Raoul François Philippe Charles de Marion woke trembling in damp blackness, wondering whether it was day or night outside. His heart was beating so hard that it ached. For a moment he couldn't think what had scared him so badly. Then he remembered the dream.
He struggled out of the old blanket he'd wrapped around himself and sat up, panting.
A white bear coming at him down here in the mine. Why in hell would he dream about a creature like that? There were white bears up in Canada, he'd heard, but he'd never even seen one.
White Bear—that was Auguste's Indian name. Was he dreaming about Auguste coming after him?
Well, Auguste is rotting in the ground now. I killed him.
He still hated Auguste even after his death. Because of Auguste he had to stay holed up here, blackness pressing on his eyeballs. His eyes were wide open and he stared till they hurt, but he could see nothing, nothing at all. It was like being blind.
He wished he had told just one of his men where to find him. He badly wanted news of what was going on back at Victor. But if he'd told anyone it would have been Armand, and he couldn't trust the bastard. Armand might stupidly let himself be followed here. Or give way to threats, or even sell him out, if Papa offered a big enough reward.
Armand would. Sure he would. I could see in his eyes how he resented me. He hated Pierre and he hated me too.[504]
Raoul only had two candles left. Should he light one now? He could spare it, because he was going to get out of this mine today—or tonight. He'd waited long enough.
He wasn't sure anymore how long he'd been hiding down here in the dark. When he slept, he had no idea how long he slept. A watch was one of the many things he had forgotten to bring with him, leaving in such a hurry. And yet he'd stupidly brought the silver case with Pierre's spectacles in it. Stuck it in his pocket when he left the trading post to get the mongrel. He felt it now, a hard oval in his coat pocket.
How long?
The men pursuing him had searched the mine, as he figured they would. Days had passed, he was sure, since he'd heard their voices in the mine, footsteps echoing. He was certain he was the only man in Victor who knew about the tunnel he was hiding in, its entrance, just big enough to crawl through, covered by a pile of gravel that appeared to have nothing but wall behind it. He'd tried to disturb the gravel as little as possible while crawling in, and had carefully replaced what he'd pushed aside.
But he might have left some trace on the other side. He'd sat in the blackness, waiting to hear the sounds of digging, his back pressed against the damp rock wall, knees drawn up to his chin. His hands, cold as if they'd been plunged into a snowdrift, had rested on his loaded rifle and his pistol. And he'd drawn his Bowie knife and laid it beside him. They'd pay dearly to take him. If there were no more than four or five of them, he might manage to kill them all and get away.
But the sounds of the search party had faded away. He'd welcomed the black cotton silence that had followed. He would stay down here as long as he could. He'd found a place in his tunnel where underground water had seeped in, and was able to keep refilling his canteen from that. He found another small branch tunnel some distance from where he slept, where he could piss and shit. But he'd come into the mine with only six candles, and he was afraid to use them up, so he spent most of the time sitting in the dark feeling as if he was going mad with alternating worry and boredom.
He had brought his canteen of whiskey down here with him, and it had made time pass easier for a while. But now it was all gone. Seemed like a hell of a long time since he'd had a drink.[505]
He made a flame with flint, steel and cotton wool, lit his next to last candle and set it in a pool of its own wax. The light hurt his eyes for a moment, and the sight of his own shadow moving on the dark gray rock walls frightened him.
His hollow belly kept squealing and grumbling, and visions of beef and turkey and duck and pork tormented him. Out of one of his saddlebags he took the bundle of corn biscuits and dried beef he'd thrown together at the trading post in his flight. He bit into a biscuit as hard and dry as a lump of wood and rolled it around in his mouth until his saliva softened it enough to chew and swallow.
Now he'd go up to the mine entrance, and if it was nighttime he'd leave. The Flemings had their cabin about a mile from here. Their men had joined the Regulators, so they deserved to have him take a horse from them. Then he'd ride north to Galena.
He hefted the other saddlebag, loaded with gold and silver coins and Bank of Illinois paper. He'd had to leave a lot behind in his office safe, and they'd probably steal it from him. But he'd get it all back.
Because this was enough to buy him an army.
