But Auguste spoke again before Raoul could fire. "Will you shoot an

unarmed man now, Raoul? Go ahead, prove yourself a coward. When you took

Victoire away from me, you wouldn't fight me. At Old Man's Creek--de

Marion's Run--I stood before you with my hands empty, and then you tried

to shoot me. You don't have the sand in you to face me fairly."

Raoul sensed that Auguste's words were aimed not at him, but at the men

behind him. He felt angry, trapped.

_Shoot, dammit! Shut him up._

_No, it's too late. All these men heard what he said._

"You're afraid to fight me man to man. I challenged you the day you

drove me away from Victoire, and you backed down. I challenge you again,

Raoul."

An answer sprang into Raoul's mind. "I accept. Let the weapons be your

neck and a rope."

But even as he spoke he had a sinking, uneasy feeling.

He did not hear any of his men laughing.

Armand said, "What the hell, Raoul. You've killed hundreds of Indians,

some of them a lot bigger than this one. Give him his duel."

For a moment Raoul felt like turning his pistol on Armand. The overseer

was paying him back, he realized, for the contempt he'd endured.

"I'm ready to meet you now or any time, mongrel. Let it be tonight. But

where there will be no witnesses to charge the winner with murder."

Auguste said, "I would be a fool to trust you and your men."

"You have to," said Raoul. "I'm not giving you any choice. The men will

see to it that it's a fair fight. That's what they want." He couldn't

keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Come with us, or I'll shoot you

down on this doorstep."

Frank Hopkins, pistol pointing at Raoul, crowded into the doorway beside

Auguste.

The black O of the muzzle pointed at him chilled Raoul. He'd heard that

Frank had fired on the Indians attacking the trading post. Seemed that

day had changed him. Now he was a man like any other, taking up the gun

like any other.

Frank said, "Auguste is not going with you. There will be no duel. Get

away from this house now."

Seeing Frank's foolish defiance in the face of over twenty armed men,

Raoul almost laughed.

But that pistol in Frank's hand could end his life. He couldn't shoot

Auguste while Frank held it on him.

Raoul swung the barrel of his own pistol to cover Frank's chest.

"Get back inside, Frank," he said, putting a steel edge into it.

Instead, with a sudden movement that almost made Raoul squeeze the

trigger, Frank came forward, stepping in front of Auguste.

Raoul saw another movement in the doorway, and then he was staring into

his father's glittering eyes. Elysee's rifle, long barrel trembling only

slightly, was leveled at him.

Raoul decided the best attack was to laugh at them. "Look at the

mongrel's protectors. A weakling who would never carry a pistol and a

lame old man in his nightshirt."

He heard a few snickers among the men behind him and felt encouraged.

But, he thought with fury, he was still trapped. His pistol was aimed at

Frank, but Frank's pistol and his father's rifle were both pointed at

him. If he shot Frank, would Elysee shoot him?

With the palm of his hand he pushed back the hammer of his cap-and-ball

pistol, the muzzle still aimed square at Frank's chest.

"Papa, Frank, both of you get out of the way, or Frank is a dead man."

But Raoul felt as if the bottom was dropping out of his stomach as he

looked at the two men. Neither Elysee nor Frank replied. Raoul saw

resolution in Frank's light blue eyes. The man who had never wanted to

kill was prepared to die.

_I have to shoot first._

He heard Nicole scream as his finger tightened on the trigger.

Frank and Elysee were pushed apart. Raoul was looking into Auguste's

eyes, blazing with a dark fire.

_Kill the mongrel now, and you're done with him forever._

He squeezed the trigger hard. The hammer fell, and the pistol boomed and

blossomed red fire and white smoke.

The pistol and the rifle pointed at Raoul both went off, hurling a

blinding bitter cloud back into his face.

He stood unhurt.

Elysee and Frank had fired, but by pushing unexpectedly between them

Auguste had spoiled their aim.

The smoke cleared. Raoul saw a black spot on the left side of Auguste's

white shirt. In an instant it was a spreading scarlet stain.

Auguste's eyes were shut. He fell back against Nicole, his knees buckled

and he sagged to the ground. Nicole, her skirts billowing, threw her

arms around Auguste and eased him down.

Raoul felt a surge of triumph.

_At last! I killed the sonofabitch!_

But below the triumph, like chill black water under thin ice, lay fear

of what might happen now. His knees trembled.

Raoul saw Nancy Hale staring at him, her eyes full of hate.

_Well, if I couldn't have you, he won't either._

"It was you led me to him, Nancy," he said, grinning as he saw her mouth

twist in anguish. "When you came here, we knew he was here."

"I pray that you burn in Hell for all eternity, Raoul de Marion!"

"Pretty talk for a minister's daughter," he laughed.

"Mon colonel!" Armand called. "We hear men running this way. Must be

Regulators. Let us ambush them. We have time to find hiding places."

"No," said Raoul. "We'd have to silence this bunch."

He gestured at Frank, Elysee, Guichard and Nicole, who were lifting

Auguste's body into the house.

_Will I truly have to stand trial for murder? Me? I never have before._

He stared into the empty doorway. Had he really finished Auguste? He'd

better go in there and see. But there were three armed men in there, and

if he had killed Auguste, nothing could stop them from trying to kill

him.

In fact, it might be a good idea to get away from here. With his family

all fired up and the Regulators on the way, a very good idea.

He heard Nancy scream again and again. Nicole suddenly appeared in the

doorway.

"You are not my brother anymore, Raoul. I'll bear witness against you

and so will Papa and Frank." She broke down and sobbed, then caught

herself. "You'll hang for this murder, and then, just like Nancy says,

you'll burn in Hell."

_She says it is murder. Then the mongrel must be dead for certain._

Raoul felt a vast relief. At last he had lifted from his shoulders the

burden that had crushed them ever since Pierre brought the savage boy

out of the forest.

But the relief lasted only for a moment. The fear came back. His legs

were still shaking. He wanted to run for it at once, to get a horse and

ride out of Smith County and keep going.

It wasn't just that he had killed a man. This killing was not like other

killings. This was not some nameless Indian or some river rat knifed in

a taproom brawl. This was his brother's son. The people in this house

had loved Auguste.

He remembered, and it was like something breathing cold on his neck, the

fear he'd felt looking into Auguste's eyes at Fort Crawford. Medicine

man. Was there some way Auguste could hurt him? Could Auguste, even in

death, get at him?

Raoul shook himself, shook off the haunting, frightening thoughts like a

dog shaking off water.

He had never meant to shoot Auguste in front of witnesses. Now the

Regulators were coming and they'd find the body in the house, and him

with the smoke practically still twisting up from his pistol barrel. And

he wasn't ready to fight them. The trial wouldn't last even as long as

Auguste's had.

He had to go to ground somewhere until he could collect more men.

_The lead mine._

Even if they came there looking for him, he knew the mine so much better

than anyone in Smith County that they'd never find him. Only two or

three men who had worked the mine before the Indian war still lived in

Victor, and they would not help the Regulators. In fact, he was sure he

was the only one who knew about some parts of the mine.

"Speak to us, mon colonel!" Armand demanded. "Do we fight?"

"No," said Raoul. "They outnumber us."

He pulled Armand to the edge of the clearing around Elysee's little

house.

"I'm going to make a run. I can be out of the county by daybreak. I'll

come back in a couple of weeks, maybe a month. By that time things will

quiet down, and I'll bring with me the men we need to run these

Regulators out."

Let them think he was going to ride straight out of the county. Let the

Regulators chase him along the Checagou road, and the Galena road and

the Fort Armstrong road. Meanwhile, he'd hide out in the mine till they

quit looking for him. Then he'd leave the county. But it would be best

if no one at all knew exactly what he had planned.

"What will _we_ do, mon colonel?" There was accusation in Armand's eyes.

He probably felt Raoul was deserting them. What the hell did Armand

expect him to do? He was doing the best he could for them; if he led

them into a fight he'd only get them killed.

Like he'd gotten men killed at de Marion's Run and at the Bad Axe.

"For now, scatter. Deny you had any part in this. Wait for me to come

back."

"It will not go easy for us, mon colonel," Armand growled.

"I'll be back," Raoul said. "And when I am, it will be just like old

times in Victor."

He plunged into the trees behind Elysee's house. While the Regulators

charged up the hill, he'd have no trouble finding his way back to the

trading post by moonlight.

Alone, moving quickly through woods he'd known since boyhood, he felt

suddenly lighthearted. He might be on the run, but he'd done the most

important thing. He'd killed Auguste. He had a winter to get through,

maybe a hard winter. But by next spring things would be back the way

they were in the days when he'd been happiest. Before he'd ever heard

that Pierre had a son. When he'd ruled like a king in Smith County.

25

The Other World

To Nancy, young Dr. Surrey looked like a brainless clothier's mannequin

in his black frock coat and ruffled white shirt. Though Woodrow had

routed him out of bed at nearly three in the morning and he had spent

over an hour working on Auguste, he didn't seem tired. If he wasn't

tired, what in God's name had he been doing? Now he was leaving, and

Auguste was still unconscious.

A helplessness in Surrey's face, round and blank as an unbaked pie

crust, turned Nancy's grief and fear into fury. She wanted to grab his

shoulders and shake him until he promised that he could and would save

Auguste.

"The bullet pierced his left lung," Surrey said. "But it was a

shoot-through, luckily, so I didn't have to dig in there and pull it

out. Many a doctor has killed a pistol-shot man that way."

Nancy took a step toward the doctor. He was her only hope, and she would

not let him escape.

"Aside from not killing him, Doctor, what have you done for him?"

"I packed the wound with cotton, front and back, to stop the bleeding. I

put dressings on. I told Mrs. Hopkins how to change the cotton and

dressings. And now he is in the hands of the Almighty."

_Earthmaker, Auguste would say._

"I hope the Almighty guided _your_ hand, Doctor."

"Knowing your father was a man of the Lord, I'm sure your prayers for

Auguste will be heard. He's got to stay where he is, in his

grandfather's bed, and fight for his life. I expect he'll take a fever,

maybe pneumonia. The punctured lung is of no use to him. He'll draw

breath with the other one. He'll be delirious, and you've got to get

some food into him--soup's the best, because he'll probably be able to

swallow that. His body will fight while his mind sleeps. I'll be back to

see him every day."

