BOOK 21831Moon of Ripe CherriesJuly
BOOK 21831
Moon of Ripe CherriesJuly
Rejoicing at the sight of Victor, Auguste stepped up to the gangplank of the paddle wheelerVirginiaand paused there a moment to look around. He couldn't help himself: he smiled broadly. The settlement hugging the bluff was not home, but it was closer to home than he had been in a long time.
And this summer, he had decided, he would go back to his true home. He would end the sorrow of being cut off from his people.
This was the sixth spring since Pierre de Marion had come and taken him to Victoire, and, as with every spring before it, he missed Saukenuk terribly. He longed for his mother, for the teachings of Owl Carver, for the arms of Redbird, whom he had lost almost as soon as he made her his.
For six years—he had learned to count years as white people did—he had obeyed his father and the promise made with the calumet and had not tried even to send a message to the British Band. He even felt it was a wise rule. To communicate with his loved ones would have torn him in two. But more than a month ago in New York City, strolling in the warm evening air on the busy cobblestone streets, past dooryards where lilacs were blooming, he made up his mind that when he returned to Illinois he would visit Victoire only briefly and then would go back to Saukenuk. He was twenty-one years old now, and among white people that meant he was master of his own life.
He gazed up at the bluff. There were more houses up there than when he had last come out here, two years ago. Some were built on the bottomland itself, in spite of the danger of flooding.
He saw the palisade and flags and towers of Raoul de Marion's trading post at the top of the bluff, and felt his joy fading. He would have to face Raoul's insults and threats, as he had every other time he came back to Victor. His belly tightened as he remembered, as if it had just happened, that first encounter six years ago, the burning-ice feel of the knifepoint slicing into his cheek, his hand gripping his own knife, Aunt Nicole and Father holding him back.
Seemingly with a will of its own his hand went to the scar and his finger traced the ridge that ran from eye to mouth.
He brought his gaze down from the top of the bluff and saw a more welcome sight—Grandpapa, Aunt Nicole and Guichard in a black open carriage from the estate, waiting to take him up to Victoire. He ran down the gangplank and strode over to them.
"Auguste! My God, you're beautiful!" Aunt Nicole exclaimed, and then her face reddened and she looked downward.
He felt that he looked good, though "beautiful," as he understood English, was not the right word for a woman to use about a man. But he supposed she admired his new clothes, the fawn-colored cutaway coat and vest, the ruffled silk shirt, the tight, bottle-green trousers. He wished he were not already holding his tall beaver hat in his hand, so that he could tip it to her with the graceful motion he'd learned watching the dandies on Broad Way.
Grandpapa leaned out of the carriage and hugged Auguste. His embrace felt strong, and his eyes were bright. Auguste was happy to see him in good health.
But where is Father?
Auguste shook hands with Guichard, who had climbed down stiffly from the driver's seat.
"Your trunk, Monsieur Auguste?"
Auguste pointed out the big wooden chest with brass fittings that had been unloaded at the Victor pier along with bales and barrels from the hold of theVirginia.
Guichard approached two buckskin-clad men lounging by a piling. He pointed out the trunk as Auguste had done.
"Forhim?" said one of the men, glowering at Auguste from under his coonskin cap. "White men don't wait on goddamn Injuns." He spat tobacco juice at Guichard's feet and turned away, as did the other man.
Auguste wanted to throw the man who had spat at Guichardinto the river. He had no doubt that he could do it, though like most men who lived in Victor, the man was armed with knife and pistol. Auguste had been taught to fight as a Sauk, and he had been a champion boxer, wrestler and fencer at St. George's School. But he was not going to get into a brawl in his first minutes ashore. Time enough for that if he met Raoul.
"Come on, Guichard. The trunk's light enough. We don't need any help." The old servant taking one end and Auguste the other, they loaded it into the back of the carriage.
"Good to see you again, Grandpapa," Auguste said as he dropped into the seat facing Elysée and Nicole, his back to the driver. "Aunt Nicole, it's you who are beautiful. But where's Father?"
Grandpapa patted him on the knee. "Not feeling well, I'm afraid. He sends his apologies. We will go to him now, at once."
Grandpapa was trying to make his voice sound unconcerned. But Auguste heard an undertone of sorrow, the anguish of a father who had lost one of his children years ago and would soon lose another.
With understanding, grief sank into Auguste's marrow. Father—Star Arrow—had hung on these past six years, growing sicker and sicker, the evil in his belly swelling up like a poisonous toad. Now the end was near.
Auguste found himself looking deep into Aunt Nicole's eyes, full of shared sorrow.
Guichard flicked the reins, and the carriage started off, turning away from the dock, passing the warehouses and rattling down the long dusty-white road that led across the bottomland fields to the bluff. It must have been a good spring out here; though this was only the beginning of July, the corn was already up to a man's waist.