Galena would be crowded with the roughest men in the Northwest Territory right now. Surely more men than could make a living in the mines around there, boom or no boom. Rough and hungry, just what he needed.
I'll yet see that high-and-mighty Cooper swinging from a tree. And I'll piss on Auguste's grave.
He bit into a slice of dried beef. It was tough as rawhide, but he forced it down.
When I'm running things in Smith County again, Nicole and Frank and that pack of squalling brats are leaving. I've put up with Frank and his damned newspaper long enough, just because he's married to my sister.
If Frank gave any trouble, his new press, the one Papa helped him buy, would end up at the bottom of the Mississippi. Or maybe he'd even be Cooper's dancing partner on that tree.
I've knocked my father down. I've killed my brother's squaw and his mongrel bastard son. Why put up with my sister and her husband? What have they ever done, except hate me?
And the old man would have to go, too, if he was still alive, and that brandy-pickled bag of bones, Guichard. Time to be rid of[506] them all. De Marion would still be the foremost name in Smith County, but it would be a new de Marion family, not this old Injun-loving bunch that understood nothing.
Nancy. What about her?
The teacher needed to be taught a lesson or two. If she hadn't let Auguste service her when she was captured by the Injuns, then she'd probably never had a man's cock up inside her. Once she found out what pleasure he could give her, she'd forget about Auguste. She was still young enough for children, good-looking children, and smart.
That brat Woodrow that she had living with her. Imagine him saying in court that the redskins treated him better than his parents did. Send him packing, just like the Hopkinses.
With Smith County and with Nancy all his, it would be time to rebuild Victoire.
He'd put that off because he wanted to do it right. And he'd left the ruin till now to remind himself and everyone in Victor why the Sauk had to be driven out of Illinois.
No, that was a damned lie.
Alone here in the dark he could not keep the truth from pecking at his brain like a buzzard's beak: Every time he went near the ruin of the château, he thought of Clarissa and the boys, and guilt stabbed him without mercy. He'd looked down on Clarissa, and he had not felt for the boys as a father should.
He'd left them unprotected, let them die horribly, just as Helene had died.
I did to Andy and Phil just what Papa and Pierre did to me. When my boys needed me most, I wasn't there.
And the Sauk never would have attacked Victor if I hadn't shot Auguste and the other two redskins at Old Man's Creek.
He forced himself to stop thinking about the family he'd made without wanting to and then had lost. Their blood was spilled, and nothing would bring them back. He'd shed plenty of Indian blood to avenge them.
He remembered the Indian witch woman, Auguste's mother, the Bowie knife slicing open her throat, her blood warm on his hand. What curse had she laid on him before he killed her?
He put her out of his mind and thought of Victoire. When he rebuilt Victoire it would not be just another blockhouse, but a stone mansion that could be seen from the river. It would be the center[507] of Raoul de Marion's new empire—steamships, railroads, cattle, farmlands, mines. Now that the Indians were gone for good, now that Pierre's bastard was dead, there was no limit to what Raoul could make of the family's wealth.
The dreams heartened him. Time to move. He stuffed the little bundle of beef and biscuit into one saddlebag. He slung the saddlebags over his shoulder, the light one with food hanging down his front, the heavy one with the money in it on his back. He loosened the Bowie knife in its sheath on his left hip. He checked the loads in his pistol and his rifle again.
As he pushed back his coat to holster his pistol, he felt Pierre's spectacle case in his pocket.
What the hell am I carrying that around for?
At times he'd suspected that he kept Pierre's spectacles because he really did love his older brother, in spite of everything Pierre had done to him.
The silver case, he told himself, was valuable. But the spectacles were worthless. The eyes that had needed them had stopped seeing a year ago.
Had they?
He opened the case. The lenses glinted in the candlelight as if there were eyes behind them.
"Goddamn it!" he shouted, and turned the case over, dropping the spectacles to the stone floor. They shattered with a crack that sounded loud as a pistol shot. He stamped on them for good measure, crushing the glass to glittering splinters and twisting the frames out of shape under the sole of his boot.
He threw the case into a pile of rock shards. Valuable or not, he didn't want the damned thing anymore.
