Raoul uncorked the jug standing on the chart table and held it out to Bill Helmer, captain of the steamshipVictory. A portly man with muttonchop whiskers, his hands firmly gripping the polished oak steering wheel, Helmer silently shook his head.
Raoul lifted the jug in a mock toast. "May we have a merry day of Indian fighting." He took two long swallows, and decided he felt strong and happy.
Helmer shook his head. "Mr. de Marion, there's nothing merry about fighting Indians."
"If that's your opinion, Captain, I'll thank you to keep it to yourself," said Raoul. He wanted a little warmth right now besides what he was getting from the jug, and he despised this dour man for not giving it to him.
Helmer shrugged and bent his gaze on the river.
Raoul knotted his fingers behind his back, and found that the effort relieved the tightness in his belly. He went to stand at the pilot house window and stared out at the forested bank where the Bad Axe River emptied into the Mississippi.
Militiamen were wading across the Bad Axe from south to north, holding their rifles, bayonets fixed, over their heads. The Bad Axe was more a creek than a river, shallow now in August, winding through a channel thick with bright green reeds. As the men slogged up the north bank, they leveled their rifles and plunged into the trees.
A blue haze of powder smoke already drifted amidst the pineand spruce north of the Bad Axe mouth. The popping of rifles carried to Raoul across the water over the wheeze and clank of theVictory's steam engine, fueled with oak and split pine.
Raoul wondered what was happening in those woods. Were the Indians fighting back, defending their women and children? He hoped the militiamen would go on killing until they'd exterminated the whole band. After four months of chasing the Indians across Illinois and the Michigan Territory, after all the innocents murdered—Clarissa,Phil,Andy—surely the militiamen would not be soft.
He felt tears starting up, and he quickly took another pull at the jug. He wished he could be in at the kill instead of out here in the river.
I want their blood on my own hands.
Lieutenant Kingsbury, in command of the gunnery crew assigned to Raoul from Fort Crawford, came up the stairs from the foredeck to the hurricane deck and entered the pilot house. He mopped his brow as he set his cylindrical shako, sporting its red plume and gold crossed-cannons artillery badge, on the chart table.
"Gets damned sticky on the river in August."
Raoul offered his jug. "Help you forget the heat."
Kingsbury grinned, thanked Raoul and took a big drink. His cheeks reddened, and he dabbed at his thick brown mustache with his fingertips.
"I don't hear much shooting on shore," he said, handing the jug back to Raoul, who took a swallow before setting it down.
"Just what I was thinking," said Raoul. "Where the hell are all the redskins? I figure there's about a thousand left. They can't all have crossed the Mississippi before we got here unless they had a whole fleet of canoes."
TheVictoryhad caught one canoe in midstream when she arrived on the scene. Raoul's militia sharpshooters had blanketed it with rifle fire, killing all six Indians aboard, and the overturned canoe had drifted downstream, out of sight.
Raoul picked up a brass telescope from the chart table and studied the riverbank, moving the circular field from point to point. He saw plenty of militiamen, but no sign of Indians.
"Look," said Kingsbury. "Militiamen coming back out of the woods."
Raoul swept his telescope back over the riverbank. Men in buckskins were dragging their rifle butts along the ground, sitting down on the river's edge and splashing water on their faces, shaking their heads angrily, raccoon tails on their caps wagging.
One man did emerge from the trees with a big grin, holding high three bloody scalps dangling from hanks of black hair. Another man led two Indian ponies. So, the Sauk still had a few horses with them.
Kingsbury said, "Looks like they only met a handful."
Raoul drummed his fingers on the polished oak sill. "A rear guard. The rest could have headed north. But I don't think they did. They were aiming to cross the Mississippi."
His telescope brought closer an island north of the Bad Axe mouth, about fifty yards out from the Mississippi's east bank, thickly covered with spruce and hemlock. He saw two bark canoes with stove-in bottoms beached at the island's southern tip. Between the island and the riverbank the water had a pale green look that said it was shallow.
"I've got a feeling most of the Indians are hiding out on that island." His pulse quickened and his breath came fast.
His first thought was to land on the island with his men and flush the Indians out. But there could still be a couple of hundred warriors left to the band. No, they'd have to use the six-pounder first.
"Captain Bill, sail along the west side of that island. I want to get a closer look at it."
The spokes flew under Helmer's hands, and theVictory's side paddles churned up the water.
Raoul, followed by Kingsbury, hurried down the stairs to the foredeck, where his own dozen militiamen, all Smith County boys who had reenlisted, watched him stride the planks to stand beside the six-pounder. It had saved the townspeople at Victor; now, mounted on theVictory's foredeck, it would finish the Sauk.
The late morning sun beat without mercy on the open deck, and sweat trickled down from Raoul's armpits. He wanted to throw his jacket off and wear just a shirt, but the military blue, the gold braid and the brass buttons gave him authority that he'd found he needed, not so much in dealing with his own men as with other officers.
Hodge Hode said, "We got 'em treed now, Colonel."
"But stay under cover," said Raoul. "These raccoons will beshooting back." His eyes tried to tear holes in the thick greenery on the island.
The Smith County boys crouched down behind the bales of hay lined along the railings and cocked their flintlocks.
Raoul patted the gun's black muzzle affectionately, and the three artillerists in blue jackets grinned and nodded at him. They had put their shakoes aside and wrapped rags around their heads to keep the sweat out of their eyes. Beside the cannon were stacked canisters of grapeshot and flannel bags of powder. In a few minutes, Raoul thought with pleasure, that grape would be sending a heap of red devils to Hell.
As theVictorysteamed around the tip of the island, Raoul searched the forest with his telescope. He guessed the island to be a quarter of a mile long. It was deeply forested enough to conceal hundreds of Indians.
Midway along, he saw a gleam of sun on brown skin in the shrubbery near the river's edge. He swung the telescope back to the spot. Nothing now. But the quarry was there, all right. His lips drew back from his teeth.
"Captain Bill," he called to the pilot house. "Turn our bow toward the island. Kingsbury, get ready to fire."
Kingsbury saluted and called orders to the gun crew. A gunner slid a bag of powder into the six-pounder's muzzle and rammed it home. Another pushed a canister of grapeshot in after it. The third held the burning linstock ready.
Raoul called to the bridge. "Captain, hold her position." The captain waved acknowledgment from behind the glass, and Raoul heard him ring a bell relaying his orders belowdecks. A moment later levers clanked and Raoul felt the deck tremble as the paddle wheels on the sides of the ship reversed themselves.
"Shoot when you're ready, Lieutenant," Raoul said.
God, how I love this!
Kingsbury shouted, "Fire!"
