"I have done nothing."
"You meant to. That is as bad."
She saw the hunting knife at Wolf Paw's belt. She could make a grab for it, try to stab him.
No, he was one of the tribe's mightiest braves. He would be too quick and strong for her. And, at least, up to now she had done noharm to anyone but herself. To try to murder the son of the war leader would be a great crime.
His grip on her arm still cruelly tight, he gestured back behind him toward the snow-covered camp. "Think of your mother's weeping over what I caught you doing. Your father, his heart torn in his chest. But he, the shaman, would have to say that you must be killed."
Hopelessness crushed her. Now she would never be able to help Gray Cloud. He was going to die. And she was caught by Wolf Paw and would be dishonored before the whole tribe and then killed.
She hung her head.
"But it is true, Redbird, you have done nothing," Wolf Paw said more softly. "I am the only one who knows that you were about to break the law."
Sun Woman knows. But Wolf Paw will never learn that from me.
"I do not want you to die, Redbird," said the low voice from the figure towering over her.
She looked up at him. Was he going to be merciful?
He said, "It makes me angry that you throw your life away for that fatherless pale eyes boy. To wed the son of Black Hawk would bring you honor."
She understood now. He was going to offer to spare her life, if she would marry him and give up Gray Cloud. He did not understand that she would rather be dead twice over than spend her life mourning Gray Cloud and married to Wolf Paw.
She was about to tell him so when she heard a rumble, almost like thunder, from the trees nearer the camp. With much whinnying and cracking of shrubbery, all the band's horses burst out of the woods and ran, floundering and kicking up clouds of snow, out on the prairie.
"Be still," Wolf Paw cautioned in a low voice, "until we see what frightened them." He stood with his head high, listening.
Whatever it was, she was grateful that it had taken Wolf Paw's mind off her.
She heard a crashing in the forest, branches breaking, snow crunching. Something large was coming toward them.
She turned. Through the trees she saw a bulky, hunched figure. It seemed to be a large animal, but it was walking on its hind legs.It came forward slowly, a step at a time. Its forelimbs swung at its sides. It was a little taller than a man.
It looked very much like a bear. A new fear, greater than the fear of what Wolf Paw might do, assailed her.
A bear in coldest winter, when all of that people withdrew to their dens and slept? Once in a while, she had heard, a very hungry bear would awaken and forage for food and then go back to sleep again. Such a bear would kill anything it met. She tensed herself to run, though she knew she could never outrun a hungry bear.
The shambling tread of the bear, or whatever it was, had brought it closer, and she saw that it was all white, glittering in the moonlight like a snowdrift.
She glanced at Wolf Paw and saw his eyes glisten as they widened. The look on his shadowed face was one she never thought to see on him—fear.
He sucked in a shuddering breath. The hand that had held her arm suddenly released her.
No wonder Wolf Paw was afraid. This was a white bear, a spirit bear. Its eyes, reflecting the moonlight, seemed to glow.
Wolf Paw uttered a terrified, inarticulate cry. She turned to see him racing over the snow. Were she not so frightened herself, she might have laughed to see how his knees flew up, first one, then the other, as white clouds sprayed from his snowshoes. Strong as he was, he could never outrun a bear. Especially not this bear.
As for herself, she was surely doomed. She thought,May this be a better death than drowning under the ice.
And she turned to face the spirit bear.
The white bear was out of the forest now. Redbird had seen bears run, and she knew it could cover the distance that separated them in a few bounds.
It did not seem to be looking at her, and she wondered if it saw her. It sparkled in the moonlight. Its breath came in huge frosty clouds, obscuring its head. Did spirit bears breathe?
She looked around again to see where Wolf Paw was. He had become a small, dark spot against the white at the edge of the village. His snowshoes had carried him far quickly. She, too, would have run, if she could run like Wolf Paw.
She did not think Wolf Paw a coward. His courage was well known. Facing a being like this, the bravest man in the world would run.
It doesn't seem to see me. Maybe it is best to stand still.
She trembled from head to foot, unable to decide what to do. She felt dizzy, as if she might collapse into the snow. The bright light that seemed to come from the bear dazzled her.
But would a spirit bear attack people in the night and kill them? Devils and cannibal giants would, but she had never heard of a spirit doing any such thing.
She was learning to be a medicine woman, and a medicine woman must deal unafraid with the beings of the other world. Talk the bad spirits out of a sick person's body and call upon the good spirits to aid in healing.
She took a deep breath. Whether this be a good spirit or a devil,she would stand here holding herself proudly. Wolf Paw, if he looked back, would see the maiden he had threatened standing in the place he had run from.
The white bear took a step toward her.
In spite of her fear, she made herself look at the spirit as it came on. It walked so slowly. Perhaps, after all, she could run away from it.
Under the pointed snout she saw eyes that seemed to glow out of a shadowed face.
It was a man she was facing.
She saw that its path was taking it past her. It—he—did not seem to see her at all. But he was close enough now for her to see the face under the bear's skull. The large, round eyes, the long, thin features ending in a pointed chin, the bony beak of a nose, the down-curving, tender mouth. His face was covered with a mask of frost.
Gray Cloud.
How could she have forgotten that when he walked out of the camp yesterday he had worn a black bear's skin draped over his arms and shoulders? Snow and frost had turned the fur white. The night and her terror had tricked her into thinking she saw a white bear spirit. Wolf Paw, the seasoned warrior, had been tricked and terrified, too.
Gray Cloud was alive!
A scream tried to force its way out of her chest, but her windpipe was so tight that all she managed was a gasp.
Joy blazed up in her like a summer campfire.
But no—he could not be alive and look like that. What she was seeing must be the ghost of Gray Cloud, or his dead body walking. The cold and snow had killed him there in the sacred cave, and this shuffling, frozen husk was all that was left of him.
"Gray Cloud," she whispered, unable to speak aloud, "talk to me."
If he walked right past her without seeing her, he must be still on his spirit journey. She had always heard that the bodies of men on a spirit journey remained motionless, sitting or lying down. But she was certain that Gray Cloud was not fully awake.
She stood staring at him, her mouth open, as he shambled on past her.
She slowly turned to follow him, and now she was facing into the moonlight and seeing the shadows of the snow-covered wickiups. He was walking in that frighteningly slow, measured way toward the village. Wolf Paw was nowhere to be seen.
The feeling came to her again of other eyes upon her. Besides Wolf Paw, besides the strange creature Gray Cloud had become, someone else seemed to be out here in the snow-covered field with her. She shuddered.
She looked around to see if she could guess where the secret watcher might be hiding. Someone might be crouching behind one of the long snowdrifts that rippled across the prairie like waves on a lake. Or in the trees by the river.