"I hope you're in Hell, Pierre!"
He didn't love Pierre. He hated him. He'd never loved him. He'd always hated him, ever since Fort Dearborn.
Holding the bit of candle high in his left hand, his rifle in his right, he started up the sloping tunnel. It was a long climb; the sacks of coins in the saddlebag on his back weighed him down.
He stopped at the gravel pile that blocked entry to this tunnel. He listened, and heard nothing but his blood hissing in his ears. He scraped chunks of stone away from the pile until he could crawl through.
After more walking and climbing through tunnels and shafts, he[508] no longer had any notion how long it had been since he left his hideout. He saw ahead a little square of gray, in the center of the black all around him. And then he could make out the walls and floor of the tunnel. Moonlight or starlight must be illuminating the mine entrance. Night, then. Good, he could leave at once.
About twenty feet from the entrance he saw up ahead an opening where another tunnel branched off from this one. He remembered it. This was the side tunnel where the Indian he'd killed seven years ago had hidden.
As he came close to that opening he heard a rumbling sound.
The growl of an animal.
He felt as if he'd been doused with ice-cold water.
He took a few steps back from the branch tunnel opening, curled his finger around the trigger of his rifle and raised it, one-handed. He didn't want to let go of the candle.
It hadn't just been a dream. There was something in this mine.
Maybe a wolf. Or a bear would like a deserted mine like this for a den.
He heard snuffling, grunting noises. Then a growl so deep it seemed to shake the stone under his feet. He felt his stomach clench, and he nearly lost his grip on his bowels.
Claws scraped on rock. With trembling fingers he set the candle in one of the wall niches the miners had carved for their lanterns and raised his rifle to his shoulder.
The bear came out of the branch tunnel. He saw the huge, pointed white head from the side at first, with a golden eye that glared at him. A perfectly white bear.
Like his dream.
The head swung toward him, a gaping mouth lined with teeth like ivory daggers.
The whole white body emerged, bigger than a bull bison.
It roared, deafening as a cannon blast. It reared up on its hind legs, filling the tunnel like a white avalanche. After the roar, it rumbled steadily, deep in its chest. Though it was more than ten feet away, he could smell its rotten-meat breath.
He squeezed the trigger. His rifle thundered, echoes slamming the sides of his head. Smoke obscured the vast white body. His ears jangled.
He felt a sudden terror that the shot might start a cave-in.[509]
But it didn't.
It didn't stop the bear either. It came on, padded feet scraping on the tunnel floor, swinging claws like rows of sickles.
I couldn't have missed. Oh Jesus, oh God, I couldn't have.
He threw the rifle down, snatched his pistol out of his holster and fired again.
Blinding flash, deafening blast, stinking smoke.
And the bear kept coming.
It was so close, the lead balls must have gone into it. It must be just so damned big it would take more than two shots to kill it.
But there was no time to reload. The bear towered over him, white body filling the whole world, eyes, claws, teeth, all shining in the glow of that pitiful little candle that somehow had stayed lit.
He screamed and sobbed like a little boy in his terror, but he managed to get his Bowie knife out. He'd killed a big Indian with this knife.
A paw the size of his head knocked the knife from his hand.
"Oh, please don't kill me!" he wept. "For the love of Jesus!"
The other paw hit his chest like a sledgehammer. He felt his ribs cave in. He felt the claws stab into his lungs.
His breath flew from his body. His strength drained away. He couldn't scream anymore. He couldn't beg for his life. His voice was gone. Only blood came out of his throat. The last thing he saw was an enormous mouth gaping, full of yellow-white pointed teeth coming at him. He felt claws rip again through his chest and belly and knew that he was going.
The pale eyes' smoke boat was a frightening thing, shooting black clouds and sparks from two black-painted iron tubes that rose up from a big lodge in its middle. On each side of the boat was a wheel with wooden boards attached, and the wheels and boards pushed the boat through the water. Standing on the floor of wood planks at the front end of the boat, Redbird tried to understand how fire in the boat's belly could make wheels turn. She felt the monstrous thing tremble under her as it swam across the river.
