He felt a flash of anger at her. She did not understand the Sauk way of life at all. She was just repeating what her father had said.
He remembered the way Nancy's eyes had shone each time they met on the prairie last summer. He had known then that if he spoke to Nancy of marriage, she would want it no matter how much it enraged her father. But marriage with Nancy would be a coming together of two strangers, of people whose worlds were utterly different. In the past six years he had learned much about her world, but that did not mean he belonged in it. And she knew next to nothing of his.
It hurt to hold himself back; he felt powerfully drawn to her. But what he was feeling was impossible. Impossible to fulfill.
"I can use my schooling to help my people make a better life forthemselves. The gift my father gave me is a gift I will give to the Sauk. And it may be worth more than the land Raoul has stolen from me."
"I don't want to lose you," she sobbed. She threw herself against him and wrapped her arms around him. Her tear-wet cheek pressed against his. Her face was hot, as though she had a fever. She wanted him; he felt it now, just as he had seen it hours ago in her unguarded eyes.
"I've never cared for a man as I care for you, Auguste," she said. "Everything you say may be true, but if you go back to your tribe I'll never see you again."
It hurt Auguste to admit it, but it was almost certain that they would never meet again.
"If you want to—you could come with me." Even as he spoke, he was sure it would never work. Did she not dismiss the way of the Sauk as "hunting and living in a wigwam"?
And suppose Redbirdhadwaited for him? What would he do with Nancy then?
"No," she said. "If I went with you my father would hunt us down and Raoul would help him. And besides—" She hesitated.
"What else?"
She shook her head. "I'm too afraid. Indians frighten me. Not you. Real Indians."
Real Indians?
Anger pulsed in his head. He wanted to pull away from her then, but she wouldn't let him go. Her arms tightened around him, and her body moved against him.
"Auguste, do you know where it says in the Bible, 'Adam knew Eve, his wife'? I want to know you—that way."
Her soft words thrilled him, and he forgot his anger. He felt exalted, and he held her tightly. He had wanted Nancy ever since he met her last June. All summer long, desiring her, he had fought his desire.
He pressed his mouth on hers, crushing her soft, full lips. She was pulling at him now, pulling him down. Pulling him to lie with her between the rows of corn.
I must not do this.
Abruptly he steadied his feet and drew his face away from hers.
The vague shape of a future different from the one he plannedshimmered in his mind. They could have each other here and now, and he could give up his decision to return to the Sauk. He might flee temporarily to some nearby county, find work, study until he could begin practicing medicine, marry Nancy, perhaps even try to win back the estate in the pale eyes' courts.
He would become, more or less, a pale eyes. It would be the end of him as a Sauk.
And the White Bear arose in his mind, as clearly as if he had suddenly stood up here among the corn stalks.
The White Bear said,Your people need you.
"Auguste, please,please," Nancy whispered. "It isn't wrong. It's right for us. There's no other man but you who's right for me. I don't want to end up a dried-up old spinster who never knew the man she truly loved."
She slid down the length of him, falling to her knees in the furrow. She pressed her cheek against the hard bulge in his trousers, sending a thrill through his whole body.
"Please."
He wanted to let himself sink to the ground with her. He shut his eyes and saw the White Bear more vividly in his mind. It seemed to glow.
He held himself rigid, fighting the pressure inside him that made him want to give in to her. He told himself he could give Nancy this moment of love she wanted and still go back to the Sauk. If he did not take her now as she wanted to be taken, he would regret it bitterly later.
But if he did this with her it would tie them in a bond that would be wrong to break. If he gave her what she wanted and then left, it would hurt her, might even kill her.
He took a step backward, then another. His legs felt as if they were made of wood; he could barely move them.
Nancy let him go, put her hands to her face and sobbed, kneeling between the rows of corn.
He stood there a moment, feeling helpless. Then he went to her, took her arms and helped her to stand up.
"I do love you, Nancy," he said. "But if I knew you as Adam knew Eve, I would still have to leave you. And it would hurt both of us much more."
Sobs still shook her body. He did not even know if she heardhim. But she let him lead her out of the cornfield, around the locked and silent church, and back to the wagon where his trunk lay. As they walked she pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve, wiped her face and blew her nose.
His heart felt heavy as lead. Sure as he was that this was the right thing to do, he was almost as sure it was wrong.
When they got to the wagon, he was still holding her arm. Gently she pulled free of him.
"You're a good man, Auguste. I'm afraid I'll always love you. Whether you want me to or not."
"Are you all right?" he asked. He wanted to make her happy, and he felt terribly helpless.
"I will be," she said.
