That must be the first time_ those _walls have ever heard a hymn._

Nicole took a turn at bullet making, ladling the silvery molten lead

from a kettle over the fire into the tiny hole in the hollowed-out mold,

opening the mold with its scissor handles and dropping the still-warm

ball into a big basket. Another woman took each ball and filed away the

bit of waste metal formed in the hole through which the lead was poured.

"Injuns!" a man yelled. The women and children crouched down on the

floor, and Nicole hurried upstairs to help Frank.

After rifle fire from both levels drove back the latest assault, Frank

said, "We get a few each time they attack, but it's not enough. I'm sure

I saw over a hundred of them when I was on the parapet."

"We've no food and very little water," said Nicole. "They could just

wait us out and we wouldn't last very long." The only water they had was

in buckets the townspeople had brought into the blockhouse with them.

David Cooper said, "We've got to be ready for them to make one big rush

for the blockhouse. They'll try to set the place on fire, so we better

save as much water as we can. Ration it out."

Nicole's body broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of fire; she

remembered all the gunpowder they'd relayed into the blockhouse.

_Enough to blow us all up._

And then she remembered too, what had happened to Helene twenty years

ago at Fort Dearborn.

_Maybe being blown to bits would be a better way to go._

"And here's just the man to take charge of rationing the water," said

Cooper.

Nicole turned to see her father climbing up the stairs, pulling himself

along on the banister and leaning on his walking stick. As he reached

the top of the stairs Frank took his arm and helped him over to sit on a

wooden box near the rifle port.

Elysee said, "One of the women, Mrs. Russell, insisted on taking my

rifle and standing guard in my place. I will be just as happy not to

have to fire at any red men for a while. I keep thinking I might shoot

Auguste."

Nicole gasped. "Auguste! Papa, he would never be out there."

"Perhaps not. Have you spoken to anyone who had news of my

grandchildren?" Elysee asked her.

Nicole was about to say "They're all here" when she realized whom he

meant.

"Raoul and Clarissa's children?" She shook her head sadly. "No, Papa.

Anyone from Victoire who isn't here--we don't know what happened to

them."

Elysee sighed. "Poor little things. In all the years since they were

born, I got to speak to them only once or twice."

The cry of "Here the Injuns come!" broke in on them again.

David Cooper gave Elysee brief instructions on rationing water, and the

old man limped downstairs as the firing began again.

Nicole, loading and reloading Frank's rifles with numb arms and mind,

heard firing from all around her. The Indians were coming from every

direction. Arrows and an occasional bullet whistled in through the

ports, but no one was hit. Smoke drifted through the second story of the

blockhouse, making her eyes water.

The Indians withdrew again. As the firing died down, Nicole was thankful

to see that the powder smoke that had filled the second floor blew up

toward the roof and vanished. Looking up, she saw that there was a space

nearly a foot high between the top of the log wall and the roof. The

roof rested on big vertical timbers, its overhang covering the opening.

Men could climb up there, she supposed, and shoot down; the attackers

would have to be standing directly below them to shoot back.

There was a heap she didn't know about this fort. In the years since

Raoul had built it she'd hardly ever had reason to set foot inside--the

last time was when she and Frank had appealed to him to leave men behind

to protect the town. Now her life depended on how well Raoul had built

it, and it was bitter medicine to swallow.

David Cooper left his rifle port to talk to Frank.

"It's only a few hours till sunset," Cooper said in a low voice, "and I

have a hunch they'll try one big attack to take this place before dark.

If they come all at once, we don't have enough rifles to stop them."

His tone was matter-of-fact, but his words struck terror into Nicole's

heart. She took Frank's hand and squeezed it. It felt cold as a dead

man's.

Cooper went on. "I keep thinking about that cannon downstairs. You know,

whatever we might say about Raoul de Marion, he did set this place up to

be defended. I figure that cannon must be in working order."

"Do you know how to fire a cannon?" Frank asked.

Cooper shrugged. "I've stood near the artillerymen a time or two and

watched them, but never thought to memorize what I saw. I couldn't even

say how much gunpowder to use. If we put in too little, we'll waste our

chance. If we put in too much, we could blow ourselves all to hell."

Nicole said, "I'd rather that than face whatever hell the Indians have

in store for us."

Cooper looked at her with his hard eyes and nodded. "Indians won't get

you, Miz Hopkins. I promise you that. Let's go take a look at that

thing."

Frank, Cooper and Nicole, chilled but grimly reassured by Cooper's

remark, cleared away the children who were straddling the cannon's

four-foot-long black barrel, and the women who were sitting against its

wooden carriage. Cooper stood frowning at the gun.

He sighed, and it sounded to Nicole like the sigh of a man about to step

off a high cliff.

"Well, let's load 'er up."

He went over to the side of the room where the flannel bags of gunpowder

were piled up, and he picked one up, holding it at arm's length as if it

were a rattlesnake. He carried it back to the cannon and slid it into

the muzzle. From the carriage he unstrapped the ramrod, a pole with a

wad of cloth wrapped around its end, and used that to push the gunpowder

down.

"Let's add another bag of powder," he said to Frank.

Women and children formed a circle to watch. Nicole pictured what the

cannon would do to all the people in this room if it blew up, and shut

her eyes.

After pushing a second bag of gunpowder down the muzzle, Cooper said,

"What we need now is canister shot that'd spread all over the place and

puncture a lot of Indians. I remember there was canister shot in the

powder magazine, but it didn't seem all that important this morning, and

we didn't have time to move it over here. Now we'll have to make do with

what we've got. Give me a load of rifle bullets."

Someone handed him a basket full of lead balls, and he poured them into

the cannon's throat and pushed them down with the ramrod.

"I don't want to use up all our rifle shot, but seems to me there's room

inside this thing for a lot more." He turned to the onlookers.

"Everybody spread out and bring me anything made of metal that'll fit in

here."

Into the cannon's maw went two chains, a padlock, a handful of knives

and forks. And a dozen lead soldiers, sent to war by the small boys who

owned them.

"Here, Mr. Cooper, use these." Pamela Russell pushed her way through the

crowd holding out a canvas bag. Her eyes were bloodshot, the lids

swollen and red.

Cooper frowned. "What's that?"

"A bag of pieces of eight from Raoul de Marion's safe. When Burke knew

he was going to be in the fighting, he gave me the trading post keys to

hold for him." She stopped, red-faced and choking, then continued.

"Burke didn't know anything about fighting Indians. My husband is dead

because de Marion left us almost defenseless. He doesn't deserve to have

this silver."

Feeling Pamela's agony, Nicole went over to her and put an arm around

her back and hugged her. Pamela's body was stiff, unresponsive.

Cooper's gaze traveled over the people gathered around the cannon. "Any

of you folks see anything wrong with us doing this?"

"We always use Spanish dollars out here on the frontier," said Elysee

with a smile. "The U.S. Government simply didn't mint enough coins. I'm

sure the Indians will accept them."

"Well, that defense will do for now," said Cooper, grinning as he slit

the bag with his hunting knife and poured the glittering silver disks

into the cannon. "Going to make some Indians rich today," he said. "Now,

we need something to touch it off with. I don't see any linstock around

here."

"A candle?" Frank found a long white candle that would burn for about an

hour and lit it from another one mounted on a wall.

"Should work," said Cooper. "Keep a lighted candle by the cannon at all

times. We have no way of knowing when they'll decide to make their big

attack."

Pamela Russell pulled free of Nicole and gripped Cooper's arm.

"Let me touch off the cannon," she said.

There was something frightening, Nicole thought, in the avid light in

her eyes.

_Is that how I'd be if Frank were killed?_ Nicole wondered. _So utterly

vengeful?_

Cooper said, "Sure you can do it?"

Pamela whispered through tight lips, "Oh, yes. Yes, I am!"

"All right," said Cooper. "You can touch it off. But look out the

Indians don't shoot you when we swing the door open."

Frank, Cooper and two more men kicked the chocks out from under the

cannon's four wooden wheels. The men strained against the gun, and for a

moment Nicole was afraid they wouldn't be able to move it. Then,

grudgingly, it rumbled over the puncheon floor until Cooper set the four

chocks back under the wheels. The cannon rested just a few feet back

from the front door.

Looking through a port on the west side of the hall, Nicole saw the sun

still high in the west. This was the month when days were longest.

_And this has been the longest day of my life_, she thought.

As the afternoon passed with agonizing slowness, Pamela Russell had to

light yet a second candle, and then a third. She sat rigid in a chair

beside the cannon, holding her candle upright, saying nothing, staring

fixedly at the blockhouse door.

Nicole noticed a beam of sunlight from a west-facing rifle port lighting

up the smoke and dust that drifted through the main hall of the

blockhouse. The shaft of light looked like a solid bar of gold. She

looked through the rifle port and was almost blinded by the sun just

above the humped silhouettes of hills across the Mississippi.

She heard the Indians screaming, and her stomach turned over.

"Fire arrows!" someone yelled.

Nicole's heart stopped. If the Indians managed to set fire to the

blockhouse, the hundreds of people who had taken shelter here would be

driven out to be slaughtered.

She ran to the slot in the stone wall where Tom was standing with his

rifle ready. Looking past her son's head, she saw an arrow with a

cloth-wrapped, burning tip arc up from the courtyard. It disappeared,

and she thought it must have hit the second-story log wall somewhere

above her.

"Upstairs!" Cooper shouted. "Fill your buckets from the water barrels

and come on." His sweeping finger included a bunch of excited smaller

boys, who followed him up the stairs. Nicole hurried after them.

Cooper and the other men boosted boys with buckets to the top of the log

walls. The boys pulled themselves up to the open space Nicole had

noticed before under the overhang of the roof. Leaning out, sheltered,

the boys were able to see where the fire arrows had stuck, and dumped

water on them.

Cooper grinned. "De Marion built well. The ground floor's stone and the

roof is covered with sheet lead. Injuns'll soon tire of this game."

The fire arrows became fewer. They stopped coming, and there was a

breathless silence in which time did not seem to pass. Then Cooper led

the way back down to the ground floor.

High-pitched Indians whoops sent a new chill through Nicole.

A rifle went off--Tom, at the gunport to the left of the front door.

"Hold your fire, boy!" Cooper called, watching from the other side of

the doorway. "Let them come."

Nicole went to stand beside her oldest son again and look out. The front

gate of the palisade was open and Indians were streaming in. Brown

bodies painted with yellow and red and black slashes, arms waving

knives, clubs, tomahawks, bows and arrows, rifles. More were tumbling

out the front door of the inn. A flicker of red light caught her eye.

Flames shot out the open front door of the fur shop. They were burning

all those valuable pelts. Raoul would lose a lot today.

And not just money, she thought, recalling burning Victoire. Money would

be the least of Raoul's loss. To her surprise she felt a moment's sorrow

for the brother she had come to despise.

Twenty or more Indians came through the gate carrying a huge black log,

its front end afire. The rest of the Indians gathered around them. All

together they ran at the blockhouse door, the glowing, smoking tip of

the log in the forefront.

"Everybody get as far away from this damned cannon as you can!" Frank

shouted. People scrambled away, leaving an empty space around the

six-pounder in the center of the floor. Some ran into the strong room

and some scurried upstairs. Only Cooper, Frank and Pamela Russell stood

by the cannon. Nicole stayed where she was, moving her body so that she

was between Tom and the cannon.

_Whatever happens will be what God wants to happen._

"Open the door!" Cooper ordered.