The gun thundered, deafening him, and leaped back in its cradle of tackle. Raoul watched the woods eagerly as a white smoke cloud spread over the water. On the island, branches flew in all directions. A big tree fell. He heard a scream followed by a series of wailing cries. He almost cried aloud with pleasure.
An Indian staggered out from behind the trunk of a tall pine.He dragged one leg, a useless mass of bloody meat, and fell heavily to the ground. He held a rifle. He shook his fist at theVictory, then aimed the rifle from his prone position.
In sudden fear, Raoul was about to duck behind a hay bale when a dozen shots cracked out from the railings beside him. Bleeding from his chest and his head, the Indian collapsed and rolled into the Mississippi. Nodding happily, Raoul watched the current catch his body. It drifted slowly downstream, trailing blood.
"Keep firing!" Raoul roared. A cannoneer swabbed inside the gun barrel to cool it down for more powder. In a moment the gun boomed out again. More trees splintered, but no more Indians were flushed out.
"Raise elevation ten degrees," Kingsbury called to the gunners. "They're probably lurking farther back in the woods."
Raoul heard the clicks as the gunners used hand spikes to raise the cannon in its carriage.
After the cannon went off, dirt and broken tree limbs sprayed out of the forest, and Raoul heard shrieking sounds that he hoped were the screams of Indians.
The cannon boomed again and again. With hand signals to Captain Bill in the pilot house, Raoul had theVictory's bow swung to starboard and then to port, so that the grapeshot struck the island in a wide arc. Trees slowly toppled over, and shrieks of pain and shouts of rage and defiance pierced the silence between the roars of the cannon.
He pictured the lead balls tearing into howling Indians, ripping their flesh apart. He remembered Helene's body in Lake Michigan. He remembered Black Salmon's lash on his back. He saw—as he had seen them two weeks ago—the heap of blackened, split logs that had been Victoire, his home, the place where Clarissa, Phil and Andy died. He saw the mound of earth in the family cemetery where they lay together. What little had been left of them.
The cannon's heat was his rage. The cannon's boom was his roar. The grapeshot was his vengeance. He hurled his hatred over the water and into the trees, blowing Indian bodies to shreds.
He heard something hum past his head and plunk into the pilot house behind him. He saw smoke puff from the shadowy base of a clump of spruces. Another puff, and another. The reports of rifles carried across the water.
"Sir!" Kingsbury's hand gripped his shoulder, the fingers digging in.
Raoul realized he had been momentarily out of his mind with fury. Breathing heavily, he got his eyes focused on the brown-mustached lieutenant.
"Get down, sir, before you get hit."
Reluctantly, because he wanted to see where the grapeshot was hitting, Raoul crouched down behind a hay bale. When he'd first come out on deck he'd been afraid of being shot at. Now he felt sure they couldn't hit him.
The six-pounder repeatedly tore into the area on shore where powder smoke had appeared. Raoul saw no sign of Indian bodies, but the firing from the trees stopped.
"Gawd, I'd hate to be on the angry side of this gun," said Levi Pope.
A dozen or more Indians burst from the trees and dove into the water. Some of them started swimming out toward theVictory; others turned south, following the current. Some just splashed helplessly.
"Shoot!" Raoul shouted.
Gleefully, he ran into the pilot's house and grabbed his breech-loading Hall rifle. He rushed back to stand by the rail. He took aim at the nearest Indian in the water. He heard his breath coming heavy, as it did when he was in bed with a woman.
Only the warrior's shaven head, scalplock flowing behind, was far enough out of the water to present a clear target. The Indian seemed to be trying to swim past theVictory, toward the distant shore opposite. Raoul took his time aiming at the shiny brown dome and pulled the trigger. He saw a splash of red, then the Indian's arms and legs stopped moving and the body drifted southward with the current.
Pushing cloth-wrapped bullets down the tight, rifled bores of their muzzle-loaders with practiced speed, Raoul's men could easily get off three shots or more in a minute. The sky blue of the river soon turned red with blood from bodies that floated swiftly away.
"Yee-hah!" Hodge Hode yelled. "This is more fun than huntin' wild goose."
"The ones we do not get, they will drown," said Armand Perrault. "There is no place for them to swim to."
It was true; the opposite shore of the Mississippi was too far away, and this shore was lined with Federal troops and state militia, who would shoot any swimming redskin they saw. The Indians must have known they were doomed, but still they came on, little groups jumping into the water, each one probably hoping to be lucky enough to escape alive. Most of the heads Raoul saw in the water streamed black hair; must be women and children, not scalplocked warriors.
But it didn't really matter what they were.
They killed my woman and my kids.
He saw a head trailing long black hair and blood in the water not ten feet off the starboard bow. Close enough to see it was a boy. He was trying desperately to swim with one arm, his face distorted with agony. Raoul aimed his rifle between the wide, terrified eyes that stared into his own. He pulled the trigger. The brown face sank below the water.
That's for Phil and Andy.
Groups of Indians threw themselves into the river from the distant parts of the island, but the steamboat turned quickly upstream and downstream, back and forth again and again, to pursue them, Raoul's sharpshooters wiping out each party of swimmers in turn. Captain Bill might not enjoy this work, but he did it well.
Raoul heard himself laughing under his breath as he thought of all the Indians who were dying before his eyes, because ofhisship andhiscannon andhisriflemen.
Then theVictoryresumed steaming slowly along the length of the island, stopping at intervals for the cannoneers to blast the forest. Kingsbury changed elevation with each shot, so that showers of grapeshot blanketed the island from side to side.
Finally Raoul decided that they had done all they could from the ship. All that blood in the water made a fine sight, made him yearn all the more to wet his hands with blood.
Climbing back up to the pilot house, he said, "Take her to the south end of the island, Captain Bill. As close as you can. We're going to land."
Helmer stared at him, but said nothing.
He'd better say nothing.
Raoul took his pistol out of its holster and checked to see that it was primed and loaded. He unsheathed his replica of Bowie'sknife. He hefted it, heavy as a meat cleaver, in his hand and tested the edge with his thumb. It would cut. By God, it would cut. He slid it back into its sheath.
He opened his mouth, gulping air in his excitement. His hands tingled and his whole body felt as if it were growing bigger. He wanted to kill Indians. He wanted to wade in their blood. Maybe find Black Hawk himself and take his scalp with the big Bowie knife. He hoped there would be hundreds of redskins still alive, cowering on that island. He needed to kill them by the hundreds.
The ship's progress down the length of the island seemed to take forever.
He tried to calm himself. After that bombardment with grapeshot, after so many Indians had been shot trying to swim away, there probably wouldn't be many left alive on the island. It wouldn't really be a fight; they'd be close to helpless.
"After we're ashore," he said to Helmer, "take the ship over to the troops on the Mississippi bank and tell General Atkinson we've found the main body of the Sauk. Tell him to send as many men as theVictorywill carry."