She must not let herself be caught out here. She picked up the blanket roll and water skin that Wolf Paw had thrown into the snow and padded on her snowshoes after the lumbering white figure. She must hurry and try to get to a place where her presence would be unnoticed, or if noticed, not questioned.
Her legs ached. She did not have the strength to run. Gray Cloud had left a trail of two shallow furrows in the snow where he had pushed his legs through and the snow had fallen in behind him. On her snowshoes she pressed on behind him.
Even though the snowshoes helped her, her legs ached. She wanted to throw down her burdens of blanket roll and water skin, but they were too valuable for her to let them be lost out here. Merciless pain shot up from her shins through her knees to her hips. Still, the miseries felt by her body could not touch the joy of her spirit. Gray Cloud lived.
A wall of fur coated with white snow loomed up before her. As Gray Cloud lumbered along, she quickly stepped to the side and hurried around him.
She turned for a closer look at him. His steaming breath obscured his face. He stopped. He swayed, and the bear's skull fell back from his lolling head. She screamed, a sound that rang distantly in her ears.
Gray Cloud dropped to his knees, then fell forward on his face, sending up a great puff of powdery snow that glittered in the moonlit air.
The silence after his fall was as stunning as thunder. Redbird felt tears stream from her eyes—and freeze at once on her cheeks.That he should have lived through two nights of blizzard and cold, that he should come down alive from the sacred cave, only to die within sight of the village under her very eyes, was more than she could stand.
"Oh, no!" she whispered. "He must not die."
She fell to her knees beside him.
He lay face down, half buried. She put her hands under his shoulder and pushed to raise his head. He was heavy, but her fear and her love for him made her strong enough to move him. She lifted his upper body and turned him on his side, and she saw the beloved features, frost-white. Hope made her heart beat faster as little clouds of warm air puffed from his nostrils. But his breathing was ragged and shallow. She had to get him in out of the cold. Gasping with the effort, she rolled him over on his back.
She would have to try to drag him to the village.
Sobbing with near-exhaustion, she sat by his head, shoved her hands under his shoulders and tried to stand, pulling him up with her.
All at once there was no weight on her arms. Someone else was there, lifting Gray Cloud.
She looked up, thankful, yet afraid she might see Wolf Paw returned to do them harm.
No, it was Iron Knife.
Seeing the broad face of her half brother, a cry of relief burst from her throat.
"Oh, Iron Knife! It is so good you are here."
He smiled grimly, grunting as he hauled Gray Cloud to his feet. Gray Cloud's eyes were shut, his mouth hanging open.
"Lucky for Wolf Paw that Gray Cloud came when he did," Iron Knife said. "I was getting an arrow ready for Wolf Paw." He jerked his head at the bow slung over his shoulder.
"Even the son of Black Hawk?" She vividly remembered Wolf Paw's threats, but the thought of Iron Knife murdering him horrified her.
"Do you think I'd let him drown my sister?" Iron Knife put an arm around Gray Cloud's shoulders, bent down and picked him up under the knees, bearskin cloak and all. Blowing a cloud of steam out of his mouth, he straightened, cradling Gray Cloud in his arms. Though Gray Cloud was nearly as tall as Iron Knife, he was much lighter.
It was Iron Knife, she realized, whose eyes she had felt on her after Wolf Paw ran away.
They started off for the camp. She heard the voices of men and women raised, calling to one another. Wolf Paw must have given the alarm.
"How did you know I was out here?" she asked. "You were sleeping when I left the wickiup."
"Father woke me," Iron Knife said, striding stolidly along, his calf-high outer moccasins of buffalo hide breaking through the snow. "He knew what you were going to do. He told me to go after you, to see you came to no harm."
As they plowed steadily onward, Redbird saw figures moving about in the village. They must be terribly sleepy, she thought. Dawn was still a long way off. Still, more and more people were running back and forth among the wickiups. They were crowding in this direction, coming to meet Gray Cloud and Iron Knife and Redbird. A mass of people, dark against the moonlit snow.
In the front rank walked Owl Carver himself. The sacred necklace of megis shells swung on his chest. In one hand he held his medicine stick, a cedar staff decorated with feathers and beads, topped with the carved head of an owl. His long white hair spread out over his shoulders.
She could hear a murmuring of voices, and above them, the shaman, her father, singing:
"Let the people welcome him.He has walked the spirit trail.He comes backFrom the sky,From the water,From under the earth.He comes back from the seven directions.Let the people welcome him."
"Let the people welcome him.He has walked the spirit trail.He comes backFrom the sky,From the water,From under the earth.He comes back from the seven directions.Let the people welcome him."
Owl Carver was dancing as he approached them, a slow, heavy shuffle alternating with sidesteps, his upper body rising and falling. His hands, one holding his medicine stick, the other a yellow and red gourd rattle, were lifted high over his head. The necklace of small black and white shells bounced on his chest.
Iron Knife, carrying Gray Cloud, came to a stop before Owl Carver. Redbird, not wanting people to know how she cared for Gray Cloud, drew away from Iron Knife and tried to melt into the crowd.
Taking a few more steps, Owl Carver placed himself facing east, with Iron Knife and Gray Cloud on his right. He danced in a sunwise circle around them, from east to south to west to north, bobbing his head and singing.
"The Great Wise One has sent him.He has walked the spirit trail.He brings wisdomFrom the sky,From the water,From under the earth.He comes back from the seven directions.The Great Wise One has sent him."
"The Great Wise One has sent him.He has walked the spirit trail.He brings wisdomFrom the sky,From the water,From under the earth.He comes back from the seven directions.The Great Wise One has sent him."
Nine times Owl Carver danced around Gray Cloud and Iron Knife in the circle that represented the sun, the horizon and the cycles of life and the seasons.
Then in his normal voice, not breaking step, he said, "Bring him to my medicine wickiup."
He turned abruptly and danced through the crowd that had gathered. The people parted to let him through and they stared at Gray Cloud's body in Iron Knife's arms.
The people who had followed Owl Carver had stamped down a path through the village. No longer needing Sun Woman's snowshoes, Redbird bent and unstrapped them from her feet. She was suddenly so exhausted by her efforts and by the fear and sleeplessness of two days that she could hardly stumble along behind Iron Knife. She felt that at any moment she might faint.
The light of the full moon, shining down from directly overhead and reflecting on the snow, seemed to make the whole village almost as bright as day. Sighing, Redbird looked up and saw Wolf Paw staring at her from beside the path.
His black eyes pierced her like arrowheads. Under his sharp nose his mouth was tight.
She nodded her head at him, hoping he would understand that she was saying that they should keep each other's secrets.
"Redbird!" A hand seized her arm roughly, and pain shot through up to her shoulder.
Her mother, Wind Bends Grass, glared at her furiously.
"Why did you leave our wickiup?"