Tom Slattery, the blacksmith, swung the door open, and Nicole saw some

of the Indians hesitate, then rush forward. She wondered if they could

see the cannon in the shadowy interior of the blockhouse.

"Shoot!" yelled Cooper.

Carefully, deliberately, Pamela Russell lowered her candle to the

cannon's touchhole.

"Fire in the hole!" Cooper called out.

Nicole heard the sizzle of gunpowder from where she stood.

The boom of the cannon hit Nicole's skull like a mallet. A huge white

cloud belched out through the open door, and the sharp reek of burnt

powder filled the air. The gun jumped right over the chocks set behind

its wheels and flew back about six feet.

In the aftermath of the cannon's roar came whoops of delight from nearly

a hundred small boys in the blockhouse.

Then Nicole heard the Indians screaming again, but now they were screams

of agony, not war cries. A fierce joy rose in her as she stood in the

open doorway and saw the yard of the trading post transformed into a

vision of Hell. Through the haze she saw dark bodies sprawling on the

ground. Some of the Indians writhed in the dust of the yard, some were

motionless. Others were frantically pulling the fallen back, dragging

them by the arms or legs. The log they were going to use to batter down

the door lay smouldering, abandoned in the yard of the trading post.

As she took in more of the sight of blood and torn bodies and severed

limbs, Nicole felt ashamed that she had rejoiced at first. Sickened, she

turned away.

"Fire your rifles!" David Cooper yelled. "Shoot, shoot, shoot! Keep them

on the run. And shut that damned door."

"Let me at the port, Maw," Tom demanded.

The rifles banged away, sounding puny in Nicole's ears after the roar of

the cannon. Finally Cooper ordered an end to the shooting.

"If we let 'em drag their dead out of here, they may be in a mood to

leave."

Nicole waited in dread, wondering whether the Indians would come again.

The sunset rays pouring through the ports on the west side of the

blockhouse slowly faded, leaving the main room dark. People lit more

candles. David Cooper directed the reloading of the cannon.

The group in Raoul's office were singing hymns again, and many people

sitting around the hall joined them. Nicole sat beside Pamela Russell on

a bench and took her hand, and soon Pamela began to talk quietly. She

told Nicole things about Burke, the books he enjoyed reading, his

favorite dishes, jokes he used to tell her.

"I always envied you, Nicole, with so many children. We wanted children

so much, and we never got any. And now we'll never--"

Nicole tried to think of something to say, but everything that came to

her sounded foolish to her mind's ear. Looking at Frank standing by a

port, she thought, _I have been blessed, and Pamela hasn't been. But

why?_ That had to mean something. She couldn't think what.

"It helps me, when life is hard, to believe that God has a plan," she

said, patting Pamela's hand. "His plan is like a painting that's so big

we can only see dark spots or bright spots without knowing what it all

means. But I think one day he'll take us up with him, where we can see

the whole picture and understand it."

"Nicole," Frank called. She gave Pamela's hand a squeeze and went to see

what Frank was looking at through the rifle port.

Even at this distance she could hear the roaring of the flames. Sparks

shot up past the palisade, and a red glow filled the sky.

"They're burning the town," he said. "Our home is gone. Our shop."

She turned back to see Pamela, sitting on the bench, a lost look on her

pale face. She thought of the people who had not managed to reach the

shelter of the trading post. She put her arm around Frank's waist and

pressed herself against him.

"You and I are alive and all of our children are alive," she said. "God

has blessed us."

16

Yellow Hair

"Wolf Paw has come back!"

White Bear felt a hollow in his stomach as the cry ran through the camp.

Wolf Paw had vowed to bring death and destruction to the pale eyes such

as they had never known before.

Before he left, Wolf Paw had held a ritual dog feast to insure success.

He had hung one of his own dogs from a painted pole by its hind legs and

disemboweled it alive, asking Earthmaker's blessing on the war party.

Then his wives, Running Deer and Burning Pine, had cooked the dog and

served bits of the meat to the braves and warriors who would follow Wolf

Paw on this raid. If he would choose one of his cherished dogs to be

sacrificed, what would he do to the people of Victor?

For days White Bear had held himself rigid, hardly able to eat, lying

awake at night, waiting for Wolf Paw's war party to come back. What

horrors would he have to face now?

Women and children ran to surround the returning braves and warriors.

White Bear saw Iron Knife on horseback towering above the crowd, his

huge arms lifted triumphantly. From each fist dangled a scalp. Beside

him was Wolf Paw, a blue cloth, stained red with blood, wrapped around

his left shoulder. Wolf Paw's right hand was raised high, gripping three

long hanks of hair with disks of white flesh hanging from them. More

braves rode behind them, also holding up scalps. Scalps, scalps, scalps.

White Bear staggered. He could not take his eyes from them. The hair was

of many different colors--light brown, gray, dark brown, black. Some of

the locks were very long, and must have been taken from women's heads.

Could Wolf Paw be holding Nicole's hair, or Frank's? Could it be

Grandpapa's?

Heart pounding, White Bear forced himself to push through the crowd. He

heard cattle lowing and horses neighing in the distance. Questioning

shouts and cries of greeting.

A scream of agony froze him. A woman's voice. And then another, from

another part of the crowd, piercing his eardrums. And still more

screams. He realized what was happening. Women were learning that their

men had not come back.

Scalps and screams. Wolf Paw's gifts to the British Band. White Bear

worked his way past women calling out anxious questions.

He suddenly came upon his mother leading a wailing pregnant woman out of

the crowd.

"She heard that her husband was killed, and she has gone into labor,"

Sun Woman said, her face hollow with her own pain. White Bear squeezed

her arm briefly as she passed him.

When he got close to Wolf Paw he saw a bound woman's body draped face

down across the back of the brave's gray pony.

She wore a ragged blue dress. Her feet were bare, dirty and covered with

scratches. She did not stir. From this side of the pony White Bear could

not see her face. A sickening suspicion gripped him, and he hesitated,

not wanting his fear confirmed.

Wolf Paw, frowning down at him angrily, was still wearing his yellow and

red war paint, faded by the ride of several days.

"I raided the town where you lived, White Bear. I took forty head of

cattle and twenty horses from your pale eyes relatives."

"I am glad to hear of the cattle," said White Bear. "Our people are

starving."

Wanting, and not wanting, to know who Wolf Paw's captive was, he walked

around the brave's horse for a better look at the bound woman.

"We killed many pale eyes," Wolf Paw said. "They will never forget Wolf

Paw's raid. Tonight we will have a scalp dance for the warriors who have

become braves."

White Bear stopped walking. People he knew and loved on both sides had

died; he had to learn which ones.

After a moment he collected himself. "And will you dance for the braves

and warriors you did not bring back?" It was a cruel thing to say, but

Wolf Paw deserved it. Wolf Paw did not answer.

White Bear had to fight himself to keep from crying aloud in anguish. He

no longer had any doubt who the captive woman was who hung head down

over the spotted pony.

One yellow braid was still tied with a blue bow. The other had come

undone, and loose locks of blond hair hung down, almost brushing the

ground.

He bent to see Nancy's unconscious face.

Coming up beside him Redbird asked quietly, "Do you know this woman?"

"Yes," he said. It all came back to him--last summer at Victoire, the

meetings on the prairie, that night in the cornfield beside her father's

house when she had begged him to "know" her. Had he missed her? Yes; he

had to admit that. Did he love her? He was not sure, but, happy as he

had been with Redbird, he often thought of Nancy and wondered if she

still longed for him as she had when he left her.

How, without hurting Redbird, who stood next to him watching as he

stared down at Nancy, could he explain what this white woman meant to

him?

He reached out to untie the rope looped around Nancy's back that held

her to Wolf Paw's horse.

"Do not touch her," Wolf Paw growled. "She is for me, and only for me."

No, White Bear thought, he could not let Nancy be kidnapped and raped by

this man. Whatever bloody things had been done at Victor, this he must

prevent. He readied himself to fight Wolf Paw if he had to.

And how would he explain _that_ to Redbird?

Wolf Paw slid down from his horse and, one-handed, untied Nancy. Fresh

blood was soaking through the cloth around his shoulder--a strip of blue

gingham torn from Nancy's dress, White Bear now saw.

Weak from his wound, Wolf Paw could not lift Nancy and carry her.

Regardless of Wolf Paw's warning, White Bear would not let her fall. He

took her from Wolf Paw and eased her to the ground. Her eyelids were

fluttering. Redbird, bending awkwardly with her swollen belly, helped

him. Their eyes met, and she looked searchingly into his.

A woman's voice cried, "The pale eyes squaw is _not_ for you, Wolf Paw.

I will not have her in my wickiup." Running Deer, the older of Wolf

Paw's two wives, strode up to Wolf Paw, thrusting her face into his.

Behind her came Burning Pine, the younger wife, a papoose strapped to

her back, looking equally determined.

"My wives will do as I say," Wolf Paw grumbled, but there was no

strength in his voice.

Burning Pine said, "Your wives and children are hungry. We are eating

roots and bark. We have no food for any pale eyes."

For now, Black Hawk's band was hidden away on an island of dry ground in

the heart of a great marsh north of the headwaters of the Rock River,

well into the Michigan Territory. But there was scarcely any game or

fish here, and they could not stay in this place much longer.

Wolf Paw said, "I have brought cattle."

"Then the people will eat well because of my husband," Running Deer

said. "But the pale eyes woman will not need to eat." Running Deer

turned to the crowd. "Many women lost their husbands in Wolf Paw's raid.

It is right that the women avenge themselves on this pale eyes."

White Bear's back crawled with gooseflesh. Running Deer meant for the

women of the band to torture Nancy to death.

For as long as they could make her pain last, it would take their minds

off their hunger and sickness and sorrow. And their own fear of death.

It must not happen. But how could he prevent it?

Feeling like a drowning man being swept away on rapids, White Bear

watched Running Deer and Burning Pine lift Nancy from the ground and

carry her off, with her feet dragging. Wolf Paw and most of the braves

who had returned with him followed.

Wolf Paw's wives pulled Nancy through the band's collection of hastily

built wickiups and lean-tos. They brought her to a tall elm tree growing

up in the center of the camp. The tree was dying. Its bark had been

stripped to cover a wickiup.

By the time White Bear caught up with the crowd around Nancy, her eyes

were wide open, but unfocused. Running Deer pushed her against the trunk

of the elm tree and drew a knife. With swift, angry slashes, Wolf Paw's

senior wife stripped away Nancy's dress and the chemise under it. Nancy

stood naked before the tribe. Her eyes were still open and unseeing.

She made no attempt to cover herself. She did not seem to know what was

happening to her. White Bear's skin crawled with shame at the sight of

her degradation.

Women laughed. "Her skin is like a frog's belly!"

Men stared greedily.

Running Deer took a coil of rawhide rope and lashed Nancy to the tree,

and White Bear felt the muscles of his neck and shoulders knotting till

they ached. He could scarcely bear to look at Nancy, who hung in her

bonds, her eyes closed again.

He did not care if they killed him. He would not let them do this. He

would not allow it to go on a moment longer.

He put his hand over the five claw scars on his chest and spoke to his

spirit self. _O Bear spirit, give me the power to move the people to

mercy._

He felt strength surge into his chest and arms, and raising his medicine

stick, he strode forward.

When he was only a foot away from Nancy, her eyes opened suddenly, huge

and turquoise, staring into his.

"Auguste!" Her voice and face were full of terror.