The steamboat's shallow draft allowed her to move in close, so Raoul and his dozen Smith County boys could jump down into knee-deep water, holding rifles, bayonets screwed in place, and pistols and cases of cartridges and shot over their heads. The water was cold and clammy through Raoul's flannel trousers, and his feet squelched in his boots.
TheVictorydrew away with a thumping of her engine and puffs of thick, black smoke from her two smokestacks. Just the sight of that steamship should have been enough to scare hell out of the Indians, Raoul thought.
He and his men clambered up sloping rocks to stand in a clear area of level ground. Just where the woods started, the upper half of an Indian lay on his back, trailing long, bloody ribbons of gut. The eyes were open, staring.
Now, that's what I wanted to see.
"Remember that we take no prisoners," he said.
Hodge Hode said, "Well, come on, let's knock them 'coons out of the trees."
An arrow punched through Hodge's neck from front to back.
Raoul's heart stopped, then thumped so hard with fear that he thought it might split his chest open.
Hodge dropped his rifle and fell to the ground, gagging.
Raoul went down on his knees beside Hodge, seized the arrow just under its knife-sharp flint head and pulled it through. As the feathered end went through his neck Hodge made a retching sound. His tongue stuck out of his mouth.
Raoul cursed under his breath as he bent over Hodge. This couldn't be happening.
More arrows were flying past them. Raoul's men fired a ragged volley into the woods, and the arrows stopped.
The arrow had cut through an artery and pierced Hodge's windpipe. His breath whistled in and out through the hole in his throat, his blood pumping out of him and soaking into his red beard.
"He is going," said Armand, kneeling beside Raoul.
"Aw no," Hodge managed to murmur.
Raoul felt sick as he watched blood fill Hodge's mouth and pour out of it. Then the big man went limp and his eyes rolled up in his head.
"Let's get the bastards!" Raoul growled. He was left scared as hell by Hodge's death, but he was damned if he'd show it.
They climbed over big branches knocked down by theVictory's cannon and ran in among the trees, Raoul taking the lead. Spruce branches whipped his face.
I must be crazy, charging into the woods like this. We could all get what Hodge got.
High-pitched war whoops shrilled out of the forest shadows ahead, and more arrows whistled at them.
Knowing it was only luck that none of them hit him, Raoul wanted desperately to fire his rifle into the forest. But he forced himself not to shoot until he could see a target.
Brown figures rushed toward him, darting from tree to tree. He fired at a warrior leaping between the thick trunks of two pines. The Indian disappeared, but Raoul was sure he'd missed. He jerked the breech of his rifle open and slapped in another ball-and-powder cartridge with frantic speed.
The same Indian reappeared from behind another tree only six feet away. Raoul brought the rifle up and fired. The Indian fell over backward.
Another brave leaped at him from the side, swinging a tomahawk.Raoul shifted his rifle to his left hand and pulled out his Bowie knife. The Indian's eyes were huge and white and wild. His upraised arms left his chest wide open, ribs showing so sharp you could count them. Raoul lunged, thrusting the knife. The Indian's rush drove him onto the blade. His tomahawk came down on Raoul's forearm. It hurt, but it didn't even hit hard enough to cut through Raoul's sleeve. Raoul planted his foot in the already-dead Indian's belly and jerked the knife out of his body.
As the warrior collapsed, Raoul noticed that his face was bare brown skin devoid of paint. They'd even run out of war paint, he thought. In the middle of this battle, that gave him a moment of pleasure.
Rifles were going off on both sides of him. Levi Pope fired into the upper branches of an elm tree and whooped as a warrior's body came crashing down. The air was full of blinding, bitter smoke.
Then silence. Motionless Indians lay on the forest floor.
But so did two more of Raoul's own men. One lay face down, perfectly still. The other was on his back, head propped against a tree trunk. An arrow, feathers black and white, stuck out of his chest. His eyes were open but saw nothing. His arms and empty hands jerked, the movements less like a human being's than like a dying insect's. Raoul felt bile rising in his throat and bit his lips hard to stop himself from puking.
That could just as easily have been me.
Another man had an arrow in his arm. Armand pulled it out of him with a mighty jerk. The man screamed, and Armand clapped a big hand over his mouth.
Raoul's nine remaining men looked from the two dead men—the second man's arms had stopped jerking—to Raoul. Were they just waiting for orders, or were they accusing him?
"Injuns're gettin' ready for another charge," Levi Pope said. "I can see them skulkin' out there."
"Pull back!" Raoul ordered. "Pick up those dead men's rifles." His voice rang out strangely in the still forest.
Reloading and walking backward, rifles pointed up, Raoul and his men retreated to the tip of the island. Armand carried the extra rifles. They piled up fallen trees to make a hasty barricade.
Raoul lay behind tree trunks long enough for the sweat to cool on his body. Mosquitoes and little black flies stung him incessantly.He wondered if the Indians would ever attack. He'd gotten himself into a very bad spot.
Rifles went off, and bullets plunked into the tree barricade. Brown bodies came leaping out of the forest. Raoul suddenly remembered how the Indians had rushed out from behind the Lake Michigan dunes twenty years ago, and for a moment he was a terrified little boy. His hands shook so violently he almost dropped his rifle.
With shrill yips and yells Indians came at them. Arrows and bullets whizzed over the heads of Raoul's men as they ducked down behind their shelter. Raoul forced himself to concentrate on shooting. He poked his rifle through an opening between broken tree limbs, aimed at a running Indian and fired.
His two remaining close companions in this war, Levi and Armand, lay shooting on either side of him. Hodge was dead, his body sprawled a few feet behind them, and that by itself brought Raoul close to panic. He had always felt the big redheaded backwoodsman could never be hurt.
Arrows flew thick and fast. Raoul and his men, reloading from the cartridge and shot cases they had carried ashore, kept up a steady answering fire.
He felt shame smouldering in his spine and along his limbs. What a damned fool he'd been. He had been so sure that storm of grapeshot from theVictorywould finish off the Indians. He had expected this to be nothing more than a stroll through the forest, counting the dead and killing off the helpless remnant. Instead it seemed there were plenty of Sauk warriors left, very much alive, fierce as wolverines. And he and his men were trapped at the tip of this damned island with no place to retreat but the river. In the river they'd be helpless under enemy arrows and bullets, just like the redskins who had tried earlier to swim away.
The Sauk war cries had fallen silent, and the shots and arrows had stopped. Raoul peered through a chink in the tree trunks piled before him. All he could see was dark green boughs with no sign of movement.
"What you figger they're doing now?" Levi said. He had his six pistols laid out on a log in front of him.
"Probably getting ready to charge us," said Raoul.