Through tight lips she said, "Tell me the truth, Doctor. Do you think

he'll get better?"

"One man in four survives such a wound, Miss Hale."

Nancy's shoulders slumped. This man could do nothing more.

"Good night, then, Dr. Surrey."

Back in the bedroom, Nancy could hear the crackling that was Auguste's

breathing, as blood bubbled in his pierced lung. His face beeswax-yellow

in the candlelight, he lay under the canopy of Elysee's four-poster,

covered to his chest by a quilt. His arms lay stretched out on either

side, his fingers slightly curled.

_His breathing is so noisy, at least we'll know when he stops._

Nancy felt as if she herself were being swept away on a black tide of

sorrow.

Elysee, sitting by the bed staring into his grandson's face, looked

almost as near death as Auguste. Guichard stood behind him, a clawlike

hand perched on his master's shoulder.

Nicole, her eyes round and dark with suffering, asked, "What can we do

for him?"

Nancy said, "The doctor says it's up to Auguste and God."

Elysee grunted. "Where was God when this happened?"

If Auguste were conscious, Nancy thought, he would be asking Earthmaker

for help. In the camps of the British Band Nancy had never seen Auguste

give up on a sick or wounded person. He had applied his remedies, gone

into his trance, danced and chanted to summon the aid of his spirit

helpers, wrestled with the hurt till either the man's soul left his body

or the healing was well begun. At first his practices had seemed foolish

and savage to her. But Auguste had done his work with such devotion that

she came, watching him, to love him all the more. And, out of love, to

respect what he did.

_But he's not the only one who practices that calling._

Maybe that was what he needed now. One of his own people to call on the

spirits for him.

If only Auguste were awake, he could tell her what to do.

Redbird had helped Auguste with his work.

She remembered the last time she had seen Redbird, small, emaciated,

holding the broken body of Floating Lily in her arms. Redbird was

probably more in need of help than able to give it.

And yet, Nancy had seen that she had a marvelous knowledge of healing.

Besides, she had told Nancy that she wanted to be a shaman herself, like

White Bear and Owl Carver.

It would be better to go to Redbird than sit here and watch Auguste die.

"I'm going to his people," Nancy said. "To find someone I think can help

him."

"No Sauk will be willing to come here," said Frank. "Not after what

these people did to them."

"This one will," said Nancy.

* * * * *

A heavy, cold rain drummed on the leather top of Nancy's buggy. Driven

by a sergeant, the little carriage splashed into the Sauk camp that

huddled beside the wooden walls of Fort Armstrong. A dozen peaked army

tents, their grayish-white canvas sagging under the rain in a muddy

field, were all Nancy could see. There were no people in sight. "I don't

know how you're going to find anybody here, ma'am," said the sergeant.

Nancy judged him to be a few years older than she was. His name was

Benson. He had tomato-red cheeks and a blond mustache so thick that it

completely hid his mouth.

Dark faces started to appear at the tent flaps. She wanted to weep as

she saw the misery of the women and children who slowly came out, some

of them holding blankets over their heads, to stand in the mud and stare

at her.

_Shouldn't I be glad to see the Sauk brought so low?_

Didn't she owe it to her father, Nancy asked herself, to rejoice

in the fate of the people who had murdered him? And what about

the horrid things they'd done to her? So proud they'd been, the

yellow-and-red-streaked faces, the feathers in their hair, the

day Wolf Paw led them to burn and kill at Victor. Now they huddled,

what was left of them, in the rain in a muddy field in tattered army

tents.

But she felt no pleasure seeing the Sauk in final defeat. Through

Auguste, they had become her people.

She felt suddenly uncomfortable sitting in the shelter of the buggy's

top, staring down at the sodden figures in the rain. If they could stand

in the rain, she decided, she could too. She jumped down.

"Ma'am!" the sergeant called, sounding alarmed. But he made no move to

follow.

In an instant her bonnet, her shawl, her dress, were all sopping. But

she didn't care, because the people she was looking at were soaked too.

She looked for familiar faces. The people standing before her seemed

made of mud. From head to foot they were a dull brown color.

"It is Yellow Hair!" She understood the Sauk words and looked around to

see who had spoken, but all she saw were black eyes wide with sudden

fear. Of course they all remembered her as the pale eyes woman who had

been kidnapped and nearly killed, and who had escaped. They must think

she had come to accuse and punish.

Yes, now that they knew her, they were backing away, ducking into their

tents.

"No--wait--" Nancy cried. She wanted to tell them not to be afraid, but

didn't know how. Redbird was the only one she could talk to. And _fear_

was not a word Redbird had taught her.

A man was standing in front of her. His eyes were empty, his face thin

and dirty. He seemed familiar. He held out his hands. He seemed to be

saying, "Here I am. Take me."

All at once Nancy recognized Wolf Paw.

His hair had grown out, hanging down in short black strands all around

his head. But at last she recognized that noble face that--much though

she'd hated him at first--had always reminded her of the engravings

she'd seen of Roman statues.

She understood what he was trying to tell her. If she'd come to find the

murderer of her father, the man who had kidnapped her, here he was. He

was at her mercy.

He seemed to have lost everything else, she thought, but not his

courage.

"Is that Injun threatening you, ma'am?" called the sergeant from the

shelter of the buggy.

"Not at all," she said, and smiled at Wolf Paw. She felt heartsick to

see how the splendid warrior had declined into a shabby spectre.

She tried to tell Wolf Paw, in the mixture of Sauk, English and gesture

that she had used with Redbird, that she had not come here to avenge

herself on him, that all she wanted was to find Redbird.

But then Redbird was standing before her.

Like Wolf Paw, she had changed so much that for a moment Nancy wasn't

sure this _was_ Redbird. She was as thin as a fence rail, and those

colorful things Nancy remembered her wearing, the feathers and beads,

the dyed quills, the painted figures on her dress, all were gone. She

clutched a coarse brown blanket around her shoulders. Her head was bare.

Water dripped from the fringe of hair across her forehead and poured

from her braids. She wore, not the doeskin clothing Nancy remembered,

but a torn gray cotton dress that was too big for her and dirty around

the bottom edge. Looking down, Nancy saw that Redbird's feet were bare,

her toes sinking into the mud.

Nancy felt warm tears mingling with the cold rain on her face as she saw

Redbird smiling at her.

"Redbird, I am glad to see my sister," Nancy said in their special

language. "Where is your wickiup?"

Redbird spoke to Wolf Paw in Sauk words too low and rapid for Nancy to

follow. He grunted assent and trudged through the mud toward a distant

tent. Watching him, Nancy felt pity at his rounded shoulders and old

man's shuffle.

Redbird beckoned Nancy to follow her to the tent she'd come from.

"Where you going, ma'am?" the sergeant called.

"I'll be all right," Nancy called over her shoulder, raising her voice

over the drumming of the rain. "This is the woman I came to find."

She could see the young soldier shaking his head. Why would a young

white woman go into the filthy, disease-ridden tents of these Indians?

_May the Lord open his eyes and heart._

At first the inside of the tent seemed black as a moonless night to

Nancy, and the smell of damp, unwashed bodies made her stomach churn.

She took Redbird's hand and held it for reassurance. Not too tightly;

the bones felt delicate.

Redbird explained that they had no dry wood for a fire. The long knives

had promised to bring them some, but they hadn't yet. The air was as

chill in the tent as it was outside, and Nancy heard women and children

coughing.

They sat in silence for a time, Sauk fashion. Nancy's eyes adjusted to

the dim light filtering through the canvas till she could see Redbird's

face. She saw Eagle Feather looking at her out of the shadows with huge

blue eyes, a little skeleton whose covering of skin looked like

stretched brown leather. Hurting inside, she greeted him with a pat on

the arm. If only she could do for him what she had done for Woodrow. Now

she could see four other women and two little girls huddled together

near the rear.

Nancy broke the silence. "Redbird, White Bear needs you."

Wincing in pain, Redbird narrowed her slanting eyes. She asked what had

happened to White Bear.

Redbird, Nancy learned, had heard no news of Auguste since the day he

left Black Hawk's camp to take Woodrow and Nancy back to the whites.

Auguste had told Nancy that he had tried to get word to Redbird; now she

silently damned the soldiers for not bothering to pass the messages on.

No doubt they thought it not worth the trouble.

When Nancy told Redbird that she had left White Bear four days ago,

unconscious with a bullet wound in his chest, she saw the gleam of tears

on Redbird's cheeks.

"The pale eyes doctor says he can do no more," Nancy finished. "You are

the only one who can help him now. You know the Sauk way of healing. You

told me you wanted to be a shaman."

No, Redbird said quietly, she _was_ a shaman. The declaration startled

Nancy.

"You told me the men wouldn't let you be one."

In their private language, Redbird said that for a long time she had not

understood what it meant to be a shaman. She had thought that a shaman

must be made by another shaman. But now she knew that if people came to

a person for help, that person was a shaman. And people were coming to

her.

"I have come to you," Nancy said. "You can help White Bear."

Redbird gave a helpless grunt that said she could not. The soldiers

would not let her leave.

Nancy reached into her handbag and drew out a folded paper. "I have

spoken with General Winfield Scott. This says that you may come with

me."

Redbird sat in the damp straw looking down at her hands folded in her

lap. Nancy waited anxiously for her to speak.

After a moment, her voice full of pain and uncertainty, Redbird asked,

did White Bear _want_ to see her?

The question shocked Nancy. It had not occurred to Nancy that Redbird

might ever doubt Auguste's love for her.

Recovering from her surprise, Nancy said, "Before his uncle shot him,

White Bear told me he was going to come here to find you and Eagle

Feather. You are first in his heart, Redbird."

_And, my God, how I wish it could be me!_

Redbird looked sadly at Nancy. She was not first in White Bear's heart,

she said. That land that had been stolen from him was.

Shocked, Nancy started to blurt out a denial. But she realized she could

not. Auguste had gone to Victor before he went anywhere else.

_But he is dying!_

"Do you want to save his life?" Nancy asked.