It came to him with a shock that he must look frightful to her. The man

she had loved was transformed into a vision of savagery--painted face, a

shoulder-length mane of hair, silver earrings, shell necklace, his

scarred chest bare, holding high a painted stick adorned with feathers

and beads. And what would she make of his right ear, torn in two by Eli

Greenglove's rifle ball? After what she had already gone through, the

sight of him must be yet another impossible shock.

"I'm going to help you," he said in English. "Try not to show that

you're frightened." Useless advice, he thought. Still, it would be

better for them both if the people respected her. There was nothing a

Sauk despised more than a show of fear.

He pointed his medicine stick at Running Deer and said sternly, "Stand

aside." She glowered at him but stepped back.

Last winter Wolf Paw had snatched this stick from his hand. But that was

before White Bear had nearly been killed carrying Black Hawk's message

of peace to the pale eyes. That was before they had begun to see for

themselves that White Bear had spoken truly when he warned that Black

Hawk's hope of a great alliance to defeat the long knives was an

illusion. And that was before many of the people had felt his healing

touch. He knew how to do things, because of his training with pale eyes

doctors, that Owl Carver and Sun Woman did not.

Now White Bear's medicine stick had much more power than a few moons

ago. Even at this moment when anxiety for Nancy gnawed at him, he felt

pride in his power.

He turned to face the crowd, standing protectively in front of Nancy.

The braves and warriors stared at him, puzzled and angry.

"Is this how you show your strength and courage, by torturing a helpless

woman?" he demanded.

Wolf Paw said, "She is a trophy honorably taken in battle."

White Bear pointed to Running Deer. "Wolf Paw meant to take the pale

eyes woman into his wickiup for his pleasure. But his wife will not let

him. So he pretends that it is his pleasure to let the women torture

her."

Feeling stronger than ever, White Bear watched Wolf Paw's face darken.

He might be able to outfight any man in the tribe barehanded or with

weapons, but not with words. This moment, thought White Bear, began to

repay Wolf Paw for shaming him last winter before the council.

_And he will have to let me tend his wound. That, too, will repay him._

Wolf Paw stood glowering at White Bear, his eyes glazing, his breath

coming in gasps. He must be on the verge of fainting from the pain,

White Bear thought.

"I captured the pale eyes woman," Wolf Paw said. "I give her to the

tribe."

"Are we fighting the pale eyes so we can steal their women?" White Bear

demanded. "As long as we torture and kill their people, the long knives

will think of us as wild animals that must be destroyed. I have lived

among the pale eyes, and I tell you that we must show them that we are

worthy of their respect."

Wolf Paw grumbled, "We will win their respect by killing them. I have

killed many."

_Many at Victor, no doubt_, White Bear thought, feeling as sick as Wolf

Paw looked, hating him for his ignorance.

He addressed the whole gathering. "Since Wolf Paw has given this woman

to the tribe, let the tribe treat her honorably," White Bear said. "The

day will come when we will have to sit down with the long knives and

talk."

"Not if we win!" cried Wolf Paw.

"Win?" White Bear laughed scornfully. "Does Wolf Paw still imagine that

thousands of long knives are going to surrender to our few hundred Sauk

and Fox warriors? We can win only if they decide to stop fighting us. If

we make them hate us, they will never stop fighting until all of us are

dead."

_It is probably already too late for talking with the long knives, but

if I hold out the hope of peace, it may save Nancy's life._

He let his gaze travel over the people who stood in a ring around him.

The dark eyes looking at him were mostly sullen and suspicious, because

their shaman was telling them what they did not want to hear. No one

seemed ready to challenge him, but he knew that if three or four braves

were to overpower him and kill Nancy, the crowd would let it happen. His

belly muscles knotted with tension.

But, as Wolf Paw had said, they needed all their luck, and it would be

best not to tempt the wrath of the spirits by defying their shaman.

_Redbird, you must not fail me._ He gave his wife a look of appeal

before he spoke further. Behind Redbird Iron Knife stood like a great

oak tree. At least there was no threat to him in Iron Knife's face.

White Bear took a deep breath and his heart fluttered. His life and

Nancy's depended on what happened next.

"I take the pale eyes woman under my protection," he said. "Redbird,

untie her."

Redbird hesitated for just a moment, her eyes wide, and White Bear held

his breath. If, moved by jealousy, she refused to obey him and sided

with Running Deer, there was no hope for Nancy.

At that thought a resolve arose in him, dark and powerful as a storm on

the Great River, and he filled his lungs and squared his shoulders.

_If they try to kill her, they will have to kill me first. If she is

doomed, so am I._

If he stood by and let the people torture Nancy to death, he would hate

himself forever.

Redbird lowered her eyes and began to undo the rope around Nancy. Iron

Knife helped his sister. Relief brightened in White Bear, like sunlight

on the river after a storm. Relief, and a surge of love for his wife.

With Iron Knife siding with him and Wolf Paw weakened by his wound, no

brave would dare to challenge him.

Eagle Feather was standing in front of the crowd, and White Bear felt

proud that his son was seeing the people treat him with respect. That

might balance out the memory of that shameful night of the woman's

dress.

"Eagle Feather, run and get one of our blankets."

Nancy looked at White Bear with huge, frightened eyes, saying nothing.

Terror must have struck her dumb. But he was relieved to see she was

able to stand on her own. Redbird put a hand on her shoulder to steady

her.

"You're going to be all right," White Bear said in English. "We will

take you to my wickiup."

He turned to Wolf Paw. "Come with me. I will see to your wound." Wolf

Paw's brown skin looked clammy and bloodless. He had ridden for four

days with a bullet in his shoulder. It must come out at once, or it

would kill him. But White Bear took pleasure in giving orders to Wolf

Paw.

Eagle Feather came with a blanket, and Redbird wrapped it around Nancy.

Most of the people scattered, many to mourn their dead, others to hear

the stories of the braves and warriors who had come back with the war

party, still others to see the horses and to butcher some of the cattle

they had brought back. A small crowd followed White Bear, the

yellow-haired prisoner and Wolf Paw.

As Redbird and Iron Knife helped Nancy, now softly sobbing, into the low

structure of branches and bark, Owl Carver came up to White Bear.

"I was ready to terrify the people if they turned against you, but you

did not need my help. You spoke to them, and against their will they

heeded you."

Owl Carver's praise delighted White Bear. But as he saw once again how

the old shaman had declined, it took some of the edge from his pleasure.

Owl Carver's eyes were watery and his cheeks were sunken. His arms and

legs were thin as spear shafts. The trek up the Rock River had not been

good for him. White Bear and Sun Woman had taken over most of the work

of caring for the wounded and sick, though Owl Carver did as much as he

could.

"You are a Great Shaman, as I predicted you would be," Owl Carver said.

"You foretold exactly what would happen if Black Hawk led the British

Band across the Great River. But I am sad that your greatness must be

proved by the suffering of our people."

White Bear felt his chest expand and a warmth spread through his limbs

at these words of his teacher.

"I may need your help yet," he said. "The people do not like me

protecting this pale eyes woman."

Owl Carver nodded. "But they respect you. And they will respect you more

when you show them you have magical powers."

"I have no magical powers."

"You do. It was not I who put the mark of the Bear on your chest."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the White Bear is your spirit self. And he can act in this

world. The mark of his claws is the mark of his favor."

As White Bear let this sink in, Wolf Paw approached with a stumbling

walk. Running Deer and Burning Pine followed him.

Out of their wickiup Redbird brought a blanket, White Bear's Sauk

medicine bag and his black bag of surgical instruments.

"Sit in the wickiup with the pale eyes woman," White Bear told Redbird.

"She is very frightened."

"I am frightened too," said Redbird as she left him.

White Bear bit his lip. The tone of her voice said, _Who is this woman?_

As White Bear set out the markers for the seven directions, positioning

four stones around Wolf Paw, he said, "This will hurt very much and Wolf

Paw must not move."

Keeping in place the two stones and the bear's claw White Bear laid on

Wolf Paw's chest would force the brave to lie still.

"You cannot hurt me," said Wolf Paw, just as if he were a captive and

White Bear was about to torture him.

White Bear turned to the people standing around them.

"All of you join hands and ask Earthmaker to heal Wolf Paw's wound."

Running Deer's face, which had been hard with anger, now melted into

tears. Burning Pine looked hopefully at White Bear.

White Bear gestured to Iron Knife to lift Wolf Paw's shoulder slightly.

Carefully, gently, he untied and unwrapped the blood-soaked blue rag

torn from Nancy's dress. Recent bleeding had softened the scab, so that

the cloth came away easily from the wound, which was between Wolf Paw's

left armpit and his collarbone. Its shape surprised White Bear: not a

round bullet hole, but a long, narrow gash, surrounded by bruised and

swollen flesh.

"How did this happen to you?" he asked. He was going to have to hurt

Wolf Paw all the more because the wound had gone untreated for four

days.

"When the braves attacked the blockhouse all together at the end of the

day, the pale eyes opened the door and fired a big gun."

White Bear desperately wanted to make Wolf Paw tell him everything that

had happened, but there was no time for that now. And after he heard

Wolf Paw's tale, he might want to hurt him even more than he had to.

Raoul kept a naval six-pounder at the trading post; White Bear had heard

about it. Probably this was a piece of what the long knives called

canister shot or grapeshot in Wolf Paw's shoulder. But then why not a

round hole?

White Bear slid the steel rod he would use to explore Wolf Paw's wound

through a loop in the end of the tongs. To see how the brave was taking

it, he looked up at his face. Wolf Paw stared back at him with hard

black eyes as he pushed the probe into the wound with one hand, the

other holding the handles of the tongs. When the rounded tip of the

probe had gone in about half a finger's length, it touched something

hard. Not a bone, White Bear was sure. He moved the probe up and down

and from side to side. The only sign of pain Wolf Paw gave was deeper,

heavier breathing.

How odd! The object was definitely flat and must have hit Wolf Paw edge

on. It lay buried in a muscle. An inch higher and whatever it was would

have broken Wolf Paw's shoulder. White Bear moved the tongs into

position within the torn flesh, one end on each side of the flat object.

His hand ached as he tightened his grip on the tongs. He had learned how

to get a good grip on bullets, but the blood would make this flat

missile slippery.

Wolf Paw was not breathing now. White Bear did not dare to look into his

face. For both of them, White Bear understood, this was a moment of

testing.

Holding his own breath, praying to Earthmaker to strengthen his grip on

the tongs, White Bear began to pull.

Wolf Paw gave the faintest groan. Another man would probably be

screaming.

The flat piece of metal came almost to the surface of Wolf Paw's

blackened flesh, but slid out of the tongs' grip just as White Bear was

about to draw it out. He gritted his teeth in anger.

Wolf Paw sighed. White Bear looked at his face and saw that only the

whites of his eyes were showing under the half-closed lids.

Mercifully--for both of them--he had fainted.

White Bear looked again at the object he was trying to pull out of Wolf

Paw's shoulder. He could just see a corrugated edge covered with blood.

With a bit of cloth he wiped the blood away and saw a bright silver

gleam.

He gave a little gasp of amazement.

_A silver coin. The last thing anyone would expect to find loaded into a

cannon. Or embedded in a man's body. Those people at Victor must have

been desperate._

That gave White Bear an inspiration. No one else was close enough to see

what he had seen in the wound. He remembered what Owl Carver had said

about showing the people magical powers.

He waited until he saw Wolf Paw's eyelids flutter and then said, "Wolf

Paw, because you have allowed the pale eyes woman to live, the spirits

will reward you."

Wolf Paw, his lips compressed, frowned at him.

"The spirits will allow me to change the lead ball the pale eyes shot

into you to one of their silver coins." He spoke loudly so that the

people watching could all hear him.

