BOOK 3

1832

Moon of Strawberries

_June_

18

The Trembling Lands

Redbird thought, _Our land by the Rock River was so good to us, and now

see what we have come to_.

Only starving people tried to make food from cattail seeds and the inner

bark of slippery elm and willow trees.

With a small steel knife Redbird cut cattails, dropping them into a

basket she carried over her arm. It would take thousands of the tiny

seeds, painstakingly picked from the white fuzz and then ground into

meal, to make a little bread that must be shared among five people.

Redbird moved slowly, pushing her swollen belly before her. As much as

her back and her feet hurt, she was determined to spend every day out

foraging until the baby was born. For the baby's sake she had to eat as

much as she could, but she did not want to take that extra portion from

the rest of her family without contributing as much as she could to the

common supply.

She sang as she walked along, asking the Trembling Lands to yield fruits

and berries. She found no fruits or berries, but singing kept her

spirits up, and she thought it helped the others too. Yellow Hair smiled

and nodded to her to show that she liked the song.

Sweat trickled down her back and inside her doeskin dress. Gray clouds

lay heavily over the Trembling Lands, and the air was warm and wet. Even

though the water of the lake was dark and muddy, Redbird was looking

forward to bathing in it.

And she was looking forward to a private talk with Yellow Hair. Yellow

Hair had been with them for many days and nights. It was time she went

to bed with White Bear.

Yellow Hair walked beside her around the edge of the lake. Ahead of them

ran Eagle Feather with a captive pale eyes boy named Woodrow. Iron Knife

had brought Woodrow back from a raid, and White Bear had taken him under

his protection too.

Woodrow, a few years older than Eagle Feather, was darting this way and

that, uprooting plants and throwing them down, tasting berries and

spitting them out. Redbird watched him with amusement. She had already

grown fond of him.

Woodrow said something to Yellow Hair, who smiled and turned to Redbird.

Speaking the pale eyes' tongue slowly, adding the few Sauk words she

knew and using gestures, Yellow Hair managed to explain to Redbird that

Woodrow was unhappy because he did not know what to pick.

"If look good, pick," Redbird said, using the little English White Bear

had taught her. "Not eat. If I say good, then eat."

Woodrow grinned and nodded to Redbird to show he understood. He ran off

after Eagle Feather, who was looking for birds and squirrels to shoot

with his small bow and arrow. Woodrow had been a captive only half as

long as Yellow Hair, but unlike her, he seemed happy with his lot.

Redbird doubted that Eagle Feather and Woodrow would find any squirrels

or birds. Very little that was edible, plant or animal, lived in this

marsh, and over a thousand people had been foraging in the area for more

than a moon. The last time the British Band had eaten well was when Wolf

Paw brought the cattle. And among so many people, those cattle had not

lasted long. Many people were digging in the ground for worms and grubs,

roasting them and eating them in handfuls. Some people were even

secretly killing and eating horses, though Black Hawk had decreed death

for anyone caught doing that.

As for Redbird herself, she felt an emptiness in her belly from the time

she woke till the time she went to sleep, and she found herself wanting

to sleep longer and longer as her strength ebbed away. She worried

constantly that the baby inside her was not getting enough nourishment

and would die or be stunted. The people around her were starting to look

like walking skeletons.

They came to a point of land covered with pale green shrubs thrusting

out into the lake. Redbird called Eagle Feather.

"Go for a swim around the other side of this point and take the pale

eyes boy with you."

Eagle Feather's blue eyes glowed. "Maybe I can shoot a frog."

Once the boys were gone, she said to Yellow Hair, "We take bath." Yellow

Hair smiled gratefully.

As they waded naked into the greenish, murky water, Redbird eyed Yellow

Hair's body, so different from a Sauk woman's. She remembered how

hungrily the braves had stared at Yellow Hair when Wolf Paw's wife

stripped her before the tribe.

Yet it was easy to imagine that such pale skin was a sign of sickness.

Yellow Hair's face and hands were somewhat tan, but every other part of

her was white as milk. Her ribs were showing, a sign of the hunger they

were all suffering. Still, her breasts were round, with pretty pink

nipples. Her legs were long, and her buttocks curved out sharply; those

of Sauk women were flatter. Even though the hair under her arms and

between her legs was light in color, she had an abundance of it, much

more than the fine tufts of black hair Redbird had in those places. She

had undone her braids, and her hair fell like a golden curtain down her

back halfway to her waist.

_What a beautiful creature she is!_

What an evil, stupid thing it would have been if Running Deer and the

others had been allowed to cut her to bits and burn her.

A man might find Yellow Hair's differences from Sauk women attractive. A

man such as White Bear.

She felt no fear that the pale eyes woman would take White Bear away

from her. He showed many times every day, with his looks, with his

movements, with his words, that Redbird, and not Yellow Hair, was first

in his heart.

Redbird waded into the lake until the water was up to her breasts and

her feet were sinking in the ooze. Then she pushed herself forward and

dog-paddled through the reeds. It was wonderful to let the water take

the weight of her belly off her hips and legs, a welcome relief to feel

so cool.

In the night in the wickiup she often heard Yellow Hair moving or

weeping softly. And that meant that Yellow Hair must have heard White

Bear and Redbird loving each other in bed. This was only to be expected.

When families slept all together in lodges and wickiups, the children

early came to know how their parents took pleasure together during the

night, and were unembarrassed when they grew up and their turn came. But

how did the sounds of White Bear and Redbird together make Yellow Hair

feel?

White Bear had said that Yellow Hair had wanted him when he lived among

the pale eyes. And lately Redbird and White Bear had been sleeping apart

on their separate pallets more often, because Redbird, in the discomfort

of the final moon of carrying this baby, rarely wanted White Bear inside

her.

And so Redbird had searched her heart and knew that she was willing to

share her husband with Yellow Hair.

White Bear and Yellow Hair could go to bed with each other.

And should.

It would be good for Yellow Hair if her yearning for White Bear could be

satisfied, at least for a time. The pleasure of mating was a healing

thing. It restored the ill to health, and it made the well strong and

happy.

Redbird could see in Yellow Hair's eyes--such a bright blue--how much

she longed for White Bear. Being close to him, Redbird thought, helped

Yellow Hair forget she was a captive.

Some days ago, not long after White Bear had taken in Woodrow, Redbird

had told White Bear she would not mind if he took Yellow Hair into his

bed. He had laughed and patted her belly and insisted he could wait

until she wanted him again.

Why should he _have_ to wait, when a woman who desired him was right

there in his wickiup?

It was good that she had spoken to him, even though he claimed he did

not want Yellow Hair. At least he knew that if Yellow Hair did come to

him in the night, they both had Redbird's blessing. But she doubted that

Yellow Hair would ever approach White Bear that way. Not without

encouragement.

She stopped swimming, and let her feet down into the mud so that she

stood beside Yellow Hair. Here the water of the lake almost came up to

Redbird's shoulders, but Yellow Hair's breasts were well above it. They

smiled at each other.

Yellow Hair crouched down in the water till it was up to her neck. She

dipped her hair into the water, then lifted her head and squeezed the

water out of her hair with her hands.

The water was good and cool, she said, but she wished she had some soap.

White Bear had explained what soap was, and Redbird smiled and shook

her head. If water would not wash dirt away, a Sauk scrubbed with sand.

As for hair, Redbird left hers braided. Once at the beginning of summer

and once at the end, she felt, was often enough to let water touch her

unbound hair.

Now that she had decided to talk to Yellow Hair, Redbird felt a

tightness in her throat. What if the idea of sharing White Bear made

Yellow Hair angry? Sharing a mate was not, Redbird knew, according to

pale eyes custom.

There was only one way: to begin in spite of her fear.

She said, "You know about woman and man? What they do?" She signed with

her fingers to make her meaning plain, and saw that she had succeeded

when the pale eyes woman's face turned a deep red. Redbird wished Yellow

Hair were standing up in the water, so she could see whether the rest of

her body turned red too.

Yellow Hair said she knew a little about what men and women did, but her

mother had died a long time ago and her father never spoke of such

things.

"You want me teach?" Redbird asked.

Yellow Hair turned red again, looked down at the water and nodded.

So, as they waded back to the shore of the lake, Redbird tried with many

gestures and a few words to teach Yellow Hair, as Sun Woman many summers

ago had taught her. When they were out of the water, Redbird picked up a

stick and drew a little picture on the mudbank. When she was finished,

she giggled. Yellow Hair took a good look and turned red again, all the

way down to her waist, Redbird noticed. She turned away, but Redbird saw

to her relief that she was laughing. Redbird scratched out the picture.

They sat on the bank where they had left their clothing, letting the air

dry their bodies. From a pouch she had brought with her Redbird took a

wood-stoppered gourd containing musk oil. She and Yellow Hair rubbed the

oil on their bodies to keep mosquitoes off.

Yellow Hair wanted to know if the first time with a man hurt very much.

"Some women hurt much. Other women little."

She patted Yellow Hair's wrist to reassure her. "I think you hurt

little. After that, feel very, very good." She patted herself between

her legs to make plain what she was talking about, and Yellow Hair

blushed again.

"_Best_ feeling," Redbird added, smiling. It was surprising, Redbird

thought, that Yellow Hair could become a fully grown woman and yet still

have her first time with a man to look forward to.

They sat in silence for a time, Redbird afraid again because now she had

to take the next step.

But before she could speak, tears began to trickle down Yellow Hair's

cheeks. She spoke brokenly, and it was hard for Redbird to follow her.

She seemed to be saying that she expected to die before she ever knew

those good feelings Redbird talked about with a man she loved. She had

already lived for twenty summers, and now it seemed she might not live

much longer. And never have a man.

It was true. There was big danger to Yellow Hair. If anything happened

to White Bear, she would have no protector. Many Sauk hated pale eyes.

One might get at her. Or her own people might even kill her by mistake.

Yellow Hair had missed so much. So tall and beautiful, but she had

nothing to show for her life--no man, no children. Redbird felt sorry

for her.

"You love White Bear?" she asked, hugging herself as she said the word

"love" to show what she meant.

Now Yellow Hair turned pale--even paler than usual--and drew away from

Redbird. She shook her head violently, her bright golden hair swinging

all wild and loose, and said, "No, no, no!"

But she stared at Redbird too fixedly, and Redbird could see that she

did not mean what she said.

White Bear wanted Yellow Hair, but said he did not want her. Yellow Hair

loved White Bear, but said she did not love him.

White Bear and Yellow Hair were both being foolish. It came of Yellow

Hair being pale eyes and White Bear being part pale eyes.