Auguste felt he would look better wearing his beaver hat as they rode along. He put it on his head, pulling the rolled-up brim down with both hands, and set it in place with a pat on the crown.
"So, you are now a finished graduate of St. George's School?" said Elysée with a smile. "Monsieur Charles Winans has sent long letters full of good reports about you."
Aunt Nicole reached over and squeezed his hand. "We're proud of you, Auguste." Her soft, fleshy hand was warm, and her eyes sparkled at him. He sensed a feeling in her that was more than the affection of an aunt for a nephew. She now had eight children, heknew, and every time he had seen her and Frank together, they had seemed very much in love. But Aunt Nicole was a big woman. She had room in her big heart, perhaps, for more than one love.
Embarrassed by what he felt radiating from her, Auguste turned to Elysée.
"If I learned anything at St. George's, I owe it all to the way you prepared me, Grandpapa. Anyone who could take a boy who could barely speak English, and in two years cram enough knowledge into his head for him to go to secondary school in New York City—such a man is no ordinary teacher."
"You were no ordinary pupil, my boy," said Elysée, leaning back in the carriage, his hands resting one on top of the other on his silver-headed cane. "And Père Isaac laid down a solid foundation in that head of yours. Those Jesuits are good for that, at least, black-hearted rogues though they may be in most other respects."
"Papa!" Nicole gave Elysée a reproving frown.
Elysée quickly patted her knee. "Forgive me, my child. Let me not shake the faith that sustains you."
"It would take more than your wicked tongue to disturb my faith, Papa," Nicole said with a wry smile.
It was amusing to hear Grandpapa and Aunt Nicole bicker about what the whites called "faith." As the carriage rolled along, Auguste recalled the many lectures he had listened to on Jesus and the Trinity at St. George's, which was affiliated with the Episcopal Church. But Auguste had walked with the White Bear and talked with the Turtle. Heknewthem as he had never known the white people's God, and what went on in their dimly lit, waxy-smelling churches had no attraction for him.
He knew that Christians, for the most part, saw his beliefs about the spirit world as rubbish sprung out of ignorance—or, worse, inspired by the Evil One. Père Isaac's efforts to persuade him to walk in the way of Jesus had prepared him for that. At school he did not speak of things sacred to him, so as not to expose them to white scorn. When teachers and fellow students tried to persuade him to take instruction in Christianity, he was polite and evasive.
And when he felt he was smothering in the noise and crowding and dirt of the huge city of New York, he would borrow a pony from the lady he called Aunt Emilie—his father's cousin, actually—and ride out of New York along a trail that led to the north end ofthe island of Manhattan. There in a forest cave he had found, he would chew a bit of the sacred mushroom Owl Carver had given him and restore his link with the spirit world by journeying with the White Bear. All through these six years,hisfaith had remained strong.
Nicole broke in on his thoughts. "You're still studying medicine?"
"Just a beginning: I've read some books, attended some lectures. I assisted a surgeon—Dr. Martin Bernard—at New York Hospital. I bought myself a surgeon's box of instruments—got it in the trunk, there. But if anybody came down with anything worse than an ingrown toenail, I'd be scared to do anything about it."
Elysée said, "You can pull teeth, I hope, like any proper surgeon?"
Auguste shrugged. "I do have a turnkey for that. But I've never actually used it."
"The only person in town who knows anything about treating the sick is Gram Medill, the midwife," Nicole said. "Tom Slattery, the blacksmith, pulls teeth. We need a real doctor."
Auguste felt a fluttering in his stomach as he wondered when he should tell this white family of his that he wanted to leave them. Nicole was thinking, he realized, that he would stay here at Victoire.
The steel-reinforced wooden wheels of the carriage bumped mercilessly over the rutted road, and Auguste hoped Nicole wasn't pregnant at the moment. The fact that his shaman's sense did not tell him reminded him that he had been too long away from the Sauk. As they began to climb the road that ran up the bluff, Nicole pointed out to Auguste that the newer houses were made of boards rather than logs, because Frank had set up a sawmill and workshop on the Peach River. Frank was now a master carpenter, with four workers to help him when there was a house to be built.
"But he'd sell the mill in a minute if printing alone would provide him with a living," she said. "That's where his heart is."
Elysée said, "Pierre and I offered Frank a regular income, so that he could give all his time to his newspaper and to printing, but he wouldn't hear of it. He got a bit haughty when I pressed him, and informed me that the system of feudal patronage is dead. I assuredhim that I was well aware of that, and that is why I am here and not in France."
"Frank is proud, Papa," said Nicole.
Elysée nodded. "I fear he is too often a proud papa."
Auguste roared, and Nicole, though she blushed, could not help laughing.