As he rode in the wagon back to the château with Marchette, the back of Auguste's neck tingled. He pictured silent hunters crouched out in the prairie, their Kentucky long rifles ready, their thoughts fixed on fifty pieces of silver. His eyes moved restlessly over the low hills around them. The nearly full moon was sinking before them in the west, a lantern at the end of their trail. In some places the prairie grass closed in around the horse and wagon, high as the horse's rump and the wagon's wheels, and it looked to Auguste as if they were pushing their way through a moonlit lake.
The loudest sound he heard was the steady singing of choruses of crickets more numerous than all the tribes of man. Somehow it seemed they always sang louder this time of year, as if they knew that frost and snow were coming soon to silence their song.
The château's peaked roof rose black against the stars. Before they reached the orchards, Auguste put his arm around Marchette and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Jumping down from the wagon, he tied to his shoulders with rawhide thongs the pack that held his medicine bundle, his instruments and his book.
"Good-bye and thank you, Marchette," he whispered, and darted off into the tall grass.
"God keep His eye upon you," she called softly after him.
Watching for Raoul's lurking hunters, he was soon past the château and slipping along the edge of the road that led through the hills to town.
He froze. He saw a light ahead of him, a swinging lantern moving away from him. Loud voices carried to him on the still night air.
Those must be some of Raoul's men. He was frightened, but he needed to know what Raoul was doing. Staying well in the shadows of the trees that grew along the edge of the road, he moved quickly and silently until he was close enough to make out words.
They staggered along, praising Raoul's generosity with Old Kaintuck. Auguste saw three of them in the lantern's yellow glow, each carrying a rifle.
He bit his lower lip, and fear formed a cold hollow in his chest. If these men saw him they would shoot him on the spot.
Or try to. He doubted they could hit anything, drunk as they looked. With that thought, his tense muscles eased a little.
The men crossed a narrow ridge that connected a hill with the bluff on which the trading post stood. Auguste flinched, startled by a whoop and a wail, followed by the crash of a body falling through shrubbery and a heavy clattering—probably a rifle—against rocks.
From the ridge came a burst of drunken laughter. Two of the men mocked their comrade who had rolled to the bottom of the hill. They wouldn't help him climb back up. Sleep it off down there, they told him. Curses floated faintly from below, then there was silence.
"What if that Indian is lurking around here?" said the man carrying the lantern. "He might come upon Hodge in the dark and scalp him or something."
Auguste thought,How I would love to. He recognized the Prussian accent of the man speaking. It was Otto Wegner, one of the men who worked at Raoul's trading post.
The other man said, "Hell, if the Injun ain't dead from the way Eli conked him with that rifle butt, he's halfway to Canada. He knows he'll get his red hide full of holes if he stays around Smith County."
"As for me, I do not shoot unarmed Indians," said Wegner. "Fifty Spanish dollars or not. I have my pride. I served under von Blücher at Waterloo."
"Waterloo, hah? Well, ain't you a hell of a fella! Raoul'd skin you alive and wear you for a hat if he heard you talking like that."
"He would not. I am his best rifleman—after Eli Greenglove. Heknows my value. And my honor as a soldier is worth more to me than fifty pieces of eight."
Crouching in the shrubbery, Auguste shook his head in wonder. There was some sense of right and wrong even among Raoul's rogues.
But that hadn't stopped Wegner from being one of the men who backed Raoul with his rifle this morning.
He waited for the men to cross the ridge. He heard no sound from the one who had fallen; he had probably taken his comrades' advice and gone to sleep.
When the lantern swung out of sight around a corner of the trading post palisade, Auguste darted forward. Keeping low, he made a wide circle through the wooded slope above Victor. He scrambled down to the road where the Hopkins house stood. A long-eared black dog barked and ran at him when he passed one of the houses along the road. His heart stopped as he waited for doors to fly open and rifles to fire at him. But he kept walking, and the dog stopped barking when he was beyond the house it was guarding.
Hoping none of the neighbors would hear him, he knocked loudly at the Hopkins door to wake them up.
Frank Hopkins, holding a candle in his hand, stood in the doorway in a long nightshirt. "What the devil is it? We've got a sick man in here—" He peered closer. "My God, Auguste! Get inside, quick."
He reached out, dragged Auguste through the door and shut it quickly behind him.
"I thought you were out at the Hales'." They stood in Frank's ground-floor workshop. The iron printing press towered shadowy in the candle's glow.
"I came to see Grandpapa. And—Frank, I'm going back to my people. I need your help."
"Come upstairs." Frank helped Auguste untie his backpack.