Redbird felt that if she stopped walking to talk she would never be able to move again. She pulled her arm free. Her sisters, clinging to either side of her mother, stared up wide-eyed at her as if she herself had returned from a spirit journey.
Her mother walked beside her, scolding her in a shrill voice, but her words meant nothing to Redbird. She only wanted to see Gray Cloud brought safely to the shaman's wickiup.
Someone else took her arm, squeezing it gently, and she looked up into Sun Woman's face. Tears streaked the strong cheekbones.
"You saved his life," Sun Woman said, so softly only Redbird could hear the words.
"I did nothing," Redbird protested. Silently, Sun Woman took the snowshoes, the water bag and the blanket roll from her.
Owl Carver stopped at the doorway of the medicine wickiup. He danced from one foot to the other, shaking his staff.
He nodded at Iron Knife, and motioned him to carry Gray Cloud into the dark interior.
Redbird followed. The owl-headed stick barred her way.
"Go with your mother," Owl Carver said softly. "You have done enough this night."
She could not tell whether he was praising or reproaching her.
Will he live?she wanted to ask. But his solemn face forbade her to speak.
She turned away from his remoteness and faced her mother's anger. Her heart was still full of terror for Gray Cloud, but she knew that the instant she lay down she would fall into an exhausted sleep.
It seemed that no time had passed when Wind Bends Grass shook her awake.
"Your father calls the people together," she said in a voice still hard with anger.
Redbird's eyelids felt as if they were made of stone. She forced herself to sit up, and then with immense effort got to her feet.
She was still fully dressed, even in her fur cloak and mittens. She had collapsed in the wickiup without removing anything. The wickiup was now empty. Her mother and her sisters had gone ahead without her.
Her heart hammered in her chest. Owl Carver might be calling the people to tell them that Gray Cloud was dead.
Outside, the air was still deathly cold, but the sun was a bright yellow disk rising above the distant gray line of trees that marked the bluffs overlooking the Great River. The light made her blink, and she turned away from it. She stumbled in the direction all the other people were going—to the medicine wickiup in the center of the camp circle.
She found that the open area before the wickiup was crowded, and she could not get close. The spaces between nearby wickiups were also filled with people, all waiting for Owl Carver to speak.
She seated herself between two women, both of whom had small children on their laps. Redbird knew one of the mothers, Water Flows Fast, a stout woman with a round, cheerful face and shrewd eyes.
Water Flows Fast said, "You are the daughter of Owl Carver. You should go up and sit close to him." Redbird sliced her hand flat across her body to say no. She knew Water Flows Fast to be a keen observer and a gossip, always looking for signs of trouble in other people's families. The less Redbird said to her, the better.
Redbird looked over her shoulder and saw that now there were many more people packed in behind her. Everyone was talking at once, and the hundreds of voices beating upon her ears made her head hurt. About five hundred people were here, everyone in this camp, which was one of four that made up the British Band of the Sauk and Fox tribes that would come together in Saukenuk after the winter snow and ice melted.
The medicine wickiup was built on a low hill in the center of the camp, and when Owl Carver appeared, everyone who was standing sat down. Redbird's eyes devoured Owl Carver's face, trying to read in it whether Gray Cloud was alive or dead.
Another man emerged from the medicine wickiup to stand beside Owl Carver. His head was bare even on this terribly cold day, and he wore his hair in the manner of a brave, his dark brown scalp shaved except for a long black scalplock that coiled down the sideof his face. His eyes were shadowed and sad-looking, and there were heavy blue-black pouches under them. His cheekbones jutted out and his mouth was wide, curving down at the corners where it met deep furrows that ran from nose to chin.
Redbird's heart beat faster as she saw that to honor this moment he had attached a string of eagle feathers to his scalplock and wore strings of small white beads around the rim of each ear. He stood with his arms folded under a buffalo robe, skin side out, painted with a red hand proclaiming that he had killed and scalped his first enemy while still a boy.
His sombre gaze fell upon Redbird like a stone striking her from a great height. She felt as if the war chief of the British Band knew every one of her secrets. She ducked her head and looked down at her mittened hands in her lap.
Owl Carver raised his arms, and the people fell silent.
"I have called on Black Hawk, our war chief, to see Gray Cloud, and he has heard great prophecies from Gray Cloud's lips," the shaman cried in a high, chanting voice.
Then Gray Cloud had lived through the night!
Owl Carver blurred in Redbird's sight, and if she had not already been seated, she might have collapsed. Relief made her heart swell up in her chest, feeling as if it might burst.
The people around her murmured in surprise, pleasure and curiosity.
The shaman stretched out his hand. "Sun Woman, stand before the people."
Nothing happened for a long moment. Then Owl Carver beckoned insistently. There was another silence. Then Black Hawk's hand emerged from under his buffalo mantle, and he crooked his finger.
A tall woman wrapped in a buffalo robe rose from among the seated people. People sighed happily and called out a welcome to her.
Sun Woman turned to face the crowd. To Redbird she seemed calm and unruffled, even though she had hesitated about standing up.
"This woman brought her son to me and asked me to train him as a shaman," Owl Carver declared. "I did not want to, because he is not a pure Sauk. She said to me, only try him for a little time andsee what he can be. I tried him for a little time and I saw something in him. I saw sleeping powers!"
The people murmured in wonder. Water Flows Fast and the woman with her whispered to each other, darting curious glances at Redbird, who carefully kept her face as impassive as Sun Woman's.
"I tested him and saw that his dreams could foretell the future, that he could send his spirit walking while his body lay still, that he could talk to the spirits in trees and birds. I saw that he had the power to be a shaman and more ..."
Owl Carver paused and stared at them fiercely.
"And so I sent him up to the sacred cave, knowing that he might meet spirits so powerful that to encounter them destroys the souls of men.
"And Gray Cloud went into the sacred cave, and he met the great spirits, and he journeyed with them," Owl Carver cried. People gasped.
"He has met the White Bear. He has spoken with the Turtle, father of the Great River. He has brought back a message for Black Hawk," said Owl Carver. "The Turtle told Gray Cloud that Black Hawk might tell others as he saw fit." The rumble of voices rose at this, and then quieted as Owl Carver raised his medicine stick.
"After the Turtle created our Mother the Earth, he mated with her, and all tribes were born in her womb," Owl Carver said. "They lived there in a warm darkness, but they had to go forth and find their way out of our Mother. Then there came to our ancestors an elder spirit, the White Bear, who led them out the womb of our Mother.
"When they were in the light, they found themselves in the midst of a ring of fiery mountains. Our people are called Osaukawug, or Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire, because that fiery place is where we first walked in the world. There was nothing to eat. There was nothing around the people but stones and fire. And they were hungry and greatly afraid, and they were angry at the White Bear for leading them out of our Mother to this place.