How long before theVictorygot back? From here at the southend of the island he could see the white steamship anchored off the riverbank, her two black stacks giving off little white puffs, her side paddle wheels motionless. She looked very small and very far away. No chance Helmer or Kingsbury could see that Raoul and his men were fighting for their lives here.
What were the men, Levi and Armand and the others, thinking? Again and again, it seemed, his decisions cost lives. He remembered Old Man's Creek—de Marion's Run—and he felt his face get fiery hot at the shame of it.
And then there was Eli Greenglove's bitterness that night they parted, accusing him of putting Clarissa and the boys in harm's way. And something about a shock Raoul would get—what had Eli meant by that?
He heard a splash and turned to look behind him. His heart stopped. A near-naked Indian was rushing at him out of the water, scalping knife high.
Hands trembling, Raoul had barely time to roll over on his back and fire his rifle up at the screaming warrior. Sunlight glinted off the long steel blade. There was a moment of black terror after the rifle went off. Nothing seemed to happen. His hands had been shaking too hard, he thought, to aim well.
But then the Sauk dropped to his knees and fell over on his side. The knife dropped from his hand. Seeing he was safe for this instant, Raoul took another ball-and-powder cartridge out of his case and shoved it into the breech.
The Indian rolled over and pushed himself up on his hands and knees, a long string of blood and spittle dangling from his mouth. Calmer now, Raoul took careful aim and put a bullet in the shaven brown skull.
Two more dripping Indians were charging out of the water. Rifles went off beside Raoul. One Sauk fell, then the other, just as he was swinging his tomahawk at a man on the right end of Raoul's line.
The militiaman screamed. The steel head of the tomahawk was buried in his buckskin-clad leg.
"See to him, Armand," Raoul said.
Armand, crouching, ran over to the wounded man. But first he attended to the fallen Indian next to him. He grabbed the brave's head and twisted it around. Raoul heard the crack of bones.
"To make bien sure," Armand said, teeth flashing in his brown beard.
Three men dead, two wounded. Eight men left. Maybe a hundred Sauk warriors out there, maybe more.
What a stupid time to die, right when the war's almost over.
Raoul gnawed on the ends of his mustache and peered into the impenetrable forest. He and his men were all going to die. He was sure of it. He felt fear, but more painful than the fear was an ache in his heart for all that he was going to lose—all that was due him that life hadn't paid out to him like he deserved. He wanted so much to live.
A line of Indians came out of the trees, some with rifles, some with bows and arrows. There must be twenty or thirty of them. They weren't whooping, as they usually did. They were silent, their eyes big, their mouths set in lipless lines. They were like walking dead men, coming at him. That was what they were. They knew they were going to die, but they were going to take this little band of white men with them.
Raoul had all he could do to keep from curling up behind his tree barricade, head in his arms, whimpering with grief and fear. He made himself aim and fire. The Indian he'd picked out as a target kept on coming.
We're done for, he thought, over and over again.We're done for.
Slowly—he did not seem able to move quickly—he inserted another cartridge into the breech of his rifle. All around him rifles were going off with deafening booms.
And from behind him there was more booming.
He looked up. Indians were falling. One here, one there, then three, then two more. Their line was breaking up.
God, the men are shooting good!
He heard voices behind him and looked around.
At the same moment Levi Pope said, "Well, here be a sight to welcome."
Ten feet or so behind him a line of men in coonskin caps and gray shirts were methodically firing over his head. He'd been so lost in panic and despair he hadn't heard them coming.
He looked back at the Indians. Brown bodies lay tumbled on the ground, some only a few feet from his barricade. Those on their feet were backing up. They melted into the tattered forest.
For a moment Raoul could not move. He lay clutching his rifle with a grip so hard it hurt his hands, panting heavily.
"It's safe now," Levi Pope said quietly, standing up.
Raoul pushed himself to his feet. His legs were shaking so hard he could barely stand. He looked around and saw militiamen wading across to the island from the east bank of the Mississippi.
The men who had been skirmishing in the forest north of the Bad Axe must have seen the fighting on the island.
Too dazed even to feel happy, Raoul stood taking long breaths and watched the militiamen come.
He had never in his life needed a drink more than he did now, and he had forgotten to bring any whiskey with him.
The southern tip of the island was soon crowded with riflemen. Raoul's three dead were stretched out under blankets, and a burly horse doctor from the mining country was bandaging the leg of the man with the tomahawk wound.
"Colonel Henry Dodge," said a tall, whip-lean officer wearing a bicorn hat. He shook hands with Raoul. "We're almost neighbors. I'm from Dodgeville settlement, just a little ways north of Galena."
"I'm damned glad you came over, Colonel," said Raoul, feeling like a fool to have gotten himself trapped. "The Sauk still seem to have a power of fighting men left."
"Glad you saved a few for us. There were only about two dozen redskins on the north side of the Bad Axe. They let us see them to draw us away, I guess, from the main body hiding out here. But the way you were blasting this island with grape, I was afraid we'd have nothing to do but bury Indians. Or pieces of them."
Dodge ordered his men to spread out in two lines, one behind the other, across the width of the island. Raoul positioned his little party in the center of the foremost line.
"Advance, my brave Suckers!" Dodge called, and the men laughed at the nickname for Illinoisians. Holding up a long cavalry saber, Dodge led the militia line, bayonets leveled, into the broken trees.
Raoul looked downriver for theVictory. She had dropped a wooden ramp to the riverbank, and blue-uniformed regulars wereboarding. When they got here there would be enough soldiers on the island to wipe out the Indians ten times over.
That would be Zachary Taylor's outfit, from Fort Crawford. Raoul had heard that the five hundred Federal troops sent from the East had been decimated by cholera, though their commander, Winfield Scott, was still on the way here.
Raoul turned and pushed forward, stumbling over tree trunks, shoving branches out of the way with his rifle, muscles rigid against the arrow he feared would come whistling out of the gloomy shadows ahead. He saw no living Indians, but many mangled corpses. He tripped over a bare, brown severed leg. A moccasin, flaps decorated with undulating red, white and black beadwork, was still on the foot.
Three Indians, swinging tomahawks and war clubs, sprang out from behind a pile of grape-blasted birch trees. Raoul and the men flanking him started shooting. The Indians were riddled before they got within ten feet.
Raoul was sure he'd killed one of the warriors. He went to the body, drew his Bowie knife and gripped the long black scalplock. He carved a circle with the sharp point in the shaved skin around the scalplock. White bone showed through when he pulled the patch of skin loose, the round spot quickly filling with blood.
The scalplock was long enough to let him tie it around his belt. The hair felt coarser than a white man's.
They pressed on into the forest, again and again meeting desperate little bands of red men, who rushed them only to be felled by a hail of lead balls. Raoul heard the constant banging of many rifles going off in other parts of the forest.