Wolf Paw stared, as White Bear passed his medicine stick three times in

a sunwise circle over the bleeding shoulder.

Once again White Bear pushed the tongs into the wound. He pushed the

ends in past the coin, to get a good purchase on it. Wolf Paw groaned.

White Bear pulled.

Joy sprang up in him as he felt the silver coin coming free. He had it

this time. The spirits might not have changed lead to silver, but they

had made him skillful. The tongs came out holding an eight-real silver

piece dripping with blood. White Bear held it up for all to see.

Wolf Paw's eyes grew round. The people cried out in amazement. Even Owl

Carver looked astonished.

Delighted with the effect, White Bear wiped the blood from the Spanish

dollar carefully with the rag from Nancy's dress. It shone in the

afternoon sunlight, the head of the King of Spain on one side along with

a Latin inscription and the date 1823. On the other side, a coat of

arms.

Perfect! Now, he thought with pleasure, the braves and warriors and

their wives would be more reluctant than ever to challenge him. And that

meant Nancy would be safer.

He held the coin before Wolf Paw's face. "The form is the form of a pale

eyes coin, but this is a gift from the spirits."

Wolf Paw, slowly sitting up, took the coin and said, "I will wear it

around my neck. Maybe it will be a charm against more wounds."

"Let it remind you that it is honorable to treat prisoners kindly," said

White Bear. He kept his face grave, but within he was bubbling over with

triumph.

After stuffing the wound with buzzard's down and giving Wolf Paw herb

tea to drink, White Bear sent him on his way. The brave stumbled off,

leaning on Running Deer. White Bear stood up, stretched his tired arms

and legs and turned to the doorway of his wickiup.

A painful moment of doubt assailed him. Was this what the way of the

shaman came to, then? Trickery? Perhaps his visions, too, were only

dreams. No, the White Bear spirit was real. He had seen the paw print

beside his father's body. He bore the claw marks on his chest.

He had to force himself to stoop down, to step through the low doorway

and face Nancy. He felt tremulous within. Whatever horrors Nancy had

seen and endured, she would surely blame them on him. In all his paint

and ornaments he was too obviously a Sauk.

And how would his efforts to protect Nancy and win her trust make

Redbird feel? How could he make her truly understand what was between

him and Nancy--and what was not?

He was not sure that he himself understood it.

In the light from the open doorway he saw Nancy, crouched on the

opposite side of the round hut, trembling, still wrapped in the blanket

Redbird had put on her. Redbird and Eagle Feather were sitting silently

against the curving wall.

He sat down facing Nancy and she drew away, shuddering.

He said, "Don't be afraid of me, Nancy. I know I look strange to you.

I'm the shaman, the medicine man, for my people."

"Your people!" she burst out. "Your people murdered my father!"

He had been afraid of that. He bowed his head and closed his eyes.

"Oh, Nancy. I'm sorry."

_What a ridiculous, futile thing to say._

_I must know what happened at Victor. Nancy's father was killed. Who

else?_

White Bear said, "Nancy, I don't ask you to forgive me for what my

people did to you. But I did try to stop all this from happening. I pray

you'll let me tell you how I tried to make peace. And you are safe now

as long as you stay with me."

"Safe with you? Here?" She shuddered. "If I mean anything at all to you,

you've got to help me to get away."

His heart sank. The one thing he was sure he could not do was have her

set free.

"That will be hard."

"I heard you talking to them. You were ordering them to leave me alone,

and they did. Tell them to let me go. Auguste, I'll go mad. I'm so

frightened!"

She clutched at his arm. He could feel her fear pouring into his arm up

to his heart. He put his hand on top of hers and held it firmly. He

wanted to take her in his arms to comfort her, but Redbird's eyes were

on him, and she would not understand. So he just patted Nancy's hand and

released it.

He told Redbird what he had been saying to Nancy.

"Does she not see that the braves would kill you if you tried to set her

free?" Redbird asked.

"She is too frightened to see anything," he said, and turned back to

Nancy.

"The only man who can free you is Black Hawk. I'll try to convince him

that he should, but he is away with a war party now."

"Killing more innocent men and women and children?" Her teeth and eyes

gleamed in the faint light within the wickiup.

Her words left a hollow ache in his chest, but he went on speaking

doggedly.

"When he comes back, I'll go to him. Meanwhile, ask your God to help you

be brave."

She let go of his arm abruptly. "What do you know about my God, with

your paint and your feathers and your magic wand?"

Her words hurt, and he was about to answer angrily, but he told himself

she was half mad with terror and grief.

"Because I have these things I can help you," he said gently. "But I

want so much to know what happened at Victor. Can you bear to tell me?"

She took his arm again. "I'd just gotten dressed to go out and feed the

animals--when I saw the Indians riding toward our house. So many of

them! I knew right away. I ran into the house and woke Father. By the

time they got to the house he was standing in the doorway. He never even

got his rifle loaded, Auguste. Before he could move there was an arrow

in his chest."

White Bear knew that Reverend Hale had never liked him; but he was

Nancy's father, and to see her father killed--how that must hurt her!

"He was a good man," he said. "He never did harm to our people. It is

wrong that he died."

Nancy went on, sobbing softly. "I must have fainted. I remember a ride,

I was thrown over the back of a horse, then we were at Victoire.

Auguste, they--they just overran Victoire."

"Did anyone get away?"

"I think the people at Victoire must have seen our church and the farms

burning, so they had some warning. I couldn't see much. I was left tied

on the horse while they attacked. I did see them chase one woman and run

a spear through her. It was over very quickly. They set fire to

Victoire."

White Bear swallowed hard.

He saw the chateau with its magnificent hall and its great sweeping

roof. There he had lived and learned so much from Grandpapa and Father.

Their hopes, their lives, had gone into that great house. And the men

and women of Victoire, kindly, cheerful hard-working people--Marchette

Perrault, Registre and Bernadette Bosquet. They may not have tried to

stop Raoul from seizing the estate, but they had, most of them, loved

Elysee and Pierre and Auguste de Marion.

The pain in his chest spread till it seemed to fill his whole world,

hammering at him inside and out.

Nancy said, "Then they rode on to Victor, taking me with them."

He choked as he asked, "Did they burn Victor down too?"

"Yes, as they left."

A voice seemed to echo inside him like a scream in a huge, empty hall.

_Nicole! Frank! Grandpapa!_

"Can you tell me--my family--were any of them hurt?"

Nancy said, "I think the people at Victor got into the trading post

before the Indians got there. There were men on the palisade shooting at

the Indians. The leader, the one with the red crest on his head, tied me

to a tree. I had to watch it all."

"He is called Wolf Paw. He is Black Hawk's son."

"I hope the Army gets him and hangs him from the highest gallows in

Illinois. He left me tied to that tree all day while they tried to take

the trading post."

The words tumbled out faster and faster. When she had first regained

consciousness she could hardly speak at all. Now her eyes glittered and

she moved her hands violently. Hysteria had broken through her former

numbness.

"I could see them using ropes to climb the palisade and charging in

through the front gate. Every so often they would pull out some dead or

wounded. Just before sunset the one you call Wolf Paw made a speech to

them. Then they set fire to arrows and shot them at the blockhouse, and

they all rushed in through the front gate. I thought that would be the

end, but then I heard a tremendous explosion. I thought maybe somebody

blew up the blockhouse. A big puff of smoke rose up over the palisade.

Wolf Paw came out wounded. That very big man helped him put me on his

horse and tie me there. And then we rode for four days till we got

here."

Auguste began to breathe easier. He felt some relief, some hope, despite

his pain for the loss of Victoire and for the people who had died there.

It sounded as if many of the people of Victor, perhaps Nicole and her

family, perhaps Grandpapa, might have come through unharmed.

But another fear took a grip on him. "On the way here, did Wolf Paw ...

hurt you, Nancy?"

"No. I think he was too tired and too badly hurt to want to do anything

like that. We rode hard, and he kept me tied on his horse all the time.

We stopped to sleep long after dark and started riding again before

sunup. There was always at least one man awake to guard me."

All the while she had been talking, Nancy had kept a tight grasp on his

arm. Now he gently pulled away from her and stood up.

"Nancy, I must leave you for a while."

"No!" Her voice was shrill with fear.

"I must. There are many wounded who need me."

Fearful of how she would react to what he was going to say next, he

hesitated. Then he spoke quickly to get it over with, as he did when he

had to hurt a patient. "This is my wife, Redbird. She will care for

you."

"Your wife?" Even in the semidarkness of the wickiup White Bear could

see pain in her eyes.

"Yes." He had no time now to ease her suffering on that score.

He turned to Redbird and said in Sauk, "Do what you can for her. She saw

her father and many others of her people killed."

"I must know who she is," said Redbird, fixing him with her slanting

eyes.

He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Have no fear. I will tell

you everything, tonight. See that she eats. Give her maple sugar. Help

her to rest."

White Bear spent the rest of the day moving through the wickiups under

the trees with his Sauk medicine bag and his bag of pale eyes surgical

instruments. Wolf Paw had brought back many wounded braves. Together

with Sun Woman and Owl Carver, White Bear treated those he could and

made the dying more comfortable. He went to the families of the braves

and warriors who had been killed and tried to comfort them, performing

rituals that helped them let their loved ones go, to walk west on the

Trail of Souls.

By late afternoon White Bear was sick with disgust at the suffering and

death this war had brought, and wanted nothing more than to go off by

himself and weep for his people. Wolf Paw's raid had brought back cattle

and horses, but nearly two dozen men had died and an equal number were

badly hurt.

_And all for what? To make the long knives hate us more._

At sunset another war party thundered in, this one led by Black Hawk

himself, with the Winnebago Prophet riding beside him. And more wounded

men to treat.

In the cool of the evening a delicious scent crept into White Bear's

nostrils, one that neither he nor any of the British Band had smelled

for far too long--roasting beef. Now that it was dark and smoke from

fires could no longer be seen, people were roasting the cattle Wolf Paw

had brought from Victoire. There were so many empty bellies to feed,

they had probably butchered all the steers.

_By rights those are my steers_, White Bear thought wryly. _Raoul stole

them from me, and Wolf Paw stole them from Raoul._

White Bear saw many small fires throughout the camp. In time of peace a

feast like this would call for one big fire, but that would send up a

glow that could be seen from a distance.

He felt a surge of resentment when he saw how calm and contented Black

Hawk looked, sitting at a fire before his wickiup, chewing on strips of

beef his wife had laid before him on a mat.

Until today the people had been on the verge of starvation. And scouts

had reported that an army of over two thousand long knives was working

its way up the Rock River toward them. How could Black Hawk bear the

responsibility for bringing so much anguish down on his people?

To White Bear's disappointment, the Winnebago Prophet sat next to Black

Hawk. At the sight of Flying Cloud, with his long, greasy hair and the

mustache that looked something like Raoul's, White Bear's shoulders

slumped. He felt an impulse to turn away, and seek Black Hawk out

another time.

The Prophet's Winnebago followers were long since gone, but the Prophet

himself was still predicting mighty victories over the long knives.

White Bear remembered a scripture reading he'd heard at St. George's,

that false prophets would arise at the end of the world. This might well

be the end of the world for the Sauk; they certainly had their false

prophet.

But a talk with Black Hawk about Nancy was too important to put off.

White Bear sat down, silently facing Black Hawk. He waited for the war

leader to speak to him.

He felt ravenously hungry watching the two men chew their beef. He

himself had not had time to eat.