About a hundred women and children with a few men were crowded at the front of the boat, watching the Ioway shore of the Great River come closer. By unspoken agreement they kept their[510] backs turned to the land that had once been so good to them, the land they had forever lost.
The happy land that was lost, Redbird thought.
At the memory of White Bear, grief stabbed her, and she had to rest against the railing of the boat. She felt an aching hollow as if she had been gutted like a butchered deer.
In their midst rose a little mountain of boxes, barrels, sacks and bales, the supplies they had bought with White Bear's grandfather's gold. But they had no horses, and when they got to the Ioway shore they would have to carry these goods on their backs, a journey of probably four days across the strip of land by the river that He Who Moves Alertly had surrendered to the long knives. Somewhere beyond that land they would find the Sauk and Fox who had been wise enough not to follow Black Hawk. She hoped it would not start to snow before they reached the camps of their people.
Wolf Paw said, "I have heard that this is the very boat that killed so many of our people at the Bad Axe."
This boat had killed his wives and his children, then, thought Redbird. She rested her hand on his arm.
"See there," he said, pointing to holes and black marks on the wood at the very front end. "A thunder gun was set there. It fired at our people and tore them to pieces. Like the one that killed so many of our warriors at the pale eyes town." Through his worn buckskin shirt he touched the silver coin that still hung around his neck on a leather thong. Redbird remembered the day White Bear had dug the coin out of Wolf Paw's body, claiming he had changed a lead ball into a coin.
She put her hand on her aching heart. Would things ever stop reminding her of White Bear?
She stared down at the gray-green water rushing by the side of the boat, and it made her dizzy. A canoe could never travel this fast, even a big one paddled by many men. And a canoe could never go straight across the river, without being pushed downstream by the current, as this smoke-belching boat was doing.
Had she been wrong not to stay with White Bear, as he had begged her to? She missed him so much. Tears came to her eyes. She hoped Wolf Paw and Eagle Feather would not see her crying, and she wiped her eyes quickly.
She felt like jumping from this boat and swimming back to shore.[511] If she drowned in the Great River, even that would be better than being carried away from White Bear.
She told herself she had made up her mind. She was determined to be a Sauk for the rest of her days. And Eagle Feather would be a Sauk.
White Bear is wrong to stay behind, even for all that land.
Eagle Feather gripped her arm. "Do not be afraid, Mother. The pale eyes will not hurt us today." His blue eyes were sad. He must have noticed her misery.
Wolf Paw smiled faintly. "No, today they only want to be rid of us."
Eagle Feather said, "One day Earthmaker will give us a medicine so strong that the long knives' guns will not hurt us."
Redbird smiled at her son. "May it be you who finds that medicine."
We can hope for that. Now that we have lost so much, the spirits might grant us new powers that will help us to resist the pale eyes.
Of one thing she was sure, White Bear's way was not a trail that the people should travel. For a Sauk to become a pale eyes was a kind of death.
We are Sauk, or we are nothing. White Bear is no longer a Sauk. My husband is dead.
She turned back to Wolf Paw and Eagle Feather. She did not like to see Wolf Paw's hair hanging loose around his head, his slumped shoulders. He had always stood so straight. Before the people at Victor killed Floating Lily.
She put her hand on his back and stroked it with a circular motion, and he straightened his shoulders. As he looked at her a light dawned in his eyes.
She must get him to shave his head again, to put the red crest back in place. The people needed a new leader, a true leader. Black Hawk had been wrong too many times, and He Who Moves Alertly would do whatever the pale eyes told him to do. Wolf Paw would help her heal the people.
How I hated him the night he mocked White Bear, putting a woman's dress on him. But he has suffered much since then, and he is a wiser man now.
Eagle Feather was standing at the rail looking across the purple river at the winter-gray hills on the Ioway shore. Redbird moved to[512] stand behind him and put her hands on his small, square shoulders. He held himself very straight.
Eagle Feather said suddenly, "I wish I could have seen my father one last time." She could barely hear him above the noise of the smoke boat and the rushing water.
She closed her eyes against the pain of that and bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
When she was able to speak she said, "I think that one day you will see him again."