And sometimes he heard the high screams of women and children. After the screams, silence.
Raoul smiled to himself. This was how he wanted it. No prisoners.
Killing no longer seemed dangerous. It no longer felt like sport. It became simply work through the day's heat. It was tiring work, but good. With some surprise Raoul realized that the line of troops had swept most of the island and were now approaching the north end. He could see Indians up ahead through the trees. This might well be the last of them. Eagerly, rifle ready, he rushed forward.
He burst into a clearing and found himself facing a half circle ofnearly a dozen bucks, their shaved scalps and bare chests gleaming with sweat. Behind them cowered a pack of squaws and children.
The warriors shouted at Raoul and his men and beckoned to them. Right in the center was one man much taller than the rest, with the red and white feathers of a brave tied into his scalplock. Whatever insults or challenges he was uttering, he looked Raoul right in the eye and shouted directly at him.
Raoul felt a chill of fear. The Indian's flesh was wasted, but his skeleton was huge. He looked like he'd be as hard to stop as a tornado. And he was holding a rifle in arms and hands so big that they made it look small.
The other warriors didn't have rifles or even bows. They must have run out of powder and shot and arrows. They held clubs and knives and tomahawks.
They want us to fight hand to hand. That's what Indians do to show their courage.
The hell with that.
With a movement that seemed almost contemptuous, the big Indian dropped the rifle to the ground. He reached down and picked up a war club painted red and black, with a huge spike at its end.
"Let's pay 'em back, boys!" Raoul shouted. "For all of our people they killed."
"Oui! For Marchette," said Armand, raising his rifle. His first shot caught a warrior in the chest and knocked him down.
At that the Indians rushed Raoul and his men.
Raoul felt himself trembling uncontrollably as the bony giant in the center came straight at him. The big Indian held his war club in front of him, as if to deflect bullets.
Forcing his arms to hold steady, Raoul aimed his rifle at the Indian's head and fired.
And missed.
I should have aimed at his chest.
Raoul cursed his shaking hand as he dropped his rifle and pulled his pistol.
The brown giant gave a long, full-throated war cry.
Raoul pulled the trigger. He saw a spark, heard the bang of the percussion cap, but there was nothing more. He cried out in a fury. His sweat must have dampened the powder.
The club came down on the pistol, and Raoul to his horror feltit knocked out of his hand. Again the big Indian screamed out his blood-freezing war whoop and raised the club high.
Raoul's empty hand fumbled for his Bowie knife. He had it out, a death grip on the hilt. He lunged at his enemy. A jolt ran through Raoul's arm to his shoulder as the point of the knife sank deep between two thick ribs.
The Indian gave a deep groan and staggered back. He swung his club, but too late. Raoul felt a numbing blow just where his neck met his shoulder, and fell to his knees.
He was looking right into the dark brown eyes of the Indian, who had also fallen. The eyes were unblinking, dead. The massive body collapsed against him.
Raoul shouted, a wordless cry of rage, and a red curtain swept over his eyes. He jerked the knife out, releasing a cataract of blood. With an effort that wrenched his arms he hurled the brown giant away from him.
Taking a scalp wasn't enough, after a fight like that. Raoul got a firm grip on the thick, stiff-standing hank of black hair in the center of his enemy's head and brought the knife down on the brown throat. Chopping and slicing and sawing, as if butchering a steer, Raoul cut through the thick neck until at last the head came free.
He lofted the head in his left hand, looking up at the still-open dead eyes.
"There, you goddamned redskin son of a bitch! Thought you could kill me, huh?"
A shrill woman's voice broke in on his triumph.
He turned to see a witchlike woman wrapped in a blanket. Her finger was pointing at him. Her voice went on and on, screeching at him.
She was tall, but starvation had stripped the flesh from her bones. Her sunken eyes seemed to glow in her skull-like face. He felt as if he was facing some horrid spectre.
He threw the warrior's head down. Curse him, would she? He snarled like an angry wolf as he reached for the woman. She didn't even try to get away. He seized the scrawny neck and pulled her to him, bringing the Bowie knife's point up against her throat.
She started singing, a weird, high-pitched caterwauling. He'd heard something like it before. Where?
When he'd been about to shoot Auguste and those two other Indians at Old Man's Creek. They'd sung like that right at the end.
Her dark eyes held him. They were not clouded over with anger or terror, but clear with full understanding that he was going to kill her. She was not afraid. He wished he could frighten her, force her to grovel, but someone might try to stop him from doing it. Her voice went on and on, chanting, up and down.
He'd silence her now. Redskin bitch.
He drove the knife into her throat and jerked it sideways. Her song ended in a sickening rasp.
Still the brown eyes were fixed on him. Her blood spurted out of the gash he had cut open, splashed over his knife blade, poured hot on his hand. It spread down over her dress and over the gold lace on his sleeve. He looked down at his red hand and felt some force within him stretch his lips and bare his teeth.
He thrust the woman away from him. Her eyes were still open, but she looked at no one and nothing. She fell to the ground like a bundle of sticks. She lay on her back, the deep wound in her throat spread wide, her eyes staring up.
He stood over her and saw that something shiny had fallen out of the front of her dress and lay beside her head. Tied around her neck with a purple ribbon was an oval metal case splashed with blood.
He had seen the case, or one like it. He reached down with the knife and slashed the ribbon. He wiped his knife on his jacket and slammed it into its sheath, then picked up the slippery case and opened it.
A pair of spectacles. Round, gold frames, thick glass lenses.
They looked exactly like Pierre's old spectacles. Was that possible? How could this Indian woman have gotten them? Stolen from Victoire, when the Sauk burned it?
Or had the mongrel somehow gotten his father's spectacles, taken them with him when he fled from Victor? Pierre's watch had disappeared then; Raoul was sure Auguste had stolen it. And if this woman had Pierre's glasses now, could she be the Sauk woman Pierre had lived with, the mother of his bastard son?
Despite the August heat beating down on the clearing, the air around Raoul suddenly felt winter cold. All day long while he fought the Indians he'd struggled with his fear of being killed. Now a worsefear had him in its grip, a fear of something worse than death, of having called down upon himself a vengeance that would follow him beyond the grave.
My God! I've just killed Pierre's squaw.
The spectacles stared up at him like accusing eyes. The flesh of his back prickled.
He shut the case and dropped it into his pocket. If it was Pierre's he couldn't just throw it away.
The few remaining Indians, a flock of women and children, huddled weeping with their backs to a big tree, arms around one another. Some were already wounded and screaming in pain.
Tiredly Raoul told himself he must reload rifle and pistol and get on with the killing. But his anger was spent. He felt empty, worn out.