"The town grows bigger every year," Auguste said. Nicole nodded sympathetically; she seemed to have guessed what he was thinking: How numerous the whites were, as he had seen for himself in the East, and how inexorably they were filling up this part of the country, like a river in flood. Last year the New York papers had reported the results of the 1830 census; the United States was over twelve million, Auguste had read, a number he could not even imagine. And 150,000 of those were here in the state of Illinois, balanced against the six thousand Sauk and Fox. Black Hawk's people, the British Band, numbered only two thousand. Hopeless.
"Victor had a hundred or so people the year you came here," said Elysée. "Now there are over four hundred. As you see, the bluff is completely covered with houses. And we have many new industries and crafts. A preacher, a Reverend Hale, has put up a church on the prairie to the east of us. I am not sure whether his work counts as an industry or a craft. There is Frank's sawmill, as Nicole said. There are also a flour mill and a brewery, and a mason works at a limestone quarry nearby. And your father is planning to set up a kiln on the estate, so we can build a new Victoire of brick."
"How sick is my father?" Auguste asked abruptly, dreading the answer he would get.
"Ah, Nicole, there are your children waiting to greet us," Grandpapa cried, as if he had not heard Auguste's question.
Where the road made a sharp turn and started upward on a higher level, stood a two-story frame building painted white. A sign over the door read,THE VICTOR VISITOR, F. HOPKINS, PUBr,PRINTING AND ENGRAVING. CARPENTRY.
Auguste could hear the press clanking away inside the house as they approached. The three younger children, John, Rachel and Betsy, were lined up by the door, Rachel holding in her arms a baby that must be Nicole and Frank's newest. Three of the older ones, Benjamin, Abigail and Martha, leaned out a windowto wave to Auguste from the second story. Auguste felt proud of himself, being able to remember all their names and which was which.
As Guichard reined up the horse and pushed the brake lever on the carriage, the sound of the press stopped and Frank came out through the open door wiping his ink-stained hands on his leather apron. His forehead was shiny with sweat. The oldest son, Thomas, followed him, pushing his hands down his own apron with the same gesture.
Auguste climbed down from the carriage and took Frank's hand, then shook with Thomas and the three little girls. The baby was Patrick, he learned. He lightly rubbed Patrick's fine hair.
"No wonder the town's population grows so fast, Aunt Nicole," Auguste said with a smile. "How many more do you think there will be for you and Frank?"
But as he spoke, his pleasure at his aunt's handsome family was dimmed by the thought that if all white families were as fertile as this, there was no hope at all for the red people.
"None, I hope," said Frank firmly. "We've got too big a tribe as it is."
Aunt Nicole's face reddened again, and Auguste reminded himself that white women were generally reluctant to talk about pregnancy and childbirth. Auguste recalled his mother, Sun Woman, speaking of a kind of tea that would keep a woman from getting pregnant. When he went back to Saukenuk he could find out more about it. He would surely come back here to visit, and then he could tell Aunt Nicole about it. If white women knew about that tea, maybe there would be fewer whites in years to come, and they would not have such a hunger for land.
As they drove on up the road to the top of the bluff, Auguste saw Nicole's face brighten, and he turned to see what she was looking at. A black buggy drawn by an old gray horse was coming toward them, having just rounded the bend in the road at the trading post palisade. Auguste caught a glimpse of blond braids under a red and white checkered bonnet.
Nicole said, "Auguste, here's a newcomer to our county. I think you'll enjoy meeting her."
"Ah yes," said Elysée. "Reverend Hale and his daughter, Mademoiselle Nancy. He came here over a year ago, Auguste, declaredthe town too corrupt for his church and started holding services for the farmers out on the prairie. They built him a church about five miles from town. Painted white, with a steeple one can see for miles. Its very simplicity makes it beautiful."
Nicole said, "As much could be said for Nancy."
Curious, Auguste tried to see the face under the red and white bonnet. Every day, and many times a day, he thought of Redbird and the joy they so briefly shared, but many of the young white women he had seen in the past six years had made his heart beat faster. Just last winter he'd gone with a group of his classmates to an elegant old house on Nassau Street where he discovered that the body of a white woman, under her many-layered dress, was in all important respects as interesting as the body of a woman of his own people. Even though he planned to leave Victoire as soon as he could, he was eager to meet the new minister's daughter.
The two carriages pulled side by side, and the drivers, Guichard and the Reverend Hale, a slab-faced man dressed in black, reined up for the customary exchange of greeting.
"Reverend Hale, Miss Hale," Elysée said, "may I present my grandson, Auguste de Marion."
The reverend stared at Auguste for a moment from under bushy brows before grunting an acknowledgment. Auguste suspected he had heard about his parentage and was looking for traces of Indian blood.