And so now Redbird took a deep breath and said, "When we sleep tonight,

you go to bed of White Bear. He make you happy."

Yellow Hair's eyes grew huge and her face glowed with a joyous wonder.

She stammered and gasped as she asked Redbird if she really meant it, if

she would really let such a thing happen.

"I happy when you happy, White Bear happy," Redbird said.

Redbird had come to see Yellow Hair as a younger sister who needed her

help and guidance. She liked Yellow Hair much more, in fact, than she

liked either Wild Grape or Robin's Nest. Her sisters had always sneered

at White Bear, and Yellow Hair saw what a fine man he was.

Yellow Hair suddenly looked frightened. She stood up abruptly, picked up

her fringed doeskin dress and struggled into it. When her head appeared

through the neck of the dress and she shook her hair free, she was

crying again.

No, she insisted, she couldn't do that. It would be wrong.

Redbird thought she understood. This hungry, dangerous time was a

terrible time for a woman to be carrying a baby.

"You not want baby? Sun Woman makes tea keeps woman from getting baby."

Yellow Hair talked for a long time. Redbird tried hard to follow what

she said, asking questions and making her repeat herself. It had to do

with Jesus, the pale eyes spirit Pere Isaac always talked about. Jesus

would not like it if Yellow Hair went to bed with White Bear.

Redbird remembered White Bear telling her that Yellow Hair was the

daughter of a pale eyes shaman. The Jesus spirit might be a special

spirit for her, then.

_But I am also the daughter of a shaman. I can teach her what we

believe._

"Jesus not here," Redbird pointed out. "We children of Earthmaker."

But also, Yellow Hair explained, by pale eyes custom a woman who slept

with another woman's husband was a bad woman.

"White Bear _is_ your husband," Redbird said. "My father shaman. He

marry you and White Bear." Surely that was more important than what a

lot of pale eyes who were not even here to see might think. Among the

Sauk, many would call Yellow Hair a bad woman for _not_ sleeping with

White Bear.

"We Sauk people. What you do with my Sauk man is good."

Yellow Hair sighed and wiped her tears with her fingers. Maybe she would

go to White Bear in the night, and maybe not. She spread her hands

helplessly. She did not know what to do.

Redbird saw that she could tell Yellow Hair no more. The pale eyes would

have to make up her own mind.

Yellow Hair gave Redbird a sad smile and thanked her for her kindness.

And after Redbird had put on her dress and her moccasins, Yellow Hair

gave her a little kiss on the cheek.

With a wooden comb Redbird had given her, Yellow Hair combed out her

long blond locks and began to braid them again.

They rejoined Eagle Feather and Woodrow and spent the rest of the

afternoon searching for food, returning to camp when the clouds overhead

turned purple and the sun made a brief appearance, blazing like a

prairie fire on the flat horizon of the marshland.

Redbird bit her lip anxiously as they walked back to the camp. If Yellow

Hair decided not to go to bed with White Bear, she might think,

according to her pale eyes custom, that Redbird was a bad woman for

saying she should. But what if Yellow Hair went to bed with White Bear

and he came to love Yellow Hair more than he did Redbird? She had

thought that could not happen, but now that she had spoken out, she was

not so sure.

That night Redbird curled up on her solitary pallet of blankets laid

over a mat of reeds on one side of the wickiup. Yellow Hair lay in her

sleeping place, and the boys were in the one they shared. White Bear was

still visiting and treating ill people. Many people, especially the very

old and the very young, were falling ill in the Trembling Lands. There

had been many deaths since they crossed the Great River. Bit by bit the

band was losing the wisdom of the old and the promise of the young.

White Bear came in long after the two women and the boys had settled

down for the night. He went to his own pallet on the east side of the

wickiup.

Now that Redbird was ready for sleep, the baby within her woke up, and

its kicking, along with burning feelings that rose from her stomach to

her throat, kept her awake.

The stillness was disturbed only by the chirping of countless frogs.

_Where were those frogs today when we were looking for food? We must ask

the Frog spirit to let us catch some of them._

Then she heard another movement. Someone was crawling across the

reed-covered floor of the wickiup. She caught her breath. Yellow Hair's

sleeping place was on the side opposite White Bear's, and the movement

was unmistakably from her bed to his.

A little later she heard other sounds that were also easy to

recognize--the crackling of a bed's reed matting, whispers, little gasps

and groans, loud, fast breathing.

Yellow Hair's cry of pain sounded as if it had come through clenched

teeth. She still did not want anyone to know. Redbird smiled to herself.

As she listened to White Bear's heavy panting, Redbird remembered the

sharp pain inside her when she first received him on the island near

Saukenuk.

White Bear sighed loudly, and then everything was still for a time, and

Redbird heard the frogs once more. They were probably mating too. How

wise of Earthmaker to make his creatures into woman and man, so they

could give each other such wonderful pleasure. Earthmaker knew

everything, but it was hard to see how he could have invented man and

woman without having seen something that gave him the idea.

Him? Redbird had always pictured Earthmaker as a man, a giant warrior,

but now she wondered whether the spirit that gave life to the world and

all things in it might be a she. Or, better yet, maybe there were two

Earthmakers, a he and a she.

As she had so many times before, she wished now that the tribe's custom

would permit her to become a shaman, so that she might see into these

mysteries with her own eyes, as White Bear and Owl Carver had.

The sounds started up again from White Bear's bed, the movements, the

whisperings. Redbird thought about how good it was to have her man

filling her solidly, giving her delicious feelings as he moved in and

out. And she felt herself warm with desire.

She smiled ruefully in the dark.

_Now I want him and I cannot have him, because I sent Yellow Hair to his

bed._

_I hope this baby will be born soon, so I can lie with White Bear again.

Of course, even then I will still let Yellow Hair have him, sometimes._

When Redbird awoke at sunrise and got up to begin the day's foraging,

Yellow Hair was back sleeping in her own place. In the faint light that

filtered through the wickiup's elm-bark skin, her pink mouth looked soft

and childlike.

White Bear was seated cross-legged on his bed, loading the rifle he had

brought with him when he came back to the tribe. With food so short,

even the shaman had to go out and try to hunt to supply his family; the

people he treated had no gifts to give him. She stood looking at him,

waiting for him to speak to her, but he kept his eyes on his rifle with

foolish shyness.

Did he think she was angry at him, or that she was going to tease him,

the way Water Flows Fast might?

Poor Water Flows Fast--she made few jokes since her husband, Three

Horses, was killed at Old Man's Creek.

Redbird said, "I know what happened last night. I am glad that it

happened. It was good for her and for you."

Now White Bear's dark eyes met hers, troubled. "Yes, it is good for me

and Nancy--Yellow Hair--but only for now."

"What troubles you?" she asked him.

"One day, when Yellow Hair must leave us and go back to her own people,

I think she will be very sad. That is why I did not lie with her when

she wanted me to at Victor. I knew we would have to part."

"Now she has what she wants, at least for as long as she stays with us.

Now she will have something to think about besides how afraid she is."

He smiled at her. "And you made it happen. I know that you sent her to

me. You are a great troublemaker."

He stood up and stroked her cheek with his fingertips, and she felt a

glow inside, certain now that speaking to Yellow Hair had been right.

* * * * *

The afternoon sun heated the interior of the birthing wickiup till it

felt like a sweat lodge.

Redbird screamed. It was not a baby; it was a wild horse down there,

kicking its way out. She felt about to faint.

The pain died away. Groaning, Redbird went limp between Wind Bends Grass

and Yellow Hair, who held her arms. Sun Woman crouched before Redbird,

observing the progress of the birth by the light of a single candle.

Her skin slick with sweat, Redbird was squatting naked over a pile of

blankets in the center of the wickiup. Her back and legs ached

unbearably.

"You don't have to scream so loud," Wind Bends Grass said abruptly. "It

doesn't hurt that much."

Redbird wished her mother could feel this pain and know how much it

hurt. She felt like telling Wind Bends Grass to leave the birthing

wickiup.

Sun Woman said gently, "No one knows how much another person hurts."

_I don't remember this much pain when Eagle Feather was born. Maybe I am

going to die._

Sun Woman stood up and wiped Redbird's forehead with a cool, wet

kerchief, then cleaned her bottom for her, where a little blood was

dripping.

"I can see the top of the baby's head," Sun Woman said. "It will be a

good birth. You are almost done now."

Redbird looked up at the mare's tail, dyed red, that hung over the

wickiup doorway, medicine to make the birth go easier.

_Let it be over soon_, she prayed. Her pains had started at dawn, and

now it was past midday. Sun Woman had used up four candles, and in the

whole band there were hardly any candles left. It had not taken this

long with Eagle Feather.

Yellow Hair rubbed the arm she was holding, and Redbird managed to look

at her and smile. Though Redbird had meant to honor Yellow Hair by

asking her to help here, she was not sure now that she had done the

right thing. The pale eyes woman's face was icy white, and she kept

biting her lips as if trying to keep from being sick. She had probably

never seen anything like this before.

Wind Bends Grass had insisted that it was bad luck to have Yellow Hair

present, but Redbird had ignored her.

The next pain came, and Redbird, to show her mother how much it hurt,

screamed even louder and longer than she had to. This time the pain gave

her hardly any rest before it came again. And another came stepping on

its heels. And another.

Her screams were continuous now, and she was hoarse and coughing and did

not have to pretend. Her eyes were blind with tears. She dug her nails

into the arms of Wind Bends Grass and Yellow Hair and bent forward,

pushing as hard as she could.

She felt the enormous mass breaking out of her, and found her voice

again in a scream that could split the very sky open even as the baby

was tearing her in two.

Her ears rang. She felt broken and useless, like an empty eggshell. She

hurt terribly, but a great weight was gone from inside her.

Wind Bends Grass said, "You have done well, my daughter."

Redbird started to cry, from pain, from relief, and because she had

finally pleased her mother.

From the floor she heard a tiny cough, and then a drawn-out wail. She

looked down and saw the little bright red figure in Sun Woman's arms,

its eyes screwed shut, its mouth wide open, at the joining of its legs

the life-giving crevice. A glistening blue cord coiling up from the

baby's belly joined her still to Redbird's body.

She felt another pain now, and pushed out the afterbirth with a groan.

Wind Bends Grass and Yellow Hair helped her to stumble to the bed

against the wall of the wickiup. They wrapped her in a light blanket,

while Sun Woman cut the cord and set it aside to be dried and put in the

baby's medicine bag. Then Wind Bends Grass bathed the tiny body first

with water, then with oil. She put her granddaughter in her daughter's

arms.

"What will you call her?" she asked.