"But the White Bear showed them a way through the fiery mountains and over many fields of snow and ice, until he brought our ancestors to this good land where there is fish and game, where the grasslands are green and the woods are full of berries and fruit. Andour friends the Fox, the Yellow Earth People, came to be our allies and to unite with us. And the Turtle opened his heart and the Great River flowed forth. Our ancestors hunted and fished in the land where the Rock River flows into the Great River. On the Rock River they built our village of Saukenuk, where they would dwell in the summer and their women would grow the Three Sisters, corn, beans and squash, in the fields around the village. And there at Saukenuk, as our ancestors died, they were buried.
"The White Bear told us we should spend our summers in that land east of the Great River. In the winter it should be our custom to cross to the west of the Great River and hunt here in the Ioway Country. And here by the Great River we Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire, have lived ever since."
Redbird felt warmth on her back through her buffalo robe. The sun had risen higher.
Owl Carver called out in his high voice of prophecy, "The White Bear has come again. He has led Gray Cloud on his spirit journey. Now Gray Cloud is a true shaman. He still must be trained to use his powers, but his powers no longer sleep. And in sign that he is a shaman with another self, he shall have a new name. Let him be known to all the people as White Bear!"
Redbird heard cries of assent from the people around her.
Owl Carver crossed his arms before his chest to show that he was finished speaking, and turned to Black Hawk.
"So let it be," said Black Hawk in his harsh, grating voice. "Earthmaker has willed that the British Band shall be blessed with a mighty new spirit walker. Let his name hereafter be White Bear."
If I could make a spirit journey, Redbird thought,I too could stand before the people and advise them.
She came to a sudden resolve.One day I will.
"Now you shall see our new shaman," Owl Carver declared. He stepped back and pulled aside the buffalo-fur curtain that covered the door of his wickiup.
A tall young man came out, stooping to pass through the doorway and then standing straight before the people. Redbird's heart beat faster, and she half rose to her feet.
His slender body, despite the cold, was bare to the waist. Redbird gasped as she saw what was on his chest.
Five long, deep scratches, side by side. The blood had dried andturned black. Five long black marks down the middle of his pale chest, running almost from the base of his neck to the bottom of his rib cage.
Cries of awe and wonder arose from the people. They had all seen such marks, sometimes scratched in the bark of trees, sometimes on the half-eaten bodies of animals found in the forest in summer.
The claw marks of a bear.
And now his name was White Bear. She whispered it to herself. Her eyes saw nothing but the shining slender form, and her ears heard nothing but the sound of his name.
Raoul threw himself into the lake, the giant Potawatomi chief Black Salmon roaring behind him. The water resisted his legs like molasses. Black Salmon seized Raoul's neck, cutting off his breath. Strangling, he was helpless as the Potawatomi dragged him back to shore.
The huge Indian's whip tore into Raoul's back. Raoul felt the skin ripping and the blood running. He was nothing but a helpless lump of bleeding flesh, paralyzed with pain.
Other Potawatomi had torn Helene's clothes off. The warriors danced around her on the beach as she cowered, white skin, shining blond hair, trying to cover herself.
The Indian bucks were naked, too, and flaunted their erect purple cocks, big as war clubs. One of them darted into the circle and bit a piece out of poor Helene's shoulder. Bright red blood flowed down her arm.
Raoul ran to save his sister. He broke away from Black Salmon and fought his way through the Potawatomi warriors around her. She lay on her back on the sand, twisting her body from side to side in pain. Hideous bite wounds all over her body lay open like red mouths silently screaming. One breast was covered with blood.
The Indians fell upon Raoul. They had their scalping knives out and they threw him down on the ground beside Helene. Black Salmon caught up with him and whipped him till every inch of his body was slashed. The redskins tore away the last few rags of Raoul's clothing.
A circle of grimacing dark faces painted with yellow and black stripes closed in on him. They bared sharp teeth like snarling dogs. They were going to eat him alive.
Raoul's father and Raoul's brother, Pierre, faces marble and calm, appeared in the midst of the Indians. They looked down at Raoul's agony. Just curious.
Raoul tried to cry out, "Papa! Pierre! Help us! They're killing us!"
No sound came out of his mouth but a useless little wheeze. He had lost his voice.
"You should not have angered them," Papa said.
One of the savages, holding high a long, thin skinning knife, seized Raoul's balls. He brought the knife down, slowly.
Raoul kept trying to scream at his father and brother. Again and again he forced air through his aching throat. Nothing came but a silly squeak. Then a groan, a little louder.
Pierre reached out a marble hand to him. Thank God!
Just as their fingers touched, Pierre jerked his hand away and disappeared.
Raoul felt the Indian's blade like cold fire slicing through the sac between his legs. At last he let out a full-throated scream.
"Raoul!"
His body cold and wet with sweat, he sat up in darkness. He felt arms clutching at him and fought them off.
"Raoul! Wake up."
Panting, he said his name in his mind.I am Raoul François Philippe Charles de Marion.He repeated it over and over again to himself.
He was sitting in bed in the dark, someone beside him. Not an Indian, and not his long-dead sister Helene. He gasped again and again, as if he had run a race.
He tried to pull his mind together. His heart was still pounding against the wall of his chest, his hands trembling, his skin ice cold. That terrible dream! He hadn't had it in a year or more.
"Lordy, what a nightmare you must have had! You did a right smart of hollerin'."
In the dim light seeping in through cracks in the shuttered window, Raoul saw a woman with long blond hair sitting up beside him, staring at him with pale blue eyes.
Clarissa. Clarissa Greenglove. He looked down at her. A warmth began to creep back into his body, rising first in his loins, as he remembered what they had done together the night before. Five times! No—six! Never before had he done it that many times in one night.
He was still panting in the aftermath of the horror, but the sight of her naked body was helping him get the dream out of his mind.
Never done it with such a good-looking woman.
She looked down at herself and drew up the sheet to cover her breasts.
"Don't do that," he said, and pulled the sheet down again, none too gently.
He began to rub her breast with the palm of his hand, feeling the nipple get bigger and harder. She closed her eyes and gave a little murmur of pleasure.
How she'd enjoyed it last night! She'd sighed and groaned and whimpered and screamed and licked him and bit him and twisted her body from side to side like a soul in perdition. Her frenzy had fired him up like never before. No wonder he'd been able to mount her so many times. And somewhere near the end of it all she'd sobbed into his shoulder for what seemed like an hour. He figured that was a tribute to what he had done to her. The sheets were still damp with their sweat, and the air in the little bedroom was thick with the musky odors of their secret juices.
But the redskins were still stalking in his brain, and he was still a little frightened. He didn't want to sit here in the dark.
"Light a candle, will you?" he said. "The striker's on that table."
She hesitated. "Can I get dressed first?"