But for now Eagle Feather and White Bear must be parted. Because Eagle Feather must grow up as a Sauk. The people would need him, too, in summers and winters to come.
But until Eagle Feather was grown, the people would turn to her. The men, like Wolf Paw, had lost heart. She would give them heart again.
In spite of the pale eyes, the Sauk would find a good trail.
The walk from Grandpapa's house to the ruins of Victoire seemed to Auguste to take all morning. By the time he stood facing the blackened chimney that towered over him like some ancient idol, his legs hurt. He was panting, but the crisp winter air infused vigor into his nostrils and lungs. He sat down to rest on a broken beam that had once held up the ceiling of the great hall.
He was still weak from having been so badly wounded and from lying in bed recovering. And even now his left lung was still not able to fill itself full with air, and probably never would be.
This was the farthest he had ever walked. Too far, really. But the bright December day invited him out of doors, and he wanted to see his land.
My land.
It was his now, without question. Now that Raoul's body had been found.
He was glad there had been no marks on the body. Glad that the Fleming children, who had found it day before yesterday while playing down in the gorge, hadn't had to see a human body torn to pieces, as he feared Raoul might be found.
Ginnie, the middle Fleming girl, had followed a cardinal into the[513] mine entrance; once the child had seen the body, the little redbird had flown out again and disappeared.
Raoul's rifle and his pistol, both of which he apparently had fired just before he died, lay beside him. His Bowie knife had fallen a short distance away, as if he had thrown it.
When Auguste and Grandpapa had gone to see the body laid out in Dr. Surrey's examining room, Auguste had been shocked to see the grimace of terror frozen on Raoul's face—jaws wide apart, lips drawn back from his teeth, eyes bulging. A good thing the light in the mine had been dim and the Fleming girl hadn't gotten a good look at that face.
Auguste and Dr. Surrey had both carefully examined the body and could find no cause of death. Surrey opined that Raoul had gone mad hiding in the mine and had been frightened to death by his own hallucinations.
Auguste knew what had killed Raoul. He vividly remembered his wanderings in the other world, in that endless prairie, with Redbird.
Auguste could only imagine what the encounter between Raoul and the White Bear had been like. It had taken place in the other world. The White Bear spirit must have attacked and destroyed Raoul's soul—if a soul could be destroyed. Like the men on spirit journeys who died because their souls never returned to their bodies, Raoul's body had been deprived of life. The White Bear could leave its mark in this world when it chose, but usually it left tangible signs as a mark of favor. This time the only mark it had left was that look of terror on Raoul's dead face.
And Auguste had paid the price for having sent the White Bear against Raoul: he had lost Redbird.
For the rest of my life I will never see a cardinal without my heart breaking all over again.
They would bury Raoul, with a mass, in the little cemetery overlooking the river, just like any other member of the de Marion family. There would be no revenge after death. Père Isaac was coming up from Kaskaskia to officiate.
And I'm afraid it will not be long before Grandpapa lies down to rest not far from Raoul.
Even as Auguste had begun to get out of bed and walk about, Elysée seemed to be spending more and more time sleeping. One[514] day, Auguste expected, he would simply not wake up at all. Though he mourned in expectation of the old man's passing, it was with a warm feeling that Elysée had done much, had walked a long trail with honor. It was now right that his spirit move on and his body return to the earth.
I am thinking like a Sauk.
And then it all swept over him in a wave of anguish. He saw the happiness he had lost. He saw the gardens and long houses of Saukenuk, cool and pleasant in the summer, the snow-covered, warm winter wickiups in Ioway. The hunting and fishing, the feasts, the dances. The beloved faces drew close before his eyes—Sun Woman, Floating Lily, Eagle Feather, Owl Carver, Black Hawk.
Redbird.
He gave an agonized shout that reverberated in the stone chimney that towered over him. He beat his chest with his fist again and again, until a bolt of pain shot through him where Raoul's bullet had pierced him. He did not want to stop hurting himself, but he could not hit his chest anymore. His head hung down and he sobbed brokenly.