Indian.Auguste had never heard that word before he went to live among white people. His people were the Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire. And their allies were the Fox. And besides these there were Winnebago, Potawatomi, Chippewa, Kickapoo, Osage, Piankeshaw, Sioux, Shawnee—each a separate people. And besides these, hundreds more, whose names he did not even know. But the whites had one name for all these peoples—Indians. And that name, Grandpapa had explained to him with gentle irony, was altogether a mistake. The explorer Columbus had thought he had landed in India.
They do not even respect us enough to call us by an honest name.
But the sight of Nancy Hale drove the bitterness from his mind. Her braids, emerging from her red and white bonnet and lying on either side of her white lace collar, were yellow as ripe corn, andher face, while too long for ideal beauty, was pink and clear. Her mouth was wide, and her teeth were white when she smiled at Nicole and Elysée. She looked straight at Auguste for an instant, then she looked down, but in that moment he saw eyes a vivid shade of blue, like the turquoise stone from the Southwest he carried in his medicine bag.
"Visiting the members of your flock, are you, Reverend?" Elysée asked. Auguste noticed that he put the tiniest humorous inflection on the word "flock."
Hale's thick gray brows drew together as he nodded sourly. "Trying to bring the Word to that wilderness you call a town."
Here was an unhappy man, thought Auguste, whose life was dedicated to persuading those around him to be equally unhappy.
"Ah, yes," said Elysée with a broad smile. "Quite a population of sheep gone astray in Victor."
"In all of Smith County," said Hale.
It must scandalize him to think that my mother is an Indian woman and that my father, by the lights of this man, isn't even married to her.
Auguste suddenly wanted to defy the disapproval he felt from the reverend. He jumped out of the carriage and in an instant was standing on the road beside the minister's buggy. He swept off his high-crowned hat with the flourish he'd seen in New York and bowed deeply.
"Miss Hale," he said. "Auguste de Marion. At your service."
The blood rose to Nancy Hale's cheeks.
"My pleasure, Mr. de Marion," she murmured. Her large blue eyes looked frightened and her flush deepened, but she did not take her eyes away, and his gaze was locked to hers. His heart beat as hard as it had the first time he saw the White Bear.
"The Lord's work awaits us in Victor," said the Reverend Hale loudly. "You really must excuse us." And without waiting for a reply he snapped the reins of his buggy, and the old horse ambled off.
Auguste stood in the road waiting to see if Nancy would glance back at him. She did. Even at a distance and through dust he could see the blue of her eyes.
Elysée said, "Well, Auguste, close your mouth, put your hat back on and get back up here."
I'm going to meet her again, Auguste thought.
He still wanted just as much to go back to his people. He had not forgotten Redbird. By now, though, she had probably forgotten him. And so, what harm could there be in getting to know this white young lady a little better?
Then their carriage was passing the log wall around the trading post. A shadow fell over his enjoyment at meeting Nancy Hale. He ran his finger down the scar on his cheek.
"Ishein there?" he said abruptly to Nicole.
Her face paled. "He's down— You know about what's going on in the Rock River country, don't you?"
Auguste stiffened. "Has something happened to my people?"
He saw Nicole close her eyes and sigh when he said "my people."
"There has been trouble," said Elysée. "Did no news reach you in New York?"
O Earthmaker, let them come to no harm.
Twisting his hands in his lap, Auguste said, "The New York papers only report what happens on the eastern seaboard." He remembered now overhearing remarks by some of his fellow passengers on theVirginiaabout "Injun trouble." But he'd kept to himself on the trip up from St. Louis.
We steamed right past the mouth of the Rock River, and I never guessed!
Elysée nodded. "Well, your father insisted that no one write you about it. He feared it would distract you from your studies."
Auguste felt a sudden flash of anger at Pierre de Marion.He does want me to forget that I am a Sauk. Not even telling me when my people are in danger.
He gripped Elysée's arm. "What happened?"
Nicole said, "Frank has a correspondent who writes him regularly from Fort Armstrong."
The American fort, Auguste remembered, was at the mouth of the Rock River, six miles downriver from Saukenuk.
Nicole went on, "Black Hawk's band once again crossed the Mississippi to Saukenuk in the spring, even though the Army has told them over and over that the land now belongs to the Federal government and they must not return to it. This time they found settlers actually living in some of their houses and farming their fields. Black Hawk drove them out. Black Hawk's warriors destroyedsettlers' cabins nearby, shot their horses and cows, told them to move away or be killed. Now Governor Reynolds has called up the militia to drive Black Hawk and his people out of Illinois. His proclamation says, 'Dead or alive.'"
Auguste's heart suddenly felt as if ice had formed around it.
Elysée said, "And Raoul and most of his cronies have gone to join the militia."