Oh, yes, Redbird did, if Earthmaker would help her. In the shadows of

the tent Nancy could see the glint of tears on Redbird's cheek.

"Then you will come with me?"

Redbird lowered her pain-twisted face. Must she go back to the place

where they killed her baby?

At the memory, Nancy broke into sobs and threw her arms around Redbird,

as she had done that terrible day.

"I will always remember Floating Lily," Nancy said. "I fought to save

her. I thought she was my baby too."

They held each other in silence for a while, and then the thought came

to Nancy that even a small delay might make the difference between

Auguste's living and dying. Nancy felt a chill that ran deeper than the

cold, damp air in the tent.

"Redbird, he will die if you do not come. You have to come."

Redbird sighed. It was true; she would go with Yellow Hair.

Nancy's heavy heart felt a little lighter. If there was any hope at all

for Auguste, it lay with Redbird.

One thing they must take with them, Redbird told her. When they

were marching to this place, a soldier had taken White Bear's

deerhorn-handled knife from Redbird. It was the same soldier who had

come with Yellow Hair today, the one with the red face and the yellow

mustache. It would be well if Yellow Hair could get it from him so they

could bring it back to White Bear. It would give him strength.

"I brought money with me," Nancy said. "I will buy it back from him if I

have to."

_I'll get it back from him if I have to kill him._

* * * * *

Redbird's eyes blurred as she stared at White Bear's face, as pale as

the moon. She wanted to scream, to throw herself weeping on his form.

Her longing to see him open his eyes, to hear his voice, was so strong

it hurt her. She remembered the night of his vision quest, when she was

sure he would freeze to death. She thought of the summers they had been

apart, the nights they had lain together. She thought of poor, dead

Floating Lily and of blue-eyed Eagle Feather, left in Wolf Paw's

keeping.

_O come back to me, White Bear!_

She had never tried to heal anyone this close to death. When she and

Yellow Hair arrived, the grandfather said that White Bear had sometimes

opened his eyes and spoken. But each day he had been awake a shorter

time.

Redbird saw that White Bear was already wandering in the other world. A

thread no stronger than a strand of spider's silk linked his spirit with

his body.

She let the love she felt for White Bear flow through her, giving her

strength. She felt the eyes of Yellow Hair, the grandfather and the old

servant upon her, but she ignored them. She squatted down on the floor

beside White Bear's bed and unrolled the blanket in which she carried

her medicines and supplies and the possessions White Bear had left with

her at the Bad Axe.

Her eye fell on the bundle of talking papers White Bear had cherished

so, that he said was called something like "The Lost Land of Happiness."

There was power in that bundle of words. Gently she laid it on his left

side, near the wound. On his right she placed the knife that Yellow Hair

had been able to retrieve for her.

Arranging the three medicine bags on the floor, she took pieces of elm

bark from the largest one and gave them to Yellow Hair.

"Make a tea for him from this. It will give him strength when he

awakens."

She forced herself to turn her back on White Bear and go out of the

house. With her she carried the blanket and the medicine bag adorned

with the beadwork owl. She crossed the little clearing around the house

and entered the woods. Here, where no one could see her, she opened the

medicine bag and took out five tiny gray scraps of the magic mushroom.

She put them into her mouth and chewed and swallowed slowly.

Then she got down on her hands and knees and spread her blanket. Oak,

maple and elm leaves, brown, red and yellow, lay thick on the ground.

She scooped leaves into the blanket. When she had gathered a big pile,

she bundled them up and went back into the house.

Carefully she spread the leaves on the bed over White Bear's body. She

heard the grandfather say something to Yellow Hair.

Yellow Hair spoke quietly to her, saying that the grandfather feared

that the leaves were not clean and would make White Bear sicker.

How could the leaves not be clean, Redbird wondered, when they came from

the woods, outside any dwelling?

But she answered, "Must do what I know. If seem wrong to him, must do

anyway, or can do nothing."

She heard Yellow Hair talking quietly to the grandfather while she

settled herself on the floor beside the east side of the bed. She could

not understand the words, but she heard acceptance in the old man's

sigh.

Grief and fear that White Bear would die trembled inside her. Breathing

deeply, she let the strength of those feelings enter into her spirit,

urging her on to begin the journey she must make.

She must go into the other world and find her guide. She began the

medicine woman's chant Sun Woman had taught her:

"Let me walk through the dark place

To the light of the other world.

Oh my red spirit Bird, fly to me,

Sing to me from the other world.

"Let me walk the sunwise circle

Into the night that hides this man.

Oh my red spirit Bird, sing to me

And fly with me to the other world.

"Sing and fly,

Sing and fly,

In the sunwise circle

To the other world,

Into the night."

She allowed the chant to settle into a simple, repetitious humming that

slowly, with the help of the magic mushroom, drew her soul out of her

body.

She stood up. The three people gathered at the foot of the bed did not

see her standing. They were looking at her seated body. She looked down

at White Bear. She saw through the leaves she had spread over him and

right through his skin.

Five glowing streaks ran from his collarbone to his belly. The claw

marks of his guardian.

She saw the hole in his chest, how it ran between his ribs. In the eight

days he had been lying here, the wound had closed up. If he lived long

enough, it would heal slowly. But there was water pooling in his chest,

and the longer he lay there unconscious, the more the water would fill

up his chest until he drowned.

His spirit must be coaxed back from the other world.

She began to walk the sunwise circle around White Bear's bed, from the

east to the south, White Bear on her right. She passed Yellow Hair,

White Bear's grandfather and the old servant. They stood like carved

statues, unseeing. She walked around the west side of the bed. The head

of the bed was against the north wall of the room, but she simply walked

through the wall on one side of the bed, took a few steps along the

north side of the cottage, then entered the wall again and continued her

circle.

When she had completed her ninth circuit of the bed, she saw a cave

mouth in the eastern wall of the bedroom. Unhesitatingly she walked into

the black, circular opening.

She could not see where the light in the cave was coming from, but its

curving walls were clearly visible to her. Here and there she passed

paintings. She had seen them when she made her first journey to the

other world, after she buried Floating Lily. She saw the Wolf, the

Coyote, the Elk and the Buffalo. Near the floor of the cave she passed

paintings of the Trout, the Pike, the Salmon and other fish. She looked

up and saw the Owl, her father's guardian spirit.

The passage slanted downward and grew narrower until her head brushed

the cave roof and her shoulders touched the walls. Then she rounded a

bend and bright blue light greeted her.

The cave opened out high on a hillside. She was looking down at tall

yellow grass rolling in waves to distant hills.

A black cloud of crows flapped up out of the grass and flew over her

head, laughing raucously.

Then she heard a marvelous singing.

She recognized it at once, the song of her guardian spirit, the Redbird.

She saw a blood-colored flash, and then the Bird perched on a branch of

blue spruce on the hillside. He had one bright eye cocked at her, ringed

in black. His red crest stood up on his head as Wolf Paw's had in better

days.

"White Bear is out there on the prairie," the Redbird spirit sang. "He

is hunting his uncle."

"Can I heal him?" Redbird asked.

The dazzling Bird chirped a yes. "He is lost. He is wandering with his

other self, the Bear spirit. He will not leave the spirit world until

the Bear finds his uncle."

Redbird shivered. "What will White Bear's guardian do to his uncle?" She

remembered both Owl Carver and Sun Woman saying that a shaman's power

must never be used to harm any person.

"What must happen, must happen," the Bird sang. "If White Bear is to be

free to go back to his body."

Redbird still felt uneasy. A shadow, like a sudden prairie storm, seemed

to fall upon the landscape.

The streak of scarlet sailed out over the endless grass, and Redbird ran

down the hill until the tassels were waving high over her head. She

could see nothing on all sides of her but yellow spears of straw.

Overhead was a patch of bright blue framed by tassels. In the center of

the blue the Bird spirit hovered, wings a blur of red. She pushed her

way through the stalks as the Bird led her.

On and on flew her spirit guide. Redbird did not tire either, as she

would have in the ordinary world, trudging through the grass. She could

not see the sun, but the light seemed never to change. And no matter how

long she walked, the same bit of cloudless sky remained overhead.

Then White Bear stood before her.

He was wearing only a deerskin loincloth and moccasins. His long hair

was bound with a beaded band. The scar on his cheek stood out white

against his tan skin. She looked at his naked chest and saw the five

shining claw marks, and the small navel-like opening of the bullet

wound.

She looked deep into his dark eyes. His love flowed out to her, and she

bathed in it, as in a warm river. She knew his thoughts, how happy and

surprised he was to see her.

_I was lost out here. You have come for me._

He held out his arms, and she rushed into them. She felt his arms around

her even though he was a spirit and she was a spirit. She laid her head

against his scarred chest and listened to his beating heart. Would she

ever again, back in the world of flesh, hold him like this?

A huge white-furred head crashed through the wall of grass around them,

and enormous golden eyes looked at her. White Bear had described his

guardian spirit to her, but she had never realized the Bear was so big.

She looked at black lips that bared yellow teeth longer than her

fingers, she stared down at claws that crushed the grass and sank into

the prairie sod. She shivered at the thought of what might happen to

White Bear's uncle if this spirit found him.

Perched on the head of the Bear was the tiny red spirit Bird.

_We are looking for my father's brother_, came White Bear's thought. _He

killed my mother and many brothers and sisters of yours and mine. He

shot me._

The Bird sang to Redbird, "I know where the uncle is, but I can only

lead the Bear to him if you say I must do it."

"I say you must, then," she said, just above a whisper. Whatever was

needed to save White Bear's life, she had to do it. Whatever she must

give up in return.

The Bird leaped into the air, his crest a bloody spearpoint. The Bear

lifted a black nose the size of Redbird's fist, and the white body

turned to follow, passing before her like a mountain of snow.

Hand in hand White Bear and Redbird followed. The Bird flew far ahead,

and they could not see him, but the Bear trampled down the grass and

left a path that was easy to follow.

Loving thoughts passed between White Bear and Redbird. If they always

met like this, Redbird thought, they could know what was in each other's

heart and their love would be deeper.

Then she remembered Wolf Paw and the new life that she alone knew was

growing in her belly. The life that fulfilled Wolf Paw's wish to have a

child with her.