"Hell no," he laughed. "What difference would that make after last night? I know you outside and in, Clarissa."
She giggled and got out of bed while he sat hugging his knees watching her.
"It's cold out here," she whined.
"Well, hurry and get that candle lit and get back in bed." The March air whistled in through chinks in the log walls and shutters, and even though the inn's chimney ran up through this room it didn't seem to help. He guessed that downstairs in the taproom someone had let the fire die.
Clarissa's pale, rounded shape as she moved through the shadowsmade him feel stronger by the moment. The women he'd had up to now—many of them right here in this bed—had been older and well-used, and he hadn't enjoyed the look of their bodies that much. Clarissa was just the right age, old enough to be filled out, young enough to be slender and firm. He guessed she must be sixteen or seventeen. Raoul had been bedding women since he was sixteen, for seven years now, and he'd never had a better night than this last one, with Clarissa.
Then why, after such a shining night, did he havethatdream?
As the oil-soaked cotton ball flared up and Clarissa held a candlewick to the flame, the nightmare came back to him, and out of the roiling images of red limbs and painted faces and blood and torn white bodies, he dragged the reason for what he had dreamed. When he remembered it, he slumped a little, his delight in waking up next to a pretty young woman wiped away.
He heard again the stunning, infuriating words that had tumbled out of Armand Perrault's bushy brown beard.
I overheard your brother, Monsieur Pierre, talking to your father this morning. He spoke of how he has always felt that he had abandoned his Sauk Indian wife and their son, when he came back here and married Madame Marie-Blanche. Now that he is a widower, he says, he wants to "do right by her and the boy."
This thing about having a Sauk woman and a son—Pierre had never said anything about that.
To call some Indian whore awife!
My brother, the master of Victoire, a squaw-man! Father of a mongrel son!
Armand had remarked sourly to Raoul, "It seems Monsieur Pierre is a great one for doingwrongby women."
Raoul knew what he meant. He'd heard the rumor that after Marie-Blanche had died, Pierre, a little crazy in his grief, had taken Armand's wife to bed a time or two, to comfort himself.
But that was nothing compared to what Pierre was threatening now.
Indians living in our home! A squaw in the bed where Pierre slept with good Marie-Blanche!
How could Pierre do such a thing, after what the Indians had done to Helene? After Raoul had spent two years beaten and enslaved by Black Salmon? How could Papa permit it?
Clarissa turned, holding out before her a lighted white candle in a little pewter dish. She didn't seem so shy now about letting him see her naked. He let his eyes linger over her melon-shaped breasts, narrow waist, the brown puff of hair where her long legs joined her wide hips.
He'd often felt a hankering for Clarissa since he'd hired her father, Eli Greenglove, to help him run the trading post. But he'd thought it unwise to get mixed up with her. Eli was a dangerous man. Last night that hadn't seemed to matter.
After Armand had brought him the bad news, he'd turned to Kentucky whiskey—Old Kaintuck—and to Clarissa, dancing with her to Registre Bosquet's fiddle in the taproom to take his mind off this sudden insult Pierre had flung at him. Late in the evening he'd stumbled upstairs behind Clarissa to his bedroom in the inn, his hands up her skirts, feeling the satiny skin of her legs.
And then down on the bed, and—whiskey and all—six times!
But this morning his pleasure in her was spoiled by this treachery of Pierre's.
A squaw and a redskinned mongrel. Raoul wouldn't want Indians on the estate even as servants. Now Pierre was talking about these savages living in Victoire as part of the family.
He felt a sudden, stinging bite down near his rear end, under the covers. Angrily, he slapped at himself. Damned fleas and bedbugs. Levi Pope's wife made a piss-poor job of laundering the bedding for the inn.
If I had a wife I'd make sure she kept the bugs out of my sheets.
Clarissa set the candle down on the table and climbed back into bed. She ran her hand over his back.
She brought her face close to his, and he decided that, though he liked her arms and legs and hips and breasts, he didn't care for her weak chin, her washed-out blond hair and light blue eyes and the brown stain on one of her front teeth.
She said, "You've got scars all over your back. Somebody beat you. Your paw?"
"My papa?" The thought made him smile. "No, the old man's not that sort."
But he's the kind of man who might forget about me for a while. Who might let me be captured by Indians in 1812 and not manage to find me and ransom me till 1814.
The kind of man who might actually let my brother bring Indians into our home.
The scars. The scars reminded him every day of Fort Dearborn, August 1812. The memories left scars inside. Memories of being ten years old, cowering in an Indian encampment with the other white captives from Fort Dearborn while the warriors with their clubs and tomahawks approached, grinning.
It hadn't happened the way he dreamed it. The Potawatomi had pulled a man, an army private, to his feet, while he begged for his life, and dragged him over to the campfire. In an agony of terror Raoul had pressed against Helene, seated beside him on the ground. She put her arm around his shoulders and held him tight.
His sister Helene had seen her husband's throat cut and his scalp slashed away that very morning, when the Indians fell upon the retreating soldiers of Fort Dearborn and the civilians fleeing the tiny village called Checagou. But somehow Helene kept herself calm and strong after witnessing Henri's terrible death. Raoul knew it was for his sake.
Raoul had shut his eyes, and heard the clubs thud into the head and body of the soldier at the campfire, heard his screams, heard the silence of death when the screams stopped. A man's life had ended, just like that. Raoul trembled, hiding his face in Helene's side. Around him the other prisoners, men and women, sobbed and prayed.
The Indians took another soldier. They tied him to a stake and cut away bits of his flesh with the sharpened edges of clam shells. They worked at him for hours, until he bled to death.
The warriors came back for their next victim, sauntering among the prisoners, eyes aglow, painted faces like masks of monsters, stinking of the whiskey they'd been drinking all night. This time he was sure they were coming for him.
But they took Helene.
He had never forgotten her last words to him, spoken serenely as the Potawatomi seized her arms.
"I am going to join Henri. Pray to the Mother of God for me, Raoul."
The Indians dragged Helene into the woods. They took another woman as well.
The Potawatomi squaws, seated around a nearby campfire, chatteredamong themselves. They laughed whenever one of the women in the woods screamed. Raoul could not believe that any of those sounds were coming from his sister's throat.
The helpless white prisoners covered their faces and prayed and wept—and the men cursed.
He had hated himself for not trying to help Helene, but he was too frightened to move. Too frightened even to cry out. Brooding about it now, nearly thirteen years later, he told himself once again that if he'd tried to help Helene the Indians would have clubbed him to death. He told himself that he had been only ten years old. That did not make any difference to the shame he felt when he remembered that night. He should have gone to her. He should have fought to the death for her. He could never forgive himself.
Why didn't we all fight and die? Wouldn't it have been better to attack the Indians barehanded and be killed than to let that happen?