Auguste whispered, "O Earthmaker, keep my people safe." The carriage had reached the top of the hill and was passing the front gate of the trading post, shut and locked with a chain. He trembled at the thought of Redbird—Sun Woman—Owl Carver—Black Hawk—all the people he had known and loved all of his life, facing the rifles of men like Raoul.
"I must go there now," he said in a low voice.
"You can't," Nicole said quickly. "You can't get through the militia lines. You'd be shot."
Auguste, fists clenched in his lap, shook his head. "If they are in such danger, how can I stay away? Imustbe with them."
Elysée seized his wrist in a grip so powerful it startled him. "Listen to me. You cannot help them. You simply can't get there before matters are settled, one way or another. And I am sure that when your chief Black Hawk sees the size of the militia force, he will go peacefully back across the Mississippi. The Sauk and Fox have many young men. You are your father's only son.Heneeds you now."
Auguste's heart ached as he saw the plea in Grandpapa's eyes. How could he deny the old man? And his father's need for the love of his son in his last days.
But the thought of thousands of armed and angry whites going to drive his people out of Saukenuk smote him like a war club. Grandpapa didn't know Black Hawk; Black Hawk was not likely to yield peaceably. And whether or not Auguste could be any use at Saukenuk, he had to be there.
Nicole said, "At least see your father and talk to him before you decide what to do."
Auguste nodded. "Of course." He saw more pain in her face than he could bear to look at. He turned to stare out at the hills as the carriage carried them to Victoire.
Now they could see Victoire, the great stone and log house risingout of the prairie on its low hill. Elysée and Pierre liked to call it a château, but Auguste had learned that it was nothing like the castles in the land they had come from. And, much as he had marveled at Victoire when he first saw it, he had seen still bigger and finer houses in New York. But it was still the grandest house north of the Rock River's mouth, and Auguste couldn't help feeling proud when he realized that the blood of the men who built it flowed in his own veins.
Their carriage rattled through the gateway in the split-log fence. Auguste saw with pleasure that the maple tree that shaded the south side of the house was bigger than ever.
Most of the servants and field hands were gathered before the front door to greet Auguste. He remembered how they had assembled this way six years ago, when Star Arrow first brought him here from Saukenuk.
Every time he thought of Saukenuk, of his beleaguered people surrounded by an enemy army, his breathing grew fast and shallow.
But he was frightened, too, by the silence of the house. It whispered of his father's dying. He must face Pierre's death and suffer with him now. Auguste wanted to rush upstairs to Pierre and hold him tight. And also he did not want to go into Pierre's room at all.
Auguste and Elysée climbed the stairway from the great hall of the château to Pierre's second-story bedroom, Nicole following. At the door Auguste hesitated, and Elysée stepped forward and firmly knocked. A woman's voice called them in.
As Grandpapa pushed the door open, Auguste closed his eyes. He dreaded what he was about to see. His heart fluttered anxiously. Would there be anything, he wondered, he could do for his father?
Now the door was fully open, and he saw the long, thin figure stretched out under a sheet on a canopied bed. Marchette was sitting with a basin of water on her knees. She had been wiping Pierre's face with a damp cloth.
A flash of bright red caught Auguste's eye. On the floor by the bed was a second basin, partly covered by a towel which, Auguste suspected, Marchette must have hastily thrown over it. But part of the towel had fallen into the basin, and blood was soaking into the white linen.
A knot of grief filled Auguste's throat, blocking it so he could not speak. He rushed to the bed.
Pierre lay on his back, his head propped up by pillows, his long nose pointing straight at Auguste, his eyes turned toward him. His bony hands looked very large, because his arms were so thin. Pierre's gray hair, what was left of it, spread out on the pillow.
Pierre lifted his head a little.
"Son. Oh, I am glad to see you."
He raised his hands, and Auguste, biting his lip, leaned over the bed and put his hands under his father's shoulders. He held Pierre close and felt Pierre's hands come to rest on his back, light as autumn leaves. They held each other that way for a moment.
His father felt so light, as if he was starving to death. Auguste released him and sat on the edge of the bed. He said the first thing that came into his mind.
"Did you eat today, Father?"
Pierre's voice was like the wind in dead branches. "Marchette keeps me alive with clear soups. They are all that I can keep down."
A half-empty bowl of broth, Auguste now saw, stood on a table beside the bed. Next to the soup lay a Bible bound in black leather, and Pierre's silver spectacle case with its velvet ribbon.
What would Sun Woman and Owl Carver do for a man this sick? What would they feed him?
"Maybe I can help you, Father," he said.
"I don't think anyone can help me, son," Pierre said. "It's all right. Just having you here makes me feel better."
Auguste had learned enough about cancer to be sure that Pierre's condition was hopeless. Dr. Bernard—any of the other white physicians at New York Hospital—would say that nothing more could be done except to make the patient comfortable, give him laudanum perhaps, and wait for the end.