She felt like a statue carved in ice. And at that very moment White

Bear let go of her hand. Somehow she knew that he was withdrawing from

her, not because he had sensed her thought about Wolf Paw, but because

he was troubled by some thought of his own. But instantly there was a

space between them, and she no longer knew his mind.

He was still walking beside her. He walked straight ahead, not looking

at her. She turned her head to the front and did the same.

She felt as if she had been pushed away, hard, and it hurt.

It seemed to her that they walked for days through the unchanging grass,

but the sun remained fixed somewhere beyond the tasseled curtain.

Yellow and blue, yellow and blue, the whole world had been reduced to

those colors. And to one sound, whispering grass.

The Bear stopped walking. Redbird and White Bear went around the huge

animal, Redbird to the right and White Bear to the left.

She found herself on the edge of a great crack in the ground, so deep

that its bottom lay in shadow. It zigzagged from somewhere, appearing

out of grass, and continued toward somewhere, vanishing back into the

prairie. A stream of bright blue water wound through the dark bottom of

the ravine; water had cut this wound in the prairie. The Bird spirit

swooped and darted in the crack like a living fire arrow.

"White Bear's uncle hides there," the Bird trilled.

She heard a growl beside her deep as distant thunder, and the ground

seemed to tremble.

The Bird flew up, swooped to hover over the Bear's head, then dove down

into the canyon. Down to an entrance into the earth framed by two

upright wooden posts and a beam laid across them.

Beside the square of darkness were abandoned wooden carts and a hill of

gray gravel that partly blocked the stream. This was a mine, Redbird

understood, where the pale eyes dug metal out of the ground.

The Bear spirit put one paw in front of the other and, with grace and

balance astonishing in a creature so huge, walked down a narrow path

Redbird had not noticed before to the shadowy bottom of the ravine. Then

it lumbered up to the mine mouth.

She opened her mouth to cry out in fear, but the Bear was gone.

_There is a man in there._

And her spirit helper, the Redbird, had led that giant Bear to him. She

had commanded it. She had not wanted to use her shaman's powers to hurt

anyone, not even one she hated as much as this uncle of White Bear's.

White Bear had saved many lives and never killed anyone.

Even though she was a spirit and this great grassland was sunny, she

felt cold, and her stomach knotted.

_I will lose something because I did this. I only did it to bring White

Bear back to his body. But I will suffer for it, even so._

_And so will White Bear._

_Only let White Bear live_, she prayed to the powers that brought life

into the world.

White Bear turned to her. _It is done_, said his spirit voice. _My other

self has found Raoul de Marion._

_Now you can come with me_, she answered him. _Back to your body._

_Back to my home_, came his whisper, and she shuddered even as she

turned, following the Bird spirit as he fluttered over her head. When he

thought of his home, he meant the great lodge the pale eyes called

Victoire.

Redbird opened her eyes in the room where White Bear lay, to find

herself once again sitting on the floor beside the bed. The three people

were looking at her, Yellow Hair with tears running down her cheeks, the

grandfather's withered face paler than the fur of White Bear's guardian

spirit, the old servant's bloodshot eyes wide.

She remembered that the sun had been low in the west when she came to

this house. Sunlight still slanted through the paper-covered west window

and fell on the layer of leaves that covered White Bear's bed.

But when she tried to move, pain struck her like knives driven into her

knees and elbows, as if she had been sitting in the same position for

days.

"His eyes!" Yellow Hair cried, pointing at White Bear. From the floor

Redbird could not see what Yellow Hair was seeing. She forced her aching

legs to lift her.

White Bear looked at Redbird, then at Yellow Hair. He smiled faintly.

She had done it. He was back in his body.

A spring of pure, sweet joy burst up inside her. A sob welled from her

lips. She stumbled toward Yellow Hair and felt that she was going to

fall. Yellow Hair's arms held her up.

She saw his mouth open, heard him whisper to her, "You brought me back.

I will always love you."

"And I will always love you," Redbird said. Her voice was a croak, as if

she had not spoken in days.

She turned to Yellow Hair. "Now he will live."

Laughing and crying at once, Yellow Hair thanked Redbird again and again

in their common language, calling on her God to bless Redbird.

_Bless me? But what of that man in the mine?_

"Give White Bear the tea of elm bark now. Later, little food, only

little," Redbird said. "Easy-eat food. Hominy good. Later, soup with

meat."

Yellow Hair eagerly agreed.

"Must sleep," said Redbird. She slurred her words, too worn out to speak

clearly.

She could lie down in another room, Yellow Hair said, leading her away

from the canopied bed where the weeping grandfather bent over White

Bear, holding him by his shoulders.

"I gone many days?" Redbird asked.

Yellow Hair's deep blue eyes widened. She shook her head at the word

"days." She assured Redbird that she had been silent only for an

instant. She had been singing, then she closed her eyes, and a moment

later when she opened them again, White Bear had opened his. Yellow Hair

hugged her so hard it hurt her.

_Just an instant?_ Every time Redbird went on a shaman's journey she

learned something new.

Yellow Hair, her arm around Redbird's shoulders, led her to a bed in

another room. Redbird had never lain on a pale eyes' bed, but she sat

down on the edge and fell back. If she was not so tired she would not

have been able to sleep in this bed. It was too soft. Yellow Hair lifted

her legs onto the bed for her.

That was the last thing Redbird remembered.

* * * * *

After a day and a night of sleep, Redbird woke refreshed. And hungry. A

cure for that was quickly produced for her; and now she was sitting on a

pale eyes' chair at a pale eyes' table, devouring slices of fried pig

meat and fluffy cakes brought to her by the old servant.

Seated across from her was a fat, smiling woman she had met once

before. This woman had tried to comfort her the day Floating Lily was

killed. This, she knew, was White Bear's aunt.

Yellow Hair, tears streaming from her turquoise eyes, appeared in the

doorway of the room where White Bear lay.

White Bear, she said, wanted Redbird to come to him.

Redbird's hunger vanished. She went rigid.

_Yellow Hair weeps now, but I will weep forever after._

She heard the suffering in Yellow Hair's voice and knew that her heart

was hurting because she believed Redbird was going to take White Bear

away from her.

Redbird knew better. She had defiled her powers by using them to destroy

White Bear's uncle, and now she must pay for it.

The lance twisted in her heart as she stood up at the table.

The fat woman stood up when Redbird did, came around the table and

hugged her. She smelled of fresh-baked bread.

Redbird walked past Yellow Hair to enter the bedroom. White Bear was

reclining with pillows behind his head in the bed where he had lain for

so many days. His chest was bare except for the white bindings that

protected his wound. The wrappings made his olive skin look darker, and

above the cloth Redbird could see the start of the five shining scars

that ran down his chest.

The leaves had been cleared away from the quilt that covered him. His

bundle of talking papers telling the story of the first man and woman

and how they lost their land of happiness was on the table beside his

bed. Next to it lay the knife Star Arrow had given him when he was a

small boy.

When he saw her his face glowed and he held out his arms to her. She

rushed to him, and heard a cry of pain behind her. The door of the

bedroom shut softly.

She threw herself across the bed, longing to hold White Bear. His arms

around her were not as strong as she remembered them, but his embrace

was firm.

"You came to me while my spirit wandered on the prairie," he said.

"The Redbird guided me to you."

"Before you came I saw many things."

"What things?"

He said, "The pale eyes will spread across the Great River and even

into the Great Desert. There will be no place left for our people."

"If we go far enough west--" she began.

"No," he said. "They will go as far as the western ocean. The Turtle

warned me about this." He stroked her hair lightly, and she rested her

head on his shoulder.

She had a heart-crushing feeling that she would never lie like this with

him again.

"You are so much better today," she said.

"You, too, know the way of the shaman now. You healed me."

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. This was the moment when

they must decide.

"I am the only shaman our people have now," she forced herself to say.

"The few who are left need me. I must go back to them."

His eyes shut tight suddenly, as if his wound was paining him.

"Stay here with me," he said.

His words struck her and tore through her, as his uncle's bullet had

torn through him.

"I could never stay here. When you are well enough, will you not come

back to your people?"

He shook his head. "We cannot fight the pale eyes and we cannot run from

them. They will destroy us. Unless we learn to live as the pale eyes

do."

"That destroys us too."

"That saves us!" His nostrils flared and his dark eyes glowed. "I can

use the power this wealth and this land gives me to fight for our

people. And you can do it with me. And Eagle Feather. I will show the

people how to make use of pale eyes' ways. I will share my land with

them."

Her heart felt as if it were being ground between stones. This, she

understood, was what she must suffer because she had used her shaman's

powers to hurt another. She was going to lose White Bear. She had saved

him from death. He was going to live, but not with her.

The claws of that giant Bear that was his other self seemed to stab into

her chest and tear her in two. She could not live with this pain. She

must surrender to White Bear.

_Yes, I must stay with him. I cannot leave him. Eagle Feather needs him.

We will be safe here, and comfortable, and at peace._

She would send for Eagle Feather. The fat aunt and the grandfather would

love them and care for them.

She tried to see herself living here with White Bear. For a moment the

picture was clear in her mind. Then it dissolved in blackness as she

realized that taking herself out of the Sauk tribe would be like pulling

a medicine plant up by its roots without its consent.

She would die. It would be a slow death that would be worse than the

pain she was suffering now.

And then another thought struck her.

_Children!_

Her heart felt heavy as a mountain.

She remembered how Owl Carver had said, after Eagle Feather smoked the

peace pipe with the Winnebago, that he could be a greater shaman than

any of them. But that would happen only if he was raised as a Sauk.

Floating Lily was dead. Redbird could not live with the people who had

murdered her.

And--she touched her belly--this was not White Bear's child.

She began to cry aloud.

She sobbed till she thought her ribs would crack. Her throat burned; her

voice rasped. She pressed her forehead against his chest. She heard him

groan in pain, but he was hurting her more than she could ever hurt him.

"How can you ask me to stay where they killed Floating Lily? How can

_you_ stay here?"

"What would you have me do?"

A sudden thought occurred to her. "The pale eyes give gold for land.

Take pale eyes gold for this land, and you can take the gold with you to

the Ioway country and share it with our people."