Black Hawk's strong hand stroked the leather cover of one of the law

books he had captured at Old Man's Creek.

"You healed my son and drew spirit silver from his body," Black Hawk

said. "Accept my thanks."

"I am happy to have made Black Hawk happy."

Black Hawk gestured toward the beef. "Share my food."

White Bear picked up a strip of meat, still hot. Saliva seemed to flood

his mouth. He chewed ferociously, closing his eyes for an instant in

pleasure. Black Hawk smiled slightly, while Flying Cloud, paying no

attention to White Bear, gnawed on a rib.

After a time during which White Bear could think of nothing but the hot,

juicy meat, Black Hawk called him back to his reason for coming here.

"I am told you have a pale eyes woman prisoner."

"I came to speak to you about her," White Bear said, and silently asked

his spirit self to help him persuade Black Hawk to let her go.

He told Black Hawk how he had convinced the people not to kill her.

"You did well," said Black Hawk. "We must make the long knives respect

us, not just fear us. Warriors should not torture and kill prisoners.

The great Shooting Star would never let his men torture prisoners."

White Bear felt a glow of pleasure at Black Hawk's approval. He felt

more hopeful that Black Hawk might listen to him. He decided to plunge

ahead with his request.

"If we give this woman back to the pale eyes, maybe they will talk peace

with us."

The Winnebago Prophet stopped eating long enough to say, "Better to keep

her. If the long knives attack us we can threaten to kill her."

Aware that Flying Cloud's argument made a kind of brutal sense, White

Bear felt a sinking in his chest.

Black Hawk pursed his wide mouth thoughtfully. "The Prophet speaks

wisely. It is foolish to give the woman to the long knives as a gift. We

should hold her until we are ready to trade her for something." He

turned his sombre gaze on White Bear. "You must keep her. You must not

let her escape."

White Bear now had to go back to tell Nancy that the Sauk would not let

her go. The thought of her terror and misery made him sick with sorrow

for her.

And afraid for her too. Every day that the Sauk suffered hunger and

illness, every time more men were killed, the women would want all the

more to hurt the one pale eyes who was in their power. And the men would

hunger to take pleasure with her fair-haired beauty. He could not guard

her at every moment. How, then, could he keep her safe?

They sat in silence again. The Winnebago Prophet looked pleased with

himself. Black Hawk was grim, probably brooding over how badly the war

was progressing.

Desperate to protect Nancy, White Bear could think of only one way.

He said, "I want to make the pale eyes woman my wife."

Black Hawk's eyebrows rose. "Why should White Bear do that?"

"The people will not kill the wife of a shaman."

The Winnebago Prophet burst out, "This is wrong! The spirits have told

me that our people must not mate with the pale eyes."

Black Hawk said, "White Bear's father was a pale eyes."

"The offspring of an impure mating should not be a shaman," Flying Cloud

grumbled.

White Bear felt his cheeks burn; the Winnebago Prophet might as well

have slapped him.

He remembered, so long ago it now seemed, though it was really only nine

months, when Pere Isaac, speaking at Pierre's funeral, had called White

Bear "the fruit of sin." He had thought then that no red man would speak

so demeaningly of his parentage, and here now was a shaman of the red

men who did.

Black Hawk said, "White Bear has always been one of us. He has seen

visions. He has saved many lives. The mark of the Bear, one of the most

powerful spirits, is on him. Let him do as he thinks best."

The Prophet said, "The spirits have told me a man should not have more

than one wife."

Black Hawk glared at him. "That is foolish talk. I have been content to

have one wife, Singing Bird. But my son, Wolf Paw, has two wives, and

many of our chiefs and braves have two or three wives. And when many men

die in battle, many women need to be cared for."

Flying Cloud grunted and fell silent.

White Bear took his leave of Black Hawk and threaded his way among the

shelters and past the small campfires where beef was still roasting on

spits.

Redbird must agree to his plan before he could tell it to Nancy. He was

afraid; afraid that she would say no, and afraid that his request would

hurt her.

When he reached his wickiup he called Redbird out, and they walked

through the camp together.

"Sun Woman is with the yellow-haired woman in the wickiup," Redbird

said. "Sun Woman speaks to her in the pale eyes' language that she

learned from your father. I think the yellow-hair is not so frightened

anymore."

"That is good," said White Bear gloomily, "because Black Hawk says she

must remain a prisoner."

Redbird sighed. "I feared he would say that."

They climbed a low hill north of the camp and sat on a huge half-buried

boulder overlooking a small lake. A newly risen crescent moon was

reflected in the still black water.

White Bear put his hand on Redbird's belly and felt the movement of the

child within her.

Redbird said, "What is this woman to you?"

White Bear stiffened. Would she understand? Would she believe him?

White Bear searched his mind for a way to explain. "She was a friend to

me when I lived at Victor."

"Was she your woman?" Redbird asked.

"No. She wanted to be, but I would not let it happen, because I knew

that one day I must leave her."

_And I feared that if I let myself love Nancy I would never return to my

people, and to you._

"You did not even lie with her?"

"No."

"I would be foolish to believe that."

"I would tell you if I had done that. I did want to, and she wanted to,

but I would not. Does it make you hate her to know she wanted that of

me?"

Redbird's head was bowed so that he could not see her face. "You are a

man many women would want. I cannot hate them all."

"When I asked you to untie Nancy today and take her to our wickiup, you

could have refused me, as Running Deer did to Wolf Paw. Then the women

would have cut her to pieces. I could not have stopped them. I thank you

for honoring my wishes."

Redbird said, "You would have tried to stop them, and you would have

been hurt. I did not want that to happen." She looked up at him

suddenly, smiling. "And I knew that people would say, 'See, White Bear's

wife does as he asks, but Wolf Paw's wife makes him look foolish.' It

felt good to make Wolf Paw look foolish, after what he did to us."

It warmed him to hear her say "us."

"Now I want to do something more for her," he said. "But I can only do

it if you will say yes to it." He held his breath.

Redbird said, "If you made her your wife, then no one in the band would

dare to hurt her."

White Bear let out a deep sigh. He should have known her thoughts would

move as swiftly as his own. He had wondered how to say it to her, and

she had said it for him.

"Only to protect her. Not to be truly my wife. Will you consent?"

She stroked the back of his hand. "I think it would be a good thing if

we keep her safe. You and I did not want our people to fight and kill

the pale eyes." She pressed her warm hand against his. "At least we can

keep them from killing this one."

The ripples on the lake reflected fragments of moonlight. White Bear

felt he could see his love for Redbird, and it looked like what lay

before him--a lake of silver. He leaned against her, and her back rested

against his arm.

"I promise you I will not bed with her."

She smiled at him again. "Why promise that?"

The question surprised him. "You are my true wife and the only wife I

want." He recalled Black Hawk's loyalty to Singing Bird. That was the

right way to live.

Redbird said, "If you do go to her in the night, I will understand.

Especially now when I am so big and we cannot get together easily. I

believe you when you say you love me more than her. But she is tall and

has hair like gold and very white skin, and I am small and have brown

skin. Perhaps the pale eyes in you would prefer her."

"I think the pale eyes in me and the Sauk in me are one. And that one

prefers you."

She took his hand and moved it down her body till he felt the warm, soft

place whence, in little more than a moon, their baby would emerge.

"I want to do this with you now," she whispered. "I think we can, if you

go into me only a little way."

When Redbird and White Bear returned to their wickiup, the crescent moon

had reached the high point of its trail across the sky. Within the

simple shelter he and Redbird had built, it was too dark to see anyone.

His mother's voice whispered, "Eagle Feather and Yellow Hair are

sleeping. She is terribly frightened, but she has been through so much

she is exhausted."

"I thank you for helping her," White Bear whispered. "In the morning I

must tell her that Black Hawk will not let her go."

"That makes me sad for her," said Sun Woman. "She is in such misery. I

sense a strength in her, but this is a very bad time for her. You must

not stop being kind to her, not even for a moment."

Sun Woman ducked out through the doorway of the wickiup.

Nancy was sleeping in Redbird's bed. Redbird and White Bear lay down

together on his pallet of reeds and blankets, her back against his

chest, and slept.

* * * * *

When White Bear's eyes opened, the faint light filtering through the

layer of bark overhead let him see a figure sitting up across from him.

Outside, he heard the sounds of the camp stirring, men and women calling

to one another, horses stamping.

He felt a rush of pity as he recognized Nancy. What she must be feeling

at this moment!

"Oh my God," he heard her say. "Lord Jesus, help me." It must have taken

her a moment to realize where she was.

"Nancy," he said, trying to keep his voice calm and pleasant, "come with

me and let us talk."

They left the wickiup and she walked through the camp with her eyes on

the ground, too frightened, he supposed, to look about her. People

stared, but White Bear wore a forbidding look, and they kept their

distance.

She had on a doeskin dress that Sun Woman had given her, and she had

done up her two blond braids the way she always had. He felt a little

catch in his throat as he looked at her and remembered those

not-accidental meetings on the prairie near Victoire.

Every so often as they walked along she twisted her shoulders inside the

soft leather and rubbed her arms uncomfortably. They passed a group of

warriors who had felled a big oak tree and were burning and scraping its

inside to make a dugout. The men stopped work to watch her go by.

Seeing the way they looked at her, White Bear thought, _Yes, she must

marry me_. He hoped he could persuade her that it would be the only way

for her to be safe.

He led her to the western edge of the high ground on which the band had

made their camp. They stopped when the earth underfoot turned soft and

wet. Before them lay an expanse of reeds that vanished into morning

mist.

"Did you talk to Black Hawk?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Can I get

away from here?"

White Bear remembered Sun Woman's admonition to be kind to Nancy at

every moment. He tried to think how best to tell her the bad news, how

to add only the smallest possible amount of fear to her burden.

"Black Hawk is pleased that I stopped the people from hurting you

yesterday," he began tentatively. "He said the white men despise Indians

when they kill their prisoners."

Her lips trembled. "He's not going to let me go, is he?" she said, and

sobs began to shake her body. When she was able, she turned pleadingly

toward him. "Couldn't you do anything for me?"

White Bear spread his hands helplessly. "I talked to him as best I

could." He tried to tell her something encouraging. "He just wants to

keep you until he can talk to the soldiers and make some kind of a

truce."

She drew away from him, her red-rimmed eyes wide. "A truce? Does Black

Hawk really think he can make a truce? Don't you realize what _your

people_, your brave Indians, have been doing all over the frontier?

Burnings and massacres everywhere. I told you what they did at Victor.

Do you think the soldiers would ever be willing to talk peace with Black

Hawk now?"

White Bear had listened to the returning warriors' tales of victories

over the long knives at Kellogg's Grove, at Indian Creek, along the

Checagou-Galena road. In despair he had realized that what the Sauk saw

as battles in a war to defend their homeland were, to the white people

of Illinois, bloody and abominable crimes. Who, after all, had Black

Hawk's war parties been killing? Some soldiers, but mostly farmers and

their wives and children.

It tormented him now, as it did day and night, that no one could see the

bloodshed as he did, with the eyes of both a white man and a Sauk. To

him, what the Sauk were doing was horrible, but it was done out of a

desperate need to cling to the land that meant life to them.

And Nancy's capture showed him how much his years among the pale eyes

had changed him. Even if Wolf Paw had brought back a captive woman who

was a stranger to him, he would have tried to save her. Nor could he

feel that a people willing to torture any woman to death were fully

_his_ people.

Nancy shook her head. "There will be no truce, Auguste. They're coming

to destroy you."

"We asked for peace," he began, "before all this killing started. I went

with a white flag myself--"

Her chest heaved, and her face was a mottled red and white.

"They don't _want_ peace with you. Your braves will kill me when they

realize that. Or the soldiers will kill me when they kill all of your

people."

"No!" he cried, knowing the truth in her words and fighting the agony

within.

"Let me go!" she screamed.

She suddenly whirled away from him and threw herself into the reeds. She

tried to run, and in a moment was in water up to her hips. Frantically

battering at the tall water grasses, she struggled to keep going. The

mist was beginning to swallow her up.

Too surprised to move, White Bear stood watching her for a moment. She

would surely die out there in the marsh, and she didn't realize it. He

plunged into the marsh after her. He drove his legs through the cold

water. The mud sucked at his moccasins. By the time he caught up with

her, he was barefoot.

He threw his arms around her. She thrashed about, turned and struck at

his face with her fists. Her eyes were wild, like a trapped fox's, her

cheeks bright red, her mouth twisted and quivering.

"I've got to get away!"

"Nancy, you can't." They were waist deep in water, and he felt his feet

sinking into the mud.

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her as hard as he could. "Listen to

me!"

She went limp in his arms, and he had to hold her up.

"I can't stay here. I won't let them kill me!"

He pulled her toward dry ground, the cold water swirling around them,

slimy mud tugging at their feet.

When they were out of the water, dripping, he said, "If there were any

way you could escape from here, I'd help you. If you try to get away,

you'll die. There are miles of swamp in every direction. Only Black Hawk

and a few braves know the way out. You'd drown or be buried alive in

quicksand. Or the warriors would catch you, and they would kill you no

matter what I did. And they'll kill me if I help you try to escape."

"I'll die if I stay here." Her eyes were dull with hopelessness.

"No, you won't. I'll take care of you. My family will protect

you--Redbird, Sun Woman, Owl Carver, Iron Knife. You'll be safe with

me."

She leaned against him. "Auguste, I can't bear being so frightened. My

heart is so full of fear it will burst."

"The band will not free you, but they will not hurt you. They respect

me. I talk to the spirits for them and heal them."

She took a long look at him and spoke more calmly. "You look so strange,

dressed like a--like a--"

"Like a real Indian?" He tried giving her a little smile. For an instant

a little life came back into her face.

_I can heal her fear, too, if she will let me._

He felt an inward glow as she managed to return a tremulous smile.

She said, "But you're still that fine young gentleman who charmed me so,

back at Victor, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm that man too." He looked down at her bare feet. "You've lost

your moccasins. We must get you another pair." And she was lucky not to

have a leech or two clinging to her feet; so was he. His moccasins were

lost too. Clothing would be hard to come by, with the band on the run in

strange country, but he need not make her feel worse by telling her

that.

"I have to resign myself to staying with your people, don't I?" she

asked. "Thank God you're here, Auguste. Maybe it was Providence that

your uncle stole your estate from you."

_Yes, Earthmaker's way is surprising_, he thought.

"One thing I must ask of you, Nancy. For your protection, you and I must

go through a wedding ceremony. Then no one will be allowed to bother

you."

"A wedding!" She let go of him and stepped away quickly.

His heartbeat quickened with anxiety over her apparent shock.

"Nothing to be afraid of. A simple ceremony." He recalled his wedding to

Redbird last fall. He might be a shaman, but he'd not had the slightest

premonition that he would go through the same ceremony with a different

woman less than a year later.

"But you already have a wife. That pretty little woman who is ...

expecting." She reddened. "You told me she was your wife." Soaking wet,

she turned forlornly away from him.

"In our tribe men may have more than one wife."

He expected to see contempt in her eyes, her pale eyes' morality

outraged.

Instead she said sadly, "Is she the reason you would not do what I

wanted the night you left Victor? Were you married to her even then?"

He had to force the words out. "No, but I did love her even then. And

she-- That blue-eyed boy you've seen in our wickiup--he is our son. He

was born after my father took me to Victoire."

She shook her head, the blond braids swinging. "You were honest with me.

You didn't tell me about Redbird, but you didn't make a fool of me, as

another man might have. A man like your uncle. But how does your wife

feel about me?"

What did she mean, _A man like your uncle_? Had Raoul approached her? He

put that question aside while he framed an answer to her question.

"Redbird agrees to this wedding. She, too, wants to help you. If you are

part of our family you will be protected. She wants that."

She stared at him. "But I'm a Christian! I can't go through a pagan

wedding ceremony to be your _second wife_. How could I do that to my

father, a minister?"

He tried to sound reassuring. "We will all know, you and I and Redbird,

that it is not a real marriage. I've no doubt your Christian God will

see and understand. And your father, if he sees you, surely he wants you

to live."

_No, Philip Hale, as I remember him, might well expect her to die for

her faith. He might well want his daughter to join him in the other

world. But never mind._

He went on quickly, "Of course, you will not have to--know me, as your

Bible says. In the sight of the tribe you will be my wife, that is all.

In our wickiup your virtue will be respected."

She laughed ruefully, but tears were running down her cheeks. "Oh,

Auguste, remember how I begged you to marry me? I even prayed for it,

would you have imagined that? And now my prayer has been answered. Only

it didn't turn out exactly the way I hoped, did it?"

White Bear's heart filled up with a dark foreboding. Nothing had turned

out as any of them hoped, but much had happened as they feared.

17

Uncle Sam's Men

Tears filled Raoul's eyes, blurring the newspaper and the letter on his

candlelit camp table. His hands were cold as a corpse's as he pressed

them against the sides of his head.

_Oh, God! A drink! I need a drink!_

He reached for the jug beside the letter. A hand lifted the tent flap

and Eli Greenglove slouched in.

The sight of him frightened Raoul. Did he know yet?

Not much chance there'd be a letter for Eli in the sack of two-week-old

mail that had just caught up with Raoul's battalion. No one in Victor

likely to write to Eli. Not now.

Eli's mouth was drawn hard. It was a hot night, and he wore no jacket,

only a plain brown calico work shirt, with a pistol and a knife at his

wide brown belt.

"Levi Pope got a letter from his missuz. There was an Injun raid on

Victor. You hear anything?" Eli's voice was as flat as the prairie. He

sat on Raoul's camp trunk.

"Yes," Raoul said, choking on the single word. "A war party attacked

Victoire."

He took a swallow from the jug. A cold, aching space was growing in the

pit of his stomach. The whiskey settled in the middle of the ache like a

tiny campfire in the middle of a blizzard.

He handed the jug to Eli, and Eli sipped and put the jug back on the

table.

"Goddammit, don't just sit there staring at me." Eli displayed his

ruined teeth as his lip curled back in a snarl. "_What 'n hell

happened?_"

Raoul picked up the letter in a shaking hand and read aloud--horrible

words, written in a flowing black script.

"'It is my sad duty as your sister to send you the news that Clarissa

Greenglove and your two sons have perished at the hands of Indians.'"

"Oh, Lord God an' Savior," Eli groaned. His head fell back on his neck,

his mouth open. His Adam's apple stuck out.

"'Also that our beloved Victoire has burned to the ground.'"

Raoul went on:

"Clarissa and Andrew and Philip, along with other people who lived

at Victoire and in Victor, were murdered on the morning of June

seventeenth.

"In your sorrow, may it comfort you to know that your fortified

trading post, where we took shelter and defended ourselves, saved

the lives of most of us. The cannon that you set in the blockhouse

was employed to good effect, even though we hesitated at first to

use it, since no one here knew how to fire such a weapon.

Nevertheless, fire it we did, and broke the Indians' last charge and

drove them off.

"Mr. Burke Russell, whom you placed in charge of the trading post,

was killed whilst fighting on the parapet. Mr. David Cooper, whom

you also appointed as caretaker, gave us the leadership and strength

we badly needed to see us through. He was the only experienced

fighting man among us.

"I cannot bear to write more. The sights we saw when we came out of

the blockhouse will haunt my dreams forever.

"Though the Indians could not lay hands on our bodies, they

destroyed our property. Our house was burned down and our printing

press and woodworking machines ruined.

"When it was all over, Frank rode to Galena, though I begged him not

to, for fear there were Indians yet lurking about. But he must needs

publish his paper. He arranged to have an edition of the _Visitor_

printed on the press of the Galena _Miners Gazette_, and brought the

copies back here on a wagon. I am sending you a copy of the paper

under this cover. Frank's account will tell you everything there is

to know about the raid, and more perhaps than you would wish to

know.

"Our father is well. He and Guichard fought bravely in our defense.

"I do not reproach you. My heart goes out to you, Brother, for I

know you must be suffering. Remember that all happens as God

ordains. May He grant you peace."

_What the hell does she mean, "All happens as God ordains?" God wanted

my woman and my kids murdered by Indians?_

"Oh, Christ Jesus," Eli said. He shook his head, then resting his elbows

on his knees, pressed his hands to the top of his head.

_Even Papa had to fight._

Raoul's heart felt bruised, as if beaten with a hammer.

_I do not reproach you._ That was reproach enough. He had taken every

man who would sign up for the militia. He had promised them their wives

and children would be safe. He'd led them away in pursuit of Black Hawk,

vengeance and glory.

Eli looked up. "What does it say in the newspaper?"

Raoul started to hand it to him.

"You read it to me."

Raoul had forgotten that Eli couldn't read. Clarissa couldn't either.

Now she'd never learn. Nor would the boys.

He shook his head and brushed his hand across his forehead. "I _can't_

read this out loud."

Greenglove's eyes were hard as bullets. "You wipe your damned eyes and

read that damned newspaper."

Raoul rubbed his eyes and took another pull from the jug. Greenglove

held out his hand and Raoul passed him the jug.

Raoul picked up the newspaper, hating the sight of it, and began to read

the column headed with the single word, MASSACRE!

Frank's story told how the people in the trading post held the Indians

off all day and finally drove them away by firing the cannon. Then came

the grievous task of finding and burying those who had not had time to

reach safety.

Then, for Raoul, the most dreadful lines of all:

In the ashes of Victoire, it appeared from examination of the

charred remains that the skulls of the men and women had been cloven

by tomahawk blows. Parts of the children's bodies were scattered

about the ruins, as if they had been chopped to bits before the

Indians set fire to the great house.

Why hadn't Clarissa gotten away? She'd taken to drinking heavily in the

last year, so much so that he'd had to hit her more than once for

letting the boys run loose without keeping an eye on them. She had

probably been lying abed in a drunken stupor while everyone was fleeing

the chateau, the boys sleeping in the room with her. Hadn't anyone tried

to wake them?

Those faithful French servants who loved Elysee and Pierre so much, they

didn't give a damn about Raoul's whore and his bastard sons. After all,

he had thwarted Pierre's dying wishes. And he had struck his aged father

with his fist in front of all those Victoire people.

Still, they'd have been human enough to try to do _something_. If they'd

had time. They'd holler and bang on the door. Try to wake them up. But

there wouldn't have been time. A hundred or more Indians galloping down

on the chateau. The servants who saw them coming would barely have time

to get away. Some of them hadn't made it. Some of them had died with

Clarissa and the boys; maybe the ones who'd stayed behind to try to warn

them.

That was how it must have been.

Frank's article in the _Visitor_ said that some of the people in the

distant farms had saved themselves by hiding in root cellars or in

nearby woods. The Indians were in too much of a hurry to get to Victor

to bother searching carefully. One family, the Flemings, had ridden to

the shut-down lead mine. Some Indians pursued them to the mine but

didn't follow them in. The Flemings hid so deep in the mine they had

trouble finding their way out again, but they did survive.

But one person had neither hidden nor been killed:

While the body of the Reverend Philip Hale, D.D., was found in the

burnt wreckage of his house, his daughter, Miss Nancy Hale, has not

been found. It is feared Miss Hale may have been kidnapped by the

Indians. Both the church and the house Reverend Hale built on the

prairie were burned down.

As Raoul read aloud the list of the dead, he thought of Nancy and then

of his sister Helene. Did they do _that_ to Nancy? The red devils!

Probably did. Horrible!

He saw the naked, slashed, violated body lying on the prairie. Nancy

Hale's body. Just like Helene's.

But it could be, too, she was alive. And if he kept after Black Hawk, he

might be the one to rescue her. There was comfort in that.

A little comfort.

And then a black bile of hatred for himself trickled up into his throat.

Great God in Heaven, this man he was sitting with--he'd had this man's

daughter in his bed for six years. And now she was murdered. And already

he was figuring how to replace her.

_Maybe I am as bad a man as Papa said I was._

_That's what Nicole meant by "All happens as God ordains." This was to

punish me._

He took a drink to wash that thought away.

He winced when he came to the name Marchette Perrault on the list of

dead. Maybe she had died trying to help Clarissa. Did Armand know yet?

Eli stood up. "Well, poor Clarissa. Poor little boys. It was a black day

in our lives when Clarissa and me met up with you, Raoul de Marion."

The words tore at a wound that was fresh and bleeding.

"Look here, now, Eli. Don't you know that I feel as bad as you do?"

"No, I don't know that. Clarissa was all I had in the world. I kept

hoping you'd find it in your heart to marry her, but you never treated

her decent. Never cared enough for them kids to give them your name.

Your brother, he did more for that half-Injun son of his than you did

for your two that was all white."

_All white they were, but half Puke_, Raoul thought, feeling his disdain

for the man who stood slumped before him.

Puke, a good nickname for Greenglove's breed. Missouri puked up the

worst of its people, and they landed in Illinois. Clarissa's breasts

flattening and sagging, her shoulders round, her teeth stained by pipe

smoke. So slatternly she'd gotten to be, he hardly cared to take her to

bed. And Phil and Andy growing up with that same washed-out, weak-boned

Greenglove look.

_How could I think that way about my own kids? What kind of a man am I?

And now they've been murdered, and I'm still despising them._

He had to quit this. He was torturing himself. Wasn't it bad enough? It

was the goddamned Indians he should be hating.

"We'll have our revenge, Eli. We'll kill a hundred Indians for each of

ours who died."

"Like you murdered them three at Old Man's Creek. I warned you not to do

that. That was what got Clarissa and her kids killed. I won't be helping

you get your vengeance, Colonel Raoul de Marion. Because if I did stay

around you, sooner or later I'd want blood for blood of mine that's been

spilled."

Raoul felt a chill, facing Greenglove's implacable, dull-eyed hatred.

But he was damned if he'd back down before this human weed.

"You'll leave this company when your term of enlistment is up and not

one damned day sooner. You're captain of the Smith County company."

Greenglove's mouth curled in a cold smile.

"By tomorrow there won't be any company. The Smith County boys heard

about what happened at Victor. Most of them'll be quitting."

Raoul felt the heat rising in his neck and head.

"The hell they will! My Smith County boys will want Indian blood just

like I do. And just like you would if you hadn't taken a notion to blame

Clarissa's death on me."

Auguste. The half-breed. Raoul felt his blood boiling as he saw the

olive-skinned face mingling Pierre's features with Indian looks. The

face he'd never stopped hating from the moment he first saw it. Auguste

was dead. Eli, here, had shot him. His body was rotting away somewhere

on the prairie behind them.

But the Indians of the British Band were alive--Auguste's people. They

snuck up on Victoire, Raoul's home. Burned it to the ground. Tomahawked

his woman. Chopped his children, his two boys, Andy and Phil, to pieces.

To pieces.

He saw that, for a moment, too vividly, and almost screamed. He grabbed

the jug and burned the bloody picture out of his mind with a swallow.

Auguste's band, skulking around up the river somewhere.

Why, Auguste might have given them the idea. Told them all about

Victoire and Victor. Lots of helpless women and children there. A rich

trading post. A big white man's house to burn down.

_My uncle kicked me off the land_, Auguste might have said. _Avenge me.

Go kill his woman and his children and burn his house down. And while

you're at it, kill every one of those white dogs in Smith County._

Sure, he probably put the idea in those devils' heads before he got

shot.

It hadn't been enough to kill Auguste. Wasn't enough.

He had to kill off every last one of Black Hawk's Indians. Exterminate

the whole band--bucks, squaws and papooses.

And he would shoot any shirker who refused to go with him.

Greenglove shrugged. "Go chase Injuns, then, if that's your heart's

desire." Then he smiled in a knowing way Raoul found strangely

disturbing. "But you'll maybe find a surprise waiting for you up there

in Michigan Territory. Almost makes me want to stay with you, just so's

I could see the look on your face."

Raoul felt a chill. Why the hell was Greenglove grinning like that?

"Damn you, you can't just walk off, Eli! You took an oath. You signed up

for another thirty days when your enlistment was up in May. I can have

you shot for desertion."

"Go ahead. Shoot me yourself."

Eli slowly raised the tent flap and stood there a moment, turning to

give Raoul one last, strange, unmirthful smile. Raoul eyed the pistol at

Eli's belt. Most likely all primed and loaded. His own pistol, unloaded,

was hanging from a tent pole behind him.

_If I went for my pistol, that'd give him an excuse to put a ball in me.

And he'd do it before I could even get a damned cap in place._

Eli gave Raoul one final nod, as if he knew what Raoul had been

thinking, and let the tent flap fall behind him.

Raoul reached for the jug. It felt light in his hand, and he shook it.

Empty.

Everything. Empty, empty, empty!

He got up, weaving slightly, and walked to the opening of the tent.

"Armand!" he shouted.

_Oh my God, now I'll have to give Armand the news about Marchette._

* * * * *

Raoul awakened, sweating. One side of his tent was glowing white, the

sun beating down on it; he had been sleeping in an oven. He sat up, and

his vision went black and his head spun. He swung his feet, still in

dirty gray stockings, over the side of his cot. He nearly stepped on

Armand, who was lying flat on his back on the straw-covered floor, his

beard fluttering as he snored through his open mouth.

Standing, Raoul saw Nicole's letter and the _Victor Visitor_ lying on

his camp table beside a burned-down candle and four empty jugs. He

remembered what had happened at Victor. He fell back onto his cot and

pounded his fist on his chest, trying to numb the pain in his heart.

_God damn the Sauk! Damn them! Damn them!_

Armand, when he learned what happened at Victoire, had not blamed Raoul

as Eli had. He'd wept over Marchette--whom he'd beaten almost daily when

she was alive--and had sworn vengeance on her murderers, the British

Band. And he had sat with Raoul till both of them were drunk enough to

sleep.

Raoul's head and body felt as if they were on fire. His fingers curled,

grasping at empty air.

He buckled on his belt with his pistol and his Bowie knife, stumbled out

of his tent and stood beside it, pissing in the tall grass.

He was facing the Rock River, less than a quarter-mile wide here, a

sheet of sparkling blue water bordered by forest. Lined up along the

bank before him were a dozen big box-shaped flatboats. The tents of his

own militia battalion and of two others were spread over the grassland

around him.

He suddenly sensed that something was wrong. He hadn't heard the bugler

blow the dozen notes signaling the start of the day. He saw now that the

men weren't assembled but were wandering aimlessly about the camp.

What the hell was it Greenglove had said?

_By tomorrow there won't be any company._

Down near the flatboats a big crowd was gathered. One man, standing on a

barrel, was addressing them. His voice, shrill and insistent, carried to

Raoul on the warm June air, but he couldn't make out what the man was

saying.

Raoul didn't like this. He didn't like this at all.

He started walking toward the river and found Levi Pope and Hodge Hode

squatting in front of a fire, making coffee simply by boiling water with

coffee grounds in it.

"Sorry for your loss, Colonel," said Pope.

Hearing Pope speak of what happened at Victoire was like being kicked in

a spot that was already bruised. Raoul had to pause a moment before he

could speak.

"Thank you. Your family come through all right?" He dreaded what he

might hear in answer.

"Your sister wrote a letter for my missuz," Pope said. "They came

through tolerably. Thanks to the way you fortified the trading post.

That was mighty foresighted, Colonel."

Raoul's chest expanded and he felt a little better. This was how he'd

hoped the men would react, not blaming him for the tragedy as that

bastard Greenglove had.

"Levi's letter told as how my boy Josiah made it to the trading post

too," Hodge said. "Mr. Cooper even let him do some shootin' at the

redskins."

_Mr. Cooper? Since when did David Cooper get to be so high and mighty?_

"I need some of that coffee," Raoul said. Hodge strained the grounds out

of the coffee by pouring it through a kerchief into a tin cup and handed

the cup to Raoul.

The black liquid scalded Raoul's lips and tongue, and didn't treat him

any better when it bit into his whiskey-burned stomach.

"Anything to eat?"

With a bitter grunt, Levi Pope took a square biscuit out of a paper

wrapper and held it out. "These worm cakes is pretty lively, but dip 'em

in the coffee a couple of times and you'll boil the little buggers to

death."

Raoul shut his eyes and waved the weevil-riddled hardtack away.

"What the hell is that bunch doing down by the river?"

Hodge Hode grinned. "They call it a 'pub-lic in-dig-nation' meeting." He

drawled out the words, amused. "Say they won't go across the river into

Michigan Territory. Say they want to go home."

"Any of our men talking that way?"

"Oh, a heap of them, Colonel," said Levi.

"I'll see about that."

"Hodge and me ain't quittin'. We won't go home till we've killed us some

Injun trash." Levi lovingly stroked the handles of his six holstered

pistols, three on each side of his belt.

But Levi and Hodge made no move to get up and join Raoul. They would go

with him across the river, he saw, but they were not about to help him

discipline the other men. He thought of ordering them to come with him,

but decided not to test their loyalty that far. Eli had walked out on

him. He didn't know who he could trust.

Hell, he could do it without these two, anyway.

For reassurance Raoul took a grip on the handle of his Bowie knife as he

approached the crowd. Could he cow dozens of men if they were determined

not to obey him?

_Sure. Might have to carve a few bellies, but the rest will fall into

line._

That was how he ran Smith County.

The man standing on the barrel was saying, "You know what the Injuns

call that country up there? The Trembling Lands. It's all swamp, water

and quicksand. You take a horse out on what looks like solid ground,

before you can blink, he sinks belly deep."

That kind of talk made Raoul want to use his knife. But that would

probably only rile these rebellious bastards all the more.

_Got to put a stop to this. Line them all up by the boats. Tell the

first man to get in. If he won't, shoot him. Then go on to the next.

That'll change their minds in a hurry._

He told himself disgustedly to quit dreaming. Not even in Smith County

could he get away with shooting white men just because they wouldn't

obey him. Not in broad daylight, anyway.

The man standing on the barrel said, "If Black Hawk has holed up in that

country, that means he's finished. Hell, his people will starve to death

up there. What do we got to follow him for?"

Pushing his way through the crowd, Raoul heard a man near him call out,

"Volunteers is what we are. That means we serve at our own pleasure.

Well, I'm not volunteering for any more."

A chorus--"Right!" "Yeah!" "Me neither!" "That's telling 'em!"--rose all

around Raoul, maddening him as a swarm of biting flies would madden a

horse.

He saw a familiar stoop-shouldered back in the crowd--Justus Bennett.

Ever since Old Man's Creek, Bennett had been whining about the fine suit

of clothes and the two expensive law books he'd lost, demanding that the

state of Illinois pay for them. Now he was standing here, encouraging

would-be deserters just by listening to them.

Raoul grabbed his shoulder and pulled him around. "You're a lawyer. You

know damned well this meeting is illegal. Get over there with Pope and

Hode, or you're no more a lieutenant in my battalion."

Bennett stared back at him with beady eyes. "That's immaterial, seeing

as we're all going home."

"No one's going home," said Raoul, loud enough to make the men around

him turn to look. "Get the hell back to your outfit."

He gave Bennett a shove. The lawyer glowered at him, but slunk away.

Raoul pushed his way to the front of the crowd. The men fell back,

making way for his blue jacket with its officer's gold stripes. But the

sun beat down on his head. He realized that he had forgotten to put on

his hat, and he wasn't shaved and his jacket was unbuttoned.

And, nothing. Hell, he could handle men. He didn't have to dress up for

that. He drew his knife and faced the man on the barrel.

"Get down off there."

"Now listen, Colonel, this is a public meeting."

Raoul waved the knife. "You've had your say. Jump."

The man stared defiantly at Raoul. Raoul thought he might have to cut

him up a little, and wondered if he was up to it. The man's eyes wavered

from Raoul's down to the thirteen-inch blade. And he jumped.

But he wasn't quite done talking. "It's a free country, Colonel. Man's

got a right to speak his mind."

Raoul said, "Tell that to Black Hawk."

He wasn't quite sure what he meant by that, but he heard several

chuckles and was encouraged.

He scrambled up on the three-foot-high barrel. It rocked under him, and

the dregs of whiskey sloshing around in his body made him feel dizzy. He

decided, after he got his feet set near the rim of the barrel, that he

would be safer if he sheathed his knife.

"You men's term of enlistment is not up. Any man who won't cross that

river is a coward and a deserter, and I'll see you're dealt with."

"Go to hell!" one man shouted.

"You talk about cowards," another man called. "Didn't your whole

battalion run all the way from Old Man's Creek to Dixon's Ferry, from

forty Injun bucks?"

"They don't call it Old Man's Creek no more," a raucous voice cried.

"Now it's de Marion's Run."

Raoul pulled his knife again.

"The man who said that about de Marion's Run--come up here and say it

again." He shook the knife.

"Quit wavin' that pig sticker around and get down off that barrel, de

Marion. We heard enough from you." Raoul saw a rifle pointed at him. The

blood pumping through his body suddenly went from hot to cold.

A new voice broke in.

"Lower that rifle!"

The tone was deep, easy and confident in command. It offered no

alternative. The rifle came down as quickly as if in response to a drill

sergeant's order.

A short, plump officer with thick black eyebrows came up to stand beside

Raoul's barrel. He wore a stained, broad-brimmed wool hat and a blue

Army jacket over fringed buckskin trousers. The gold stripes on his

upper arm identified him as a colonel. The saber at his side nearly

dragged on the ground. He might have been comical looking, but somehow

he wasn't. Raoul had seen the officer at command meetings and knew that

despite his mixed dress, he was Regular Army. This morning, though, he

couldn't remember his name.

Movement in the distance caught Raoul's eye. A long line of

blue-uniformed troops was marching across the prairie about a hundred

yards away, their shakoes bobbing. They came to a halt, turned and faced

the militiamen. They came to parade rest, each man with a rifle at his

side. The morning sun glittered on bayonets.

Some militiamen glanced over their shoulders at the line of Federal

soldiers, and a nervous muttering of "Bluebellies!" spread through the

crowd.

"You can get down from there now, Colonel de Marion," said the short

officer. "I'd appreciate it if you'd let me handle this."

Raoul hated to admit it to himself, but he was relieved. Crouching

slowly and carefully, so as not to make an ass of himself by falling, he

climbed down from the barrel.

"That's Zachary Taylor," Raoul heard someone in the crowd say as he

moved, now unnoticed, to stand apart on the riverbank. Raoul felt

foolish that he had forgotten Taylor's name, especially when Taylor knew

his.

Instead of standing on the barrel, Taylor hitched himself up and sat on

it, gesturing in a friendly way to the men to gather around him.

He spoke with an easy southern drawl, but he made his voice carry.

"Now, men, I don't set myself up as your superior, even though I am a

Federal officer. We're all equal Americans here." He nodded as if

thinking something over. "In fact, many of you are important men in

civilian life, and I have no doubt some of you will hold public office

and be giving orders to _me_ some day."

Raoul's eyes traveled over the crowd, and he noticed one figure taller

than most, eyes grave as he listened intently to Taylor. That Lincoln

fellow, who had been such a nuisance at Prophet's Town. Raoul wondered

if the young man was for or against crossing the Rock River today.

Taylor said, "The best assurance you have that I'll obey your orders

when it comes your turn is that I'm obeying the orders I've got now. I

will tell you in a moment what those orders are. But let me refresh your

memory about what Black Hawk and his savages have done to the people you

and I are sworn to defend."

He pulled a folded paper from the side pocket of his blue jacket and

read from it.

"One man killed at Bureau Creek. One man at Buffalo Grove, another at

the Fox River. Two on the Checagou Road. A woman and two men killed on

the outskirts of Galena. Apple River Fort besieged, four dead. Seven men

massacred at Kellogg's Grove. Three whole families, fifteen people,

wiped out at Indian Creek. Victor besieged, and seventeen men, women and

children massacred."

Raoul saw the shamefaced glances of men who knew him shift his way. He

looked down at the ground angrily. He didn't want these men pitying him.

But an image of burned and scattered flesh and bones reared up suddenly

in his mind. It struck at him like a rattlesnake. He almost threw up. He

clenched his fists and held himself rigid.

One man called out, "Colonel Taylor, that's why we don't want to cross

the state line. The Indians are attacking all over the place, and we

want to be back home to protect our people."

Taylor nodded. "That's understandable. But I've been fighting Indians

for a long time. I came up against old Black Hawk nearly twenty years

ago in the war against the British. I've got a score to settle with him,

because he whipped me then, and I promise you he will not whip _us_ this

time. Yes, that's wild country up there, no doubt about it. But we'll

have a band of Potawatomi scouts led by one of their chiefs, Billy

Caldwell, to guide us. And General Winfield Scott is coming across the

Great Lakes with five hundred more Federal troops. With all that help,

we'll finish Black Hawk.

"And we must finish him. The murders and massacres will not stop as long

as Black Hawk and his tribe are on the loose. If you go back to your

farms and settlements, there'll be a dozen of you in one place and

twenty in another. And one morning or night you'll find yourself facing

a war party of a hundred, hundred fifty braves, like the people at Apple

River and Victor did. Our strength is in our numbers, and while we are

three thousand and more together, we've got to seek out the British Band

of the Sauk and Fox and destroy them."

Raoul heard a murmur of assent. His heart lifted. The little colonel was

winning them over, and the war would go on.

"In plain English, gentlemen and fellow citizens, my orders from

Washington City are to pursue Black Hawk wherever he goes, and to take

the Illinois militia with me. I mean to do both. Now, there are the

flatboats drawn up on the shore." He paused, then slid down from his

perch on the barrel and, standing very straight, pointed over their

heads. "And here are Uncle Sam's men, drawn up behind you on the

prairie."

Taylor was so short that only the men near him could see where he was

pointing. They turned first, and then in an ever-widening ring the men

in the farther reaches of the crowd turned to look at the long,

blue-clad line stretched behind them like a chain.

Raoul heard resignation in the militiamen's voices.

"Boys, I'm for the flatboats."

"Me too. I signed up to fight Injuns, not Americans."

A man called out, "Hell, Colonel, we're _all_ Uncle Sam's men."

Taylor smiled, reached up to settle his mottled hat on his head, and

said, "Then I will be proud to lead you."

He strode through the assembly.

At the edge of the crowd he turned and raised his voice. "Officers,

assemble your men. We'll take the troops over first, then the horses. I

want everyone on the other side by noon."

Taylor walked over to Raoul, squinted at him and sniffed audibly.

"You look like the backside of hell, sir. You been drinking this early

in the day?"

"I haven't touched whiskey this morning," Raoul said, not adding that it

was only because when he woke up all the jugs in his tent were empty.

"Well, then you were drinking damned late last night. Appearing in front

of these unruly men looking like a sot is no way to get them to obey

you."

Raoul eyed the short colonel's mismatched uniform parts and wondered

where he got the gall to criticize. But he wanted to be on this man's

good side.

"My wife and two sons were murdered by the redskins. At Victor. They've

been dead for two weeks, and I just found out about it last night."

Taylor reached out and gripped his arm. "Damn! I am sorry, Colonel de

Marion. I should have realized you might have lost loved ones there.

I'll see that _you_ get leave to go home."

Back to Victor? Raoul trembled at the thought of having to see the ruins

of Victoire and the town--the graves of Clarissa and Phil and Andy.

Having to face people who, like Eli, might believe that he put them in

harm's way. Besides, he had a mission to carry out. Kill Indians. And

there were no Indians to kill in Victor now.

"No, Colonel, no," he stammered. "I want to go after Black Hawk's

people. We can't let them get away."

"Nor will we. General Atkinson and I were talking about that just

yesterday--and about you, as it happens. You own a Mississippi

steamboat, don't you?"

Puzzled, Raoul answered, "Yes, the _Victory_. It makes a regular run

from St. Louis to Galena."

"We're certain that if we don't catch up with Black Hawk, wherever he's

hiding up in the Michigan Territory, that he'll try to take his band

west, to the Mississippi. If he gets across it, we'll have a hell of a

time catching him." Taylor's eyes glinted hard as glass marbles. "We are

determined, Colonel, not to allow him to make a successful retreat. We

have to show all the tribes that they can't murder white people and then

light out for Indian country and get off scot-free."

Taylor's words, now that the near-mutiny was over, lifted Raoul's heart.

He had left Victor in April hoping for revenge for Helene and for his

own sufferings of years ago. But now there were more slaughtered

innocents to avenge--and now he had the army of the United States to

help him do it.

"I'll do anything to get those redskins."

"With your ship patrolling the stretch of river where they're likely to

cross, we could be sure that Black Hawk won't escape us."

"You want me to go back and get the _Victory_ ready?" He felt himself

trembling again.

"For now you'll go along with us into the Michigan Territory," Taylor

said. "But if it looks as if Black Hawk is making a run for the

Mississippi, you'll see that we cut them off. The _Victory_, eh? Aptly

named."

Raoul's grieving, vengeful heart rejoiced. When the time came, he'd have

the cannon from the trading post mounted in the bow of the _Victory_.

Then let any damned Indians try to cross the Mississippi. He'd pay them

back for what they did to Victoire.

But he remembered Nicole and Frank coming to him, telling him the

militia was needed to guard Victor. He'd laughed at their fears. If he'd

listened to them, Clarissa and Andy and Phil and those other people

might still be alive. Victoire and Victor would still be standing.

Hadn't he had some hand in bringing death and destruction upon his home?

No, it was all the Indians' doing.

_I'll get you, Black Hawk. If I have to follow you all the way to

Hudson's Bay. There won't be a one of your damned British Band left

alive when I'm done._

He would make them suffer. From this moment on, he had only one thing to

think of and only one thing to do: kill Indians.