From somewhere behind him came a shout of, "Cease fire!"
It was welcome. He'd done enough.
"Yonder come the bluebellies," said Levi.
"Ah, merde," muttered Armand, standing with red-dripping bayonet above a pile of bodies.
Raoul looked around. The order to stop the shooting had come from their rear, from a short, stout officer who, as Dodge had, was advancing with drawn saber. Colonel Zachary Taylor.
Taylor looked around the smoking glade at the dead, big bodies and little ones, brown flesh and tan deerskin splashed with bright red, eyes staring, limbs helter-skelter.
"Jesus Christ." He turned to Raoul, pain in his bright blue eyes.
Raoul felt his face grow hot. "Colonel," he said, "you understand why we had to—"
Taylor's expression changed from sadness to weariness. "I've been out on the frontier for over twenty years. I don't see anything here that I haven't seen before." He turned away before Raoul could answer and called, "Lieutenant Davis!"
A tall young officer with a handsome, angular face came up to him and saluted.
Taylor said, "Jeff, run ahead and make sure any Indians left on this island get a chance to surrender." He turned to Raoul again, shaking his head.
"Why let them surrender?" Raoul said.
"There's only a few left alive," said Taylor. "And we're not goingto kill them. And if you need a reason, it's because I wouldn't feel right about it, and I know a lot of the men wouldn't feel right about it."
Taylor turned to one of his men, a red-faced trooper with a thick blond mustache. "Sergeant Benson, get me that Sauk man we captured. We'll be needing to talk to the Indians. We want to find out what's happened to Black Hawk."
Raoul was painfully aware that Taylor's eyes had shifted to his right hand, covered with blood. He wanted to hide it behind his back.
He looked Raoul up and down. "Good God, man. Do you know you've got blood all over you?"
"Enemy blood," said Raoul.
"I see you've got a scalp tied to your belt," Taylor said. "General Atkinson issued an order against mutilating enemy dead."
Raoul felt himself shaking again, not with fear, but with anger. "I saw one of my best friends shot dead with an arrow through the throat today."
"And this?" Taylor asked, pointing to the severed head of the big brave lying a few feet from Raoul's red-spotted boots. "Was this to avenge your friend too? You'd better get back to your steamship, Mr. de Marion. I don't think we have any more need of your services here."
It was not so much Taylor's words, but the mingled contempt and pity in his voice that enraged Raoul. His fist clenched on the handle of his knife.
Taylor wore a pistol and carried a saber, but he was a far smaller man than Raoul, and his stout body, dressed today in a blue jacket and knee-high fringed buckskin boots, seemed to invite attack.
Taylor's calm blue eyes went to Raoul's hand, then back to his face. He stood motionless, waiting.
God! What am I thinking? The regulars would shoot me down the minute I drew this knife.
Raoul silently beckoned to his men and started back through the broken trees the way they had come.
After walking a short distance, Raoul saw the sergeant Taylor had sent behind the lines coming toward him with an Indian walking beside him.
Raoul glanced at the Indian and stopped dead.
He felt as if the arrow he'd been expecting and fearing all day had finally struck him.
There are no ghosts.
But Auguste couldn't be alive. He'd been shot to death at Old Man's Creek.
Was this what killing Pierre's squaw had brought on him?
The man before him had gone hungry for a long time. His almost skull-like face was a chilling reminder of the woman whose throat Raoul had slashed. But his gauntness also made him look more like Pierre than ever before. His buckskin leggings, like those of the Indians Raoul had just killed, were dirty and full of rips and holes. But the pale scar line running down his cheek, and those five parallel scars on his bare chest, left Raoul in no doubt who this was. Auguste's dark eyes burned at Raoul, alight with a fierce hatred.
The sergeant pulled Auguste by the arm. As the mongrel turned, Raoul suddenly saw that the middle of his ear was missing, the empty space bordered by partly healed red flesh.
Stunned speechless, Raoul looked at Levi and Armand, who stared back at him. They couldn't speak either. They were just as shaken.
Still burning at Taylor's high-and-mighty dismissal of him, Raoul was staggered by the shock of this meeting. But he saw one thing clear. All right, Auguste was still alive. That meant Raoul's revenge on the Sauk was not complete. Auguste was a traitor. Auguste was a murderer. And Raoul was going to work day and night to get him hanged.
Longing to hear that White Bear was safe, Redbird could not stop thinking about him. She sat cross-legged on the ground with Floating Lily bundled in a blanket on her lap. She gazed out at the small lake where Black Hawk and his few remaining followers had set up camp. This was a peaceful place, but with White Bear gone and her dread of what might have happened to her loved ones at the Bad Axe, she could feel no peace.
"A lovely place, this lake," said Owl Carver, sitting beside her.
But it is far from White Bear.
The thought of White Bear's having to make his way through Winnebago country haunted her. She longed to look into the birch forest behind her lean-to and see him walking toward her through the white tree trunks.
She missed Yellow Hair and Woodrow too. They were to her another sister, another son. She hoped that by now they were out of danger.
She had left so many people behind at the Bad Axe, people who had always been part of her life—Sun Woman, Iron Knife, her two sisters. In the seven days since Black Hawk had led their little group north on the ridge trail leading to Chippewa country, there had been no word from the rest of the band.
Redbird's fear for the people she loved was like a ferret eating away at her insides.
From his medicine bag Owl Carver took the pale eyes time teller White Bear had given him and opened its gold outer shell. Redbird saw black markings on its inner surface and two black arrows.
Could it tell me when White Bear will come back?
The old shaman dangled the time teller by its gold chain over Floating Lily's tiny head. The gold disk gave off a regular, clicking sound, like the beating of a metal heart. Floating Lily's brown eyes opened wide and her flower-petal lips curved in a wide, toothless smile.
Eagle Feather, sitting beside Redbird, said, "Grandfather? Is it right to use a sacred thing just to make the baby smile?"
Owl Carver smiled. His face these days seemed to have caved in. All of his front teeth were gone, and his mouth was as sunken as Floating Lily's, while his chin and his nose jutted out.
"A baby's smile is also a sacred thing."
Redbird said, "Have you asked the spirits what has become of the rest of our people?"
From a cord around his waist Owl Carver untied a medicine bag decorated with a beadwork owl. He opened it, let little gray scraps sift through his fingers and sighed.
"Last night I chewed bits of sacred mushroom," Owl Carver said. "I saw pale eyes' things—lodges that travel over the ground on trails made of metal, smoking boats with bonfires in their bellies, villages as big as prairies. Crowds of pale eyes seemed to be cheering for me. It made no sense. It told me nothing about what happened at the Bad Axe. Maybe I took too much."