The stairs led to a second-floor corridor, and Frank drew Auguste into a room where an oil lamp with a tall glass chimney burned next to a large bed. Nicole sat there. The lamplight revealed Elysée's sharp profile against the white of the pillow.
Nicole jumped to her feet. "Oh, Auguste! Are you all right?"
"I'm getting better. How is Grandpapa?"
"He's only been awake half the time. Gram Medill looked in onhim. She said he wrenched his hip when he fell and had bad bruises, but he hadn't broken any bones. I've been sitting up with him. What about you—how is your head?"
Auguste felt as if chains had fallen away from his chest at the news that Grandpapa was not dying. Then his head started to hurt. In the excitement of slipping past his enemies, Auguste had forgotten his pain. Now he rubbed the spot above his right ear where Greenglove's rifle had hit him. He felt a lump that was sore to the touch. But he was able to smile reassuringly at Nicole.
He spoke in a low voice so as not to disturb Elysée. "I won't be able to put my fine beaver hat on over this bump. But I won't be taking my fine beaver hat where I'm going."
"I'll get some more chairs," Frank said. "We can talk in here. The old gentleman is sound asleep now. Could you use a drop of brandy, Auguste?"
Auguste nodded. "That might ease the pain." He thought not only of the pain from the rifle blow, but of the pain in his heart from having lost Victoire despite his promise to his father. And the pain of tearing himself away from Nancy.
He and Frank quietly removed chairs from the other upstairs rooms where the Hopkins children were sleeping. Frank went down to the kitchen and came back with a tray bearing three small bowl-shaped crystal glasses and a cut-glass decanter that twinkled in the lamplight.
"Handsome glassware," Auguste said, seating himself and carefully setting his backpack between his feet.
"From the time of Louis the Fifteenth," Nicole said. "One of the things Papa brought over from the old château in France. And he gave it to Frank and me as a wedding present. At least Raoul won't get his hands on this."
Auguste said, "But Raoul has everything else, because father left it all to me. I told him he should will it to you; I should have insisted." His face burned with shame.
Frank said, "I doubt we'd have held onto the estate any longer than you did. And, frankly, I don't want it any more than you do. I don't know how Nicole feels."
Now that the land was irrevocably lost to him, Auguste was no longer so sure that he did not want it. He twisted in his chair, angry at himself for his uncertainty.
Nicole shook her head. "I'm a wife and mother. I'm not prepared to be a châtelaine. Especially when I'd have to fight that—that beast."
As Frank poured an inch of the warm amber liquid into each of their glasses, Auguste noticed that his fingers were, as always, blackened. He must never get the stains of his trade off his hands.
Frank said, "I'm going to write in theVisitorabout what happened today, tell what I saw, so the whole county will know what happened."
Auguste looked at Nicole. He saw fear in her eyes, but she said nothing.
"Why write about it?" Auguste said. "Raoul would do some harm to you. And it would change nothing. I won't even be here to read it." The last thing he wanted was these people, whom he cared about, getting into trouble because of him.
Frank smiled faintly. "You know that unlike just about every other man in Smith County, I don't carry a gun." He pointed downward, in the direction of the press on the floor below them. "That's my way of fighting."
For a moment Auguste felt ashamed that he was running away from that same fight.
"Because you stood by me today my heart will always sing your praises. Do you think my father's spirit will be sad if I do not stay and fight for the land until I die?"
"You almost did die, Auguste," Nicole said.
And I might yet, before I get away from here.
He sipped the brandy. It burned his tongue and his throat and lit a fire in his belly. It made him feel stronger.
Frank said, "Nobody's saying you should stay. I don't want to see you killed."
Nicole said, "Neither would your father. Pierre wanted you to have the estate, but he didn't want you dead on account of it."
"Amen to that," said Frank.
Yes, Auguste thought, despising himself,but I think he expected me to keep the land for more than a day.
Frank went on, "But if you go back to your people, you've got to tell them—they can no more fight the United States for their land than you could fight Raoul."
A fierce heat rose in Auguste as he took another sip of brandy."At St. George's School I read that the Indian does not make good use of the land. The whites need the land. Therefore the Indian must yield." He clenched his fist around the glass in his hand. "We were living on this land! Doesn't that mean anything?"
Frank said, "Auguste, you know better than any of your people how much power the United States have. You've got to tell them."
Auguste was silent for a moment.
The long knives, he thought. That was what his people called the American soldiers. But the British Band had no idea how very many long knives there were. He must make Black Hawk understand.
He sipped a little more of the brandy, and its fire flowed through his blood.
He sighed and nodded. "I will tell them. Frank, I need a boat."