"No, Redbird," he said sadly. "What could we do with gold, out there in

Ioway? Sometimes the long knives have given our chiefs gold in return

for land, yes. In no time the gold melted away. Gold by itself is like

seed corn. Without the right ground to plant it in, it is soon used up

and gone. The only way I can use the wealth my father Star Arrow left to

me is to stay here and work with it."

She had stopped crying. This hurt too much for tears. Only when Floating

Lily was killed had she felt more pain than this.

For a moment she could not bring herself to say the words she had to

say.

From somewhere she summoned the strength to speak.

"Then I must leave you."

Each word, she felt, was an arrow fired into him.

His arms tightened around her. "I beg you to stay."

_Spirit of the Redbird, help me to do what I must._

It would hurt less if she acted at once. She pushed herself away from

him. She stood up and crossed the room to the closed door.

"May you walk always in honor, White Bear."

"No, Redbird, no!" _He_ was crying bitterly now, and he rolled over and

buried his head in his pillows, beating the bed with his clenched fists.

She could not bear to leave him weeping like this, like a child she was

abandoning. She would rather see him angry.

Then the spirit Bird, whom she had called on for help, sent her a

message. She saw Wolf Paw, as he had looked when he was proud and

undefeated, with the red crest on his head, a red blanket wrapped around

him and black paint around his eyes.

_Why did I never see it before?_

Wolf Paw wore the markings of the Bird she was named after, the Bird

that was her spirit guide. Neither she nor he had been aware of it. But

it must mean that they were destined for each other, and that what had

already happened between herself and Wolf Paw _had_ to happen.

To live out her life with Wolf Paw and never to see White Bear again was

like being told she would never again see a day with sunlight.

But it was as the spirit Bird had sung to her-- _What must happen, must

happen_.

She breathed deeply. She hated having to tell White Bear about Wolf Paw.

If he had been willing to come with her, she would not have had to say

anything. Wolf Paw would not have tried to hold her. And if she gave

birth a moon or two too soon, White Bear would have forgiven her. But

now she had to use Wolf Paw to hurt White Bear.

To hurt him so as to heal him.

_But when I am gone from here, who will heal me? Must the shaman suffer

wounds that can never be healed?_

_Yes, if she has dealt such wounds._

"You would not want me anymore, White Bear," she said. "These past moons

since you left us I have been Wolf Paw's woman."

He raised his tear-streaked face from the pillow and stared at her.

"What are you saying?"

"Wolf Paw lost his wives and his children at the Bad Axe. He was like a

dead man. I wanted to heal him, and I will heal him, by living with

him."

His eyes widened. She could see anger darkening his cheeks.

He said, "After my father took me to live here, you waited six summers

for me while Wolf Paw courted you. Could you not keep him off for a few

moons?"

She held out her hands imploringly. "Before, when he was an honored

warrior and had his family, he had no need of me. He wanted me as he

wanted another feather to hang in his hair. But now he needs me. Without

me he would be as good as dead. And he is the last brave in our band."

"I need you."

She put her hands over her belly. It was still flat, but she knew what

was there.

"I am carrying Wolf Paw's child."

He pushed against the bed till he was sitting bolt upright, and he

pounded his fist on his knee. He was still badly wounded. He could hurt

himself. What if he tried to get out of bed, and tore the wound open?

But when he looked up at her his eyes were large and dark with sadness.

"I still love you, whatever you did with Wolf Paw. And I will love _any_

baby you bear."

She felt his hands seize her heart, tearing it out of her chest,

crushing it. She cried out with the pain and staggered backward.

She cried, "You offer me everything but the one thing I want--for you to

come back to our people."

"What I do, I do for our people." His voice was so low that she could

barely hear him. "One Sauk, at least, will take back land the pale eyes

stole from us."

The world grew darker and darker for her. With every word he spoke she

was losing him a little more.

She made the flat-handed "no" gesture. "The pale eyes here in this land

are too strong for the red people. And in you there is both pale eyes

and red man, and the pale eyes is stronger than the red."

His shoulders slumped. She saw a dullness in his eyes that made her

think of Wolf Paw as he had looked after the people of Victor had killed

Floating Lily.

_Have I hurt White Bear so badly that he will get sick again?_ Sudden

fear rippled through her.

But then he lifted his head and looked at her, and there was strength in

his gaunt face.

"I will always love you. And as long as this place is mine, there will

be a home here for you, for Eagle Feather, for any child of yours. For

any Sauk. When you go back, tell them that."

Grief crushed her as she gazed at the man she loved, knowing that they

were parting forever.

He reached out to her, and she went back to lie beside him on the bed.

It felt so good to be held by him, and it hurt so much to know that this

was the last time they would ever lie heart against heart, she thought

she would scream at the agony of it.

* * * * *

_Good-bye, Floating Lily, my daughter. I may never be able to come back

here again. I hope you have begun your journey West. But if your spirit

lingers here, know that your father is close by._

Redbird stood a moment looking down at the mound of earth, now covered

with leaves, the strip of red blanket tied to the willow wand now faded.

She rocked back and forth in the pale eyes shoes made of heavy leather

that Yellow Hair had given her. She wailed softly in her sorrow for

Floating Lily.

Then she turned to Yellow Hair, who stood under a nearby maple.

"You take White Bear here and show him."

Yellow Hair nodded.

They went back to Yellow Hair's carriage. The buggy was laden with food

and blankets, and Redbird carried with her a heavy bag of gold coins

given her by White Bear's grandfather. Used wisely, the gold would buy

blankets and food, rifles and ammunition from the traders to help the

Sauk get through the winter. Now they would not have to winter over at

Fort Armstrong, but could cross over at once to join the rest of the

tribe in Ioway.

The wound in Redbird's heart ached constantly, and she sat bent forward

on the buggy seat, her hands gripping her knees. As they rattled down

the road to Fort Armstrong she felt some small relief at leaving the

place where she had lost so much. She tried to tell herself that she was

on the way to a new life.

Yellow Hair said she didn't understand why White Bear was not with them.

She wanted to know if he would follow Redbird when he got better.

_She understands, but she does not dare believe he is going to stay with

her. She thinks it is too much to hope for._

Redbird said, "He still your husband, Yellow Hair. You want him?"

Yellow Hair's lips quivered as she asked, would Redbird not come back to

be with White Bear?

Redbird gritted her teeth. It hurt to have to explain to Yellow Hair.

Redbird made the flat-hand motion. "He not follow me. I never come back

here."

Now Yellow Hair's eyes were glowing like turquoise set in silver. But

she put a comforting hand on Redbird's arm.

She wanted to know why. How could Redbird part from White Bear and he

from her? Did it not hurt too much?

"Yes, hurt much," said Redbird softly, watching the rutted dirt road

pass under the wheels of the buggy.

But Yellow Hair pressed her. How could White Bear tear himself away from

the Sauk?

"Pale eyes family now his people."

But his son--how could he give up his son?

Redbird struggled to find words and gestures to explain this. "Maybe

some day White Bear come for Eagle Feather, like Star Arrow once come

for White Bear." She remembered how White Bear had wept when Sun Woman

told him he must go to live with the pale eyes. "That day, I not say

Eagle Feather must go or must not go. Eagle Feather do what he want."

Yellow Hair shook her head, her braids lashing. She repeated over and

over again an English word Redbird understood, but it asked a question

she could never answer.

"_Why?_"

Again Redbird wrestled with the English words. "Land of his father and

grandfather holds him. He not want to leave."

But what about the uncle who nearly killed him?

"That uncle no more trouble," said Redbird.

_And because of that, I must lose him._

Then when would Redbird see White Bear again? Yellow Hair's question

buried itself in Redbird's heart like a steel arrowhead.

"Never!" she screamed.

Yellow Hair shrank back, her eyes wide with shock. Redbird sighed and

let her body droop.

They drove on in silence. Redbird heard small sounds beside her that

told her Yellow Hair was weeping.

Redbird reached over and took Yellow Hair's hand.

"Make him happy."

Yellow Hair uttered a sob and turned her head away.

But Redbird was no longer crying. Dry-eyed, she stared ahead at the road

south. Her sorrow was too deep for tears.

26

Blood on the Land

Raoul Francois Philippe Charles de Marion woke trembling in damp

blackness, wondering whether it was day or night outside. His heart was

beating so hard that it ached. For a moment he couldn't think what had

scared him so badly. Then he remembered the dream.

He struggled out of the old blanket he'd wrapped around himself and sat

up, panting.

A white bear coming at him down here in the mine. Why in hell would he

dream about a creature like that? There were white bears up in Canada,

he'd heard, but he'd never even seen one.

White Bear--that was Auguste's Indian name. Was he dreaming about

Auguste coming after him?

_Well, Auguste is rotting in the ground now. I killed him._

He still hated Auguste even after his death. Because of Auguste he had

to stay holed up here, blackness pressing on his eyeballs. His eyes were

wide open and he stared till they hurt, but he could see nothing,

nothing at all. It was like being blind.

He wished he had told just one of his men where to find him. He badly

wanted news of what was going on back at Victor. But if he'd told anyone

it would have been Armand, and he couldn't trust the bastard. Armand

might stupidly let himself be followed here. Or give way to threats, or

even sell him out, if Papa offered a big enough reward.

_Armand would. Sure he would. I could see in his eyes how he resented

me. He hated Pierre and he hated me too._

Raoul only had two candles left. Should he light one now? He could spare

it, because he was going to get out of this mine today--or tonight. He'd

waited long enough.

He wasn't sure anymore how long he'd been hiding down here in the dark.

When he slept, he had no idea how long he slept. A watch was one of the

many things he had forgotten to bring with him, leaving in such a hurry.

And yet he'd stupidly brought the silver case with Pierre's spectacles

in it. Stuck it in his pocket when he left the trading post to get the

mongrel. He felt it now, a hard oval in his coat pocket.

How long?

The men pursuing him had searched the mine, as he figured they would.

Days had passed, he was sure, since he'd heard their voices in the mine,

footsteps echoing. He was certain he was the only man in Victor who knew

about the tunnel he was hiding in, its entrance, just big enough to

crawl through, covered by a pile of gravel that appeared to have nothing

but wall behind it. He'd tried to disturb the gravel as little as

possible while crawling in, and had carefully replaced what he'd pushed

aside.