Redbird had thought of a name in the lake where she and Yellow Hair had

been bathing several days ago. "I will call her Floating Lily."

"A good name," Sun Woman said.

Floating Lily's voice was strong. Hungry already, and she had only been

in the world a few moments. Redbird pressed the little mouth against her

breast. She prayed that she would have milk. She had eaten as much as

she could; now she must give nourishment.

She felt the rhythmic pull on her breast. The baby's mouth was full of

milk; no more crying. A warm feeling spread through Redbird's body.

After Redbird had fed Floating Lily, they both slept. It was near

sundown when the three women attending her helped her limp with the baby

back to her own wickiup. Each time she took a step it felt as if a club

hit her between her legs, but her heart rejoiced that the ordeal was

over.

Yellow Hair said that she would go and look for Woodrow and Eagle

Feather. She was crying. Redbird was not sure why.

In the wickiup, White Bear was waiting for her. As she lay on her bed

with Floating Lily, his eyes lit up with joy at the sight of his

daughter. He picked the baby up, which made her cry, and he laughed and

handed her back to Redbird.

"I was not with you to see our son born," he said. "I have never been

happier in my life than I am at this moment."

The hide curtain over the wickiup doorway was pulled aside and Owl

Carver entered, holding his owl's head medicine stick in one hand and a

bowl of smoking aromatic herbs and wood shavings in another. His white

hair was getting thinner and thinner, Redbird noticed, and he walked

with a permanent stoop. He blew the smoke over Redbird and Floating Lily

to bless them.

"May she walk her path with honor," he said, laying his hand on Floating

Lily's head. He left, the scented smoke lingering behind him.

When Redbird bared her breast, White Bear leaned over and kissed her

nipple, his lips catching a droplet of milk that had formed there. She

put Floating Lily to her breast and lay in contented silence with her

husband sitting beside her.

He took up his book and read aloud:

"Whence Hail to thee,

Eve, rightly called Mother of all Mankind,

Mother of all things living, since by thee

Man is to live, and all things live for Man."

"What does that mean?" she asked.

He translated the words into Sauk, and said, "It means that all life

comes from woman."

Iron Knife's head suddenly appeared in the doorway, his eyes wide, his

mouth drawn down.

"White Bear! Long knives coming this way, thousands of them."

Redbird's body went cold, and she clutched the baby to her. How could

she keep this tender new life safe in the midst of flight and fighting?

"Maybe they will not be able to find us," White Bear said.

"No, the scouts say they have Potawatomi guides riding with them, who

know where to look for us. Potawatomi dogs! To side with the long knives

against us."

"The Potawatomi must have been forced to help," said White Bear quietly.

Iron Knife said, "Black Hawk says we must break camp right now. We will

head west as quickly as we can toward the Great River."

Redbird tightened her arms around Floating Lily until the baby cried out

in pain. Instantly she relaxed her grip, but in her mind she saw the

long knives coming, with their cruel, hairy faces, murdering them all

with their guns and their swords. She saw the people she loved sprawled

dead in the mud of the Trembling Lands. White Bear had told her that

Black Hawk's war parties had killed many pale eyes, even women and

children. Now the long knives would take terrible vengeance. Even as she

stroked the baby and whispered to soothe her, her heart pounded in her

chest.

There would be hard traveling ahead and even less food, thought Redbird.

Trying to walk after just giving birth, the pain would kill her.

For an instant she hated Black Hawk for having led them into this

suffering. If only the British Band had listened last winter to White

Bear. And to her. Then hatred gave way to sick despair. She would die

before they ever reached the Great River. And Floating Lily, who had

just come into the world, would die too.

Iron Knife left them. White Bear turned to Redbird, and she saw in his

eyes the same hopelessness she felt. But if he gave up, too, they were

truly lost. Why, then, go through the agony of a flight from the long

knives? They might as well stay here and let the long knives come and

kill them.

White Bear said, "The Turtle told me, 'The many who follow Black Hawk

across the Great River will be few when they cross back.'" A chill went

through her as she saw how those prophetic words were coming true.

The little bundle in Redbird's arms stirred. Anger rose in her. Despite

Black Hawk's blundering, despite the deadly hatred of the long knives,

she and her husband and her son and her baby daughter would not let

themselves be killed.

"Then if we do not cross the Great River we will escape in some other

direction," she said firmly. "Go and find Eagle Feather and Woodrow. I

will start to pack our belongings."

He smiled gratefully at her, reached for her and held her. She felt

herself gaining strength from his strong arms around her.

"For a few days I will not be able to walk or ride. You will have to tie

me to a travois and pull me along, as we do with old people."

"If I have to carry you in my arms," said White Bear, "I will do that."

Now that she was determined to fight to stay alive, she smiled up at

White Bear and pressed herself against him. She _was_ love. The power of

a great spirit, perhaps that she-Earthmaker she had once thought of,

filled her.

The Turtle, she thought, had said that many would die. But he had also

said that a few would live.

She and her husband and her children, they would live.

19

The Band Divided

The setting sun, warming the flat land at the foot of a hill beside the

Great River, cast deep shadows in the hollows of Redbird's and Nancy's

faces. How thin they were getting to be. Fear for them wriggled

snakelike through White Bear's own empty stomach.

_Has Earthmaker abandoned his people? No--worse--this is the fate he has

chosen for us. He bestows evil as well as good on his children._

Redbird said wearily, "What did the council decide?" She unfastened the

sling in which she carried Floating Lily on her back and cradled the

baby in her arms, frowning into the tiny brown face. White Bear knew

what she was thinking. Floating Lily was too quiet.

White Bear said, "Black Hawk wants to go north and seek refuge with the

Chippewa. He took the compass my father gave him out of his medicine bag

and showed it to the chiefs and braves. He said we must follow its arrow

north. But Iron Knife disagreed with him."

Redbird's eyes widened. "My brother never disagrees with Black Hawk.

Black Hawk has lived three times as long as he has."

"Iron Knife spoke for many of the younger braves," White Bear said.

"They want to cross the Great River here, now, and bring the war to an

end. Black Hawk reminded them that we have only three canoes. Each canoe

can hold only six people, and two of those six must paddle back and

forth. They would have to ferry nearly a thousand people. He said the

long knives would reach us long before we all got across. Iron Knife

said they would make rafts and more canoes. In the end the three chiefs

and most of the braves said they would cross the river. Only a few have

agreed to go north with Black Hawk."

It had taken a whole moon to cross from east to west, from their camp in

the Trembling Lands to this place where the Bad Axe River emptied into

the Great River. The land through which they passed, following an old

Winnebago trail, was rolling prairie at first. Then they plunged into

country that was ever wilder and more mountainous as they struggled

westward. At the last they had to cut their own trail. They marked their

passage with kettles, blankets, tent poles and other possessions too

heavy to carry--and their dying old people who could walk no more, and

their dead children. The only good thing about this rugged land was that

it slowed down the long knives even more than it did Black Hawk's

people, who knew by the time they reached the Great River that their

pursuers were two days behind them.

White Bear told Nancy in English what he had just told Redbird about the

council.

"If the band is dividing, where will _we_ go?" Nancy asked.

"I asked Black Hawk--I begged him--to let you and Woodrow go." Anger

crept into White Bear's voice as he recalled Black Hawk's stubbornness.

"He still refuses. He wants to take the two of you north with him."

Redbird said, "But pale eyes prisoners are no good to Black Hawk now."

White Bear was pleased to see that she had learned to get the drift of

English conversations between him and Nancy. He did not like to feel

that he was leaving Redbird out of anything, especially since he _knew_

Nancy now.

"True," White Bear said to Redbird in Sauk. "And if we meet up with long

knives again they will shoot first and not think to look for pale eyes

among us. I want to get Yellow Hair and Woodrow away from the tribe

before there is another battle."

There had been one great battle with the long knives halfway through

their trek, on the south shore of the Ouisconsin River. Many had died on

both sides, but Black Hawk had managed to get most of his people away

after nightfall. Right now White Bear could almost hear the huge army of

long knives crashing through the forests behind them.

But Nancy shook her head violently. "I feel safer with you." Her eyes

glistened with tears.

Ever since Redbird had encouraged Nancy to seek his bed, White Bear had

feared that when the time came for their parting, it would hurt her

badly.

And him as well. In the moon just past he and Nancy had joined bodies

and hearts many times. Now it seared his throat to speak aloud his

decision that Nancy must leave the British Band.

He sat down on a fallen tree trunk and reached out to her. Nancy came

over and took his hands and sat beside him.

"With the band going in two different directions, this is your best

chance to get away. You and I have loved each other, but you are still a

white woman, and my people murdered your father. Why should you share

our fate? And what about Woodrow? If you and he go together, you have a

better chance of reaching safety."

She bent over, her shoulders shaking with sobs. "If you're going to die,

I want to die with you."

A moon ago, he thought, she had desperately wanted to escape from the

British Band. Now her own heart was holding her captive.

Eve's words to Adam as they left Paradise rose unbidden in his mind:

_With thee to go, is to stay here; without thee here to stay, is to go

hence unwilling._

"But no one wants to die," he said gently. "For you to stay now when you

can escape would be madness."

It was a madness he felt himself. There was a part of him that wanted to

keep her with him, to let her stay, however all this might end. He had

to force himself to keep to his plan to help her get away.

Eagle Feather and Woodrow came from the woods along the south bank of

the Bad Axe River, arms loaded with boughs for the wickiup that now they

would not bother to build.

White Bear squatted down before Woodrow and grasped his shoulders.

"Tonight I am going to help you and Miss Nancy to get away from our band

and back to the white people." He would be sorry to lose the boy.

Eagle Feather, standing nearby, said nothing. But his face, full of woe,

told White Bear that he understood.

"I guess Miss Nancy and me could find our way to white folks if we

follow the river," Woodrow said uncertainly. With the beaded headband

Iron Knife had given him wrapped around his high forehead, and his face

browned by the summer sun, he looked like a Sauk boy, except for his

light brown hair. He seemed not much happier about leaving the band than

Nancy.

"I'm not going to send you to find your way alone," White Bear said.

"I'll go with you until I see you in safe hands. Prairie du Chien and

Fort Crawford are south of here on the river. If we go in that direction

we're bound to meet some of your people."

"I got no people but you," said Woodrow. "You treated me better than my

folks ever did."

White Bear felt a catch in his throat. He remembered how, seven years

ago, he had fought against being sent from the tribe when Star Arrow

came looking for him.

Eagle Feather's blue eyes rested gravely on White Bear. "What about

Mother and Floating Lily and me? Are we going to cross the Great River

now?"