Nicole said, "Your eyelids are drooping, Auguste. You're tired and you're still hurt. You can't go tonight."
True. And he wanted to stay long enough to see Grandpapa when he was awake.
Auguste's last memory that night was of letting Frank lead him across the corridor into a darkened bedroom, where he fell face down on an empty bed.
When he came to himself again, he was lying on the same bed, still fully clothed except for his boots. The room was not as dark as he remembered; it was in a sort of twilight. The one window was shuttered. A curtain covered the doorway. He looked around the room, saw boys' clothing hanging on pegs and piled on the floor, another bed, covered with rumpled sheets, empty. His own boots and his pack were set neatly at the foot of his bed.
An urgent pressure inside told him he had been sleeping a long time. He saw a chamber pot in one corner. Smart of them to leave the pot here, he thought as he filled it. He didn't dare to go to their outhouse during daylight.
He went to the window and cautiously looked through the shutter. The window looked south, and he could not see the sun, only the black shadows it painted in the ruts of the road that slanted up the hill past the Hopkins house. It must be late afternoon.
He wondered, were Raoul and his men out there somewhere, looking for him? Would he live to see another nightfall?
His head ached less than it had last night—until he touched it. Then the pain was like someone pounding a nail into his brain. The bump felt as big as a hen's egg.
Opening his backpack, he took out his leather medicine bag and drew out the stones one by one, rubbing his fingers over each. He opened his shirt and touched the tip of the bear's claw to the five scars on his chest.
Then, on impulse, he touched it to the old scar on his cheek.
A black leather bag contained his surgical instruments—two saws, a big one for legs and a smaller one for arms; four scalpels; lancets for bleeding; a turnkey for pulling teeth; a probe and tongs for removing bullets; a small jar of opium. Any of those things might be needed, where he was going.
Last, he took out a book, chosen almost at random from his small collection. On the spine of its brown leather cover was stamped in gold: "J. Milton.Paradise Lost."
Reverend Hale had recommended that he take a Bible. This long poem giving the Christian account of creation was the next thing to a Bible. But he had read it at St. George's and enjoyed it. And its title and its story of Adam and Eve being driven out of the Garden of Eden made him think of how he was dispossessed. Perhaps he would find some wisdom or guidance in the book.
Today he thought,Paradise lost? It may be that I'm returning to paradise.
But then he remembered how Nancy had wanted to "know" him as Adam knew Eve. Hewasleaving behind what might have been a great happiness.
He opened the book and read the first verse his eye fell upon:
High on a Throne of Royal State, which farOutshone the wealth ofOrmusand ofInd,Or where the gorgeous East with richest handShow'rs on her KingsBarbaricPearl and Gold,Satan exalted sat ...
High on a Throne of Royal State, which farOutshone the wealth ofOrmusand ofInd,Or where the gorgeous East with richest handShow'rs on her KingsBarbaricPearl and Gold,Satan exalted sat ...
Sounded like Raoul, with his fifty Spanish dollars and his steamboat and lead mine and trading post. Raoul was better fitted to be Satan than to be the angel at the gates of Eden keeping sinners away.
He heard voices nearby. One, faint but unmistakable, was Grandpapa's. His heart leaped. He quickly repacked his treasures.
He pushed the curtain aside and hurried across the hall. It was a joy to see Elysée's eyes looking at him, open and bright.
"I do not as a rule believe in miracles," Elysée said, smiling at Auguste, "but it's certainly a miracle that you could charge a man pointing a pistol at your chest and come out with nothing but a bump on your head."
"It's a bad enough bump, Grandpapa," said Auguste, dragging over the chair he had sat in last night and pulling it close to the side of the bed. "I wish I could stay and doctor you."
"Our local midwife says I too will heal," said Elysée. "I can move all my arms and legs without extreme pain. I think the worst injury was to my hip." He touched his right side gently. "I bruised it when I fell. There's swelling there, but I can move my leg. The hip is not broken." He closed his eyes, and Auguste knew that the old man was feeling a sharper pain in his heart than in his bones. "You must not think of staying here. I am afraid Raoul is perfectly capable of murdering you."
One son dead, the other an enemy. And now I must leave him. How much more can he stand?
Nicole was sitting beside Elysée's bed, just as she had been last night when Auguste arrived. He wondered whether she had slept.
Nicole smiled at him. "I sent the children down to play by the river. Having two injured adults to care for has been very restful for me."
Elysée sat up a little straighter, Nicole quickly plumping the pillows behind him, and turned a sharp, blue-eyed stare at Auguste.