But that was merely what white medicine had taught Auguste. White doctors had sharp lancets to draw blood, scalpels to cut into sick people's bodies, saws to cut off infected limbs. They had huge thick books listing hundreds of diseases and prescribing treatments for them. But after spending many hours treating the sick in New York, Auguste had seen that there were many things the white physicians did not know how to do, had never even thought of doing. Perhaps greater hope for Pierre lay in the way of the shaman.
At the very least, Auguste, as White Bear, could speak to Pierre'ssoul, could summon the aid of the spirits, especially his own spirit helper and that of the sick man, to cure him if possible; if not, then to ease his suffering, help him to accept what was to happen to him and prepare him to walk in the other world.
With a jolt, the thought hit him anew:If I stay here with Father, what of Saukenuk?
Pierre said, "God has kept me alive because I must talk to you about our land, Auguste."
Auguste did not like the sound of that. The thousands of acres the de Marions owned had nothing to do with him, and he wanted to keep it that way.
Marchette stood up, pushing her chair back. "Perhaps the rest of us should leave you and Monsieur Auguste alone."
Auguste saw in her face the anguish of a woman who was losing a man she loved. Auguste had long suspected, seeing the looks that passed between Pierre and Marchette, and the way her husband, the brown-bearded Armand, glared at both of them, that there was—or at least had once been—something between the master of Victoire and the cook.
Pierre raised a tremulous hand. "Au contraire. I want the three of you—Papa, Nicole, Marchette—to hear what I say. Besides, you are the three I trust most. I want you to know my wishes, my true wishes, because after I am gone there are those who will lie about me."
Auguste took Pierre's hand, so big and yet so weak, in his own strong, brown one.
"Father, you must believe that you will live."
Auguste heard the others move closer to the bed. Nicole went to stand at the foot. Elysée seated himself in an old spindly-legged armchair brought over from France, his cane across his knees.
Pierre pointed a skeletal finger above his head to a shelf mounted on the white-painted plaster wall, where an Indian pipe lay, its bowl carved of red pipestone, its stem polished hickory.
"Take down the calumet," Pierre said. "Let me hold it."
Auguste took the pipe reverently, with a hand at each end of its three-foot length. Two black feathers with white tips fluttered from the bowl as he put the pipe into Pierre's hands. From the moment he touched the pipe, Auguste's hands were shaking as much as Pierre's. Only he and Pierre understood how much power was inthis pipe—power to bind men for life to whatever they promised when they smoked the sacred tobacco.
Pierre let the pipe lie on his chest, his fingers touching it lightly.
"This pipe was given me a few years after you were born, Auguste, by Jumping Fish, who even then was one of the civil chiefs of the Sauk and Fox. It is the sign of an agreement between our family and the Sauk and Fox, fully understood and freely entered into by both sides."
Auguste looked in wonderment from Pierre to Elysée, and Grandpapa nodded solemnly.
Elysée said, "We had spent years exploring the more unsettled parts of the Illinois Territory, and we had decided that here was the land we wanted as our family seat in the New World. In 1809 we bought this land for a dollar an acre at the Federal land office in Kaskaskia. Thirty thousand dollars. The Federal government claimed that the Sauk and Fox had signed a treaty a few years earlier with Governor William Henry Harrison, selling fifty-one million acres, including all of northern Illinois, to the United States for a little over two thousand dollars, a shockingly paltry sum."
Pierre said, "But we knew that the Sauk and Fox disputed that claim."
Auguste said, "Yes, Black Hawk says Harrison cheated the Sauk and Fox. He says the chiefs who signed the treaty were drunk and could not speak English or read or write it, and did not know what they were agreeing to when they made their marks. He says that anyway those chiefs had no permission from the tribe to sell any land."
"Exactly," said Elysée. "And we wanted to live in peace with the Sauk and Fox. And that was why your father went to Saukenuk. We hoped to make reasonable payments for the land we would live on to those from whom it had been taken."
Pierre said, "I was still there with your mother, by my own choice, when war broke out in 1812, and then they required me to stay with them. You were already two years old. After the war, and after I left them, I sent the Sauk and Fox chiefs what they asked for—thirty thousand dollars, partly in coin and partly in trade goods, knives, steel axes, tin pots and kettles, blankets and bolts of cloth, rifles and barrels of gunpowder, bags of bullets. So, we paid for this land twice over. Despite that, I think it is far more valuablestill than all the money we spent for it. The chiefs recognize our right to live on the land and use it. And Jumping Fish gave me this calumet, and I gave him a fine Kentucky long rifle with brass and silver inlay on the barrel and stock."
Auguste nodded eagerly. "Yes, yes, I've seen it. Jumping Fish uses it to shoot the first buffalo every winter to start the hunt."