But neither could he forgive Papa and Pierre. His father and brother had left Raoul in Helene's care at Fort Dearborn, where her husband, Henri Vaillancourt, ran the trading post of Papa's Illinois Fur Company. When it became apparent that a second war between England and the United States was about to break out, Papa declared that land prices in Illinois were now as low as they would ever be, and he set off in search of likely land to buy for a family seat. Pierre had gone to the Sauk and Fox Indians on the Rock River to talk about trade and land purchases with them. Raoul had been happy enough to be left with Helene, who had been a mother to him as far back as he could remember. His own mother, Helene had gently explained to him, had gone to Heaven when he was born.
When Raoul heard no more screams from the woods, he knew Helene had gone to Heaven, too.
The next morning, as the Indians began the march back to their village, dragging their bound captives, Raoul had seen Helene's naked body, with stab wounds in a hundred places, lying face down, half submerged in Lake Michigan's surf. He saw a round, red patch on top of her head. Later he saw a brave who had tied to his belt a long hank of silver-blond hair, surely Helene's, a circular piece of skin dangling down.
The Indians had chosen not to kill Raoul, perhaps because at ten he was too young to be a satisfying victim, but old enough towork. And so Black Salmon had taken him for his slave. It made no difference whether he worked well or poorly; Black Salmon let not a day go by without whipping him, and fed him entrails and hominy grits. Only after Raoul had endured two years of slavery did his father, Elysée, find him and ransom him from Black Salmon.
And when Raoul was older he came to understand the full horror of what the Indians had done to Helene. They must have raped her over and over again. And he hated himself and Pierre and Elysée all the more for letting it happen.
But most of all he hated Indians.
Indians living at Victoire? He had to kill that notion of Pierre's right now. He would put on his clothes and saddle Banner and ride up to the château and set his father and brother straight.
But would they understand? Pierre, with his oh-so-tender conscience, who had lived with the damned Sauk and Fox for years and slept with one of their dirty squaws? Elysée, buried in his books? Raoul remembered their marble faces, as he had seen them in his dream.
They'd never understood him.
"Where did you get them scars?" Clarissa asked, interrupting his thoughts as she ran her fingers lightly over the hard ridges on his back.
Raoul told her about Black Salmon. "He liked whipping me even better than he liked whiskey. And when he got hold of whiskey he liked beating me even better."
"Poor Raoul! And such a little boy." Clarissa's face drew down with sympathy. "I'm powerful sorry for you." She pulled him to her.
He lowered his head to her breast and drew the nipple into his mouth, pressing it with his teeth. They lay back together, and he enjoyed the feel of the soft, feather-filled mattress and pillows billowing up around them.
By God, if he didn't feel himself getting big and hard to do it again. Proudly he threw back the sheet and let her see what he had for her. She smiled up at him, welcoming, her pale blue eyes shining in the candlelight.
He could use her to help him forget a little longer about Pierre and his redskin wife and son.
A sharp rapping at the bedroom door brought an end to his new surge of desire.
Clarissa gasped and pulled away from Raoul, dragging the bedclothes toward her.
Raoul put his finger to his lips and called out, "Who's there?"
"It's Eli," said a voice through the door.
Raoul's heart began hammering again, as hard as when he woke from his nightmare.
"Oh, Lord, my paw," whispered Clarissa.
She sounded frightened—but only atouchfrightened, and Raoul eyed her suspiciously. Her eyes were wide, like a child trying to deny mischief after being caught red-handed. Could Eli and his daughter have planned this?
Did Eli know that Clarissa was in here? Raoul had been too drunkenly careless to worry about who was watching when he took her upstairs last night.
Feeling a quaking in his stomach, Raoul walked over to the door. "What, Eli?" He hoped his voice sounded strong. He no longer took pleasure and pride in his nakedness.
"Thought you should know about something I heard over to the fur store, Raoul."
"Who's minding the furs now?" The place was full of bundles of pelts, beaver, badger, fox, raccoon, skunk. And valuable trade goods. Indian bucks walking in and out all the time, this time of year. Raoul had been happy to turn most of the fur trade work over to Eli. He couldn't stomach dealing with Indians.
"I left Otto Wegner there. Raoul, there's Injuns out digging in your lead mine."
At once Raoul forgot his fear of being caught with Clarissa. In its place he felt a rage so powerful his body seemed to fill up with boiling oil. Indians, more Indians! Worming their way into his family, and now stealing from his mine.
"Came looking for lead, did they?" he growled. "We'll give them lead. Round me up a couple of good marksmen and I'll meet you down in the taproom."
He heard no sound for a moment, and wondered what Eli was doing and thinking on the other side of the plank door.
Then Eli's voice came, "I'll be a-waiting for you, Raoul."
That gets him away from here for now.
But if Eli and Clarissa were planning to try to push him into a marriage, he knew he wouldn't get out of this that easy.
Pierre bringing an Indian wife and son home, Clarissa trying to trap him into a marriage—he began to feel as if he had walked into some kind of an ambush.
And Indians at the mine.
He eyed Clarissa, who sat with a pillow between her bare back and the rough-hewn log wall, sheet and blanket pulled up to her shoulders. He walked over to her to make sure he could not be heard from outside.
"I'm going to have to ride out to the mine, and I'll be taking your father with me," he said, keeping his voice soft. "Wait till you hear us ride away, then get out of here. And make sure nobody sees you."
She was still wide-eyed. "Oh, Raoul, if he was to catch me with you he'd beat me worse'n that Injun ever beat you."
Raoul leaned forward and put his hand, gently but firmly, on her throat. "If he ever finds out from you that you and I were together," he said softly, "I'll beat you even worse than that."
In the taproom on the first floor of the inn, Eli, a short, skinny man whose thinning blond hair was turning gray, gave no sign of knowing that Clarissa was in the room upstairs. Where did he think she was? Raoul wondered. Maybe he knew, but was biding his time.
"Winnebago with a bundle of beaver pelts come in this morning," Eli said. "Said that for an extra cupful of whiskey he'd tell me a thing I might like to know. I obliged, and he told me riding over here yesterday he'd seen smoke rising from the prairie. He went for a look-see and it was three Sauk bucks carrying galena out of the mine and smelting it down."
Eli had rounded up three big men to ride out with Raoul. Levi Pope, a tall, hatchet-faced Sucker, an Illinois man, carried a Kentucky rifle that almost came up to his shoulder. Otto Wegner, a veteran of the army of the King of Prussia, was six foot three with broad shoulders. He wore his brown mustache thick and let it grow back over his cheeks to join his sideburns. Hodge Hode, like Eli, was a Puke, a Missourian. Huge as a grizzly bear, he dressed in fringed buckskins. Under his coonskin cap red hair, wild and knotted,hung down to his shoulders, and his red beard hid three quarters of his face. Besides their long rifles, Eli, Levi, Hodge and Otto had pistols stuck through their belts, powder horns slung over their shoulders, hunting knives sheathed in pockets in the front of their buckskin shirts.
Raoul let them each have a glass of whiskey, his good whiskey, Old Kaintuck from a canvas-wrapped stone jug, not the terrible-tasting corn liquor he dispensed from the barrel in the taproom. Then the five of them went out to mount their horses in the courtyard of the trading post. Raoul rode his chestnut stallion, Banner.
My domain, Raoul thought proudly, as he looked around. Surrounding the trading post was a palisade twenty feet high made of logs set vertically, with a catwalk running all around it and a guard tower in each corner. From a pole atop the southwest tower flew the flag of the United States, thirteen stripes and twenty-four stars, and below it the flag of the de Marions' Illinois Fur Company, an arrow and a musket crossing behind a beaver pelt.
Dominating the buildings inside the palisade was a blockhouse, limestone at ground level, with an overhanging second story of logs and rifle slits all around. Raoul had built it to fortify the trading post against his memories of Checagou. Pierre and Papa might have thought it foolish expense and effort, but where had they been when he needed them?
Near the east side of the blockhouse was the inn they'd just left, a log house, food and drink on the ground floor and lodgings above. On the west side, the fur store. Over in the northwest corner was the magazine, a windowless cube of limestone blocks, surrounded by its own little palisade the height of a man. Here were stored the bags and barrels of gunpowder that passed through the trading post.
They rode out through the gateway, arched over by the nameDE MARION, formed out of small bits of log by Raoul's brother-in-law, Frank Hopkins, carpenter and printer. Raoul glanced down at the town of Victor, built on the steep slope below the trading post. From here he could see mostly half-log roofs and clay-lined log chimneys following the road that zigzagged across the face of the bluff. The houses all faced west, with their backs to the limestone slope. North and south from the base of the bluff stretched miles of bottomland along the Mississippi River. The spring floods that left the bottom some of the richest farmland in the world also made itnecessary to build almost everything on the bluff above the high-water line.
Raoul pulled Banner's head around and led his little troop at a trot along the ridge that ran east. Now Victoire came into view, the château his father and brother had built on the edge of the prairie, its first floor, like that of the blockhouse, of stone, its upper two stories of square-hewn timber. Some day, he thought, as he rode past the hill crowned by the great house, he would enter Victoire as master.
They rode on, passing big log barns and animal sheds Raoul had helped build. They followed a narrow trail through fields planted in corn and wheat, through orchards, the trees as yet only a little higher than a man but already yielding apples and peaches. Farther out still, cattle and horses grazed on grassland that rolled eastward like the waves of the ocean.
Five miles from the Mississippi they came to the boundary stone with an M carved on it that marked Victoire's easternmost extent. From there Raoul could see, a good ten miles or more away, the sign of the Indians, a long finger of gray smoke leaning northeastward among the fluffy white clouds. The mine entrance was at the bottom of a ravine carved in the prairie by the Peach River, and the smoke doubtless meant the Indians were smelting lead.
After a long ride they reached the little river. The five men reined up and tethered their horses downwind from the smoke; an Indian, it was said, had a sense of smell as keen as a dog's. Raoul led his men to the edge of the ravine.
They walked quietly along the ravine until they sighted Indians down at the bottom. Sauk or Fox, Raoul saw, recognizing their shaven heads with tufts of hair in the center. One of the bucks was standing at the mine entrance holding a skin sack that appeared to be full of chunks of galena, lead ore. The other two were adding logs to the smelter's fire. Their six horses—three for riding and three for carrying lead—were standing at the edge of the river about ten feet from the smelter.
The Indians' smelter was simply a square pit dug in the hillside, lined with rocks at the bottom and filled with logs and brushwood. They were melting down the galena, letting it flow through the rocks into a slanting trench that led to a square mold dug in the earth. Raoul counted five pigs of lead already formed, cooled and stackedbeside the mold. They'd probably been at this ever since the end of winter, thinking the mine was so far from town that no white man would notice.
Lead was selling at seventeen dollars per thousand pounds at the pit head up north in Galena, the new boom town named for the ore, and if these Indians had been working since the snow melted, they might have robbed Raoul of as much as two hundred dollars.
Raoul thought he recognized the two bucks at the smelter. Last fall they had come to him as he was bossing the crew he'd put to work expanding the mine before he shut it down for the winter. The Indians had claimed it was their mine. He had told them to be off, and when they hadn't moved quickly enough, he and his men had cocked their flintlocks. Should have killed them then.
Raoul gripped the gilded butt of the cap-and-ball pistol that hung at his waist and slid it out of its holster.
"Get them!" he called, standing up suddenly. He stretched out his arm, sighted along the barrel of his pistol and fired at the nearer Indian standing by the smelter.
Four rifles went off at once. Raoul was enveloped in the bitter smell of gunpowder and a cloud of smoke. The Indian Raoul had aimed at jerked, fell to his knees, then collapsed face forward beside the smelter. The other one at the smelter ran for his horse and leaped on its back. They must have all aimed at the same one, Raoul thought, cursing himself for not thinking of pointing out targets for each man.
The third Indian had disappeared. The skin sack of galena lay beside the mine entrance.
"Dammit," said Raoul. "If that redskin on the horse gets away there'll be raiding parties coming here. Whoever digs here'll have to have eyes in the back of his head."
"I'll put an eye in the back ofhishead," said Eli as he poured powder from his measure down the muzzle of his rifle. He grinned at Raoul—two upper front teeth missing and one lower. Did he know about Clarissa? Raoul still couldn't tell.
The other men were also reloading. Raoul pushed powder and shot down the muzzle of his pistol, then took a percussion cap out of a pouch at his belt and pressed it onto the nipple in the breach. By the time he was ready to fire, the Indian was galloping down the riverbed and had disappeared around a bend.
Hodge Hode, Levi Pope and Otto Wegner ran for their horses. Eli stayed where he was, smiling down at the rifle in his hands as if he were holding a baby.
"If we all chase after the one on horseback," Eli said, "the one that's hiding will run off in the other direction."
"True enough," said Raoul. By this time Hodge, Levi and Otto had ridden off.
"Another thing," Eli said. "Our boys is on the wrong side of the ravine. When the Injun comes out, he'll come out on the south side. By the time they ride down and in, and up and out again, he'll be a mile away."
"So what do we do?" asked Raoul.
"It's all flat land hereabouts."
Before Raoul could demand an explanation of that, he saw the fleeing Indian on his mount scramble out of the ravine and ride southward, just as Eli had predicted. Raoul glanced at his men as they came to a halt, puzzlement showing in their gestures. Hodge fired at the Indian, who rode on unharmed. Though Raoul would not have known what else to do, he despised his two men for their uselessness.