"Nicole and Frank told me about your plan to go back to the Sauk. I can understand why you would wish to do so, but that is not the only choice open to you. You might consider going where people are much more civilized than they are around here—back East, where you were educated. Emilie and Charles would be happy, I am sure, to take you in again for a time. And I could help you. I have money banked with Irving and Sons on Wall Street. You could continue your education and follow the medical profession in New York."
Wishing he did not have to refuse the old man, Auguste said, "Grandpapa, I must go to the only other people I love in the world as much as I love you and Aunt Nicole."
Elysée uttered a little sigh. "I understand. Loyalty pulls you back to your mother's people. It is a family trait. I suppose your father must have told you about the mystery around the origin of our family name."
"Yes, Grandpapa." Wanting him to know his French forebears, Pierre had spent hours with Auguste recounting their names and deeds. And he had told him that, strangely, the de Marion records extended back only to the late thirteenth century, though the family was wealthy and powerful even then. According to a murky legend, one ancestor had committed treason against the King, and that one's son had deserted his wife and children, simply disappeared. Feeling the original name, whatever it had been, irreparably tarnished, the first recorded Count de Marion had destroyed all record of it—apparently with the approval and help of the royal authorities—and had taken his mother's family's name instead. The story had left Auguste wishing he could use his shaman's powers to learn more, but he doubted that the Sauk spirits could see clear across the ocean.
Elysée said, "We de Marions sometimes display an overabundance of loyalty, as if we were still trying to expiate that ancient guilt."
Puzzled, Auguste said, "There's nothing wrong with loyalty, is there?"
"Certainly not. But remember this—if I had let loyalty keep me in France, we would not be here in this primeval paradise."
He sees this land as a paradise too. But it has not been kind to him.
"Looking back, Grandpapa, do you think you would have done better to have stayed in France?"
Elysée laughed, a short, humorless bark. "Not at all. I would almost certainly have lost my head to Dr. Guillotine's wonderful invention. Our lands would have been confiscated, and that would have been the end of the family."
"But now, with most of the wealth in Raoul's hands—"
Elysée raised a hand and shook his head. "This is not the end. I do not believe in divine intervention, but I do believe there is a law of nature that says a bad man will do badly in the end."
Auguste was about to reply when he heard footsteps coming down the road toward the house, reminding him of how quiet it had been ever since he awakened. A good part of the town was sleeping off Raoul's Old Kaintuck, he suspected.
He heard the door open and close below. A moment later Frankcame into the room carrying a long rifle, with an ammunition bag and a powder horn slung over his shoulder.
"Well, I bought you a little bateau that will get you across the Mississippi," he said, "for five dollars, from an old trapper who doesn't feel up to going out this winter. And for another twenty dollars I got him to throw in his second best rifle and a good supply of ammunition." He smiled grimly at Auguste. "I expect you'll find this useful over in Ioway."
Auguste nodded. "I'll eat better. But—twenty-five dollars. Frank, that's too much for you to spend on me." He felt a warm gratitude toward the plump, sandy-haired man who was risking so much to help him. Frank's newspaper, his printing business and his carpentry all together could hardly bring in twenty-five dollars in a month, little enough to feed a family of ten.
Elysée said, "I told you I had some money salted away, Auguste. Let the boat and the rifle be my gift to you."
Auguste reached out and squeezed his grandfather's bony hand.
Frank said, "I've moved the boat about half a mile below town and hidden it. We should be able to get down there unseen after dark."
Nicole said, "If Auguste is leaving as Raoul wants him to, why wouldn't Raoul just let him go?"
Frank said, "We can't take that chance. I believe Raoul won't be content unless he kills Auguste."
Auguste shuddered inwardly at the thought that there was in the world a man who would not be satisfied until he was dead. He could not live with that kind of fear. He asked the White Bear, his spirit guide, to give him courage.
He tried to push the fear out of his mind. He stood up to go back to the room where he had slept. He would clean and repack the things he was taking, he decided. He would get busy getting ready and not give himself time to think about being afraid.
But nightfall seemed a long way off.
At nine o'clock in the evening by the Seth Thomas clock in Frank's printing shop, which he reset every day at sunset, it was dark enough and the town was quiet enough for Auguste to leave. He held Nicole's ample body tight and kissed her, shook hands with the boys and kissed the girls. His grandfather had drifted off to sleep again, but the old man had kissed him on both cheeks, and they had said their good-byes in the afternoon.
The road down the bluff from the town to the bottomland was empty. Most people in Victor went to bed soon after sunset, and those who didn't would be up in the taproom of the trading post inn.
Auguste did see candlelight flickering in a one-room log cabin they passed. A silhouette appeared in the window just as he looked in. A man reached out and slammed the shutters closed.
"Bad luck we should pass that house just as he came to the window," Frank said. "One of Raoul's men. But he's more than likely still half drunk."
Frank and Auguste followed the road past fields of corn ready for harvesting, their way lighted by the nearly full moon.
Up ahead the wooded sides of the bluff came down to the water's edge. Frank led Auguste out on a shrub-covered spit.
Not until he was nearly on top of the bateau did Auguste see it. Frank had pulled it up out of the water, covered it with branches, and tied it to the roots of a tree that had toppled into the water, undercut by the river.
With sinking heart Auguste saw that though the riverboat was small, it would be heavier and harder to row than a canoe. Well, Frank had done his best, and now he would have to dohisbest.
His heart leaped with fear as he heard hoofbeats.
Horsemen, coming down the road from Victor.
Frank stopped working on the boat and lifted his head. "Damn! That skunk must have seen you after all."
The pounding was coming rapidly closer. Auguste's heart was beating as fast as the oncoming hooves. He saw the horsemen by moonlight—fiveof them, racing through the high corn.
Frank and Auguste pushed the little boat into the water bow first, pointed stern resting on the shore. Auguste put his pack in the stern and the rifle and ammunition in the bow, where they were more likely to stay dry. The current pulled the bow downstream, the flat bottom grinding in the mud.
Auguste saw a flash and heard a loud boom. Something whistled through the bare branches of a bush beside him.
He leaped into the boat.
"Here. Beef and biscuit." Frank tossed a bag to Auguste, who set it on the seat beside him. Frank pushed the bateau's stern free.
"Now row for your life!"
Pulling as hard and fast as he could, Auguste steered diagonallyinto the Mississippi, trying to get beyond pistol range without spending all his strength fighting the current.
"Hopkins, goddamn it, I'll killyouif he gets away!"
Raoul's voice. Auguste wished he had time to load his rifle and shoot back, but if he stopped rowing they were sure to get him.
Five bright red flashes and five shots roared out one after the other from shore.
If one of those men is Eli Greenglove I'm dead for sure.
Auguste heard a sharp rap on the side of the boat and splashes in the water on his left. He felt naked sitting up in the boat pulling frantically on the oars. He could stop rowing and lie down using the side of the boat as a shield, but then he would remain within range, drifting south along the riverbank, and Raoul and his men could follow him and shoot at him at their leisure. He gritted his teeth and kept rowing, his shoulder muscles feeling as if they were about to tear loose from his bones.
He heard a ball whiz past his head. They must have stopped riding to reload and take better aim.
Another ball smashed into the boat just ahead of the wooden oarlock.
His body was coated with the cold sweat of fear. There was nothing he could do but sit here, a target in the moonlight, and pull on the oars with all his strength. If he missed one stroke it might be his death.
Earthmaker, do not let Raoul take revenge on Frank.
Pistol balls splashed water into the boat.
White Bear rowed upstream on the Ioway River past stands of weeping willow whose yellowing fronds drooped into the dark green water. Even though the current was at its weakest now, his arms and shoulders felt as if they'd been beaten with clubs. If only Frank had been able to find a canoe for him instead of this heavy bateau that he'd had to push across the Great River and now up the Ioway.
His heart fluttered in his chest like a trapped bird as he sensed himself coming closer to the British Band's winter hunting camp. He had thought he would be happy at this homecoming, but he was terrified.
How would they receive him? After six years they must think he had forgotten all about them. Would they despise him? Maybe they would just make fun of him.
And in what state would he find the British Band? They'd had to get through the summer without the crops they always raised. Had any friends been shot by white snipers during the siege of Saukenuk? How many, weakened by hunger, might be ill or dead? Would his mother be alive?
And what of Redbird?
He had already met, just by chance, one member of the band, Three Horses, who had been fishing in the shallows on the Ioway shore of the Great River. And Three Horses had certainly been happy to see him. He'd jumped on his pony and had said he would ride back to the camp with the news that White Bear was back. He was so excited that he did not wait for White Bear to ask any questions about how his people had fared.
So they would all be waiting for him by the time he got there. The thought frightened him all the more.
Ahead, a row of bark and dugout canoes lay bottoms up on a dirt embankment.
He saw a flash of red in the trees near the canoes. For a moment he thought, with a joyous leap of his heart, that it might be Redbird. Then a man wearing a deep red blanket stepped out of the woods. He stood over the beached canoes with his arms folded.
Wolf Paw.
His eyes were like splinters of coal, and the black circles he had painted around them gave him a terrifying aspect. The crest of red-dyed deer hair that sprouted from his shaven skull seemed strange and savage to White Bear after six years away from the Sauk.
White Bear rowed in close to the riverbank, uncertain how to greet Wolf Paw. The brave said nothing, did nothing. A maple branch swayed in the wind. Red leaves fell, and sunlight flashed from a steel-headed tomahawk that Wolf Paw was holding.
White Bear's belly knotted.
He skidded the boat to a halt on the bank a short distance downriver from Wolf Paw. He climbed out the front end, pulled the boat up on the bank, unloaded it and turned it over.
Wolf Paw watched in silence as White Bear slung his pack and bags on his back, picked up his rifle and rested it on his shoulder. Looking at Wolf Paw's red crest and blanket and buckskin trousers, White Bear realized how strange he himself must seem to Wolf Paw in the green clawhammer jacket he had worn to his father's funeral.
Now they were face to face.
I will wait for him to move, if I have to stand here till sunset and all through the night. He chose this strange way of meeting me. Let him show me what is in his mind.
He heard the boughs creaking in the wind around him. River water rippled over the stones along the bank. He heard a redbird whistling in the distance.
Wolf Paw drew a deep breath, opened his mouth and let out a war whoop.
"Whoowhoowhoowhoo!"
White Bear's heart gave a great thump, and he fell back a step. He heard rage in the whoop, and the frustration. Wolf Paw was angry at him. Why? Maybe just for coming back.
Wolf Paw held the tomahawk high. Corded muscles and dark veins stood out in his rigid arm. Two feathers dyed red danced just under the steel head. He repeated his war whoop, and then his lips drew back from clenched white teeth.
He whirled and plunged into the woods, leaving White Bear shaken and open-mouthed. He stood still, listening to Wolf Paw crashing through the trees and shrubs, kicking piles of leaves, until the noise died away in the distance. No Sauk ran noisily through the woods like that, unless driven by some madness.
White Bear sighed. Oddly, he felt less frightened than he had before he met Wolf Paw. Before, he had not known what to expect. Now he felt ready for anything.
He strode into the woods following Three Horses' directions. As he walked he began to hear the sounds of people's voices and dogs barking. Gradually they drew nearer, until at last he broke through the trees into a clearing.
The sight made his eyes brim with tears.
A hundred or more women in brown, fringed skirts were facing him, and as he came forward they rushed to form a ring around him. His vision blurred as he recognized faces he had not seen in six years.
Beyond the women he could see the camp of the British Band. In his joy it seemed to him that the wickiups were bathed in a golden light. Rings of gray domes began near the trees where he stood and spread into the tall yellow prairie grass. Before the wickiups he could see what the women had been working at, tasks abandoned for the moment, clothing being mended, skins stretched, meat and fish cleaned and set on frames to dry.
"White Bear is here!" cried one woman, and he recognized Water Flows Fast, plump wife of Three Horses.
Three Horses, a short man with broad shoulders, stood beside his wife. His nose was flat and spread out. White Bear did not remember it that way. Something must have happened to Three Horses while he was gone.
Much has happened to them while I was gone.
"I told you White Bear had come back," Three Horses said over and over again.
White Bear breathed in the familiar smells of campfire smoke and roasting meat, of leather and freshly cut wood and tobaccosmoke. His delighted eyes took in quillwork and beadwork and paint, blankets and ribbons, bodies clad in fringed buckskin, warm brown faces, dark, friendly eyes.
Murmuring greetings, he searched the crowd for specially loved faces.
"Where is Owl Carver?" he asked. After such a long time the Sauk language came awkwardly to his lips.
Three Horses said, "Owl Carver visits the camps of the Fox and the Kickapoo, to invite them to Black Hawk's council."
What is Black Hawk planning now?
White Bear did not like the sound of the news, but there would be time to think about it later.
"Where is Sun Woman, my mother?"
Water Flows Fast spoke up. "She has gone to gather medicine plants." She looked as cheerful as, he remembered, she always had, but her eyes penetrated him.
"Will no one find her and tell her that I am here?"
Water Flows Fast said, "Redbird should go and tell Sun Woman. Redbird lives with Sun Woman now."
Redbird!
He felt almost dizzy at the sound of her name, a name he had not heard spoken aloud in six years.
As soon as Water Flows Fast spoke, she started to giggle, putting her hands over her mouth. Many of the other women in the group giggled too. White Bear wanted to hide his burning face. He had forgotten how painful it could be to be made fun of by those who knew him so well.
But joy blazed up in his chest. Redbird living with Sun Woman? He wanted to whoop with happiness, even as Wolf Paw had whooped with rage. That could only mean that she had not taken a husband.
Then he took a deep breath and stiffened his body to hide his feelings. He looked at the laughing faces all around him, especially the bright, curious eyes of Water Flows Fast. If they saw how excited he was, they would laugh at him all the more.
Trying to keep his voice steady, he asked, "Where is my mother's wickiup?"
With a knowing smile—but what was it that she knew?—Water Flows Fast beckoned to the wickiup of Sun Woman—and Redbird. "Come. I will take you."
She turned, her fringed skirt swinging. The women parted to make way for her. Shouldering his rifle, White Bear followed. Three Horses walked beside him. White Bear heard the whisper of many moccasins and the murmur of many voices behind him.
Water Flows Fast marched up to a wickiup near the center of the camp. The dark, rounded shelter of sheets of elm bark and tree limbs was small, just big enough for two people, three at the most.
White Bear's heart was beating like a dance drum. The buffalo-hide flap was pulled down over the door, showing that if anyone was within they wanted privacy.
"The wickiup of Sun Woman," said Water Flows Fast. "And of Redbird." She looked at him expectantly.
"There is no one here," said White Bear.
This brought shouts of laughter from the women around him. He wished they would all go away.
"I saw Redbird go in there," said Water Flows Fast, "and I did not see her come out."
White Bear's discomfort increased as he watched her face redden and her cheeks puff out. It seemed that mirth would make her burst.
Every beat of his heart seemed to shake his whole body. He looked around slowly, trying to calm himself. Even if Redbird had waited for him, his sudden return must have shocked her. She needed time to prepare herself to meet him. And, like him, she did not want all these women watching their meeting and laughing. He would simply have to wait until Redbird was ready to greet him.
A rack of crisscrossed wooden sticks for drying skins stood by the closed doorway. Slowly, deliberately, he walked over to the rack, leaned his rifle against it, and laid down his pack and bags.
Then, turning his back on the wickiup, he sat down cross-legged on the ground.
Water Flows Fast looked at him, open-mouthed.
"Thank you for showing me the way," he said. Hiding his embarrassment, he made himself smile at the hundred or more women gathered to watch him.
"What are you going to do?" Water Flows Fast asked.
"I am going to rest and thank Earthmaker for seeing me here safely."
"White Bear is a man of sense," said Three Horses, smiling his approval.
"Is that all?" Water Flows Fast asked.
"I am going to wait for Sun Woman, my mother."
"Isthatall?"
"Thatisall," said White Bear.
Three Horses, who was no taller than his wife, gripped her plump upper arm firmly. "Let White Bear alone."
"But—" Water Flows Fast started to protest, and her husband jerked her arm.
"We will leave this man in peace," he said.
Her lower lip jutting out, Water Flows Fast let Three Horses pull her away through the crowd.
White Bear sat with his eyes downcast to discourage people from talking to him. Gradually the rest of the crowd dispersed.
The back of his neck bristled. He knew Redbird was in the wickiup behind him. Sooner or later she must come out.
To have her so close after all this time, to know she was there and to hear nothing but that terrible silence, and yet to sit with his back to that buffalo-hide curtain, all this was a torment for him. The urge to jump up and tear the curtain away pressed against his resolve to hold himself still. He thought he might explode like a barrel of gunpowder.
He forced himself to breathe slowly and pretend that he was hidden in shrubbery with a bow and arrow, watching for a deer.
After a time—he could not tell how much time—a face was peering into his. Dark and square. The brown eyes brimmed with tears.
His eyes opened wider. Sun Woman was kneeling before him.
"My son." She reached out to him, and he scrambled to embrace her. When her strong arms held him he felt like a little boy again.
He sat back to look at her dear face, wet with tears. Resting beside her on the ground was the familiar basket with blue cloth cover that she used to gather herbs.
He looked around for the sun. It was low and red on the western horizon. It had been high when he sat down here. He must have gone on a spirit walk.
"I knew it would be like this," Sun Woman said. "It would come one day when I least expected it—my son would be back again."
He sighed deeply. "To see my mother makes my heart as big as the prairie."
They sat facing each other and she gripped his shoulders. "You are a man now, a very handsome man." She ran her hand along hischeek, and his whole face felt warm. He kept his gaze fixed on her eyes.
She said, "You have learned much. You have been hurt. Your face is scarred." She followed the line of the scar with her thumb, leaning forward to peer still more closely at him. "I see sadness in you. Your father is dead. That is why you have come back."
She sat back and closed her eyes for a silent moment. Then she began a song for the dead.