But he might have left some trace on the other side. He'd sat in the

blackness, waiting to hear the sounds of digging, his back pressed

against the damp rock wall, knees drawn up to his chin. His hands, cold

as if they'd been plunged into a snowdrift, had rested on his loaded

rifle and his pistol. And he'd drawn his Bowie knife and laid it beside

him. They'd pay dearly to take him. If there were no more than four or

five of them, he might manage to kill them all and get away.

But the sounds of the search party had faded away. He'd welcomed the

black cotton silence that had followed. He would stay down here as long

as he could. He'd found a place in his tunnel where underground water

had seeped in, and was able to keep refilling his canteen from that. He

found another small branch tunnel some distance from where he slept,

where he could piss and shit. But he'd come into the mine with only six

candles, and he was afraid to use them up, so he spent most of the time

sitting in the dark feeling as if he was going mad with alternating

worry and boredom.

He had brought his canteen of whiskey down here with him, and it had

made time pass easier for a while. But now it was all gone. Seemed like

a hell of a long time since he'd had a drink.

He made a flame with flint, steel and cotton wool, lit his next to last

candle and set it in a pool of its own wax. The light hurt his eyes for

a moment, and the sight of his own shadow moving on the dark gray rock

walls frightened him.

His hollow belly kept squealing and grumbling, and visions of beef and

turkey and duck and pork tormented him. Out of one of his saddlebags he

took the bundle of corn biscuits and dried beef he'd thrown together at

the trading post in his flight. He bit into a biscuit as hard and dry as

a lump of wood and rolled it around in his mouth until his saliva

softened it enough to chew and swallow.

Now he'd go up to the mine entrance, and if it was nighttime he'd leave.

The Flemings had their cabin about a mile from here. Their men had

joined the Regulators, so they deserved to have him take a horse from

them. Then he'd ride north to Galena.

He hefted the other saddlebag, loaded with gold and silver coins and

Bank of Illinois paper. He'd had to leave a lot behind in his office

safe, and they'd probably steal it from him. But he'd get it all back.

Because this was enough to buy him an army.

Galena would be crowded with the roughest men in the Northwest Territory

right now. Surely more men than could make a living in the mines around

there, boom or no boom. Rough and hungry, just what he needed.

_I'll yet see that high-and-mighty Cooper swinging from a tree. And I'll

piss on Auguste's grave._

He bit into a slice of dried beef. It was tough as rawhide, but he

forced it down.

_When I'm running things in Smith County again, Nicole and Frank and

that pack of squalling brats are leaving. I've put up with Frank and his

damned newspaper long enough, just because he's married to my sister._

If Frank gave any trouble, his new press, the one Papa helped him buy,

would end up at the bottom of the Mississippi. Or maybe he'd even be

Cooper's dancing partner on that tree.

_I've knocked my father down. I've killed my brother's squaw and his

mongrel bastard son. Why put up with my sister and her husband? What

have they ever done, except hate me?_

And the old man would have to go, too, if he was still alive, and that

brandy-pickled bag of bones, Guichard. Time to be rid of them all. De

Marion would still be the foremost name in Smith County, but it would be

a new de Marion family, not this old Injun-loving bunch that understood

nothing.

Nancy. What about her?

The teacher needed to be taught a lesson or two. If she hadn't let

Auguste service her when she was captured by the Injuns, then she'd

probably never had a man's cock up inside her. Once she found out what

pleasure he could give her, she'd forget about Auguste. She was still

young enough for children, good-looking children, and smart.

That brat Woodrow that she had living with her. Imagine him saying in

court that the redskins treated him better than his parents did. Send

him packing, just like the Hopkinses.

With Smith County and with Nancy all his, it would be time to rebuild

Victoire.

He'd put that off because he wanted to do it right. And he'd left the

ruin till now to remind himself and everyone in Victor why the Sauk had

to be driven out of Illinois.

No, that was a damned lie.

Alone here in the dark he could not keep the truth from pecking at his

brain like a buzzard's beak: Every time he went near the ruin of the

chateau, he thought of Clarissa and the boys, and guilt stabbed him

without mercy. He'd looked down on Clarissa, and he had not felt for the

boys as a father should.

He'd left them unprotected, let them die horribly, just as Helene had

died.

_I did to Andy and Phil just what Papa and Pierre did to me. When my

boys needed me most, I wasn't there._

_And the Sauk never would have attacked Victor if I hadn't shot Auguste

and the other two redskins at Old Man's Creek._

He forced himself to stop thinking about the family he'd made without

wanting to and then had lost. Their blood was spilled, and nothing would

bring them back. He'd shed plenty of Indian blood to avenge them.

He remembered the Indian witch woman, Auguste's mother, the Bowie knife

slicing open her throat, her blood warm on his hand. What curse had she

laid on him before he killed her?

He put her out of his mind and thought of Victoire. When he rebuilt

Victoire it would not be just another blockhouse, but a stone mansion

that could be seen from the river. It would be the center of Raoul de

Marion's new empire--steamships, railroads, cattle, farmlands, mines.

Now that the Indians were gone for good, now that Pierre's bastard was

dead, there was no limit to what Raoul could make of the family's

wealth.

The dreams heartened him. Time to move. He stuffed the little bundle of

beef and biscuit into one saddlebag. He slung the saddlebags over his

shoulder, the light one with food hanging down his front, the heavy one

with the money in it on his back. He loosened the Bowie knife in its

sheath on his left hip. He checked the loads in his pistol and his rifle

again.

As he pushed back his coat to holster his pistol, he felt Pierre's

spectacle case in his pocket.

_What the hell am I carrying that around for?_

At times he'd suspected that he kept Pierre's spectacles because he

really did love his older brother, in spite of everything Pierre had

done to him.

The silver case, he told himself, was valuable. But the spectacles were

worthless. The eyes that had needed them had stopped seeing a year ago.

_Had they?_

He opened the case. The lenses glinted in the candlelight as if there

were eyes behind them.

"Goddamn it!" he shouted, and turned the case over, dropping the

spectacles to the stone floor. They shattered with a crack that sounded

loud as a pistol shot. He stamped on them for good measure, crushing the

glass to glittering splinters and twisting the frames out of shape under

the sole of his boot.

He threw the case into a pile of rock shards. Valuable or not, he didn't

want the damned thing anymore.

"I hope you're in Hell, Pierre!"

He didn't love Pierre. He hated him. He'd never loved him. He'd always

hated him, ever since Fort Dearborn.

Holding the bit of candle high in his left hand, his rifle in his right,

he started up the sloping tunnel. It was a long climb; the sacks of

coins in the saddlebag on his back weighed him down.

He stopped at the gravel pile that blocked entry to this tunnel. He

listened, and heard nothing but his blood hissing in his ears. He

scraped chunks of stone away from the pile until he could crawl through.

After more walking and climbing through tunnels and shafts, he no

longer had any notion how long it had been since he left his hideout. He

saw ahead a little square of gray, in the center of the black all around

him. And then he could make out the walls and floor of the tunnel.

Moonlight or starlight must be illuminating the mine entrance. Night,

then. Good, he could leave at once.

About twenty feet from the entrance he saw up ahead an opening where

another tunnel branched off from this one. He remembered it. This was

the side tunnel where the Indian he'd killed seven years ago had hidden.

As he came close to that opening he heard a rumbling sound.

The growl of an animal.

He felt as if he'd been doused with ice-cold water.

He took a few steps back from the branch tunnel opening, curled his

finger around the trigger of his rifle and raised it, one-handed. He

didn't want to let go of the candle.

It hadn't just been a dream. There _was_ something in this mine.

Maybe a wolf. Or a bear would like a deserted mine like this for a den.

He heard snuffling, grunting noises. Then a growl so deep it seemed to

shake the stone under his feet. He felt his stomach clench, and he

nearly lost his grip on his bowels.

Claws scraped on rock. With trembling fingers he set the candle in one

of the wall niches the miners had carved for their lanterns and raised

his rifle to his shoulder.

The bear came out of the branch tunnel. He saw the huge, pointed white

head from the side at first, with a golden eye that glared at him. A

perfectly white bear.

Like his dream.

The head swung toward him, a gaping mouth lined with teeth like ivory

daggers.

The whole white body emerged, bigger than a bull bison.

It roared, deafening as a cannon blast. It reared up on its hind legs,

filling the tunnel like a white avalanche. After the roar, it rumbled

steadily, deep in its chest. Though it was more than ten feet away, he

could smell its rotten-meat breath.

He squeezed the trigger. His rifle thundered, echoes slamming the sides

of his head. Smoke obscured the vast white body. His ears jangled.

He felt a sudden terror that the shot might start a cave-in.

But it didn't.

It didn't stop the bear either. It came on, padded feet scraping on the

tunnel floor, swinging claws like rows of sickles.

_I couldn't have missed. Oh Jesus, oh God, I couldn't have._

He threw the rifle down, snatched his pistol out of his holster and

fired again.

Blinding flash, deafening blast, stinking smoke.

And the bear kept coming.

It was so close, the lead balls _must_ have gone into it. It must be

just so damned big it would take more than two shots to kill it.

But there was no time to reload. The bear towered over him, white body

filling the whole world, eyes, claws, teeth, all shining in the glow of

that pitiful little candle that somehow had stayed lit.

He screamed and sobbed like a little boy in his terror, but he managed

to get his Bowie knife out. He'd killed a big Indian with this knife.

A paw the size of his head knocked the knife from his hand.

"Oh, please don't kill me!" he wept. "For the love of Jesus!"

The other paw hit his chest like a sledgehammer. He felt his ribs cave

in. He felt the claws stab into his lungs.

His breath flew from his body. His strength drained away. He couldn't

scream anymore. He couldn't beg for his life. His voice was gone. Only

blood came out of his throat. The last thing he saw was an enormous

mouth gaping, full of yellow-white pointed teeth coming at him. He felt

claws rip again through his chest and belly and knew that he was going.