Redbird glanced down at Eagle Feather. His mouth was a circle, and his blue eyes as he stared up at Owl Carver were so wide that she could see the whites above and below them. He strained toward Owl Carver, his longing to follow his father and grandfather in the way of the shaman showing in every line of his body.
She had always felt that same longing.
"Let me try your sacred mushrooms," said Redbird. "Sun Woman says sometimes women can see into places where men cannot see."
Owl Carver set the medicine bag down between himself and Eagle Feather. He sliced his hand through the air, palm down, in refusal.
"The magic might get into your milk and be bad for the baby."
Resentment was a bitter taste in Redbird's mouth. But she had to admit there was no telling what the mushrooms might do to Floating Lily's unformed spirit. Still, she knew Owl Carver welcomed that excuse because he did not want to give the mushrooms to a woman.
Eagle Feather shouted, "Look!" He pointed up at the sky.
Owl Carver and Redbird both looked up. Scanning the cloudless midday sky for a moment, she saw two tiny black shapes high up, circling slowly.
"Eagles!" said the boy. "My guardian spirits."
Redbird squinted. Yes, those were the wide-spreading wings of eagles. The birds were searching for prey. Like the long knives and their Winnebago allies. Their remorseless circling frightened her.
Those bright blue eyes of Eagle Feather's saw farther than hers did, thought Redbird. She looked down at him proudly, as he wiped his hand across his mouth and smiled up at her. His pointed chin reminded her of White Bear.
"If the Winnebago find us here, will they kill us?" she asked her father.
Owl Carver waved his hands. "They are not our enemies, but they will do what the long knives demand."
In a strange voice Eagle Feather said, "Mother?"
Frightened by his flat tone, she reached for him. But with the baby in her lap she could not get to him before Eagle Feather fell over on his side with his eyes shut.
She screamed.
She laid Floating Lily on the ground and picked up Eagle Feather. He lay limp in her arms, his head lolling, his mouth hanging open.
After all they had been through, this was more than she could bear. She burst into tears, her heart thudding like a deerskin drum.
"What is it?" She turned to Owl Carver. "Help him."
The shaman crouched over his grandson, looking down into his face, bending low to sniff his breath.
"Redbird, be very quiet. We must not wake him."
"What happened to him?" she whispered, trembling.
"This." He gestured to the open medicine bag that lay where he and Eagle Feather had been sitting. "He must have taken some bits of mushroom while we were looking up at the eagles."
Terror cascaded over her. "What will it do to him?"
Owl Carver emptied the gray scraps into his hand and then poured them back into the bag. "What a foolish old man I am, leaving that bag open right next to him."
Eagle Feather had gone on a spirit journey. And her own sensitivity to the other world told her that he wasmeantto. She felt forhim the fear she had felt for White Bear in that long-ago Moon of Ice.
"No," said Redbird sadly. "You were not foolish. It was Earthmaker's way. He sent those eagles to take our eyes away from the medicine bag."
With infinite care, so as not to disturb him, Redbird carried Eagle Feather into the lean-to, resting his head on the blanket roll that held everything she had been able to carry.
"I will stay with you until Eagle Feather comes back," said Owl Carver. Redbird picked up Floating Lily and held her tightly.
As the sun crossed above the lake, they sat watching the small, still body. Redbird could barely see Eagle Feather's narrow chest rise and fall in the shadowy lean-to. There were moments when she was sure he was dead.
Sunset had turned the small lake to a sheet of beaten gold when Eagle Feather sat up suddenly, his eyes wide.
"The Bad Axe!" he shrieked. It was the voice of a child struggling with a nightmare.
"Eagle Feather!" Redbird cried.
Owl Carver put his hand on her knee. "Be quiet."
"The Bad Axe!" Eagle Feather called out again, staring at something no one else could see. "The Great River runs red!" His eyes closed and he fell back.
Redbird felt as if she were shivering in a blizzard. Eagle Feather's words seemed to open a doorway of second sight in her own mind, disclosing a horrifying vision of bodies drifting in red-tinged water.
She heard a sound behind her. Suddenly terrified, she whirled. In the birch forest she saw a man riding toward them on a gray pony. The beat of hooves sounded hollow among the trees.
Feeling on the edge of madness, she let out a scream. She had wanted so much for White Bear to come to her that way, that she thought for a moment it was he. Like White Bear's, his head was unshaved, his hair long.
But as he came closer through the white tree trunks, a hand raised in greeting, she saw he was not White Bear. His full head of hair had a brave's feathers tied into it. A Winnebago. She saw a second rider behind him. An attack? But they were approaching slowly, their hands empty.
The Winnebago dismounted and led his pony till he was standing over them.
He wore four red and white feathers, one hanging from each silver earring, two tied into his hair. A leader of warriors. Heart pounding, she moved protectively closer to the lean-to where Eagle Feather lay. Owl Carver slowly got to his feet. She glanced at him, and when she saw how grim his face was, her own terror increased.
Another Winnebago rode out of the woods, dismounted and stood beside his companion.
The first man turned to take something from his saddle.
Scooping Floating Lily up in her arms, Redbird leaped up to give the alarm. The brave held out a restraining hand.
"Wait! We are two only, and we come to talk peace." The man spoke Sauk.
He faced her, smiling tentatively, and held up a beautiful calumet, its red pipestone bowl gleaming in the sunset, its polished hickory stem as long as a man's arm.
Owl Carver drew himself up in all his white-haired shaman's majesty. "Who are you?"
"I am called Wave," said the man holding the calumet. "This is He Who Lights the Water. He does not speak Sauk."
Redbird glanced down into the lean-to, to make sure Eagle Feather was all right.
"Who is in the lean-to?" Wave asked a little suspiciously as He Who Lights the Water stepped forward to look in.
"My grandson," said Owl Carver. "He is sick."
"Many of you must be sick. And hungry," said Wave. "Time your leaders took pity on the women and children and ended this war."
More Sauk men and women were coming over now to see the newcomers. The two Winnebago were men of courage, Redbird thought, coming alone as they had into a camp of fifty or more desperate people.
Redbird's mother came to stand beside Owl Carver. She asked what was wrong with Eagle Feather, and Owl Carver explained in a whisper.
"Children will eat anything they can get their hands on," Wind Bends Grass scolded. "Now he will probably grow up to be a madman." Redbird held back a shriek of rage.
Black Hawk and the Winnebago Prophet strode through the gathering crowd to face the newcomers. Black Hawk carried under one arm one of those heavy paper bundles captured at Old Man's Creek. He glanced at Redbird, and she thought she saw reproach in his eyes, even though he had said he forgave her for her part in Yellow Hair's and Woodrow's escape.
Flying Cloud addressed Wave in a strange tongue.
"This Winnebago brave is the son of my sister," said the Prophet pompously in Sauk.
Does he think that means we are saved?Redbird wondered, sick of the Winnebago Prophet forever claiming that victory awaited just a little farther along the trail, when it was so clear that the trail led only to death.
Wave said in Sauk, "My father is a Sauk who married into the Winnebago. So I come to you as one joined with you by blood. We were sent by the chief of our band, Falcon."
"How did you find us?" Black Hawk asked.
"One of our hunters was passing this way and saw your camp. He was afraid to come near you, but he told me. I have been looking for you for many days."
Wolf Paw, his face so deeply lined that he looked as old as his father, came to stand beside Black Hawk. "Do you have news of our people who were trying to cross the Great River?" he asked. He touched the silver coin that hung around his neck, as if for luck.
Dread flowed cold through Redbird's arms and legs.
Now we will know.
Wave and He Who Lights the Water looked at each other for a long, silent moment.
"What has happened?" Black Hawk pressed them.
"The long knives caught up with them," said Wave. "Most of the people were hiding on an island in the Great River. The long knives had a smoke boat that fired a thunder gun at the island and killed many people. Then the long knives landed on the island and killed nearly all that were left."
Redbird reeled, stunned.
Sun Woman! My second mother! Iron Knife! Oh, no! O Earthmaker, let it not be so.
Cold crept over her as she remembered Eagle Feather's cry:The Bad Axe! The Great River runs red!
Black Hawk gave a cry of anguish. His paper bundle dropped to the ground with a thud. He sat down on the ground, picked up a handful of ashes from Redbird's campfire and threw them on his head. The people around him screamed and wept and held one another in their grief.
Wind Bends Grass fell against Owl Carver, and both of them sank to the ground weeping. Redbird saw Wolf Paw standing slumped and motionless, his arms hanging helpless at his sides, his face gray. He had insisted that both his wives and his four children try to cross the Great River at the Bad Axe, thinking they would be safer.
Sobbing and clutching her baby, Redbird watched the orange sun disappear behind the pointed treetops on the western shore of the little lake. She thought, Iron Knife, so strong and always there when she needed him, must be gone. Her two sisters and their new husbands, probably dead.
The people mourned, some sitting on the ground, some walking about distractedly, some standing, holding each other.
And now Eagle Feather was stricken. She could not get the chill out of her body.
When it was dark she relit her fire. Floating Lily woke and cried, and Redbird held her to her breast. Then she crawled under her lean-to to look at Eagle Feather. His eyes were still shut. He had not moved since his outcry, and his breathing was shallow.
I cannot bear this. Eagle Feather lying as if dead, White Bear vanished, most of my people dead.
Why have I been spared to suffer so?
Black Hawk began to mourn aloud for his lost people:
"Hu-hu-hu-u-u-u-u ... Whu-whu-whu-u-u-u-u ..."
The rest of the people joined in the wailing. Redbird noticed that Wave and He Who Lights the Water cried out, too, and tears ran from their eyes. She liked them for joining the mourning.
Owl Carver was sitting beside her, holding the hands of weeping Wind Bends Grass. His own features, as much of them as she could see in the twilight, were still and drawn, shrunken by sorrow.
Redbird thought, the Sauk were known far and wide as a people who never shirked the demands of honor. If even one man of Black Hawk's party smoked the calumet with Wave, that would oblige Black Hawk and his remaining braves to surrender to the Winnebago and make peace.
Redbird said, "Now, with so many dead, can we have peace? Will you smoke the pipe with these two men?"
Owl Carver said, "If I were alone, I would smoke the pipe with them. But I will not go against Black Hawk."
"We are all that is left of the band," she said. "Someone must take the calumet and smoke it."
And by that odious Sauk custom, she thought, clenching her jaw, it would have to be a man.
As darkness deepened, the wailing died down. Wave and He Who Lights the Water made a little fire at the edge of the lake near Redbird's lean-to.
One by one the last people of Black Hawk's band drifted close to Wave's fire.
The Winnebago brave stood before the fire holding the peace pipe. Twilight lingered in the sky behind him while the firelight before him illuminated his heavy features.
Sitting near Eagle Feather, Redbird looked around and saw silent figures standing in the shadows as the people waited to hear what Wave had to say. Gravely he took tobacco out of a pouch at his waist and filled the bowl of the calumet. Then he touched a dry stick to his fire and carried the flame to the pipe. It flared up bright yellow over the pipe bowl as he puffed on it.
Wave cleared his throat and spoke in a strong voice. "Earthmaker gave us the sacred tobacco as a means of making peace among us. No one may break a promise sealed with tobacco. Our chief, Falcon, asks me to say this to you:
"Black Hawk, you have frightened the long knives greatly, brought them much sorrow, and forced them to pursue you over rivers and swamps and mountains. Black Hawk, your honor has been satisfied. Falcon offers this tobacco to you and asks that you end this war, for the sake of your women who are hungry and sick and your children who are without fathers."
Yes, let it be done. Let this war be over before all of us are dead.
Redbird's heart leaped with hope as she saw Black Hawk reach toward the pipe that Wave held out to him. He was about to take it and smoke it! But his hand, instead of grasping, only pointed at the pipe.
"I will not smoke this pipe. I believe the Sauk should fight on until they cannot fight anymore."
Please, Earthmaker, let at least one man be moved to stand for peace.
Wave added more tobacco to the pipe and puffed on it again. He stood before the Winnebago Prophet.
"Show your wisdom, Uncle. Smoke the sacred tobacco."
Flying Cloud took a step backward and raised both arms. "It is wrong for the Winnebago to turn against us in our time of need. Go back and tell your Chief Falcon that if he does not join us in making war on the long knives, they will take his land from him as they have taken ours from us." He crossed his arms before his chest.
Despairing, Redbird realized that the Winnebago Prophet could not smoke the pipe because that would be admitting that all his advice up to now had been wrong.
"What will you do, Sauk shaman?" Wave said to Owl Carver. "Do not the spirits tell you to smoke the calumet?"
"Please do it, Father," Redbird whispered.
She wanted to shout it aloud. But she held her tongue. She remembered with pain the derision of Wolf Paw and the others when she spoke out at the war council.
She bit her lip. Maybe, by speaking out that time, she had turned people away from the path she wanted them to take. She would not make that mistake again.
Owl Carver said, "Black Hawk has always been my chief. I follow where he leads."
Redbird groaned. Now she wished she had spoken out.
Eagle Feather stirred beside her. Heart frozen, she looked down at him. But he was motionless again.
Wave turned next to Wolf Paw, who closed his eyes, bowed his head and made no move to accept the pipe. Redbird saw that the red crest on his head was faded and limp.
She could only watch as the two Winnebago went from man to man in the circle of firelight, holding out the pipe, each man refusing.