"And I gave Black Hawk the compass your war chief still treasures, from which I received my Sauk name."
"Yes."
Auguste looked across Pierre's bed and out the windows, of costly clear glass shipped from Philadelphia, that gave a view south across grass-covered prairie. Once all that prairie belonged to my people, he thought.
As if knowing his thoughts, Pierre said, "I did not say the Sauk and Fox sold us the land. I said they recognized our right to use it. Do you understand?"
Auguste nodded, repeating what he had so often heard Black Hawk say in the tribal meetings. "Land is not something to be bought and sold. So we believe."
Pierre closed his eyes wearily, his fingertips still resting on the calumet that lay across his chest. Auguste grieved. The father who had left him when he was a little boy and then come back for him was leaving him again, slipping away. Marchette wiped Pierre's face with a damp cloth.
Nicole's lower lip trembled as she said, "My big brother. You've always been here for me."
Elysée's face was crumpled by an unbearable sadness. He wishes, Auguste thought, that it was him lying there dying, instead of his son.
Pierre opened his eyes and lifted his head to look at Auguste. Auguste gently pressed his hand against his father's balding brow.
"Rest, Father, rest."
"Not till we are done. You know that your grandfather turned the estate over to me when I was forty years of age. Now I must pass it on. Until recent years I had thought that the land would go to Raoul when I died.
"But the enmity between me and Raoul has grown deeper and deeper. A few times he and I and Papa have met together, trying to come to terms. Each time, the words that passed between us weremore cruel. Then, a year ago, he even boasted to me that he killed three Sauk Indians who were taking lead from that mine he has been working, which they believe to be theirs."
Auguste gasped.
Sun Fish and the others! That must have been what happened to them.
Pierre said, "What is it?"
"I think I know those three. One of them was my age, and a friend of mine." His hatred for Raoul burned fiercer than ever.
Pierre said, "For a long time now there have been no words at all between Raoul and me."
Auguste said, "It was my coming here that turned you against each other."
Nicole spoke up. "Not you. Raoul has had a grudge against Pierre for as long as I can remember."
Elysée said, "Yes, Raoul has many quarrels with me—over land and how it is to be used, our paying the Sauk and Fox for it, the Fort Dearborn massacre. Yes, you are part of it, Auguste, but there is much more besides."
Auguste shook his head. "But before I came, Father and Raoul were speaking to each other and the question of who would get the estate was settled. And it still can be. Father, after you are gone I will go back to my people. You can tell Raoul that, and there will be peace between you."
With pain that tore all through him like lightning burning through a tree, Auguste realized that he had committed himself to stay here as long as his father lived. His Sauk family and loved ones were in terrible danger four days' ride from here, and he wanted to be with them. But he couldn't leave Pierre now. His fear for Sun Woman and Redbird and the others in peril, his shame at not going to help them, would be a terrible torment, but he would have to endure it. He could not leave his father to take his first steps on the Trail of Souls alone.
Pierre reached out suddenly and seized him by the wrist.
"You must not leave, even after I am gone. You must stay here as my heir."
Auguste gasped as the enormity of what Pierre was saying hit him. Heir! He tried to stand up, but Pierre's grip held him fast. Justas this huge house and all the land around it would hold him captive, forever parted from his people.
"No!"
"Listen, please, Auguste. I cannot will the land to Raoul."
Auguste lifted his free hand pleadingly.
"You can't will it tome. I know nothing about managing farms and raising livestock. Nothing about business. Raoul has been trained from childhood to do all the work of this estate. I can't do it, and I don't want it."
He looked around the room, hoping the others would help him persuade Pierre that what he wanted was impossible. Nicole and Marchette were both wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Elysée leaned forward in his chair, his eyes intent on Auguste.
Pierre said, "Once the land is your responsibility, you will do what is right with it. I know you will. I want to turn the estate over to you now, as Papa did with me, while I am still alive. I would be here to help you, for a little while. Your grandfather will advise you, as he has advised me all these years. There will be others to help you. Nicole, her husband, Marchette, Guichard."
Auguste said, "Grandpapa, tell him I can't do it."
Elysée, who had been sitting slumped and miserable in his fragile-looking armchair, roused himself and said, "I knew your father was going to propose this to you today, Auguste. This is what he wants. It is no mere whim. He has been thinking about it for a long time. And it is not impossible. You have shown yourself capable of learning quickly. I can only promise you that if you take up the burden your father offers you, I will be at your side to help you every way that I can."
For a moment Elysée's words made Auguste's resolve waver. Thirty thousand acres, he thought. And the United States stole fifty million acres from my people. Should not one Sauk get some of it back?
But he had some idea of the crushing responsibility a huge estate would entail. It was absurd to think of himself occupying such a place.