Soon the Indian, riding hell-bent south, was a tiny dark silhouette against the yellow prairie. Eli raised the barrel of his Kentucky long rifle. It was an impossible shot, Raoul thought, but he said nothing. Eli seemed to be aiming slightly high, not straight at the redskin. Raoul heard the Puke suck in a deep breath through his missing front teeth.
The rifle boomed. The muzzle flash made Raoul blink, and a cloud of blue-white smoke drifted across the canyon.
A long time seemed to pass with nothing happening. But maybe it was only a heartbeat or two. Then the dark, distant figure threw up his arms and toppled sideways from his horse. The horse kept running and was gone over the horizon a moment later.
"Right through his noodle," Eli said. "I couldn't of made that shot if he hadn't been riding due south. Too hard to get a lead on himandarch the bullet just right."
Eli made it seem just a simple matter of skill, but Raoul felt as if he had just seen a miracle.
The faces of the other men, as they climbed down from their horses, showed as much awe as Raoul felt.
"Pretty good shooting, for a Puke," said Levi Pope.
"Better'n any Sucker could do," Eli returned genially.
Raoul said, "Otto, go get that Indian's body and bring it back here."
Otto Wegner turned at once to remount his horse. Raoul liked the way the Prussian obeyed every order instantly.
But Hodge Hode glowered at Raoul. "Waste of time. Coyotes and buzzards have a taste for Injun meat."
Annoyed at being questioned, Raoul said, "I don't want anybody to know what happened to these redskins."
As Otto rode off, Eli, pointing to the mine entrance, said, "We got one still alive. At least one."
"I'll take care of him," said Raoul.
Eli, Hodge and Levi looked at him, surprised.
Eli's fine shot had not only awed him; he felt it, uneasily, as a challenge. The law was absent in Smith County, which was the way Raoul liked it. Gave an edge to a man who could handle a rifle as well as Eli. But now, to make sure his own word remained the closest thing to law in these parts, Raoul felt he had to equal Eli's accomplishment.
He checked the load in his pistol. He gripped the hilt of the thirteen-inch knife at his belt and loosened it in its sheath. A blacksmith in St. Louis had made it for him, assuring him it was an exact replica of the knife designed a couple of years ago by the famed Arkansas frontiersman Jim Bowie.
Raoul's mouth was dry. His heart was beating so hard he thought his men must be able to see his woollen coat quivering. His hands were cold and sweaty.
"Ain't but one way out of that mine, is there?" said Eli. "If we go in four abreast he can't get past us, and it's a hell of a sight safer."
"I'll take care of him," Raoul repeated. Every word Eli said against his going into the mine alone made him even more determined to do it. He needed to keep Eli in line, especially if it should turn out that Eli knew about him and Clarissa.
"He might have a rifle," said Eli. "Might shoot you when you walk in there."
"If we all go in, one of you might get shot," said Raoul. "This is my property."
And fighting for it will make it more truly my property than any government grant could.
But that Indian in there—what was he armed with? Rifle, knife, bow, tomahawk? How strong was he, how fast, how skilled in fighting hand to hand?
I'm a fool to put myself through this.
"Could be more'n one in there," said Eli.
Raoul felt the blood run hot through his veins as he thought of Pierre's bastard son, of Black Salmon, of the Potawatomi who raped and murdered Helene. His men had killed two Indians today, but there was a third waiting in that mine, and Raoul de Marion meant to be the death of him.
Ignoring Eli's warnings, he moved toward the black square of the mine entrance.
He walked slowly, pistol at waist level. He needed his knife out, too, he decided. Even though he was right-handed, it would be better to have a second weapon ready than have his left hand empty. He drew his knife, taking heart from its well-balanced feel.
He stepped under the logs he'd set last fall to brace the entrance. Should he light a candle? No, that would make him an even better target. He tried to pierce the blackness with his eyes; it was thick as a wool curtain.
This was foolish, he thought. If they all went in together, the way Eli said, a couple of men could carry candles, and they could flush out the Indian in no time. This way, he was going to get himself killed. If the Indian had a rifle, Raoul was dead for sure. He felt an urge to back out and call the others to help him. He stood there a moment, legs trembling.
No. He had to kill his Indian by himself. He had to show Eli and the rest.
He forced his feet to slide forward as silently as he could manage. His hesitation had given his eyes a chance to get used to the dark. He tried to remember the layout of the mine. In the dim light from the entrance he made out the downward slope of the long tunnel. About twenty feet in, another tunnel branched off to his left. His eyes ached as they tried to find the enemy hiding somewhere ahead of him.
He could see nothing but black walls lined with logs to brace the ceiling, a floor littered with chunks of rock. As he moved forward,the tunnel got narrower, the ceiling lower. He could almost feel the weight of the rock and earth above him; these logs could suddenly give way and the prairie come down on him like a boot on a bug. He began to be more afraid of the mine than he was of the hidden Indian.
He came to the branch tunnel and peered into it.
With a high-pitched shriek the Indian sprang at him.
Raoul glimpsed a steel tomahawk edge coming at his head. He jerked the pistol's trigger and jabbed with the knife in his left hand to parry the axe blade.
The blast of the pistol deafened Raoul, and in the momentary blaze of light he saw the face of a young Indian, distorted with anger and fear.
It was a face he hated on sight—dark skin, narrow black eyes, flat but for a beak of a nose, shaven skull. A face like those in his nightmares. It stayed vivid in his mind's eye when the flash of light was gone.
The Indian's war whoop ended in a cry of pain.
Got the sonofabitch!Raoul exulted. He'd been holding his pistol low, must have hit the Indian in the gut.
The flash had temporarily blinded him, but reflexes honed in dozens of riverfront brawls took over. He jammed his pistol into its holster and switched the knife to his right hand. Every fiber of him hungered to kill. He lunged forward, knife straight out in front of him. He could feel his lips stretching in a grin.
The knife hit something solid, yet yielding. With a yell of triumph he drove the point in, was rewarded with a scream of agony. He was beginning to see again. The shadow facing him lifted the tomahawk. Raoul jerked the knife free and swung; it chunked into the Indian's arm like a meat cleaver. He heard the tomahawk clang on the rock floor.
Raoul threw himself on the Indian, stabbing, stabbing. His enemy's body, smaller and lighter than his, crumpled under his weight. The fingers of his left hand dug into smooth skin and hard muscle. He felt hands pushing against him, but their efforts were weak, the struggles of a dying creature. The cries and groans of pain made him eager to hurt the Indian more. It was too dark to see where his knife was going in, but he brought it down again and again. His hands felt wet. Some of his thrusts sank deep, others were stopped by bone.