He had sacrificed too much. He had given up everything he really loved to become a prisoner of this place. He was trapped on this land. The ancient wealth of the de Marions held him in golden chains.
I could ride away from all this, even now. I could take a horse and swim it across the Mississippi—the Great River—and I could find the Sauk and live with them again. I could be free.
Redbird had said she had become Wolf Paw's woman. Anger boiled him at the thought of that. But he knew it was the healer in her who had chosen that path. As she had said, Wolf Paw was one of the last braves of the British Band, and by healing him she healed the people.
And was he not lying to himself to think he could do anything for the Sauk here? How could he resist the immense power of men like Sharp Knife, who, he was sure, were bent on exterminating the Sauk, on exterminating all the red people on this continent?
To make the de Marion estate prosper he would have to learn to perform a thousand tasks about which he knew almost nothing. He must give all his heart and mind and strength to this domain if it was to flourish. That was the burden Star Arrow, Pierre de Marion,[515] had laid on him. In taking up that burden, might he not forget his other tie, to the Sauk, so far away?
But it was his being a Sauk that chained him so irrevocably to Victoire—the afternoon he smoked the calumet with Star Arrow—the Turtle calling on him to be guardian of this land.
Somehow he must try both to be master of Victoire and to fulfill his destiny as a Sauk.
This land, right here, once belonged to my people. If I leave it, it will never belong to them again.
I will dedicate my possessions to them. I will send them what they need. I will use the influence my wealth gives me with the lawyers and politicians to protect them, so they will never be driven from their land again, never be massacred again.
He stood up and walked away from the charred wreckage of Victoire into the fields that surrounded it. The farmhands had planted corn last spring, but the Sauk raiders had burned it, and some prairie grass had come back. It had only had time to grow chest high before the frost killed it, and as he pushed his way through it he could see fields beyond, where the yellow horizon met the sky.
Nancy would share this land with him. She would love him, and they would raise Woodrow together and have children of their own. He loved Nancy, though there were places in him that only Redbird could touch. Those places would be sealed off now. Hand in hand Nancy and he would walk their path together.
The World was all before them, where to chooseTheir place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
But he would never stop missing Redbird and Eagle Feather.
And he would never stop wishing he could live out his life as a Sauk. Inwardly he would always be a Sauk. The Bear spirit would always be with him to guide him.
I failed the Sauk when they needed me. I warned them not to go to war, but I could not make them listen. They need a shaman who will make them listen.
He thought of the many, more than a thousand, who had died[516] following Black Hawk, and a sudden, crushing grief struck him to his knees.
"Hu-hu-hu-u-u-u-u," he wailed, stretching his arms wide and lifting his face up to look at long, faint streaks of cloud that stretched across the sky. "Whu-whu-whu-u-u-u-u."
He tore open his coat and his shirt. Kneeling, he could see only a patch of blue directly overhead, framed by the tassels of the prairie grass that rose up all around him. Staring up into the blue he wailed for the dead for a long time.
He felt something wet running down his chest. He felt the cold grip of fear on his heart. When he had struck his breast before, had he reopened the hole Raoul's bullet made?
He looked down. Beads of dark red were pushing their way through the five claw scars. Further down his chest they ran together as rivulets. Five streams of blood trickled down his stomach.
The sight of flowing blood lifted his heart. It was a sign that the Bear spirit was still with him. He bent forward and put out his hands to grip the land at the roots of the prairie grass. His fingers dug into the ashes of corn stalks and the roots of grass. A bright red spot appeared on the ground between his hands and knees, and then another.
My blood drips into the soil. I give myself to this land.
"I hold this land for the Sauk nation," he said. First he said it in Sauk, then he repeated it again in English.
He pushed himself to his feet and drew from its sheath at his waist the knife Star Arrow had left him long ago.
Standing, he could see over the waving grass. He flourished the knife blade at the vast dome of sky covering the prairie. He faced toward the east, whence came those waves of pale eyes that had driven his people from their homes. Whence, too, had come his father and one of his grandfathers.
The last Sauk shaman this side of the Great River held up his knife so the sun glinted from it.
"I will defend this land!" he shouted.
As long as he lived, he would give his blood to this earth.
[517]