White Bear remembered again what the Turtle had said in his vision. He

looked out at the river, tinged with red by the sunset, and felt a

chill. Calamity, his shaman's sense told him, awaited those who tried to

escape by crossing the river again.

"No." White Bear looked over at Redbird, who held Floating Lily to her

breast. "Day after tomorrow at the latest, the long knives will be here.

I want you to go with Black Hawk. Though I think Black Hawk has led us

unwisely, still, to go north is safer. Three lodges, about fifty people,

are going with Black Hawk. Owl Carver, Flying Cloud, Wolf Paw--they will

follow him."

He shook his head sadly.

"What is it?" Redbird asked.

"Even Wolf Paw disagrees with Black Hawk about going north. He himself

will remain at his father's side, but he is sending his two wives and

his children across the river. He thinks they will be safer. I think he

is wrong."

He gazed out at the reddened river and shook his head again.

"Wolf Paw made the right choice for his family," said a deep voice

behind him. White Bear turned to see Iron Knife's huge figure,

silhouetted by the setting sun. Behind him trudged a much smaller shadow

whom White Bear recognized at once--Sun Woman.

White Bear hurried to his mother, put his arm around her shoulders and

led her to the fallen tree to sit down. He could feel her bones under

her doeskin dress.

"How is my mother?"

She patted his hand. "Very tired. But alive."

"Are you hungry?"

"One good thing about getting old is that I do not want as much food."

White Bear felt immediate relief that they did not have to share their

few boiled roots and their bits of meal cake, and then he hated himself

for begrudging food to his own mother.

_Getting old_, she had said. She was not an old woman. From what she had

told him, he guessed her age was less than fifty summers. But the woman

before him was terribly gaunt and stooped. The privations of the moons

just past had aged her beyond her years.

He felt a stone block his throat as he realized that his mother might

not have much longer to live.

Iron Knife bent down and hugged Redbird, then patted Woodrow's head with

a big hand while the boy looked up at him with shining eyes. It was Iron

Knife, leading the war party that had captured Woodrow, who had insisted

the boy be allowed to live.

Like everyone else in the band, Iron Knife was mostly brown skin

stretched over a skeleton, but his was a very big skeleton, a head

taller than White Bear's. Studying Iron Knife, White Bear wondered

whether he could ask his help in getting Woodrow and Nancy safely away.

Iron Knife said, "There is no safety in following Black Hawk. He said

the British and the Potawatomi and Winnebago would join forces with us,

and they did not. Now he says the Chippewa will help us. He is sure to

be wrong again. And before he gets to the Chippewa he must travel

through Winnebago country for many days, and now most of the Winnebago

are helping the long knives hunt us."

Sun Woman said, "Black Hawk knows that if we join the rest of the tribe

in Ioway, he will no longer be leader. No doubt those who accepted He

Who Moves Alertly as their chief have prospered as much as we have

suffered. Black Hawk will have to take second place to He Who Moves

Alertly. That sticks in his throat like a fishbone. He would rather lead

us on and on until we all die."

White Bear had to force his voice from a chest tight with urgency. "You

will not have time to build enough canoes and rafts before the long

knives are upon you."

And the heads of the long knives would be full of names like Kellogg's

Grove, Old Man's Creek, Apple River Fort, Indian Creek and Victor, and

their hearts would be ravenous for revenge.

Iron Knife sat down on the tree trunk beside Sun Woman and pointed at

the river. "If they attack us before we can cross, we can defend

ourselves on that island."

White Bear followed Iron Knife's gesture. The sun had just set behind

the western hills, and the Great River now reflected a pale blue back at

the sky. A long, low island covered with spruce and hemlock trees bulked

darkly an arrow's flight from shore. White Bear shivered. His shaman's

senses told him that this was a place of grief and horror, an isle of

death. He did not like the name of this river at whose mouth they were

camped--the Bad Axe.

Trying to ignore the rapid thudding of his heart, White Bear readied

himself to talk to Iron Knife about Woodrow and Nancy. He hated having

to reveal his plan. If Iron Knife was against letting the two pale eyes

escape, all would be lost. He opened his mouth, hesitating.

But he needed Iron Knife's help getting horses and avoiding the warriors

guarding the camp. He reminded himself that Redbird's brother had always

given him help when he needed it. He decided to go ahead and talk to

him.

He said, "It would not be good for Yellow Hair and the boy to cross the

river or to go with Black Hawk. I have taken them into my care, and now

I am afraid for them. If there is a battle, the long knives may kill

them by mistake."

Iron Knife grunted. "I would be sorry to see that happen."

White Bear's heartbeat steadied. He felt more sure of himself now.

He took a deep breath and said, "I have been thinking of helping them to

get away."

Iron Knife smiled at White Bear, reached across Sun Woman and patted his

knee. "That is well."

"It honors you, my son," said Sun Woman.

White Bear felt knots released in his chest and shoulders. "I was hoping

you would see this as I see it."

"I will offer to watch the horses tonight," Iron Knife said. "Come when

you are ready, and I will have three picked for you."

Sun Woman said, "If the long knives see you with Yellow Hair and the

boy, they will try to shoot you."

White Bear put an arm around her bony shoulders and pulled her to him.

"There is danger all around us, Mother. I think those who follow Black

Hawk to the north will be safest. Redbird and the children will go that

way. I think you should too. Do not try to cross the Great River."

"I have walked enough," said Sun Woman. "My legs ache and my feet are

bruised. If I follow Black Hawk, I will end like the old people who sit

down by the trail and wait for death."

"I speak as a shaman," White Bear said. "I have a bad feeling about this

river crossing."

Sun Woman stood up. "And I speak as a medicine woman. I have seen many

kinds of death, and I would rather drown or be shot than die little by

little of hunger and weariness."

White Bear hugged his mother again. "I know we will meet again in the

West," he said. That, as they both knew, could mean across the river or

at the other end of the Trail of Souls.

Sun Woman said, "My son, you have made my heart glad. Every day of your

life you have walked your path with courage and honor. May you walk the

same way always."

Redbird held Sun Woman and Iron Knife, each in turn, for a long time.

And after they had gone, White Bear and Redbird went together into the

thick woods along the edge of the Great River.

Away from the others, White Bear became aware of the shrill chirping of

choirs of crickets filling the night air. Mosquitoes shrilled around his

ears and stung his hands and face. He and Redbird had long since used up

the oil that kept them off. But the scratches and bruises of the trail

of hardship they had walked these past moons had toughened their skins

and their spirits so that mosquito stings meant little.

White Bear found a clear spot in the midst of a stand of young maples,

and they lay down side by side. He put his hand on her breast, fuller

than he had ever felt it, swollen with milk for Floating Lily. She

slipped her dress down off her shoulders and let him touch her bare

flesh. Very gently, knowing it was tender from nursing, he caressed her

nipple with his fingertips.

"Before I leave tonight I will give you the deerhorn-handled dagger my

father gave me," he said softly. "I must go unarmed, so that the long

knives will not kill me if they catch me. Keep it for me till I come

back."

"I am afraid," she whispered. "When you and Yellow Hair and Woodrow are

gone, Black Hawk will know you helped them escape. What will he do to

you when you come back?"

"By the time I return to you, he will not be angry. He will realize he

did not really need them."

And then, too, White Bear might be captured or killed. The last time he

had gone to the long knives they had nearly killed him. The sight of

Little Crow's head bursting, blood flying everywhere as Armand

Perrault's bullet smashed it, would never leave his memory.

If that happened to him, Black Hawk's anger would not matter.

Redbird wriggled closer to him, her hand stroking his chest as his

stroked hers. "I do not think any Sauk warrior would be willing to steal

prisoners away from his chief. I think you do this because you have

lived so long with pale eyes."

White Bear felt desire for her swelling in him. They had coupled twice

only since Floating Lily was born. He pulled her skirt up so he could

stroke her belly and the smooth insides of her thighs.

"From what I saw among the pale eyes," he said, knowing a bitterness

even as he sought the joy of Redbird, "they are more obedient to their

chiefs than we are. And though it makes our hearts weep, if our people

are not to disappear, we must learn to obey our leaders as the pale eyes

do. But this night I must disobey our war chief."

"We must change," said Redbird. "But if we become like the pale eyes it

will be the same as disappearing." Then she whispered, "Oh!" as his

touch in a warm, moist place pleased her.

She loosened his loincloth, and his breathing quickened as her

fingertips played awhile with him; then she grasped his hard flesh

firmly. He sighed as he felt her fingers squeezing him. He should save

his strength, he thought, because he would be awake and traveling all

night, and probably all day tomorrow, with Nancy and Woodrow. But he and

Redbird might never be together like this again. He rolled over on top

of her and let her small, gentle hand guide him into her as he groaned

aloud with the pleasure of it.

* * * * *

A tiny sliver of a new moon had risen just above the hills on this side

of the river. White Bear, Nancy and Woodrow made their way south of the

band's camp to a meadow in a hollow between hills.

Here the band had turned out their few remaining horses to graze and

sleep. From the north end of the camp, beside the Bad Axe River, came

the sound of men's voices and the light of fires. Men were stripping the

bark from elm trees to make simple canoes and tying driftwood logs

together to make rafts.

White Bear, Nancy and Woodrow worked their way around the edge of the

meadow. The horses were dark shapes standing quietly. White Bear could

hear Nancy stifle a sob every now and then. She had been crying all

evening.

He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her close and tell her she

did not have to leave him. He was the cause of her pain and could do

nothing about it. He could, possibly, save her life, but he could not

make her happy.

A tall shadow suddenly stood in his path.

"I have three horses ready for you," said Iron Knife. "I even found

saddles, to make it easier for you to ride. They belonged to men who

died at the Ouisconsin River battle."

White Bear had been carrying the rifle and powder horn Frank had given

him. He thrust them at Iron Knife.

"I want you to have this rifle. A pale eyes uncle of mine--a good

uncle--gave it to me. If I meet the long knives now, a rifle will not

help me."

Iron Knife took the rifle and slung the horn over his shoulder. "May the

spirit of the Great River watch over you."

His heart aching, White Bear opened his mouth, wanting to tell Iron

Knife again to go with Black Hawk, not to stay here at the mouth of the

Bad Axe. But he knew Iron Knife's mind was made up. Redbird's brother

was strong, not only in body, but in doing what he had decided.

Instead of speaking, White Bear reached up and grasped Iron Knife's

broad shoulders and squeezed hard.

* * * * *

White Bear, Nancy and Woodrow led their horses quietly along the

riverbank, finding places where the shrubbery was thin enough to allow

passage. White Bear kept glancing over his shoulder, and when he could

no longer see the band's fires to the north he whispered to Nancy and

Woodrow to mount.

He let his horse find its own path beside the rippling water. Many

times as they rode southward he caught himself dozing off, fatigued not

only by exertion and lack of sleep but by hunger. He watched the

thumbnail-shaped moon slide across the sky over the river. As it sank in

the west he called a halt and told Nancy and Woodrow they could rest

till sunup.

They tied their horses to saplings and crawled in under the boughs of a

big spruce tree. Woodrow fell asleep at once, but Nancy crept into White

Bear's arms.

By her movements she told him that she wanted him.

"Forgive me," he said. "I am so tired." She stroked his cheek

reassuringly. But her face against his was tear-wet.

She fell asleep with her head on his chest.

Daylight and a loud chorus of birdsong woke them. Soon after they

started riding, they passed through an empty village of bark-covered

lodges, Winnebago he was sure, beside the river. Winnebago friends of

Black Hawk had said that the long knives had ordered all Winnebago to

camp within sight of the forts to show that they were not helping Black

Hawk.

A clear trail led south from the village along the riverbank, and White

Bear, Nancy and Woodrow rode along it. By the end of the day they should

be near the settlement of Prairie du Chien and the long knives' Fort

Crawford.

When the sun was high over the river, White Bear heard a sound that sent

fear rustling down his back--the drawn-out shouts of long knife leaders

calling orders. The cries came from somewhere to the south.

With horror, he saw it at once in his mind: One long knife army coming

from the east. Now another marching up from the south. Both heading for

the mouth of the Bad Axe where the people were trying desperately to get

across the river.

A little later he heard the rumble of many hooves.

He wanted to turn and gallop back to warn the band. They had no notion

that this second army, much closer to them, was coming.

Nancy said, "You'd better leave us here. They'll shoot at you."

Fear for himself and for his people tempted him to agree, but he firmly

shook his head.

"I must stay with you until I'm sure you're safe. It is a matter only of

minutes."

Soon White Bear glimpsed the Stars and Stripes fluttering among distant

trees and the noon sun glittering on brass buttons. Federal troops. At a

clear spot on the trail, where Nancy and Woodrow would be visible from a

distance, he called a halt.

"You two stay on the trail. Nancy, pull your braids around to the front

so they can see your blond hair. Woodrow, take that headband off. You

want to make sure they see that you're white. Just hold your horses

still, and when you see the first soldiers, raise your hands above your

heads. And call out to them in English."

_Oh, Earthmaker, keep them safe._ This was the best he could do for

them.

Nancy kissed him hard on the mouth.

"I love you so much," she said, her voice breaking. "And I know I'll

never see you again. Go on, get away from here!"

White Bear led his horse back into the woods between the river and the

bluffs. He tied the horse and then crept back through the shrubbery to

watch Nancy and Woodrow.

Terrified by the thought that he might see them shot down before his

eyes by careless soldiers, he held his breath.

He heard hoofbeats approaching at the gallop.

He heard Nancy cry, "Help us, please! We're white people!"

_Good._

Two men wearing tall, cylindrical black shakoes and blue jackets with

white crossbelts rode up to Nancy and Woodrow, who lowered their hands.

After a brief conversation, all four rode off down the trail.

In a burst of relief, White Bear let his breath out. For a moment he

could not move, so limp had his fear for Nancy and Woodrow left him. He

whispered a prayer of thanks to Earthmaker.

He crept back to his horse and walked it till he found a deer track the

horse could follow, then mounted and trotted northward.

He was back riding on the trail when an arrow, thrumming, buried its

head in the dirt just in front of him. It startled him so that he nearly

fell out of the saddle. He reined in his horse.

Men on horseback emerged from the trees ahead of him. They rode toward

him silently, five of them. Two pointed rifles at him, the other three

bows and arrows. They were red men, but wore pale eyes' shirts and

trousers. Their hair was long, bound by brightly colored sashcloth

bands, and they grew it full, not shaving part of their heads as most

Sauk men did.

He sighed and held his hands out from his sides to show that they were

empty. The Winnebago could have shot him off his horse without warning,

so he supposed they meant to let him live.

The man on the right side of the trail, who held a bow with an arrow

aimed at White Bear's heart said, in Sauk, "I am called Wave. We are

looking for Black Hawk. Where can we find him?"

White Bear decided to make a joke of that. "Do you want to help him

fight the long knives?"

Wave laughed, and translated it for his companions, who laughed also. He

wore a brave's red and white feathers dangling from earrings, with two

more standing upright in his hair.

He said, "The long knives have offered horses and gold to whoever

captures Black Hawk. We are not enemies of the Sauk, but we want the

long knives' friendship." The man spoke Sauk fluently and without an

accent.

"It is a shame that the Winnebago fight on the side of the long knives,"

White Bear said. "One day they will take your land from you, as they

have taken ours from us."

Wave shrugged. "Look what has happened to you, who fought against them."

_Red man betrays red man, and only the whites gain. It is as I told

Redbird. If we want to live in this land, we ourselves must become like

the whites._

"Come," said Wave. "We must take you to the long knives' war chief."

White Bear slumped in despair, realizing that he was no longer a free

man. He looked about him. The trees, the birds, the Great River, they

were all free, but he was in the power of his enemies. The world was a

darker place. Black Hawk's war, for him, was over. He wished he could

have warned his people about the approaching army of long knives. And

also, his heart ached for the Sauk he was unable to warn of the second

long knife army. A yearning for Redbird and Eagle Feather and Floating

Lily seemed almost to pull his heart from his body. He prayed that they

had safely left the Bad Axe country by now and headed north with Black

Hawk. Probably he would never see them again. Probably the long knives

would kill him. With a sigh, he turned his horse's head in the direction

Wave had pointed.

* * * * *

While his regiment rode by, the long knife war chief, a stocky man with

a long face, thick eyebrows and hard blue eyes, stood by the side of the

trail facing White Bear. He was Colonel Zachary Taylor, he had told

White Bear. A burly, red-faced soldier with a sergeant's three chevrons

on his forearm stood beside Taylor staring at White Bear with open

hatred.

"What are you, a renegade white man?" Taylor demanded. "How come you

speak good English?"

"I am Sauk, Colonel. My name is White Bear. My father was white, and he

took me to be educated among the whites for several years."

"Well, White Bear, what were you doing on this trail? Chasing the white

woman and the boy we just picked up?"

"It was I who brought them to you."

Taylor snorted. "You expect me to believe that?"

"Miss Hale will tell you it is true."

"Well, we already sent her and the boy back to Fort Crawford with an

escort, so that will have to wait. But you do have her name right. Where

are the rest of the Sauk? Trying to cross the Mississippi?"

"I cannot help you, Colonel. Any more than you would give information to

the Sauk, if we captured you."

Taylor's sergeant said, "Sir, let me and a couple of my men take this

half-breed for a stroll in the woods. We'll find out what you want to

know."

"No, Benson, no." Taylor brushed the suggestion aside with an irritated

wave of his hand. "Showing how they can resist torture is a regular game

with Indians. He'll just sing Indian songs till he dies, and listening

to that would be worse agony for you than anything you could do to him."

"Well, then let's shoot the bastard, sir, and be done with him. The

militia don't take no prisoners. Why should we?"

Taylor threw back his head, and even though he was shorter than the

sergeant, managed to look down his nose at him. "We're professional

soldiers, Sergeant. I trust we know how to conduct ourselves better than

the state militia. No, we'll just take him along with us. An Indian who

speaks both Sauk and English could be of use to us, alive. I see you

have a full head of hair and you wear no feathers, White Bear. That mean

you haven't killed anybody? Or just that you don't want the fact known?"

"I haven't killed anybody." White Bear thought of adding that he had

saved more than one white life. But he couldn't expect them to believe

that. He would not expose himself to their scorn.

He said, "I am a medicine man, a shaman."

Taylor looked at him gravely. "Educated as a white man and educated in

the way of the spirits, too, eh? And with all that learning you couldn't

warn Black Hawk away from this disaster?"

White Bear shook his head. "He listened to other voices."

Taylor's eyes narrowed. "Well, whatever advice you gave him, it's all

over for your chief now. God pity your people."

White Bear said, "All they want now is to go back across the Mississippi

and live in peace. Those who are left."

Taylor fixed him with an angry stare. "It's too late for that. Things

have gone too far. You people are going to have to suffer for what

you've done."

White Bear felt his limbs go cold as he heard the steel in Taylor's

voice. This was not a bad man, White Bear sensed, not a man like Raoul.

But whatever mercy was in him had no doubt long since been washed away

by the blood shed by Black Hawk's war parties.

_No doubt while he talks about making my people suffer he thinks of

himself as quite a civilized man._

"Revenge, Colonel?" White Bear said. "I thought you were professional

soldiers."

The sergeant balled his fists. "Please, sir, let me teach him some

respect."

Taylor cocked his head, listening to a distant sound, then turned to

look downriver.

"He's got a much more bitter lesson to learn, Sergeant. As do all his

people."

White Bear heard it too. A chugging sound. It had been a while since he

had heard a noise like that. He followed Taylor's gaze down the river.

All he could see was a column of gray smoke in the sky to the south. But

he knew what it was.

A steamship.

Because he could not ride to warn his people, he wanted to cry out in

agony. He saw what would happen--those few frail canoes, the steamship

bearing down on them, two long knife armies marching inexorably toward

the mouth of the Bad Axe.

_The many who follow Black Hawk across the Great River will be few when

they cross back._

20

River of Blood

Raoul uncorked the jug standing on the chart table and held it out to

Bill Helmer, captain of the steamship _Victory_. A portly man with

muttonchop whiskers, his hands firmly gripping the polished oak steering

wheel, Helmer silently shook his head.

Raoul lifted the jug in a mock toast. "May we have a merry day of Indian

fighting." He took two long swallows, and decided he felt strong and

happy.

Helmer shook his head. "Mr. de Marion, there's nothing merry about

fighting Indians."

"If that's your opinion, Captain, I'll thank you to keep it to

yourself," said Raoul. He wanted a little warmth right now besides what

he was getting from the jug, and he despised this dour man for not

giving it to him.

Helmer shrugged and bent his gaze on the river.

Raoul knotted his fingers behind his back, and found that the effort

relieved the tightness in his belly. He went to stand at the pilot house

window and stared out at the forested bank where the Bad Axe River

emptied into the Mississippi.