"But Raoul is also your son, Grandpapa," he said. "Don't you want him to inherit your land?"
Elysée shook his head. "Raoul is a murderer many times over, who has escaped punishment only because Smith County is on the frontier, where there is no law. He hates Indians with a passion thatis close to madness. He is a crude, violent, greedy man. He shames our family. He is far less worthy than you."
Auguste felt anger boiling up under his dismay. Father and Sun Woman and Owl Carver and Black Hawk had promised him he would live among whites only for a time and then go back to the Sauk. They had all smoked the calumet, making that agreement sacred. He had lived for that homecoming, through these six years. He freed his wrist from Pierre's grip and held out his hands, pleading for understanding.
"But I can't stay here with white people for the rest of my life."
Pierre said, "You are not the same person you were when I took you out of the forest. You have been educated. You may yet become a doctor."
"Yes, and I want to be a doctor for my people."
"You can do more for them if you stay here, my son. The Sauk will need friends among the whites who have knowledge and wealth and power."
Auguste shook his head violently, as if to drive out Pierre's words. "I will never be happy, living as a white man. I must go back to my people. I beg you to let me go."
But even as he spoke he realized with a sudden pang that these loved ones, Pierre, Grandpapa, Nicole, were his people too.
Pierre's sunken eyes blazed at Auguste. "I have already written my new will, Auguste. There is one copy with the town clerk, Burke Russell, and one copy in your grandfather's keeping. It names you my sole heir. To all that I possess, the entire de Marion estate. If you accept what I am offering you, you will have to fight Raoul. It will all be upon your shoulders. I can only beg you with these last breaths to take what I would give you. You must decide."
A voice inside Auguste screamed,You must not do this to me, Father. You will destroy me.
He stood looking down at his father with his arms hanging at his sides, his shoulders straight, his head bowed. He could not say no so finally, so bluntly, to his dying father. He needed time to work his way free of this trap.
"Father, you know we Sauk never decide quickly. When it is a very important decision, we think, we go on with our work, we walk the sunwise circle, we wait in silence for the answer to come. You must give me time."
Pierre closed his eyes and his head fell back to the white pillows. "You have as much time as I do," he whispered. "But only that much."
Auguste turned away from the bed. His eyes met Nicole's. He saw sympathy for him in her face, but only another shaman could know the pain he was feeling inside.
White Bear crouched over the brown blanket he had brought down from his room and unrolled it. Bare-chested and barefoot in white sailcloth workman's trousers he had bought in New York, he took from the blanket roll his powerful necklace of megis shells and hung it around his neck. Next he opened his soft leather medicine bag.
Propped up against the big old maple tree on the south side of Victoire, Pierre lay on his mattress with his head and shoulders resting on pillows. His cotton blanket, all he needed on this warm September day, was tucked around his chest, leaving his arms free. He had begged to be taken outside; the weather was so fine. As soon as the servants had carried him out and left him and White Bear alone, he had fallen asleep. These days, Pierre slept most of the time, as a baby would. But a baby slept to build up its strength, Pierre because he was losing strength.
White Bear—he did not think of himself as Auguste now—laid out the objects from his medicine bag on the unrolled blanket and contemplated them. They represented the seven sacred directions. First, East. He picked up a sparkling white rock and placed it on the east side of the tree. The color of East was white and therefore was White Bear's own color. Next was South. He took up the green stone on which the mound builders had long ago carved the figure of a winged man. This he laid on the earth next to the mattress on Pierre's left side. The ground under the maple tree was bare, and an early morning rain had left it damp and soft.
Now West. The spirits of men and women went West when they died, and the color of West was red. He set the red stone, with dark honeycomb markings that looked as if they had been painted on its highly polished surface, on the ground at Pierre's feet. By the north side of the mattress he placed a black stone, itself from the North, that Owl Carver had engraved with an owl image. The fifth direction, Up, was blue, and he put a blue stone, the color of Nancy Hale's eyes, on the pillow beside Pierre's head. He set a piece of brown sandstone for the sixth direction, Down, beside Pierre's blanket-covered feet.
Now for the seventh sacred direction—Here. He picked up the last and largest item from his medicine bag—the claw of a grizzly bear that had been killed by Black Hawk himself many years ago. After White Bear had come back from his first spirit quest with the prediction that Black Hawk would do deeds of courage and that his name would never be forgotten, the war chief had made him a gift of the grizzly claw. White Bear laid the saber-shaped claw on Pierre's chest, over his heart, with the brown tip toward the cancerous lump in Pierre's belly that was killing him.
He went back to his blanket and took out a dried gourd painted black and white. Slapping the gourd against the palm of his hand to make it rattle, he danced in a circle around Pierre and the maple tree, sunwise from east to south to west to north and back to east again, keeping Pierre on his right, singing softly, almost to himself: