Levi frowned and shook his head. "Well, when we seen that the woods was full of Injuns."
"Now, we've heard many times during this trial that 'the woods was full of Injuns.' How many Indians did you see?"
"'Twasn't me that saw them. It was the scouts Colonel Raoul sent out."
"So you didn't see any sign yourself that the Indians were trying to lead you into some kind of trap?"
"Well—no, sir."
"And when you rode into the forest on the north side of Old Man's Creek, did you see any Indians?"
"No, sir. They must of all run off by that time."
"When did you first meet up with Indians?"
"Oh, we rode maybe an hour up along the river. It was full dark then, and they come down off a hill in front of us, a-yelling and screaming."
"A frontal attack, then. If the Indians were planning to ambush you, what did they gain by sending three men into your camp claiming they wanted to talk surrender?"
Levi Pope's face seemed to elongate as he contemplated Ford's question. "I don't rightly know."
"Do you think the Indians are stupid, Mr. Pope?"
"Well, they was stupid to start this war." Levi grinned at Ford, looking pleased with himself. Auguste heard some appreciative chuckles from the spectators. He turned and saw Levi Pope's wife, a skinny, pale woman, frowning at her husband as if his testimony made her angry.
Ford nodded and held off on making his reply while he paced the open space before the judge's table and let his calm gaze travel over all the spectators and jurymen. He waited until the hall was quiet.
"Maybe the Indians thought it was a stupid war, too, Mr. Pope. Maybe that is the real reason Black Hawk sent those three braves to your camp."
"Objection," called Bennett. "Mr. Ford is just speculating."
Ford said, "Your Honor, the claim by Colonel de Marion and others that the Indian attempt to make peace, in which Auguste de Marion participated, was some kind of dastardly trick is, itself, merely speculation."
Judge Cooper grunted. "Well, let's stick to what people know, not what they think they know."
"Fine with me, Your Honor," said Ford, "as long as the prosecution is held to the same standard."
Auguste's belly tightened as he heard Ford speak sharply to the judge. He'd seen some hope in Cooper. He didn't want him antagonized. Then he slumped, letting his manacled hands dangle. What difference? He didn't have a chance anyway.
Ford went back to his seat, smiling grimly at Auguste, and Levi Pope, looking somewhat puzzled, slouched back to his place among the spectators. Judge Cooper declared that proceedings were over for the day and that the defense would call its witnesses tomorrow.
Hopelessly, Auguste stood up and bent over to pick up the iron ball chained to his leg. Perhaps, he thought, Lynch's law would be better. At least it would not prolong his suffering, make him relive moment by moment everything he and those he loved had suffered over the past year. And sooner or later he was bound to end up in the same place—a grave.
The following day Nicole was sitting in the witness chair, answering Ford's questions in a soft, melodious voice.
Ford asked, "Do you agree, Mrs. Hopkins, with your brother's charge that Auguste is a renegade and murderer?"
Nicole's full face reddened with anger. "My God, no! Auguste never turned against us. He left Smith County because Raoul would have had him murdered if he'd stayed. Auguste has never harmed anyone."
Ford's next witness was Mrs. Pamela Russell. Hearing the spectators murmuring questions to one another after Ford called her name, Auguste wondered anxiously what a woman whose husband had been killed by Wolf Paw's raid on Victor could possibly say that would help him. Her black dress and bonnet made her face look even paler. She clutched a black leather bag in her lap.
Ford said, "Mrs. Russell, did your late husband entrust any papers to you concerning Auguste de Marion?"
"Not exactly, but he kept such papers in our house and told me about them. I kept them safe after he died."
"What were they?"
"A certificate of adoption and a will."
"Why did he keep them in your home instead of in the village hall?"
Pamela Russell's dark eyes flashed as she searched the courtroom, looking, Auguste suspected, for Raoul.
"Raoul de Marion, who never let my husband forget that he owed his job to him, ordered Burke to destroy both papers."
"That's a lie!" came Raoul's shout from the back of the hall.
Justus Bennett looked toward Raoul and said, "Colonel de Marion, please. What this woman is saying might even help our case."
"All right," Raoul called. "But you watch what you're doing."
"Now, Mrs. Russell—" Ford began again.
"Burke knew that what he told him to do was wrong. So, instead of destroying the adoption certificate and the will, he brought them home and kept them in his strongbox in our cellar. When the Indians burned our house, the papers survived." She paused, gazing over Ford's head. "The papers survived."
"Do you have them now, Mrs. Russell?"
She unbuckled the strap that closed the leather bag in her lap and drew out two folded pieces of paper. She handed them to Ford, who unfolded them with a flourish and turned to the judge.
Ford asked, "Your Honor, may I read these documents to the court?"
"Go right ahead," said Judge Cooper.
"First, the certificate of adoption," said Ford.
Auguste felt a hard lump rise to block his throat as Ford read the statement that Pierre de Marion, on the sixteenth day of August, 1825, did declare his natural son, hereafter to be known as Auguste de Marion, to be his lawful son, granting him all rights and privileges to which that status might entitle him.
Auguste covered his burning eyes with his hand.
I meant so much to him.
"Now," said Ford, "the will: 'I, Pierre de Marion, residing on the estate called Victoire, in the County of Smith and State of Illinois, make this my will and revoke all prior wills and codicils.'"
It was the will Auguste had fought against until Pierre had finally persuaded him to smoke the calumet; the will giving the château and the land to Auguste. There were also monetary gifts to a number of servants, including one of two hundred dollars to Armand and Marchette Perrault. Auguste heard an angry-bee buzzing among thespectators. By seizing the estate, and concealing the will, Raoul had wiped out these gifts. He'd have to face some angry servants today, Auguste thought with satisfaction. Including that swine Perrault.
"The prosecution will want to see those papers," said Bennett when Ford had finished reading.
"Of course," said Cooper. "You may have a look any time. In my presence."
After Ford had given the jurors the two papers to look at and had returned them to Cooper's table, he turned to Bennett.
"Your witness."
Bennett slouched into the open area before the judge's table. "No questions. Mrs. Russell, widowed by those savages, has surely suffered enough."
Pamela Russell stayed sitting in the chair beside the judge's table, clutching her leather bag. Her bosom, Auguste saw, was rising and falling with some powerful emotion.
"That's all, Pamela," David Cooper said softly. "You can go now."
She stood up, looking like a woman in a trance, and moved slowly toward the door in the rear of the courtroom. Auguste turned in his seat to watch her. She stopped before Raoul, who was sitting near the back. He stared up at her as she pointed at him.
"How dare you call me a liar, Raoul de Marion! When it's you that lied about what you told my husband. My husband never fired a gun before in his life, and he had to stand up and be killed, because you took all the men who could shoot away with you. I hope those papers ruin you."
Spots of red stood out on her cheeks. She covered her face with her hand and rushed out of the courtroom.
"How come you didn't shut her up, Judge?" Raoul shouted after she was gone.
"I figured she deserved to have her say," said Cooper calmly.
Ford said, "The defense calls Miss Nancy Hale."
Auguste's heart started to beat harder as he watched Nancy, tall and straight in a pale violet dress, walk to the witness's chair. Just what he had feared a year ago, when Nancy first asked him to make love to her, had happened. He felt a love for her—an impossible love, now—that was as strong in its way as the love he felt for Redbird.
In answer to Ford's soft-spoken questions, Nancy told how she had been captured and how Auguste had intervened to protect her, and later to protect Woodrow. She told how he had risked his life to escort her and Woodrow to safety, and had ended up being captured.
Bennett got up to cross-question.
"Miss Hale, this may be a hard question for you to answer in open court. But it is important to this trial. It's well-known that Indians are no respecters of the virtue of white women. So, what I'm asking you is ..." He paused and leaned over her. "Were you subjected to anything of a shameful nature while you were a prisoner of the Sauk?"
"Objection," called Ford. "The question itself is shameful. It has no possible bearing on this case."
Judge Cooper glared at Bennett. "What call do you have to ask her that?"
"Defense counsel has taken us down a lot of winding roads, Your Honor. I'm attempting to determine facts about the defendant's character."
"I'll allow it," said Cooper, his voice low and reluctant, and Bennett turned with a look of satisfaction to Nancy and repeated his question.
Nancy looked him coldly in the eye. "I've already said. Auguste de Marion protected me. I was never harmed."
Bennett narrowed his eyes. Raoul had chosen the man well for his purposes, Auguste thought, hating Bennett for tormenting Nancy.
"Well, but what about Auguste de Marion himself? Didn't you live in one of their huts with him? Did he ever approach you with lewd intent?"
"Certainly not!" said Nancy. "Yes, I did live in his—the word is wickiup, Mr. Bennett. But the situation was perfectly proper. His wife and child were with us all the time."
From the back of the hall Raoul brayed, "She probably enjoyed it. She always had an eye for the mongrel."
Auguste felt his neck grow hot. He wanted to kill. But someone would stop him before he reached Raoul; and even to try to attack him would only confirm the picture Bennett was trying to paint, of a murderous savage. He forced himself to sit still.
And yet, he thought, as he breathed deeply to calm himself, it was Nancy who was concealing the truth and Bennett and Raoul who sensed what had really happened. But their very words for it—"shameful," "lewd intent"—turned the truth into a lie.
He and Nancy had proclaimed their love in honor before the British Band. Now he felt as if he were tied down on a forest floor and weasels and crows were biting and pecking at him. Why must he and Nancy hide their love from these hate-filled people?
He heard indignant murmurs provoked by Raoul's outburst.
"Shocking!" someone said.
"No gentleman would talk that way."
Auguste heard Lieutenant Davis sitting behind him, say to one of his men, "If I weren't on duty, I'd teach that scoundrel a lesson."
Someone with the accent of Victoire called out, "Raoul, your father is right! Tu es un sauvage!"
Cooper pounded on his table with his wooden mallet until there was silence.
Thomas Ford called, "Master Woodrow Prewitt, will you take the stand, please?"
Woodrow walked past Auguste, who felt a warmth for him and, again, a pang of longing for Eagle Feather.
Under Ford's questions, Woodrow told how White Bear and Redbird had treated him like a foster son, and how White Bear had helped them escape.
When it was Bennett's turn, he stood threateningly over Woodrow. "Have you forgotten, young man, that you had a real, white, Christian father and mother? Have you forgotten what the Indians did to them?"
"No, sir," said Woodrow in a small voice.
"Well, then, how can you make it out that this half-Indian and his squaw were such fine people? They held you prisoner!"
"Sir, my pa used to whip me before breakfast and after supper. My ma laid in bed most days, drunk. White Bear—Mr. Auguste—he was kind to me. So was his missus. Living with them was shinin'."
"Shining!" Bennett looked disgusted.
Woodrow shrugged. "Well, would'a been, if the soldiers hadn't always been chasing us."
Auguste heard the thump of boots. He turned to see Raoul storming up from the back of the room.
"That boy's lying!" Raoul roared. "Indians took me prisoner when I was his age—I know firsthand how kind they are, I got the scars to prove it. The half-breed's white squaw has made it worthwhile for the kid to lie. If I get my hands on him, I'll beat the truth out of him."
"Sit down, sir!" Lieutenant Davis jumped up from his seat behind Auguste and blocked Raoul's way. Auguste turned to see Raoul's big frame just a few feet from him, close enough for him to smell whiskey fumes.
"This is none of your business, Davis," Raoul growled.
"General Winfield Scott and Colonel Zachary Taylor commanded me to see that this man receives a proper trial," said Davis in a calm, steady voice.
Judge Cooper rapped his mallet. "De Marion, I won't allow you to disrupt this court."
Raoul shouted at Cooper over Davis's shoulder. "Don't you forget, Cooper, that when you're not wearing that black robe you're just a small farmer who bought his land from me and sells his crop to me."
Cooper was standing now, his jaw clenched. "That's enough, de Marion. Sit down."
Raoul's head turned slowly from side to side. For a moment he stared at Auguste, his eyes full of hate. Auguste felt an answering hatred boiling up in his chest.
Raoul and the lieutenant stood facing each other for a long, silent moment. Then Raoul turned abruptly and strode back to his seat. Auguste, whose attention had been fixed on Raoul and Davis, became aware of men sitting down all over the courtroom. He wondered whether they were Raoul's men.
Auguste felt his guts squirm as he realized what a thin barrier protected this trial from being abruptly ended. Raoul could call on his crew of rogues to drag him out and hang him at once. The judge and the three Federal soldiers might not be able to stop him.
Ford called Auguste to the witness chair. Auguste had sat rigid for so long that standing up made him stumble, and Ford put a steadying hand on his arm.
As he sat down he felt himself trembling at the sight of dozens of pale eyes faces, hard, solemn and expressionless, looking at him. Bearded men squirting tobacco juice into brass spittoons. Womeneyeing him from under bonnets. He looked for the friendly faces in the room—Nancy, Woodrow, Elysée, Guichard, Nicole, Frank.
Ford said, "We've heard bits and pieces of your story from many different people, Auguste. If you were just another Sauk Indian you wouldn't be on trial here today. You'd be with your people, what's left of them. But because you've lived with whites and your father was white and you have a claim to a white man's property, you're accused of being a traitor and a murderer. I want you to tell us about your life. How come you're both Indian and white man?"
As Auguste talked he forgot the watching faces and saw again Sun Woman and Star Arrow, Black Hawk and Owl Carver, Redbird and Nancy, Saukenuk and Victoire, Old Man's Creek and the Bad Axe.
When he was done, Ford thanked him quietly and sat down. It was Bennett's turn.
He shuffled toward Auguste, fixing him with small eyes that glinted with malice.
"We have to take your word for it that you spoke for peace in the councils of the Sauk and Fox Indians, don't we? And we have to take your word that you went to the camp of Colonel de Marion's spy battalion on an errand of peace, don't we?"
"That's right," Auguste said bitterly. "Because all my witnesses are dead."
"Don't try to get us to feel sorry for you," Bennett rasped. "This courtroom is full of people who've seen loved ones stabbed, shot, scalped, cut to pieces, burnt to ashes. At the hands of your Indians." He raised his voice to a shout. "And while that was happening, you were behind the red fiends! Urging them on to kill and kill some more!" He turned away, face twisted in disgust. "I have no more questions for you."
Cooper said, "Does the defense have any more witnesses?"
"No, Your Honor," said Ford, and Auguste's heart sank as he walked back to his seat. Bennett, he felt, had finished him with those few sentences reminding people what the Sauk had done to them.
Auguste turned to Ford, whose round face was blank, unreadable. No hope there. Ford had done his best, Auguste was sure. But he had no more chance against the hatred here in Victor than Black Hawk's band had against the armies of the United States.
I am going to be hanged.
"Hold it there!" called a voice from the doorway of the courtroom. "Hehasgot two more witnesses."
Auguste saw a tall, mustached man thumping up from the back of the court with the aid of a crutch and a peg leg. Beside him a skinny man with a small head and a gap-toothed grin shuffled over the plank floor. A rifle hung from one long arm.
It took him a moment to recognize Otto Wegner and Eli Greenglove.
Alert, wary, he watched them come up the aisle between the spectators' chairs.
Cooper raised a hand in warning, said, "Mr. Greenglove, you'll have to put that rifle down before you come any farther."
"So be it," said Greenglove, handing the rifle to one of Jefferson Davis's corporals who had risen to bar his way. "I just needed it to make sure I got this far alive."
Ford came over to Auguste and said in a low voice, "I take it these men are offering to testify in your defense. Do you want them?"
"I think Wegner must be here to help me," said Auguste. "But I don't know why Greenglove is here." He remembered his conviction that Greenglove had missed him on purpose, and shrugged. "I haven't got much to lose."
Ford began with Wegner, asking him how he came to be in Victor when word was he had emigrated to Texas.
"My family and I only got as far as New Orleans, where we are buying provisions to join the colony at San Felipe de Austin. Then this gentleman comes to me." Wegner pointed to Greenglove, now sitting in the front row of spectators. "He tells me Herr Auguste is to be tried at Victor. At once we take the steamboat. I pay for both his passage and mine, using money my family needs. I tell you this not to praise myself but to show how much that man means to me." Now Wegner pointed to Auguste, who looked down at the floor, his face hot and his throat choked.
Ford nodded gravely. "I understand you were at Old Man's Creek, Mr. Wegner. What happened to you?"
Wegner told the story just as Auguste remembered it, ending, "I lost my leg, but I still have my life, thanks to Auguste de Marion, for whom I never did a single thing good."
If I could have taken him back to the Sauk camp, I might even have saved his leg.
Ford said, "Mr. Wegner, we've heard that Auguste de Marion is a murderer and a traitor to his country."
"Lies!" said Otto Wegner firmly. "By the rules of war he had every right to kill me and he did not. He is the most Christian man I have ever known."
I wonder if Wegner knows I have never believed in any spirits but Earthmaker and the Turtle and the Bear.
Returning from the witness chair, Wegner stopped to take Auguste's hand in both of his. "I am so glad I could come and speak for you. You are agreatman, Herr Auguste."
Auguste, struggling to hold back tears, murmured his thanks. Perhaps Elysée could replace the money Wegner had spent getting here, if the Prussian was not too proud to take it.
Ford began questioning Eli Greenglove about Old Man's Creek.
"Hell, there weren't no Injuns in ambush in the woods," Greenglove drawled. "'Twas plain as day what was going on. They was a few scouts that come to watch what happened to the peace party. Most of our men were carrying a right powerful load of whiskey. Some of the men saw the scouts hiding in the woods and got excited. Colonel Raoul, he used that as an excuse to order us to finish off the Injuns with the white flag."
"And you shot Auguste?" Ford asked.
"I give him that ear." Greenglove pointed in the general direction of Auguste's right ear. "Hoped he'd be smart enough to play possum after he was hit."
"Why did you choose not to kill Auguste? Did you think it would be murder?"
Greenglove cackled scornfully. "Hell, that never stopped me before. No, it was real simple." He paused, and the courtroom was still. "I saved that boy's life because I wanted Colonel Raoul to marry my daughter, Clarissa."
And suddenly Eli Greenglove started to cry. Tears ran down his bony cheeks and sobs shook his lean frame.
Ford stood looking wide-eyed, turned to stare at Auguste, who himself was dumbfounded, having never seen a man like Eli Greenglove cry.
Bennett broke the embarrassed silence. "Your Honor, I don't see what this man's daughter has to do with the case."
Greenglove's moist eyes narrowed to angry slits. "Just shut up a minute, lawyer, and I'll tell you. My daughter lived with Raoul de Marion for seven years and bore him two kids, but he wouldn't marry her because she weren't good enough for him. No, he had to have the preacher's daughter. That lady, Miss Hale." He pointed toward the spectators. "But she was sweet on Mr. Pierre's boy, Auguste, and I could see he had an eye for her too. As long as Auguste was alive, I figured there'd be a chance that Miss Hale would run off with him. So I made sure to keep him alive."
Auguste's heart sank. If the jury believed what Greenglove was saying now, wouldn't that make them think that there must have been something between him and Nancy when she was kidnapped by the Sauk?
Greenglove's lips drew back from his stained teeth. "But then that sonofabitch Raoul had to go and kill Black Hawk's men that brought the white flag. There weren't no real war before that happened. If he'd sent them messengers on to General Atkinson, the whole thing would've been over in May. Every one of them white people, soldiers and farmers, men, women and children, was killed by that man there." He pointed a skinny finger in Raoul's direction. "Meanin' my daughter Clarissa and my two grandkids."
"Your daughter was a slut, Greenglove," Raoul shouted. "I'd've never married her if she lived to be a hundred." Auguste turned and saw him standing in the back of the courtroom, Perrault and a few more of his bully boys flanking him.
"Oh?" said Greenglove in a whisper that somehow was loud enough for the whole court to hear. "You are very lucky they took my rifle away from me, Colonel Raoul."
Ford said, "I think that's all. Mr. Bennett, do you wish to cross-examine?"
Raoul, from the back, cut in, "Judge, this man is a deserter from my militia battalion. He's been on the run for the past three months. What he's said here is worth nothing."
Cooper frowned at Greenglove, then at Raoul. "I don't see what difference that makes. They bring convicted criminals out of prison cells to testify."
Ford said, "In fact, if this man risked arrest to come here, that makes his testimony all the more believable. To say nothing of going all the way to New Orleans to bring Mr. Wegner back."
"No, it doesn't show him any more honest," Bennett spoke up. "It just means he wants revenge against Raoul de Marion."
Cooper rapped with his mallet. "The testimony can stand. The jury'll decide what it's worth. Lieutenant Davis, have your corporals see that Mr. Wegner and Mr. Greenglove reach the town limits safely. And then, Lieutenant, I'd like a word with you. Meanwhile, the lawyers for each side can sum up."
Flanked by the two blue-coated corporals, Greenglove and Otto Wegner started side by side toward the courtroom door, Wegner's peg leg thumping on the plank floor.
"You go to Hell, Eli!" Raoul snarled as Greenglove passed him.
Greenglove laughed. "I got a better idea from ol' Otto here. I'm a-going to Texas!"
The two men walked out the door as a silence fell over the courtroom.
Auguste wondered, had their testimony saved him? They had told the truth about what happened at Old Man's Creek, but since when had truth meant anything to the pale eyes? If those twelve men sitting in church pews on the right side of the courtroom decided they wanted to hang him, they would hang him even if their Jesus spirit himself came into the courtroom and told the truth about him.
And after seeing the slaughter at the Bad Axe, could Auguste doubt that killing all red people was what all pale eyes most wanted to do?
Cooper and the lieutenant talked quietly at the judge's table. When Cooper called on Bennett to sum up, the prosecutor rose and sidled over to the jury.
"About the supposed adoption papers and Pierre de Marion's alleged will, Mrs. Russell's claim that Mr. Raoul de Marion ordered these papers destroyed is hearsay. She has no direct knowledge that Mr. de Marion gave any such instructions to her husband. More important—if Pierre de Marion adopted Auguste, that makes Auguste a U.S. citizen, and his participating in acts of war by the Sauk nation against the United States is treason. Auguste made war on his own flag.
"Whether Raoul de Marion did right or wrong in running his nephew off Victoire, gentlemen, one thing is sure. Auguste went back to the British Band carrying a powerful grudge against thisplace and these people. So, I put it to you, he decided that if he could not be a white landowner, he would destroy the white landowners.
"And he had the power to do it, because the Indians would listen to him. They knew him as a witch doctor, and they also knew that he had been educated among whites. And so he used his power to push Black Hawk toward war. He is an accomplice to the murder of every white man, woman and child killed by his fellow tribesmen.
"Auguste de Marion or White Bear or whatever he chooses to call himself"—Bennett pointed an accusing finger at Auguste—"should be hanged as a traitor and a butcher of his own people."
Auguste heard mutterings of approval from around the courtroom and a loud "Damned right!" from Raoul. His feeling that this trial was hopeless grew deeper. Bennett had told the jury what they wanted to hear—the version of the truth that would let them do what they wanted to him.
Ford stood up, wiping his brow. The room was hot for late September. He crossed the front of the courtroom to stand before the two rows of jurymen in their borrowed church pews.
"Gentlemen of the jury, I took up arms against the Sauk and Fox Indians under General Edmund Gaines in 1831. I am not prejudiced in favor of Indians. I only ask that you try to understandthisman whose life is in your hands.
"You have to decide two questions: One, by traveling and living with the British Band of the Sauk and Fox from September 1831 to August 1832, did Auguste de Marion commit treason against the United States? Two, is Auguste de Marion guilty of the murder of any citizens of the United States or the state of Illinois?
"Is Auguste a traitor to his country? Well, it seems to me that if anything, Auguste holds dual citizenship in the United States and in the Sauk and Fox nation. And, far from being a traitor to either, he tried to make peace between them. The only thing he ever carried against the United States was a white flag.
"Has Auguste committed murder? All we know for a fact is that no one has seen him raise a violent hand against another human being. Otto Wegner told you how Auguste had a chance to kill him, and instead helped him escape. At great peril to himself.
"You've heard Pierre de Marion's will, which explains why Raoulde Marion, who illegally seized the great house known as Victoire, has been so eager to hound this young man to his death.
"This man has lost everything a man holds dear. His father and mother. His home here in Victor. His home among the Sauk.
"Almost all of his people, his loved ones and the friends of his youth, have been killed. Everyone who lives in Victor knows to their sorrow what happened to his infant daughter. His wife and son are captives, too, and he cannot be with them or provide for them. Which of you, having had so much taken from him so cruelly, would not go mad with grief?
"He has lost so much. All he has left is his life. Let us not, I beg of you, take that from him as well."
Ford sat down in the midst of a heavy silence. Auguste tried to send his shaman's sense forward into the future to tell him how the jury would decide, but his spirit met a blank wall.
He glanced out a nearby unshuttered window and saw a blue afternoon sky with a few white clouds. Within the wooden walls of this courtroom, sky and sun, prairie and river, seemed very far away.
Judge Cooper said, "Gentlemen of the jury, we have prepared a room upstairs for you. We'll send food and drink to you as you require. There are cots in case you can't make up your minds today."
As he watched the twelve men file up the stairs behind the judge's table, Auguste could not stop his mind from wandering to the worst. He thought about what it would be like to be hanged, the rough grip of the rope on his neck, the blood bursting in his head, the world going black, his body jerking in hopeless struggle, breath cut off, lungs aching, the final silencing of his heart.
He heard a harsh laugh in the back of the room. He turned and saw Raoul in the midst of a group of men standing near the doorway of the courtroom. Beside Raoul was Armand Perrault. Raoul looked at Auguste and smiled. Auguste knew what that smile meant.
Whatever the jury decided, for him there would be no escape from death.
Late that afternoon, Lieutenant Davis called Auguste from his cell and took him down to the courtroom.
"Judge said send for you. I think maybe the jury's reached a verdict."
Entering through the rear door of the courtroom, Auguste met Raoul's eyes and his longing for vengeance made his blood feel like molten metal in his veins.
The jurymen came in through a side door. Robert McAllister, foreman of the jury, glanced at Auguste, then handed David Cooper a folded piece of paper.
"He looked at you," Ford whispered. "It's an old tale among lawyers that if members of the jury have found the defendant guilty, they don't look at him."
Cooper read the note and sighed loudly, as if he found the message burdensome. Then he took goose quill and ink and wrote a note of his own. McAllister watched him write, looking over his shoulder, sighed as heavily as Cooper had, looked at Auguste again. After a moment he nodded and took the judge's note back upstairs.
"Well," said Judge Cooper to the courtroom at large, "it seems the jury's a pretty fair distance from a verdict. They can't agree on a lot of things. So, I've given orders that they stay upstairs and keep at it. It looks like we won't have a guilty or not guilty until tomorrow. The prisoner will go back upstairs to his cell. Court will open at nine o'clock in the morning."
Auguste heard the rear door of the courtroom slam and knew without looking around that Raoul had left.
That night Auguste lay on his corn-husk mattress wondering whether he should try to run away when they took him out. To be shot while trying to escape might be more honorable than hanging. He wished he could see Redbird and Eagle Feather one last time. He wished Nancy would come to visit him. Or at least Nicole, Grandpapa or Frank. But Lieutenant Davis said that for the prisoner's safety no one would be allowed into the village hall tonight.
He heard a key turning in his door lock. He climbed to his feet.
"Come on," said Davis quickly. "We're taking you out of here."
They've come to kill me, Auguste thought. It would not be the first time an inconvenient Indian was "shot while trying to escape." But his shaman's insight told him Davis was as trustworthy as any Sauk.
"Why? Before the verdict?"
"They did reach a verdict today. You are found not guilty."
Not guilty! Joy flooded through him as he stood, so amazed that he could not move, staring at the open cell door.
When he had recovered enough to move, Auguste followed Davis out of the village hall, to where the two corporals waited with horses in the silent street. The river rippled black and silver in the light of a three-quarter moon. The Ioway bluffs opposite were black bison shapes under a sky spangled with stars.
The moonlight helped Auguste guide his horse up the steep road out of the village. Davis led, followed by Auguste, the two corporals bringing up the rear. After weeks of imprisonment, Auguste reveled in the cool night air blowing in his face.
They passed the trading post. The road was wider here, and the three soldiers bunched around him. Raoul was surely in there getting drunk, laughing as he looked forward to seeing Auguste swinging at a rope's end.
They trotted along the ridge leading to Victoire. Auguste's heart started to beat harder as he approached the place that had been his home.
The remains of the mansion sprawled on its hilltop like the skeleton of some huge animal, blackened timbers rearing up in the moonlight. People had died bloody, horrible deaths there. Was the place haunted now? Accursed?
A longing came over him to climb that hill again, to sweep away that ruin and rebuild. Put up a fine new house like the ones he'd seen in the East.
I could do so much with this land, but I'm running away from it again. Leaving it to Raoul again.
Then they were past Victoire, but the yearning for it clung to him like a lover's scent.
"By morning you'll be far out of your uncle's reach," said Davis, riding beside him.
Auguste's heart swelled in his chest with the thought that he was more nearly a free man than he had been in weeks.
"If I'm not guilty, why must I run away?"
"Surely you realize that your uncle and his cronies were planning to take you straight from the courtroom to the nearest tall tree if the court didn't sentence you to death. The foreman brought Judge Cooper a note stating their verdict. The judge wrote back, telling them he would say they hadn't reached a verdict, and he wanted them to remain in seclusion overnight while we spirited you out of town. They were willing to put up with the inconvenience. After all, who'd want to find a man not guilty and then see him taken out and hanged?"
Auguste's heart felt like a cup that was overflowing. The jury had understood him; they had believed him.
"I never even got a chance to thank Mr. Ford."
"Main thanks he'd want is knowing that you got away safely."
As they rode on, Auguste's happiness faded. The town that had been his home for six years had exonerated him. But he still had to run away from it at night, for the second time in his life. He hated to do this.
This was something else Raoul had taken from him—his moment of vindication.
Pain throbbed in Auguste's chest with the jouncing of the horse under him. He remembered his mother's body, like a castaway doll, her eyes pathetically wide, the gash in her throat, the splash of blood on her doeskin dress. She must be avenged. How could he let the man who murdered her walk free? Silently he called on the Bear spirit to avenge Sun Woman.
Again he remembered it was wrong to ask a spirit to harm any person. Even so, if he could not hurt Raoul himself, he wanted him hurt, whatever price he himself might pay.
And once again he was fleeing from people he loved. Elysée. Nicole and Frank.
Nancy.
"Soon I must go back," he said.
Davis turned his head to stare at him. "Go back? In the name of the great Jehovah, what for?"
It was Auguste's turn to be surprised. It seemed so obvious that he had to return to Victor and face Raoul.
"I belong in Victor as much as I belong with the Sauk."
He could not, he decided, turn his back on Victor a second time.
"Why are we going east?" he asked.
"You've have been found not guilty in Victor, but you're still a prisoner of war, Auguste. Your future is in the hands of the President of the United States."
Auguste remembered now. General Winfield Scott at the hearing at Fort Crawford had said,If the people of Smith County don't hang you, I think President Jackson would find a meeting with you most interesting.
A chill spread across his back at the thought of meeting Andrew Jackson himself. What would he and Sharp Knife have to say to each other?
Auguste leaned into a small window cut in the thick stone wall of Fort Monroe. He stared through iron grillwork at a blue-gray expanse of rippling water. Eastward on the horizon lay low land, the other side of Chesapeake Bay. Pressing his forehead against the bars he could see the bay opening to the south into that vast open ocean the pale eyes had crossed in their relentless search for new land.
A faint breeze cooled Auguste's sweat-beaded brow. This was the Moon of Falling Leaves, but it was still hot as summer.
Black Hawk had said little since their arrival. No doubt, Auguste thought, the old war leader was comparing this huge stone fortress with the log forts of the long knives he had besieged in his own country. He must be absorbing the lesson it taught of the true magnitude of the long knives' power. But when he did speak he sounded as defiant as ever.
"Why must I wear the clothing of my enemies?" Black Hawk stood in his loincloth staring at the uniform that a soldier had laid out on his bed. Auguste admired Black Hawk's lean, muscular body. It was hard to believe that he had seen sixty-seven summers and winters. His wide mouth was drawn down with distaste as he eyedthe tall, red-plumed shako, the dark blue jacket with its gold-trimmed collar, gold lace chevrons on the upper arms and brass buttons, the lighter blue trousers, the white leather belt.
"Sharp Knife wishes to show his respect for you by giving you the dress of one of his war chiefs," said Auguste.
It is also his way of reminding you that you are subject to him.
Owl Carver said, "It is a mark of hospitality. Just as Chief Falcon gave us new doeskin garments when we surrendered to the Winnebago."
Auguste felt a thrill of pride as he recalled the amazing tale Owl Carver had told him about Eagle Feather's part in that surrender. A boy not yet seven summers old whose vision moved him and showed him how to bring a war to an end was surely destined for great things.
Owl Carver looked strange, with his long white hair and megis-shell necklace, in a peacock-blue cutaway coat and tight gray trousers. Auguste was also wearing a pale eyes' suit with a dark brown jacket. The Winnebago Prophet was dressed similarly in shades of green and gray. Auguste had shown Owl Carver and Flying Cloud how to don the pale eyes' clothing, and now they stood stiff and uncomfortable in the room they shared, waiting for Black Hawk to put on his military garb.
Owl Carver said, "And the American pale eyes are not your enemies any more. You have made your mark on the treaty paper."
"This time for all time," said Auguste, putting his heart into his voice, remembering that Black Hawk had signed and broken treaties before.
Black Hawk sighed. "The spirits of hundreds dead at the Bad Axe cry out to me that the Americans are still our enemies."
That was ever Black Hawk's way, Auguste thought, brooding on old wrongs, regretting agreements made with the pale eyes. Irreconcilable.
He will never change. But we must change.
One hope had preoccupied Auguste throughout the month-long journey east, by steamboat to Cincinnati, where he caught up with Black Hawk's party, by horse-drawn coach and finally by that astonishing new pale eyes' invention, the railroad. Auguste must find a way for the Sauk to live in a world where the pale eyes ruledabsolutely. He was the only one who understood both Sauk and pale eyes. It was up to him.
"Do you want to say again the words you will speak to Sharp Knife?" Auguste asked.
"Yes," said Black Hawk. "Will he be surprised to hear me speak to him in his own language?"
"Very surprised. He will know you are a very smart man."
Haltingly Black Hawk repeated his speech in English, which Auguste had, at the chief's request, been teaching him. Black Hawk had told Auguste what he wanted to say. Auguste had translated it, and the old leader had learned it word by word.
Smiling, Owl Carver said, "This is just what your vision foretold, White Bear, that Black Hawk would speak to Sharp Knife in Sharp Knife's own lodge."
Yes, and I told you then that it did not mean Black Hawk would conquer Sharp Knife.
But Auguste did not have the heart to remind Owl Carver of the unhappy reality. Silently he helped the reluctant Black Hawk dress.
He wished now that he might have another vision of the future beyond this moment.
It took Black Hawk and his companions two days to travel by steamboat from Fort Monroe to Washington City. As the meeting with Sharp Knife drew closer, Auguste grew more and more fearful. If Jackson and Black Hawk quarreled, the President might decide to throw all of them into prison for life. He might even have them quietly killed. He was the most powerful man between the two oceans.
They slept overnight in the ship's cabin. Auguste dreamed that he stood empty-handed and helpless while Raoul came at him with a huge dagger.
The next day, at about nine in the morning, Black Hawk and his three advisors were riding in an open carriage down Pennsylvania Avenue, with columns of long knives four abreast on horseback before and behind. Auguste felt bewildered listening to the rattle of hooves. Only a few moons ago the long knives were hunting Black Hawk and his band. Now they escorted Black Hawk with honor. The change was dizzying.
Auguste looked about him curiously at the capital of the United States. It was a sprawl of large brick and frame houses, and Pennsylvania Avenue was a muddy, deeply rutted thoroughfare as wide as a cornfield. Behind them on its hill was the Capitol Building, an immense square stone structure topped by three low domes. The air was thick and damp and hot, and moisture-laden gray clouds lay overhead. Auguste longed for the drier climate of Illinois.
Pale eyes and many of their black-skinned slaves stood under the poplar trees lining the sides of the avenue. They waved cheerfully to Black Hawk and clapped their hands. From time to time Black Hawk raised a hand in solemn greeting.
Auguste had expected that they would have to endure jeers and cries of hatred when they were paraded through Washington City. But, surprisingly, people were welcoming them as if they were heroes. It gave him a feeling of hope. His people might learn to live with these people.
Auguste was awed by the size of the President's House, three or four times bigger than Victoire. It stood behind an iron fence at the western end of Pennsylvania Avenue. All this for the Great Father, thought Auguste. It seemed all the more impressive because the entire building was painted white.
Among the Sauk, colors always meant something. Auguste asked Jefferson Davis, who had ridden with their mounted escort, what the white of the President's House meant.
Davis smiled wryly. "Why, that's to hide the scorch marks from where the redcoats burned it in 1814."
But how fitting it seemed that the Great Father of the white people should live in a white palace. Auguste felt a tingle of excitement as the blue-coated officers ushered his party up the front steps.
Owl Carver stuck his hand into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out the gold watch that had once been Pierre de Marion's. He smiled, toothless, at Auguste.
"You told me I could use this to tell when the pale eyes will do things. See now. One of the long knife chiefs told me this." He pointed to the face of the watch. "When the long arrow is here and the short arrow is here, we will meet with Sharp Knife." He had pointed to the numerals XII and XI—eleven o'clock in the morning.
They awaited Sharp Knife in the East Room of the President's House. An officer told the four Sauk to stand abreast, with BlackHawk at the right end of their line and Auguste on the left. The arrangement told Auguste that the long knives considered him the least important member of the Sauk delegation, an estimate with which he agreed. A dozen long knife colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants, all in blue jackets and gold braid, stood in two groups flanking the Sauk.
Even though he had never had any reason to doubt his shaman's vision, Auguste was surprised at how exactly he had seen the room they were standing in—its rows of windows with blue and yellow drapes, its three glittering chandeliers and the four huge mirrors in gilded frames facing each other across an immense blue and yellow carpet with a red border. Under each mirror was a fireplace. Four fireplaces, to keep one room warm in winter.
The long arrow on Owl Carver's watch had moved from XII to VI, and the old man was uttering doubts of its power to tell him anything when a black servant opened a door at the far end of the room and all the long knives in the room drew themselves up stiffly, clicking their heels together. Sharp Knife came slowly into the room.
Andrew Jackson in person looked just as he had in Auguste's vision, only more terrifying. Whatever unknown red man had first called him Sharp Knife had chosen aptly. With his long, narrow face and his extraordinarily tall, thin body, he looked like a blade come to life. A shock of white hair stood up as stiff as Wolf Paw's crest on top of his head, and thick white eyebrows shadowed eyes as bright as splinters of steel.
Raoul's words of over a year ago came back to Auguste:I'd like to see what an old Indian killer like Andy Jackson would say to you.
Auguste felt he was face to face with the power that had destroyed the Sauk. This man, with his own hand, had slain Indians by the hundreds, had uprooted whole nations and driven them westward. This was the leader of those endless swarms of murderous, grasping pale eyes who, territory by territory, were driving the red people from their homes. This was the man who willed that white people should fill all the land from ocean to ocean.
But Sharp Knife was also frail as an icicle. He moved one step at a time, as if in great pain, and Auguste sensed that he was afflicted with many ailments and troubled by many old wounds. Auguste saw in him an immeasurably powerful spirit that kept him going in spite of so much sickness and pain.
"Which of you is the one that can speak English?" Jackson asked. Auguste had expected his voice to be like thunder, but it shrilled like a knife on a grindstone.
Feeling a painful hollow in his belly Auguste said, "I am, Mr. President." Only this morning Davis had told him that was the way Jackson was to be addressed. "I am White Bear, also called Auguste de Marion."
When Jackson turned his gaze on him, Auguste felt it with the force of an icy gale.
"Colonel Taylor wrote me a long letter about you. I want to have a talk with you later. Now, tell the chief I am happy to greet him as a friend. Tell him there will be peace between me and my red children as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers shall run."
A talk later? What did Jackson have in mind for him? Auguste wondered as he translated for Black Hawk.
"Now shall I speak to him in his tongue?" Black Hawk asked.
"This would be a good time," said Auguste.
Black Hawk took a step forward, leaving Owl Carver, Flying Cloud and Auguste standing behind him. Auguste saw that Black Hawk was shorter than Jackson, but broader in chest and shoulders. And, Auguste believed, stronger and healthier though they were about the same age.
Black Hawk raised his right hand in greeting and said in English, "I am a man. And you are a man like me."
Jackson looked startled, then stood very straight and stared intently at Black Hawk's bronze face as the war leader spoke the memorized words slowly, one at a time.
"We did not expect to conquer your people. I took up the tomahawk to avenge great wrongs that we could no longer bear. If I had not been willing to fight, the young men would have said Black Hawk is too old to be chief. They would have said Black Hawk is a woman. They would have said he is no Sauk. So I raised the war whoop. You are a war leader, and you understand me. I need say no more. I ask you to give me your hand in friendship and to let us return to our people."
"A very fine speech," said Jackson. "I was not told that you spoke English, Chief."
Auguste repeated the President's comment in Sauk.
Black Hawk said, "Tell him that you taught me how to say what I wanted to say in the pale eyes' tongue."
Jackson grunted. "I see. Yes, White Bear, you and I will have to talk. Well, tell him that we will send him back to his people when we are certain we'll have no more trouble from them."
Auguste wanted to say,Almost all the people who caused you trouble are dead. But he merely translated Jackson's words for Black Hawk.
Why does Jackson want to talk to me?Auguste did not like the sound of it. Did Sharp Knife have in mind some treachery against Black Hawk?
Black Hawk said, "Tell the Great Father that the Sauk will be quiet as long as the pale eyes do no more harm to them." Auguste had a sinking feeling, as he translated this, that he might well be reopening hostilities right here in the President's House.
Jackson answered, "We never have done any wrong to your tribe. When we buy land from people we expect them to honor their agreements."
Two stubborn men, thought Auguste. Black Hawk was right in saying that they were alike.
When he told Black Hawk what Jackson had said, the chief answered, "Say to him that I have thought much about this. I do not think land can be bought and sold. Earthmaker put it there for our use. If people leave their land, then someone else can take it and use it. But it is not something like a blanket or a pot, that can be carried away by its owner. It belongs to all Earthmaker's children."
Black Hawk's words worried Auguste, giving him the feeling that a storm was about to break. Jackson, he knew, was a hot-tempered man, a man who had killed others in duels. Black Hawk might be bringing further trouble on himself, on all of them, by speaking so candidly to Sharp Knife.
He considered changing Black Hawk's words to a speech more agreeable-sounding. But that would be a kind of treachery, he decided. Out of loyalty to Black Hawk, he must convey his meaning exactly to Sharp Knife. So, watching with inner trembling as Jackson frowned and shook his head, he faithfully translated.
Jackson looked directly at Auguste, not at Black Hawk, as he answered.
"You Indians just do not understand that land is the source of all the goods of civilization. That's why the white man is so much richer and more powerful than the red man. Among us, every pieceof land is owned by a particular man, and that man makes good use of his land to produce wealth. Never mind, don't translate that," he ordered. "It's just as well the chief and I have no more words on this point right now."
Auguste felt deep relief that Black Hawk's words had not angered Jackson. Unsmiling, the President took a stiff step toward Black Hawk and thrust out his hand. Black Hawk reached out to him, and they clasped hands solemnly, staring into each other's eyes. Auguste felt a shiver run through him at the sight of that handclasp. Now Black Hawk's war with the pale eyes was truly at an end.
The white officers standing on either side of Jackson and Black Hawk clapped their hands, and after a moment of hesitation Auguste, Owl Carver and the Winnebago Prophet applauded too.
Jackson said, "Lieutenant Davis, take the chief and these two older medicine men on a tour of the President's House and the gardens." He turned his blue eyes on Auguste. "White Bear—Mr. de Marion—I'd like you to accompany me to my office for a private word."
Now Auguste's heart pounded as he followed Jackson, accompanied by two soldiers, up a flight of stairs. He sensed that Jackson must have demands in mind, and knew that because of what he had been—old Indian killer—the Sauk would not be helped by his yielding to those demands. But what might refusal mean? Imprisonment? Death?
Jackson's office was a large room, well lit by big glass windows, where the President's polished oak desk was piled high with papers. The two soldiers stationed themselves on either side of the door, and as Auguste entered behind Jackson he saw a guard with a bayonet-mounted rifle standing like a wooden statue in one corner of the room. Auguste wondered whether there was always a guard there, or only when Jackson had an Indian visitor. Jackson folded his tall body inch by painful inch into a large mahogany chair. With a gesture he invited Auguste to sit opposite him in a comfortable chair with curving wooden arms and legs.
"I want you to consider staying here in Washington City, Mr. de Marion," Jackson said abruptly. "I think you can be of great service to your Indian people and to the United States. I'm impressed by the way you prepared that speech for Black Hawk. Zack Taylorhas written me that you're a remarkably learned fellow. There are plenty of men and women who straddle the border between the white and the red races, but most of them are trash—illiterates and drunks who hang around Army posts. You seem to be an important man both in the white world and among your fellow tribesmen."
Auguste's body went cold. Jackson did want him to work for him. He found himself resenting the President's apparent expectation that he could easily be won over. But he was afraid that if he refused outright Jackson might take it out on the Sauk.
He shook his head. "You overestimate me, Mr. President. I have no importance in the white world. I had a place, but it was taken from me. Among the Sauk—yes, I am what you would call a medicine man, but I begged them not to go to war against the whites and they did not listen to me."
Jackson waved that away with a long, bony hand. "I can see that you are capable of accomplishing much. I have a situation for you in my Bureau of Indian Affairs. If you do well in that post you might one day head the bureau as Commissioner, responsible for the welfare of all the Indian tribes under the protection of the United States."
Auguste felt overwhelmed. Jackson's proposal went far beyond anything he had imagined. Was he wrong in thinking that he must refuse?
No, he must reject Jackson's offer. The President meant to use him against his own people.
Auguste looked straight into Jackson's steel-splinter eyes. "You expect more trouble with the Indians, don't you, Mr. President?"
Jackson frowned. "Why do you say that?"
"Up to now you've been assuring the red men that they could live in peace on the west side of the Mississippi. But now you can't promise them that anymore."
"Youarea medicine man, de Marion. How have you divined that?"
Auguste felt as if he were walking on bad ice and might at any moment break through and drown. He should not be so bold with this all-powerful man.
"I know that General Scott has signed a treaty with He Who Moves Alertly whereby the Sauk give up a strip of land fifty miles wide running down thewestside of the Mississippi."
Jackson clenched his fist until the knuckles showed white. "Youwere not supposed to learn about that treaty till you returned to Sauk country."
"We traveled over a thousand miles, Mr. President. We talked to many people, and they talked to us."
"And with someone who speaks English as well as you do in the party, you were bound to learn. Does Black Hawk know about this?"
"No, sir."
Jackson's smile was knowing.He thinks I'm willing to betray Black Hawk.
Before Jackson could speak, Auguste said, "He would be angry if he knew. He would protest to you. And it would do no good. It would only mar the meeting between you and him."
Sharp Knife's smile broadened. "Exactly the sort of tactful decision I'd expect of you. Just why I want you to help me."
Auguste was frightened, but felt he must make it clear to Jackson where he stood.
"Mr. President, when you force the red people to give up land west of the Great River, how will they live? Soon there won't be enough land for them to hunt on."
Jackson spread his hands. "If their food supply runs short, our Indian agents can supply them until they find other means of livelihood."
To depend on government agents for the very food they put into their mouths? That would be a kind of prison.
His heart galloping, Auguste decided to speak even more boldly. "You are looking for someone to reconcile the red man to having his land stolen from him, Mr. President."
"Mr. de Marion, the United States is not a thief." A fierce glare lit Jackson's eyes.
I must try to be bold without being rude.
"I meant no insult, Mr. President. The red manthinkshis land is being stolen from him."
Jackson frowned at Auguste as if he was not sure whether he was being sarcastic, and, indeed, hearing his own words, Auguste was not quite sure how he meant them.
"Exactly," Jackson said. "The red man doesn't understand what is happening. You can help to see that thismustbe."
Auguste hesitated. He had not had time to think. He was not ready to decide his whole future and perhaps bargain away the futureof his people in a moment. Staying here in Washington City just might be the best thing he could do for the Sauk. Working for and with Jackson, he could protect his people, warn them of danger, avert attacks on them.
But his choosing to refuse Jackson was not the outcome of a momentary impulse. His whole life had taken him to this place on his path. The path might wind; its direction might sometimes be lost in shadows. But it did not lead to Sharp Knife. Jackson was a far better man than Raoul, but they were both on the same side, the side of the dispossessors.
"What the red men don't understand, Mr. President, is how much they are giving up."
"Black Hawk said land can't be bought and sold," Jackson said. "Then it belongs to whoever can make the best use of it."
Each man owning his own land and defending it against all comers, thought Auguste, that was the centerpost of the white way of life.
"I understand that you feel a responsibility to your people, to provide them with land," Auguste said. "But whether it is legal or illegal, just or unjust, I can't help you to move my people or any other red people off the land they are living on."
Jackson's face seemed to sharpen. "You could have done much for Indians by working for me. I'm surprised that a man of your intelligence and education would prefer running around in the woods wearing a loincloth."
Auguste was reminded of Nancy's words,hunting and living in wigwams.
Jackson reached into an inner pocket of his black jacket and took out a pair of spectacles. To Auguste they looked somewhat like Pierre's. Auguste thought with sorrow of Sun Woman and wondered what had happened to the spectacles he had given her. Jackson bent forward and picked up a sheet of paper from one of the piles on his desk.
"Ask one of the soldiers in the next room to help you find the rest of your party."
A few days later Jefferson Davis came to see Auguste in his new room, a small wedge-shaped chamber in one of the towers of Fort Monroe.
"I see they've moved you," said Davis with a smile.
Auguste nodded. "I believe President Jackson prefers that I no longer associate with Black Hawk and his party."
"Seems so," Davis said. "President Jackson plans to send Chief Black Hawk and Owl Carver and the Prophet on a tour of our big cities. Jackson's up for reelection next month. And, of course, he wants Black Hawk to see at first hand what he's up against. The President has made it clear that you are not to go along."
Auguste shrugged. "He offered me a position. I refused."
A smile warmed Davis's pale, gaunt face. "People don't ordinarily say no to the President of the United States. Well, you'll go home all the sooner. Black Hawk and the others won't get back to the Sauk reservation in Ioway till sometime next year. But I'm leaving tomorrow to rejoin Zachary Taylor's command at Fort Crawford, and I'm to take you with me, to return you to your people."
Auguste did not answer. He sat down heavily on his bed, which he had pulled next to the one small window in his room, overlooking the strait called Hampton Roads.
Did he want to go back to his people? He remembered a thought that had come to him while talking with Andrew Jackson. Each man owning his own land. That was the key to the white way of life.
But he longed to see Redbird and Eagle Feather again. Were they well or sick? He wanted to hold Redbird in his arms, mourn Floating Lily with her. That wonderful story he had heard from Owl Carver about Eagle Feather and the calumet—he wanted to tell Eagle Feather he had done well.
But, go back to the Sauk? He knew now, especially after talking to Jackson, what the future of the Sauk would be. Never to see the Great River again. To lose their land bit by bit. To be confined to a tract of land in Ioway far smaller than the territory they'd formerly ranged over. Not permitted to hunt where they wished. Might have to beg food from an Indian agent, as Jackson had said. They would not choose their own chiefs as they always had, but would have chiefs picked for them by the whites, men like He Who Moves Alertly, who knew how to use both the pale eyes and their own people to advance themselves. A miserable life, a prison life, a slave's life.
Memories crowded his mind. The words of the Turtle:You willbe guardian of that land that has been placed in your keeping.Sun Woman's lifeless brown eyes staring up at him at the Bad Axe. The charred ribs of Victoire under a three-quarter moon.
He thought of the endless acres of farm and grazing land stretching around Victoire. He remembered the verdict Not Guilty. The eyes of David Cooper, hard but honest.
If he could take Victoire away from Raoul ...
Then he would have something to offer Redbird and Eagle Feather. If he won his rightful place in the world the whites were building, he could bring his wife and son to share it with him.
"What's the matter?" said Davis, breaking in on his thoughts. "Doesn't the idea of going back to your people make you happy?"
Auguste shook his head. "No."
"What other choice do you have?"
"I could do more for my people by staying in the white world. Not as Jackson's Judas goat, but as master of Victoire."
Davis took a step backward, astonished. "Master of Victoire! Have you lost your senses, man? We barely got you out of Smith County alive."
"Will you take me back there instead of to the Sauk in Ioway?"
Davis shook his head. "I'm not authorized to do that."
"Am I still a prisoner?"