Militiamen were wading across the Bad Axe from south to north, holding

their rifles, bayonets fixed, over their heads. The Bad Axe was more a

creek than a river, shallow now in August, winding through a channel

thick with bright green reeds. As the men slogged up the north bank,

they leveled their rifles and plunged into the trees.

A blue haze of powder smoke already drifted amidst the pine and spruce

north of the Bad Axe mouth. The popping of rifles carried to Raoul

across the water over the wheeze and clank of the _Victory_'s steam

engine, fueled with oak and split pine.

Raoul wondered what was happening in those woods. Were the Indians

fighting back, defending their women and children? He hoped the

militiamen would go on killing until they'd exterminated the whole band.

After four months of chasing the Indians across Illinois and the

Michigan Territory, after all the innocents murdered--_Clarissa_,

_Phil_, _Andy_--surely the militiamen would not be soft.

He felt tears starting up, and he quickly took another pull at the jug.

He wished he could be in at the kill instead of out here in the river.

_I want their blood on my own hands._

Lieutenant Kingsbury, in command of the gunnery crew assigned to Raoul

from Fort Crawford, came up the stairs from the foredeck to the

hurricane deck and entered the pilot house. He mopped his brow as he set

his cylindrical shako, sporting its red plume and gold crossed-cannons

artillery badge, on the chart table.

"Gets damned sticky on the river in August."

Raoul offered his jug. "Help you forget the heat."

Kingsbury grinned, thanked Raoul and took a big drink. His cheeks

reddened, and he dabbed at his thick brown mustache with his fingertips.

"I don't hear much shooting on shore," he said, handing the jug back to

Raoul, who took a swallow before setting it down.

"Just what I was thinking," said Raoul. "Where the hell are all the

redskins? I figure there's about a thousand left. They can't all have

crossed the Mississippi before we got here unless they had a whole fleet

of canoes."

The _Victory_ had caught one canoe in midstream when she arrived on the

scene. Raoul's militia sharpshooters had blanketed it with rifle fire,

killing all six Indians aboard, and the overturned canoe had drifted

downstream, out of sight.

Raoul picked up a brass telescope from the chart table and studied the

riverbank, moving the circular field from point to point. He saw plenty

of militiamen, but no sign of Indians.

"Look," said Kingsbury. "Militiamen coming back out of the woods."

Raoul swept his telescope back over the riverbank. Men in buckskins were

dragging their rifle butts along the ground, sitting down on the river's

edge and splashing water on their faces, shaking their heads angrily,

raccoon tails on their caps wagging.

One man did emerge from the trees with a big grin, holding high three

bloody scalps dangling from hanks of black hair. Another man led two

Indian ponies. So, the Sauk still had a few horses with them.

Kingsbury said, "Looks like they only met a handful."

Raoul drummed his fingers on the polished oak sill. "A rear guard. The

rest could have headed north. But I don't think they did. They were

aiming to cross the Mississippi."

His telescope brought closer an island north of the Bad Axe mouth, about

fifty yards out from the Mississippi's east bank, thickly covered with

spruce and hemlock. He saw two bark canoes with stove-in bottoms beached

at the island's southern tip. Between the island and the riverbank the

water had a pale green look that said it was shallow.

"I've got a feeling most of the Indians are hiding out on that island."

His pulse quickened and his breath came fast.

His first thought was to land on the island with his men and flush the

Indians out. But there could still be a couple of hundred warriors left

to the band. No, they'd have to use the six-pounder first.

"Captain Bill, sail along the west side of that island. I want to get a

closer look at it."

The spokes flew under Helmer's hands, and the _Victory_'s side paddles

churned up the water.

Raoul, followed by Kingsbury, hurried down the stairs to the foredeck,

where his own dozen militiamen, all Smith County boys who had

reenlisted, watched him stride the planks to stand beside the

six-pounder. It had saved the townspeople at Victor; now, mounted on the

_Victory_'s foredeck, it would finish the Sauk.

The late morning sun beat without mercy on the open deck, and sweat

trickled down from Raoul's armpits. He wanted to throw his jacket off

and wear just a shirt, but the military blue, the gold braid and the

brass buttons gave him authority that he'd found he needed, not so much

in dealing with his own men as with other officers.

Hodge Hode said, "We got 'em treed now, Colonel."

"But stay under cover," said Raoul. "These raccoons will be shooting

back." His eyes tried to tear holes in the thick greenery on the island.

The Smith County boys crouched down behind the bales of hay lined along

the railings and cocked their flintlocks.

Raoul patted the gun's black muzzle affectionately, and the three

artillerists in blue jackets grinned and nodded at him. They had put

their shakoes aside and wrapped rags around their heads to keep the

sweat out of their eyes. Beside the cannon were stacked canisters of

grapeshot and flannel bags of powder. In a few minutes, Raoul thought

with pleasure, that grape would be sending a heap of red devils to Hell.

As the _Victory_ steamed around the tip of the island, Raoul searched

the forest with his telescope. He guessed the island to be a quarter of

a mile long. It was deeply forested enough to conceal hundreds of

Indians.

Midway along, he saw a gleam of sun on brown skin in the shrubbery near

the river's edge. He swung the telescope back to the spot. Nothing now.

But the quarry was there, all right. His lips drew back from his teeth.

"Captain Bill," he called to the pilot house. "Turn our bow toward the

island. Kingsbury, get ready to fire."

Kingsbury saluted and called orders to the gun crew. A gunner slid a bag

of powder into the six-pounder's muzzle and rammed it home. Another

pushed a canister of grapeshot in after it. The third held the burning

linstock ready.

Raoul called to the bridge. "Captain, hold her position." The captain

waved acknowledgment from behind the glass, and Raoul heard him ring a

bell relaying his orders belowdecks. A moment later levers clanked and

Raoul felt the deck tremble as the paddle wheels on the sides of the

ship reversed themselves.

"Shoot when you're ready, Lieutenant," Raoul said.

_God, how I love this!_

Kingsbury shouted, "Fire!"

The gun thundered, deafening him, and leaped back in its cradle of

tackle. Raoul watched the woods eagerly as a white smoke cloud spread

over the water. On the island, branches flew in all directions. A big

tree fell. He heard a scream followed by a series of wailing cries. He

almost cried aloud with pleasure.

An Indian staggered out from behind the trunk of a tall pine. He

dragged one leg, a useless mass of bloody meat, and fell heavily to the

ground. He held a rifle. He shook his fist at the _Victory_, then aimed

the rifle from his prone position.

In sudden fear, Raoul was about to duck behind a hay bale when a dozen

shots cracked out from the railings beside him. Bleeding from his chest

and his head, the Indian collapsed and rolled into the Mississippi.

Nodding happily, Raoul watched the current catch his body. It drifted

slowly downstream, trailing blood.

"Keep firing!" Raoul roared. A cannoneer swabbed inside the gun barrel

to cool it down for more powder. In a moment the gun boomed out again.

More trees splintered, but no more Indians were flushed out.

"Raise elevation ten degrees," Kingsbury called to the gunners. "They're

probably lurking farther back in the woods."

Raoul heard the clicks as the gunners used hand spikes to raise the

cannon in its carriage.

After the cannon went off, dirt and broken tree limbs sprayed out of the

forest, and Raoul heard shrieking sounds that he hoped were the screams

of Indians.

The cannon boomed again and again. With hand signals to Captain Bill in

the pilot house, Raoul had the _Victory_'s bow swung to starboard and

then to port, so that the grapeshot struck the island in a wide arc.

Trees slowly toppled over, and shrieks of pain and shouts of rage and

defiance pierced the silence between the roars of the cannon.

He pictured the lead balls tearing into howling Indians, ripping their

flesh apart. He remembered Helene's body in Lake Michigan. He remembered

Black Salmon's lash on his back. He saw--as he had seen them two weeks

ago--the heap of blackened, split logs that had been Victoire, his home,

the place where Clarissa, Phil and Andy died. He saw the mound of earth

in the family cemetery where they lay together. What little had been

left of them.

The cannon's heat was his rage. The cannon's boom was his roar. The

grapeshot was his vengeance. He hurled his hatred over the water and

into the trees, blowing Indian bodies to shreds.

He heard something hum past his head and plunk into the pilot house

behind him. He saw smoke puff from the shadowy base of a clump of

spruces. Another puff, and another. The reports of rifles carried across

the water.

"Sir!" Kingsbury's hand gripped his shoulder, the fingers digging in.

Raoul realized he had been momentarily out of his mind with fury.

Breathing heavily, he got his eyes focused on the brown-mustached

lieutenant.

"Get down, sir, before you get hit."

Reluctantly, because he wanted to see where the grapeshot was hitting,

Raoul crouched down behind a hay bale. When he'd first come out on deck

he'd been afraid of being shot at. Now he felt sure they couldn't hit

him.

The six-pounder repeatedly tore into the area on shore where powder

smoke had appeared. Raoul saw no sign of Indian bodies, but the firing

from the trees stopped.

"Gawd, I'd hate to be on the angry side of this gun," said Levi Pope.

A dozen or more Indians burst from the trees and dove into the water.

Some of them started swimming out toward the _Victory_; others turned

south, following the current. Some just splashed helplessly.

"Shoot!" Raoul shouted.

Gleefully, he ran into the pilot's house and grabbed his breech-loading

Hall rifle. He rushed back to stand by the rail. He took aim at the

nearest Indian in the water. He heard his breath coming heavy, as it did

when he was in bed with a woman.

Only the warrior's shaven head, scalplock flowing behind, was far enough

out of the water to present a clear target. The Indian seemed to be

trying to swim past the _Victory_, toward the distant shore opposite.

Raoul took his time aiming at the shiny brown dome and pulled the

trigger. He saw a splash of red, then the Indian's arms and legs stopped

moving and the body drifted southward with the current.

Pushing cloth-wrapped bullets down the tight, rifled bores of their

muzzle-loaders with practiced speed, Raoul's men could easily get off

three shots or more in a minute. The sky blue of the river soon turned

red with blood from bodies that floated swiftly away.

"Yee-hah!" Hodge Hode yelled. "This is more fun than huntin' wild

goose."

"The ones we do not get, they will drown," said Armand Perrault. "There

is no place for them to swim to."

It was true; the opposite shore of the Mississippi was too far away, and

this shore was lined with Federal troops and state militia, who would

shoot any swimming redskin they saw. The Indians must have known they

were doomed, but still they came on, little groups jumping into the

water, each one probably hoping to be lucky enough to escape alive. Most

of the heads Raoul saw in the water streamed black hair; must be women

and children, not scalplocked warriors.

But it didn't really matter what they were.

_They killed my woman and my kids._

He saw a head trailing long black hair and blood in the water not ten

feet off the starboard bow. Close enough to see it was a boy. He was

trying desperately to swim with one arm, his face distorted with agony.

Raoul aimed his rifle between the wide, terrified eyes that stared into

his own. He pulled the trigger. The brown face sank below the water.

_That's for Phil and Andy._

Groups of Indians threw themselves into the river from the distant parts

of the island, but the steamboat turned quickly upstream and downstream,

back and forth again and again, to pursue them, Raoul's sharpshooters

wiping out each party of swimmers in turn. Captain Bill might not enjoy

this work, but he did it well.

Raoul heard himself laughing under his breath as he thought of all the

Indians who were dying before his eyes, because of _his_ ship and _his_

cannon and _his_ riflemen.

Then the _Victory_ resumed steaming slowly along the length of the

island, stopping at intervals for the cannoneers to blast the forest.

Kingsbury changed elevation with each shot, so that showers of grapeshot

blanketed the island from side to side.

Finally Raoul decided that they had done all they could from the ship.

All that blood in the water made a fine sight, made him yearn all the

more to wet his hands with blood.

Climbing back up to the pilot house, he said, "Take her to the south end

of the island, Captain Bill. As close as you can. We're going to land."

Helmer stared at him, but said nothing.

He'd better say nothing.

Raoul took his pistol out of its holster and checked to see that it was

primed and loaded. He unsheathed his replica of Bowie's knife. He

hefted it, heavy as a meat cleaver, in his hand and tested the edge with

his thumb. It would cut. By God, it would cut. He slid it back into its

sheath.

He opened his mouth, gulping air in his excitement. His hands tingled

and his whole body felt as if it were growing bigger. He wanted to kill

Indians. He wanted to wade in their blood. Maybe find Black Hawk himself

and take his scalp with the big Bowie knife. He hoped there would be

hundreds of redskins still alive, cowering on that island. He needed to

kill them by the hundreds.

The ship's progress down the length of the island seemed to take

forever.

He tried to calm himself. After that bombardment with grapeshot, after

so many Indians had been shot trying to swim away, there probably

wouldn't be many left alive on the island. It wouldn't really be a

fight; they'd be close to helpless.

"After we're ashore," he said to Helmer, "take the ship over to the

troops on the Mississippi bank and tell General Atkinson we've found the

main body of the Sauk. Tell him to send as many men as the _Victory_

will carry."

* * * * *

The steamboat's shallow draft allowed her to move in close, so Raoul and

his dozen Smith County boys could jump down into knee-deep water,

holding rifles, bayonets screwed in place, and pistols and cases of

cartridges and shot over their heads. The water was cold and clammy

through Raoul's flannel trousers, and his feet squelched in his boots.

The _Victory_ drew away with a thumping of her engine and puffs of

thick, black smoke from her two smokestacks. Just the sight of that

steamship should have been enough to scare hell out of the Indians,

Raoul thought.

He and his men clambered up sloping rocks to stand in a clear area of

level ground. Just where the woods started, the upper half of an Indian

lay on his back, trailing long, bloody ribbons of gut. The eyes were

open, staring.

_Now, that's what I wanted to see._

"Remember that we take no prisoners," he said.

Hodge Hode said, "Well, come on, let's knock them 'coons out of the

trees."

An arrow punched through Hodge's neck from front to back.

Raoul's heart stopped, then thumped so hard with fear that he thought it

might split his chest open.

Hodge dropped his rifle and fell to the ground, gagging.

Raoul went down on his knees beside Hodge, seized the arrow just under

its knife-sharp flint head and pulled it through. As the feathered end

went through his neck Hodge made a retching sound. His tongue stuck out

of his mouth.

Raoul cursed under his breath as he bent over Hodge. This couldn't be

happening.

More arrows were flying past them. Raoul's men fired a ragged volley

into the woods, and the arrows stopped.

The arrow had cut through an artery and pierced Hodge's windpipe. His

breath whistled in and out through the hole in his throat, his blood

pumping out of him and soaking into his red beard.

"He is going," said Armand, kneeling beside Raoul.

"Aw no," Hodge managed to murmur.

Raoul felt sick as he watched blood fill Hodge's mouth and pour out of

it. Then the big man went limp and his eyes rolled up in his head.

"Let's get the bastards!" Raoul growled. He was left scared as hell by

Hodge's death, but he was damned if he'd show it.

They climbed over big branches knocked down by the _Victory_'s cannon

and ran in among the trees, Raoul taking the lead. Spruce branches

whipped his face.

_I must be crazy, charging into the woods like this. We could all get

what Hodge got._

High-pitched war whoops shrilled out of the forest shadows ahead, and

more arrows whistled at them.

Knowing it was only luck that none of them hit him, Raoul wanted

desperately to fire his rifle into the forest. But he forced himself not

to shoot until he could see a target.

Brown figures rushed toward him, darting from tree to tree. He fired at

a warrior leaping between the thick trunks of two pines. The Indian

disappeared, but Raoul was sure he'd missed. He jerked the breech of his

rifle open and slapped in another ball-and-powder cartridge with frantic

speed.

The same Indian reappeared from behind another tree only six feet away.

Raoul brought the rifle up and fired. The Indian fell over backward.

Another brave leaped at him from the side, swinging a tomahawk. Raoul

shifted his rifle to his left hand and pulled out his Bowie knife. The

Indian's eyes were huge and white and wild. His upraised arms left his

chest wide open, ribs showing so sharp you could count them. Raoul

lunged, thrusting the knife. The Indian's rush drove him onto the blade.

His tomahawk came down on Raoul's forearm. It hurt, but it didn't even

hit hard enough to cut through Raoul's sleeve. Raoul planted his foot in

the already-dead Indian's belly and jerked the knife out of his body.

As the warrior collapsed, Raoul noticed that his face was bare brown

skin devoid of paint. They'd even run out of war paint, he thought. In

the middle of this battle, that gave him a moment of pleasure.

Rifles were going off on both sides of him. Levi Pope fired into the

upper branches of an elm tree and whooped as a warrior's body came

crashing down. The air was full of blinding, bitter smoke.

Then silence. Motionless Indians lay on the forest floor.

But so did two more of Raoul's own men. One lay face down, perfectly

still. The other was on his back, head propped against a tree trunk. An

arrow, feathers black and white, stuck out of his chest. His eyes were

open but saw nothing. His arms and empty hands jerked, the movements

less like a human being's than like a dying insect's. Raoul felt bile

rising in his throat and bit his lips hard to stop himself from puking.

_That could just as easily have been me._

Another man had an arrow in his arm. Armand pulled it out of him with a

mighty jerk. The man screamed, and Armand clapped a big hand over his

mouth.

Raoul's nine remaining men looked from the two dead men--the second

man's arms had stopped jerking--to Raoul. Were they just waiting for

orders, or were they accusing him?

"Injuns're gettin' ready for another charge," Levi Pope said. "I can see

them skulkin' out there."

"Pull back!" Raoul ordered. "Pick up those dead men's rifles." His voice

rang out strangely in the still forest.

Reloading and walking backward, rifles pointed up, Raoul and his men

retreated to the tip of the island. Armand carried the extra rifles.

They piled up fallen trees to make a hasty barricade.

Raoul lay behind tree trunks long enough for the sweat to cool on his

body. Mosquitoes and little black flies stung him incessantly. He

wondered if the Indians would ever attack. He'd gotten himself into a

very bad spot.

Rifles went off, and bullets plunked into the tree barricade. Brown

bodies came leaping out of the forest. Raoul suddenly remembered how the

Indians had rushed out from behind the Lake Michigan dunes twenty years

ago, and for a moment he was a terrified little boy. His hands shook so

violently he almost dropped his rifle.

With shrill yips and yells Indians came at them. Arrows and bullets

whizzed over the heads of Raoul's men as they ducked down behind their

shelter. Raoul forced himself to concentrate on shooting. He poked his

rifle through an opening between broken tree limbs, aimed at a running

Indian and fired.

His two remaining close companions in this war, Levi and Armand, lay

shooting on either side of him. Hodge was dead, his body sprawled a few

feet behind them, and that by itself brought Raoul close to panic. He

had always felt the big redheaded backwoodsman could never be hurt.

Arrows flew thick and fast. Raoul and his men, reloading from the

cartridge and shot cases they had carried ashore, kept up a steady

answering fire.

He felt shame smouldering in his spine and along his limbs. What a

damned fool he'd been. He had been so sure that storm of grapeshot from

the _Victory_ would finish off the Indians. He had expected this to be

nothing more than a stroll through the forest, counting the dead and

killing off the helpless remnant. Instead it seemed there were plenty of

Sauk warriors left, very much alive, fierce as wolverines. And he and

his men were trapped at the tip of this damned island with no place to

retreat but the river. In the river they'd be helpless under enemy

arrows and bullets, just like the redskins who had tried earlier to swim

away.

The Sauk war cries had fallen silent, and the shots and arrows had

stopped. Raoul peered through a chink in the tree trunks piled before

him. All he could see was dark green boughs with no sign of movement.

"What you figger they're doing now?" Levi said. He had his six pistols

laid out on a log in front of him.

"Probably getting ready to charge us," said Raoul.

How long before the _Victory_ got back? From here at the south end of

the island he could see the white steamship anchored off the riverbank,

her two black stacks giving off little white puffs, her side paddle

wheels motionless. She looked very small and very far away. No chance

Helmer or Kingsbury could see that Raoul and his men were fighting for

their lives here.

What were the men, Levi and Armand and the others, thinking? Again and

again, it seemed, his decisions cost lives. He remembered Old Man's

Creek--de Marion's Run--and he felt his face get fiery hot at the shame

of it.

And then there was Eli Greenglove's bitterness that night they parted,

accusing him of putting Clarissa and the boys in harm's way. And

something about a shock Raoul would get--what had Eli meant by that?

He heard a splash and turned to look behind him. His heart stopped. A

near-naked Indian was rushing at him out of the water, scalping knife

high.

Hands trembling, Raoul had barely time to roll over on his back and fire

his rifle up at the screaming warrior. Sunlight glinted off the long

steel blade. There was a moment of black terror after the rifle went

off. Nothing seemed to happen. His hands had been shaking too hard, he

thought, to aim well.

But then the Sauk dropped to his knees and fell over on his side. The

knife dropped from his hand. Seeing he was safe for this instant, Raoul

took another ball-and-powder cartridge out of his case and shoved it

into the breech.

The Indian rolled over and pushed himself up on his hands and knees, a

long string of blood and spittle dangling from his mouth. Calmer now,

Raoul took careful aim and put a bullet in the shaven brown skull.

Two more dripping Indians were charging out of the water. Rifles went

off beside Raoul. One Sauk fell, then the other, just as he was swinging

his tomahawk at a man on the right end of Raoul's line.

The militiaman screamed. The steel head of the tomahawk was buried in

his buckskin-clad leg.

"See to him, Armand," Raoul said.

Armand, crouching, ran over to the wounded man. But first he attended to

the fallen Indian next to him. He grabbed the brave's head and twisted

it around. Raoul heard the crack of bones.

"To make bien sure," Armand said, teeth flashing in his brown beard.

Three men dead, two wounded. Eight men left. Maybe a hundred Sauk

warriors out there, maybe more.

_What a stupid time to die, right when the war's almost over._

Raoul gnawed on the ends of his mustache and peered into the

impenetrable forest. He and his men were all going to die. He was sure

of it. He felt fear, but more painful than the fear was an ache in his

heart for all that he was going to lose--all that was due him that life

hadn't paid out to him like he deserved. He wanted so much to live.

A line of Indians came out of the trees, some with rifles, some with

bows and arrows. There must be twenty or thirty of them. They weren't

whooping, as they usually did. They were silent, their eyes big, their

mouths set in lipless lines. They were like walking dead men, coming at

him. That was what they were. They knew they were going to die, but they

were going to take this little band of white men with them.

Raoul had all he could do to keep from curling up behind his tree

barricade, head in his arms, whimpering with grief and fear. He made

himself aim and fire. The Indian he'd picked out as a target kept on

coming.

_We're done for_, he thought, over and over again. _We're done for._

Slowly--he did not seem able to move quickly--he inserted another

cartridge into the breech of his rifle. All around him rifles were going

off with deafening booms.

And from behind him there was more booming.

He looked up. Indians were falling. One here, one there, then three,

then two more. Their line was breaking up.

_God, the men are shooting good!_

He heard voices behind him and looked around.

At the same moment Levi Pope said, "Well, here be a sight to welcome."

Ten feet or so behind him a line of men in coonskin caps and gray shirts

were methodically firing over his head. He'd been so lost in panic and

despair he hadn't heard them coming.

He looked back at the Indians. Brown bodies lay tumbled on the ground,

some only a few feet from his barricade. Those on their feet were

backing up. They melted into the tattered forest.

For a moment Raoul could not move. He lay clutching his rifle with a

grip so hard it hurt his hands, panting heavily.

"It's safe now," Levi Pope said quietly, standing up.

Raoul pushed himself to his feet. His legs were shaking so hard he could

barely stand. He looked around and saw militiamen wading across to the

island from the east bank of the Mississippi.

The men who had been skirmishing in the forest north of the Bad Axe must

have seen the fighting on the island.

Too dazed even to feel happy, Raoul stood taking long breaths and

watched the militiamen come.

He had never in his life needed a drink more than he did now, and he had

forgotten to bring any whiskey with him.

* * * * *

The southern tip of the island was soon crowded with riflemen. Raoul's

three dead were stretched out under blankets, and a burly horse doctor

from the mining country was bandaging the leg of the man with the

tomahawk wound.

"Colonel Henry Dodge," said a tall, whip-lean officer wearing a bicorn

hat. He shook hands with Raoul. "We're almost neighbors. I'm from

Dodgeville settlement, just a little ways north of Galena."

"I'm damned glad you came over, Colonel," said Raoul, feeling like a

fool to have gotten himself trapped. "The Sauk still seem to have a

power of fighting men left."

"Glad you saved a few for us. There were only about two dozen redskins

on the north side of the Bad Axe. They let us see them to draw us away,

I guess, from the main body hiding out here. But the way you were

blasting this island with grape, I was afraid we'd have nothing to do

but bury Indians. Or pieces of them."

Dodge ordered his men to spread out in two lines, one behind the other,

across the width of the island. Raoul positioned his little party in the

center of the foremost line.

"Advance, my brave Suckers!" Dodge called, and the men laughed at the

nickname for Illinoisians. Holding up a long cavalry saber, Dodge led

the militia line, bayonets leveled, into the broken trees.

Raoul looked downriver for the _Victory_. She had dropped a wooden ramp

to the riverbank, and blue-uniformed regulars were boarding. When they

got here there would be enough soldiers on the island to wipe out the

Indians ten times over.

That would be Zachary Taylor's outfit, from Fort Crawford. Raoul had

heard that the five hundred Federal troops sent from the East had been

decimated by cholera, though their commander, Winfield Scott, was still

on the way here.

Raoul turned and pushed forward, stumbling over tree trunks, shoving

branches out of the way with his rifle, muscles rigid against the arrow

he feared would come whistling out of the gloomy shadows ahead. He saw

no living Indians, but many mangled corpses. He tripped over a bare,

brown severed leg. A moccasin, flaps decorated with undulating red,

white and black beadwork, was still on the foot.

Three Indians, swinging tomahawks and war clubs, sprang out from behind

a pile of grape-blasted birch trees. Raoul and the men flanking him

started shooting. The Indians were riddled before they got within ten

feet.

Raoul was sure he'd killed one of the warriors. He went to the body,

drew his Bowie knife and gripped the long black scalplock. He carved a

circle with the sharp point in the shaved skin around the scalplock.

White bone showed through when he pulled the patch of skin loose, the

round spot quickly filling with blood.

The scalplock was long enough to let him tie it around his belt. The

hair felt coarser than a white man's.

They pressed on into the forest, again and again meeting desperate

little bands of red men, who rushed them only to be felled by a hail of

lead balls. Raoul heard the constant banging of many rifles going off in

other parts of the forest.

And sometimes he heard the high screams of women and children. After the

screams, silence.

Raoul smiled to himself. This was how he wanted it. No prisoners.

Killing no longer seemed dangerous. It no longer felt like sport. It

became simply work through the day's heat. It was tiring work, but good.

With some surprise Raoul realized that the line of troops had swept most

of the island and were now approaching the north end. He could see

Indians up ahead through the trees. This might well be the last of them.

Eagerly, rifle ready, he rushed forward.

He burst into a clearing and found himself facing a half circle of

nearly a dozen bucks, their shaved scalps and bare chests gleaming with

sweat. Behind them cowered a pack of squaws and children.

The warriors shouted at Raoul and his men and beckoned to them. Right in

the center was one man much taller than the rest, with the red and white

feathers of a brave tied into his scalplock. Whatever insults or

challenges he was uttering, he looked Raoul right in the eye and shouted

directly at him.

Raoul felt a chill of fear. The Indian's flesh was wasted, but his

skeleton was huge. He looked like he'd be as hard to stop as a tornado.

And he was holding a rifle in arms and hands so big that they made it

look small.

The other warriors didn't have rifles or even bows. They must have run

out of powder and shot and arrows. They held clubs and knives and

tomahawks.

_They want us to fight hand to hand. That's what Indians do to show

their courage._

_The hell with that._

With a movement that seemed almost contemptuous, the big Indian dropped

the rifle to the ground. He reached down and picked up a war club

painted red and black, with a huge spike at its end.

"Let's pay 'em back, boys!" Raoul shouted. "For all of our people they

killed."

"Oui! For Marchette," said Armand, raising his rifle. His first shot

caught a warrior in the chest and knocked him down.

At that the Indians rushed Raoul and his men.

Raoul felt himself trembling uncontrollably as the bony giant in the

center came straight at him. The big Indian held his war club in front

of him, as if to deflect bullets.

Forcing his arms to hold steady, Raoul aimed his rifle at the Indian's

head and fired.

And missed.

_I should have aimed at his chest._

Raoul cursed his shaking hand as he dropped his rifle and pulled his

pistol.

The brown giant gave a long, full-throated war cry.

Raoul pulled the trigger. He saw a spark, heard the bang of the

percussion cap, but there was nothing more. He cried out in a fury. His

sweat must have dampened the powder.

The club came down on the pistol, and Raoul to his horror felt it

knocked out of his hand. Again the big Indian screamed out his

blood-freezing war whoop and raised the club high.

Raoul's empty hand fumbled for his Bowie knife. He had it out, a death

grip on the hilt. He lunged at his enemy. A jolt ran through Raoul's arm

to his shoulder as the point of the knife sank deep between two thick

ribs.

The Indian gave a deep groan and staggered back. He swung his club, but

too late. Raoul felt a numbing blow just where his neck met his

shoulder, and fell to his knees.

He was looking right into the dark brown eyes of the Indian, who had

also fallen. The eyes were unblinking, dead. The massive body collapsed

against him.

Raoul shouted, a wordless cry of rage, and a red curtain swept over his

eyes. He jerked the knife out, releasing a cataract of blood. With an

effort that wrenched his arms he hurled the brown giant away from him.

Taking a scalp wasn't enough, after a fight like that. Raoul got a firm

grip on the thick, stiff-standing hank of black hair in the center of

his enemy's head and brought the knife down on the brown throat.

Chopping and slicing and sawing, as if butchering a steer, Raoul cut

through the thick neck until at last the head came free.

He lofted the head in his left hand, looking up at the still-open dead

eyes.

"There, you goddamned redskin son of a bitch! Thought you could kill me,

huh?"

A shrill woman's voice broke in on his triumph.

He turned to see a witchlike woman wrapped in a blanket. Her finger was

pointing at him. Her voice went on and on, screeching at him.

She was tall, but starvation had stripped the flesh from her bones. Her

sunken eyes seemed to glow in her skull-like face. He felt as if he was

facing some horrid spectre.

He threw the warrior's head down. Curse him, would she? He snarled like

an angry wolf as he reached for the woman. She didn't even try to get

away. He seized the scrawny neck and pulled her to him, bringing the

Bowie knife's point up against her throat.

She started singing, a weird, high-pitched caterwauling. He'd heard

something like it before. Where?

When he'd been about to shoot Auguste and those two other Indians at Old

Man's Creek. They'd sung like that right at the end.

Her dark eyes held him. They were not clouded over with anger or terror,

but clear with full understanding that he was going to kill her. She was

not afraid. He wished he could frighten her, force her to grovel, but

someone might try to stop him from doing it. Her voice went on and on,

chanting, up and down.

He'd silence her now. Redskin bitch.

He drove the knife into her throat and jerked it sideways. Her song

ended in a sickening rasp.

Still the brown eyes were fixed on him. Her blood spurted out of the

gash he had cut open, splashed over his knife blade, poured hot on his

hand. It spread down over her dress and over the gold lace on his

sleeve. He looked down at his red hand and felt some force within him

stretch his lips and bare his teeth.