* * * * *

The pale eyes' smoke boat was a frightening thing, shooting black clouds

and sparks from two black-painted iron tubes that rose up from a big

lodge in its middle. On each side of the boat was a wheel with wooden

boards attached, and the wheels and boards pushed the boat through the

water. Standing on the floor of wood planks at the front end of the

boat, Redbird tried to understand how fire in the boat's belly could

make wheels turn. She felt the monstrous thing tremble under her as it

swam across the river.

About a hundred women and children with a few men were crowded at the

front of the boat, watching the Ioway shore of the Great River come

closer. By unspoken agreement they kept their backs turned to the land

that had once been so good to them, the land they had forever lost.

_The happy land that was lost_, Redbird thought.

At the memory of White Bear, grief stabbed her, and she had to rest

against the railing of the boat. She felt an aching hollow as if she had

been gutted like a butchered deer.

In their midst rose a little mountain of boxes, barrels, sacks and

bales, the supplies they had bought with White Bear's grandfather's

gold. But they had no horses, and when they got to the Ioway shore they

would have to carry these goods on their backs, a journey of probably

four days across the strip of land by the river that He Who Moves

Alertly had surrendered to the long knives. Somewhere beyond that land

they would find the Sauk and Fox who had been wise enough not to follow

Black Hawk. She hoped it would not start to snow before they reached the

camps of their people.

Wolf Paw said, "I have heard that this is the very boat that killed so

many of our people at the Bad Axe."

This boat had killed his wives and his children, then, thought Redbird.

She rested her hand on his arm.

"See there," he said, pointing to holes and black marks on the wood at

the very front end. "A thunder gun was set there. It fired at our people

and tore them to pieces. Like the one that killed so many of our

warriors at the pale eyes town." Through his worn buckskin shirt he

touched the silver coin that still hung around his neck on a leather

thong. Redbird remembered the day White Bear had dug the coin out of

Wolf Paw's body, claiming he had changed a lead ball into a coin.

She put her hand on her aching heart. Would things ever stop reminding

her of White Bear?

She stared down at the gray-green water rushing by the side of the boat,

and it made her dizzy. A canoe could never travel this fast, even a big

one paddled by many men. And a canoe could never go straight across the

river, without being pushed downstream by the current, as this

smoke-belching boat was doing.

Had she been wrong not to stay with White Bear, as he had begged her to?

She missed him so much. Tears came to her eyes. She hoped Wolf Paw and

Eagle Feather would not see her crying, and she wiped her eyes quickly.

She felt like jumping from this boat and swimming back to shore. If she

drowned in the Great River, even that would be better than being carried

away from White Bear.

She told herself she had made up her mind. She was determined to be a

Sauk for the rest of her days. And Eagle Feather would be a Sauk.

_White Bear is wrong to stay behind, even for all that land._

Eagle Feather gripped her arm. "Do not be afraid, Mother. The pale eyes

will not hurt us today." His blue eyes were sad. He must have noticed

her misery.

Wolf Paw smiled faintly. "No, today they only want to be rid of us."

Eagle Feather said, "One day Earthmaker will give us a medicine so

strong that the long knives' guns will not hurt us."

Redbird smiled at her son. "May it be you who finds that medicine."

_We can hope for that. Now that we have lost so much, the spirits might

grant us new powers that will help us to resist the pale eyes._

Of one thing she was sure, White Bear's way was not a trail that the

people should travel. For a Sauk to become a pale eyes was a kind of

death.

_We are Sauk, or we are nothing. White Bear is no longer a Sauk. My

husband is dead._

She turned back to Wolf Paw and Eagle Feather. She did not like to see

Wolf Paw's hair hanging loose around his head, his slumped shoulders. He

had always stood so straight. Before the people at Victor killed

Floating Lily.

She put her hand on his back and stroked it with a circular motion, and

he straightened his shoulders. As he looked at her a light dawned in his

eyes.

She must get him to shave his head again, to put the red crest back in

place. The people needed a new leader, a true leader. Black Hawk had

been wrong too many times, and He Who Moves Alertly would do whatever

the pale eyes told him to do. Wolf Paw would help her heal the people.

_How I hated him the night he mocked White Bear, putting a woman's dress

on him. But he has suffered much since then, and he is a wiser man now._

Eagle Feather was standing at the rail looking across the purple river

at the winter-gray hills on the Ioway shore. Redbird moved to stand

behind him and put her hands on his small, square shoulders. He held

himself very straight.

Eagle Feather said suddenly, "I wish I could have seen my father one

last time." She could barely hear him above the noise of the smoke boat

and the rushing water.

She closed her eyes against the pain of that and bit her lower lip to

keep it from trembling.

When she was able to speak she said, "I think that one day you will see

him again."

But for now Eagle Feather and White Bear must be parted. Because Eagle

Feather must grow up as a Sauk. The people would need him, too, in

summers and winters to come.

But until Eagle Feather was grown, the people would turn to her. The

men, like Wolf Paw, had lost heart. She would give them heart again.

In spite of the pale eyes, the Sauk would find a good trail.

* * * * *

The walk from Grandpapa's house to the ruins of Victoire seemed to

Auguste to take all morning. By the time he stood facing the blackened

chimney that towered over him like some ancient idol, his legs hurt. He

was panting, but the crisp winter air infused vigor into his nostrils

and lungs. He sat down to rest on a broken beam that had once held up

the ceiling of the great hall.

He was still weak from having been so badly wounded and from lying in

bed recovering. And even now his left lung was still not able to fill

itself full with air, and probably never would be.

This was the farthest he had ever walked. Too far, really. But the

bright December day invited him out of doors, and he wanted to see his

land.

_My land._

It was his now, without question. Now that Raoul's body had been found.

He was glad there had been no marks on the body. Glad that the Fleming

children, who had found it day before yesterday while playing down in

the gorge, hadn't had to see a human body torn to pieces, as he feared

Raoul might be found.

Ginnie, the middle Fleming girl, had followed a cardinal into the mine

entrance; once the child had seen the body, the little redbird had flown

out again and disappeared.

Raoul's rifle and his pistol, both of which he apparently had fired just

before he died, lay beside him. His Bowie knife had fallen a short

distance away, as if he had thrown it.

When Auguste and Grandpapa had gone to see the body laid out in Dr.

Surrey's examining room, Auguste had been shocked to see the grimace of

terror frozen on Raoul's face--jaws wide apart, lips drawn back from his

teeth, eyes bulging. A good thing the light in the mine had been dim and

the Fleming girl hadn't gotten a good look at that face.

Auguste and Dr. Surrey had both carefully examined the body and could

find no cause of death. Surrey opined that Raoul had gone mad hiding in

the mine and had been frightened to death by his own hallucinations.

Auguste knew what had killed Raoul. He vividly remembered his wanderings

in the other world, in that endless prairie, with Redbird.

Auguste could only imagine what the encounter between Raoul and the

White Bear had been like. It had taken place in the other world. The

White Bear spirit must have attacked and destroyed Raoul's soul--if a

soul could be destroyed. Like the men on spirit journeys who died

because their souls never returned to their bodies, Raoul's body had

been deprived of life. The White Bear could leave its mark in this world

when it chose, but usually it left tangible signs as a mark of favor.

This time the only mark it had left was that look of terror on Raoul's

dead face.

And Auguste had paid the price for having sent the White Bear against

Raoul: he had lost Redbird.

_For the rest of my life I will never see a cardinal without my heart

breaking all over again._

They would bury Raoul, with a mass, in the little cemetery overlooking

the river, just like any other member of the de Marion family. There

would be no revenge after death. Pere Isaac was coming up from Kaskaskia

to officiate.

_And I'm afraid it will not be long before Grandpapa lies down to rest

not far from Raoul._

Even as Auguste had begun to get out of bed and walk about, Elysee

seemed to be spending more and more time sleeping. One day, Auguste

expected, he would simply not wake up at all. Though he mourned in

expectation of the old man's passing, it was with a warm feeling that

Elysee had done much, had walked a long trail with honor. It was now

right that his spirit move on and his body return to the earth.

_I am thinking like a Sauk._

And then it all swept over him in a wave of anguish. He saw the

happiness he had lost. He saw the gardens and long houses of Saukenuk,

cool and pleasant in the summer, the snow-covered, warm winter wickiups

in Ioway. The hunting and fishing, the feasts, the dances. The beloved

faces drew close before his eyes--Sun Woman, Floating Lily, Eagle

Feather, Owl Carver, Black Hawk.

Redbird.

He gave an agonized shout that reverberated in the stone chimney that

towered over him. He beat his chest with his fist again and again, until

a bolt of pain shot through him where Raoul's bullet had pierced him. He

did not want to stop hurting himself, but he could not hit his chest

anymore. His head hung down and he sobbed brokenly.

He had sacrificed too much. He had given up everything he really loved

to become a prisoner of this place. He was trapped on this land. The

ancient wealth of the de Marions held him in golden chains.

_I could ride away from all this, even now. I could take a horse and

swim it across the Mississippi--the Great River--and I could find the

Sauk and live with them again. I could be free._

Redbird had said she had become Wolf Paw's woman. Anger boiled him at

the thought of that. But he knew it was the healer in her who had chosen

that path. As she had said, Wolf Paw was one of the last braves of the

British Band, and by healing him she healed the people.

And was he not lying to himself to think he could do anything for the

Sauk here? How could he resist the immense power of men like Sharp

Knife, who, he was sure, were bent on exterminating the Sauk, on

exterminating all the red people on this continent?

To make the de Marion estate prosper he would have to learn to perform a

thousand tasks about which he knew almost nothing. He must give all his

heart and mind and strength to this domain if it was to flourish. That

was the burden Star Arrow, Pierre de Marion, had laid on him. In taking

up that burden, might he not forget his other tie, to the Sauk, so far

away?

But it was his being a Sauk that chained him so irrevocably to

Victoire--the afternoon he smoked the calumet with Star Arrow--the

Turtle calling on him to be guardian of this land.

Somehow he must try both to be master of Victoire and to fulfill his

destiny as a Sauk.

_This land, right here, once belonged to my people. If I leave it, it

will never belong to them again._

_I will dedicate my possessions to them. I will send them what they

need. I will use the influence my wealth gives me with the lawyers and

politicians to protect them, so they will never be driven from their

land again, never be massacred again._

He stood up and walked away from the charred wreckage of Victoire into

the fields that surrounded it. The farmhands had planted corn last

spring, but the Sauk raiders had burned it, and some prairie grass had

come back. It had only had time to grow chest high before the frost

killed it, and as he pushed his way through it he could see fields

beyond, where the yellow horizon met the sky.

Nancy would share this land with him. She would love him, and they would

raise Woodrow together and have children of their own. He loved Nancy,

though there were places in him that only Redbird could touch. Those

places would be sealed off now. Hand in hand Nancy and he would walk

their path together.

The World was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way.

But he would never stop missing Redbird and Eagle Feather.

And he would never stop wishing he could live out his life as a Sauk.

Inwardly he would always be a Sauk. The Bear spirit would always be with

him to guide him.

_I failed the Sauk when they needed me. I warned them not to go to war,

but I could not make them listen. They need a shaman who will make them

listen._

He thought of the many, more than a thousand, who had died following

Black Hawk, and a sudden, crushing grief struck him to his knees.

"Hu-hu-hu-u-u-u-u," he wailed, stretching his arms wide and lifting his

face up to look at long, faint streaks of cloud that stretched across

the sky. "Whu-whu-whu-u-u-u-u."

He tore open his coat and his shirt. Kneeling, he could see only a patch

of blue directly overhead, framed by the tassels of the prairie grass

that rose up all around him. Staring up into the blue he wailed for the

dead for a long time.

He felt something wet running down his chest. He felt the cold grip of

fear on his heart. When he had struck his breast before, had he reopened

the hole Raoul's bullet made?

He looked down. Beads of dark red were pushing their way through the

five claw scars. Further down his chest they ran together as rivulets.

Five streams of blood trickled down his stomach.

The sight of flowing blood lifted his heart. It was a sign that the Bear

spirit was still with him. He bent forward and put out his hands to grip

the land at the roots of the prairie grass. His fingers dug into the

ashes of corn stalks and the roots of grass. A bright red spot appeared

on the ground between his hands and knees, and then another.

_My blood drips into the soil. I give myself to this land._

"I hold this land for the Sauk nation," he said. First he said it in

Sauk, then he repeated it again in English.

He pushed himself to his feet and drew from its sheath at his waist the

knife Star Arrow had left him long ago.

Standing, he could see over the waving grass. He flourished the knife

blade at the vast dome of sky covering the prairie. He faced toward the

east, whence came those waves of pale eyes that had driven his people

from their homes. Whence, too, had come his father and one of his

grandfathers.

The last Sauk shaman this side of the Great River held up his knife so

the sun glinted from it.

"I will defend this land!" he shouted.

As long as he lived, he would give his blood to this earth.

Afterword

The reader may suspect the author of a bit of frontier-style

exaggeration, with one President and three future Presidents--two of the

United States and one of the Confederacy--playing parts in this novel.

But it's a historic fact that Colonel Zachary Taylor and Lieutenant

Jefferson Davis were among the regular Army officers who pursued Black

Hawk's people. The two ultimately drew even closer, when Davis married

Taylor's daughter Sarah. Davis resigned from the military and took his

new bride back to Mississippi, where they settled on a plantation. But

the daughter of U.S. President Zachary Taylor was not to be First Lady

of the Confederacy; she died of malaria a few months after the wedding.

And after the Civil War Jefferson Davis saw the inside of Fort Monroe

once again--as a prisoner.

The meeting of Andrew Jackson and Black Hawk in the President's

House--as the White House was known in 1832--is also an actual

historical incident. When Sharp Knife sent the Sauk leaders on a tour of

major Eastern cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York,

the crowds that came to see Black Hawk greeted him as if he was a

conquering hero, somewhat to Jackson's chagrin. But "King Andrew," as

his political opponents called him, handily won the election of 1832.

During the second four years of his reign Congress enacted into law his

policy of forcing all Native American tribes in the U.S. to move west of

the Mississippi. Even though the Winnebago and the Potawatomi remained

neutral or actively helped the Americans, they also had to give up their

land in Illinois and Wisconsin and move westward.

Abraham Lincoln, aged twenty-three, joined the Illinois militia in April

1832, and was promptly elected captain of the Sangamon County company of

volunteers. In May, Lincoln was one of those who helped bury the slain

militiamen at Old Man's Creek. When his company was disbanded, the men

having served their four weeks' enlistment, Lincoln signed up for two

more short hitches. He served them as a private, and was finally

mustered out in July. His horse was stolen, and he and a friend walked

and canoed 250 miles southward to their home, in New Salem, Illinois.

Though Black Hawk War veterans tended to make much of their exploits,

Lincoln was content to say afterward that the only combat he saw was

against flies and mosquitoes. Thomas Ford, Auguste's attorney, served as

governor of Illinois from 1842 to 1846. His _History of Illinois_,

written in 1847, is one of the sources for this novel.

Other than Black Hawk himself, the most historically prominent Sauk in

these pages is He Who Moves Alertly. For the sake of consistency I've

translated all the Native American names in the novel into English.

Otherwise you'd have met He Who Moves Alertly under the name he's better

known by--Keokuk. And I would have referred to Shooting Star, the

Shawnee war chief mentioned in Chapters Five and Sixteen, as Tecumseh.

But then I'd have had to call Black Hawk by his Sauk name,

Makataimeshekiakiak. No wonder Emerson called consistency a hobgoblin.

Also an unfamiliar name today is Michigan Territory as a term for the

land north of Illinois through which Black Hawk and his people made

their final trek from the Trembling Lands to the mouth of the Bad Axe.

That land would soon become the state of Wisconsin. After achieving

statehood in 1848, Wisconsin promptly laid claim to the prosperous

northern portion of Illinois, including Chicago; but Illinois

politicians knew all about clout even then, and beat the Badgers back.

Large parts of Illinois and Wisconsin were lands previously occupied by

the Sauk and Fox. In the seventeenth century the Sauk migrated from

Canada, driven by wars with the Iroquois, down into what is today

eastern Wisconsin. During the eighteenth century they formed a

confederacy with the Fox and moved into the southwestern part of

Wisconsin and northern Illinois. In Black Hawk's time there were about

four thousand Sauk and sixteen hundred Fox, living in villages along the

Wisconsin (earlier spelled Ouisconsin) and Mississippi rivers and at the

mouth of the Rock River.

With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the U.S. took charge of the Sauk

and Fox homeland. In 1804 white settlers attacked a party of Sauk men,

women and children, and three whites were killed. As territorial

Governor William Henry Harrison demanded, a delegation of five Sauk and

Fox chiefs brought one of the accused killers to St. Louis. Harrison

used the occasion to negotiate a treaty in which the Sauk and Fox ceded

to the U.S. all their land east of the Mississippi, including what is

today northwestern Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin, as well as a

portion of Missouri. All together the Sauk gave up 51 million acres. For

this they got $2234.50 and an annual payment of $1000 worth of goods.

Later one of the chiefs who had signed the treaty said that the

delegation had been drunk most of the time they were in St. Louis. The

prisoner the chiefs had delivered to Harrison was "killed while trying

to escape."

Black Hawk never recognized this treaty or later confirmations of it. In

defiance, he led his people back to Saukenuk every spring.

There is a gaudy rural playground area in south-central Wisconsin known

as the Wisconsin Dells, where local folks will show tourists a cave in

which, they swear, Black Hawk was hiding when captured by two Winnebago

warriors named Chaetar and One Eye Decorah. But Dr. Nancy O. Lurie of

the Milwaukee Public Museum has unearthed a different account of Black

Hawk's surrender, written by John Blackhawk, grandson of a Winnebago

chief and no relation to the Sauk leader. I find the John Blackhawk

version much more probable than the Wisconsin Dells story, and it's the

one I've followed, adding, inevitably, my own fictional elaborations. Be

it noted that the incident of the small boy who commits Black Hawk's

party to surrendering by smoking Wave's peace pipe is not my invention,

but is reported in the John Blackhawk manuscript. Tobacco was that

sacred to the Native Americans of those times.

Another matter on which historians disagree is the origin of the

expression "O.K.," which made its appearance in the American language in

the 1830s. Here I propose an explanation (see page 239) that I haven't

seen anywhere else, but that, like John Blackhawk's story, makes sense

to me. People at that time attached the adjective "old" to anyone or

anything they felt affectionate about--Old Glory, Old Ironsides, Old

Hickory. By the time he got around to running for President, Zachary

Taylor was "Old Rough and Ready." The most popular alcoholic beverage in

early nineteenth-century America was whiskey, and the best whiskey was

distilled in Kentucky and widely known as Old Kaintuck. It was a jug of

Old Kaintuck that Raoul grudgingly shared with Abe Lincoln. It seems

likely enough that the nickname Old Kaintuck would in time be shortened

to "O.K."--easier to say after you've had a few--and come to mean the

good stuff in any area of life.

About the Author

Robert Shea is the co-author of the epic fantasy _The Illuminatus!

Trilogy_ and author of the two-volume _Shike_, among other novels. For

many years he worked for magazines, and he has been writing novels

full-time since 1977. He lives in Glencoe, Illinois.

SHAMAN

A man of potent magic and mystical vision

SHAMAN

Healer, future-teller, initiate into the mysteries of the spirit world

SHAMAN

A story of sacred Indian rites and the land-greed of an

expanding new nation

It was a time of bloody confrontation between the white man and the red

man, a time when the pioneers of a new nation were pushing out across

the Great Plains and yet the powerful spirits of an ancient mystical

religion still held sway over the Indians. In this troubled, dangerous

time, there is a man who has the privilege--and the curse--of belonging

to both worlds. He is Gray Cloud, a disciple of the aging shaman Owl

Carver. A handsome young half-breed, he is chosen by the Great Turtle to

become the mystical leader of the Sauk people ... and summoned by his

French-born aristocratic father to inherit the vast estate of Victoire.

Here is the riveting drama of Gray Cloud's transformation into the

powerful shaman White Bear, and his desperate struggle to reconcile the

opposing forces of his white and Indian heritage. It is a sweeping epic

of mysticism and history, of bitter love and brutal warfare, and of the

tragic fate of an ancient people.