Shaman by Robert Shea (nice books to read TXT) 📖

into the bright blue eyes that looked so blankly at her now, and wondered where her smiling little brother had gone, so many years ago. The smile still came readily to his face; but now it only mocked and taunted. Did those years of captivity with the Indians fully explain Raoul, or was he a throwback to some robber-baron ancestor whose only law was the sword?

"When a man goes off to war, Miss Nancy, it means the world to him to know he has someone to come home to."

Raoul smiled down from his chestnut stallion, Banner, at Nancy Hale in the driver's seat of her black buggy. At nineteen, she was a woman in full bloom. She'd probably have married a long time ago if she'd stayed back East. There were a lot of men out here on the frontier, but few good enough to court a woman like her.

She'd be a fool not to take my offer seriously. It's the best one she'll ever get.

Nancy looked first at the dusty road over the grass-covered hills between Victoire and Victor, the morning sun beating down on it, then up at him. The deep blue of her eyes was a marvel.

"You already have someone to come home to, Mr. de Marion. And children."

Children, yes, but the mingling of his de Marion blood with the[228] nondescript Greenglove line could hardly produce the children he wanted. Nancy, on the other hand, from an old New England family that probably went back to even better English stock, was just the sort of woman he wanted to breed with.

"Clarissa and I have never stood up before a priest or a minister, Miss Hale. I've just been passing my time with her until the right lady came along."

Her gaze was cool and level. "As far as I'm concerned you're as good as married, and you have no right to be talking to me this way."

"Necessity makes your bedfellows out here on the frontier."

"Not mine." She shook her head, blond braids swinging. He could picture all that honey-gold hair spread out on a pillow, and he felt a pulse beat in his throat.

Nancy went on, "You must know how wrong it is for you to speak to me this way. Otherwise you wouldn't have ambushed me out here."

"I've waited days for a chance to speak to you in private."

Josiah Hode, Hodge Hode's boy, had ridden fast to the trading post this morning to tell Raoul that Miss Hale was driving her buggy into town and was traveling, for once, without her father. It was the news Raoul had been hoping for ever since the governor's proclamation had arrived in Victor. Knowing Miss Nancy was indignant over his treatment of the mongrel, Raoul had delayed approaching her. Now he could delay no longer.

"I leave with the militia next Monday," he said. "That gives you three days to think it over. I hope to carry your favorable answer with me when I ride off to defend you from the savages."

She smiled, but the smile was without humor or warmth. "Carry this answer with you if you wish: No." She flicked the reins, and her dappled gray horse speeded up to a trot.

Raoul spurred his own horse to keep pace with her. "Take time to consider."

"The answer will always be no."

White-hot anger exploded within him. His fists clenched on Banner's reins.

"You'll end up an old maid schoolmarm!" he shouted. "You'll never know what it is to have a man between your legs."

Her face went white. He had hurt her, and that made him feel better.[229]

He kicked his heels hard into Banner's sides and the stallion uttered an angry whicker and broke into a gallop, leaving Nancy Hale and her buggy enveloped in dust.

He wished the country around here weren't so damned open. If he could have dragged her out of that buggy and into the woods, given her a taste of the real thing, she'd have changed her mind about him.

Is she still pining for the mongrel?

Well, he thought, as the gray log walls of the trading post came into sight around a bend in the ridge road, he would carry her answer to the war. And the Indians would suffer the more for it.

Prophet's Town was deserted. Black Hawk and his allies had fled.

Raoul reined up Banner in the very center of the rings of dark, silent Indian houses. Armand Perrault, Levi Pope, Hodge Hode and Otto Wegner stopped beside him. He did not know whether he was relieved or disappointed. His cap-and-ball pistol drawn, the hammer pulled back, he drew angry breaths and glared about him. He felt exposed, realizing that at any time an arrow aimed at his heart could come winging out of one of those long loaf-shaped bark and frame Winnebago lodges.

Because of Raoul's experience in the skirmishing around Saukenuk last year, General Henry Atkinson had commissioned him a colonel and put him in command of the advance guard, known as the spy battalion. He enjoyed the prestige of leading the spies, but he felt a constant tightness in his belly.

He reached down for the canteen in the Indian blanketwork bag strapped to his saddle, uncorked it and took a quick swallow of Old Kaintuck. It went down hot and spread warmth from his stomach through his whole body. He cooled his throat with water from a second canteen.

For three weeks now, slowed by heavy spring rains that swelled creeks to nearly impassable torrents, the militia had followed Black Hawk's trail up the Rock River. To the whites' disappointment, the Indians had bypassed Saukenuk, doubtless aware that the militia had come out against them. Instead, Black Hawk's band had trekked twenty-five miles upriver, reportedly stopping at Prophet's Town. Now, they were not here either.

Raoul hated the Indian village on sight. Built on land that sloped[230] gently down to the south bank of the Rock River, it surrounded him, threatened him, lay dark, sullen and sinister under a gray sky heavy with rain. It reminded him too vividly of the redskin villages where he'd spent those two worst years of his life.

He saw no cooking fires, no drying meat or stacks of vegetables by the dark doorways, no poles flaunting feathers, ribbons and enemy scalps. That characteristic odor of Indian towns, a mixture of tobacco smoke and cooking hominy, hung in the air but was very faint. He figured the Indians had left here days ago.

"Otto," Raoul said, "ride back to General Atkinson and report the enemy has abandoned Prophet's Town."

Wegner gave Raoul a strenuous Prussian salute, pulled his spotted gray horse's head around and rode off.

The two hundred men of the spy battalion were trickling in behind Raoul, hoofs pattering on the bare earth. In their coonskin caps and dusty gray shirts and buckskin jackets, the men didn't look like soldiers, but they had taken the oath and were under military discipline till their term of enlistment was up at the end of May.

The men called to one another and laughed as they gazed around at the empty lodges. They were enjoying themselves immensely, Raoul thought. This time of year most of them would be breaking their backs doing spring plowing and planting. Now they could earn twenty-one cents a day while going on something like an extended hunting trip.

Most men would rather fight than work any day.

Eli Greenglove, on a brown and white pony, trotted up beside Raoul. His silver lace captain's stripes glittered on the upper arms of the blue tunic Raoul had bought for him. A long cavalry saber hung from his white leather belt.

Eli grinned, and Raoul had to look away. It seemed that every other tooth in Eli's head was missing, and the ones that were left were stained brown from years of chewing tobacco.

And now Clarissa had taken up pipe smoking, making it even harder for Raoul to enjoy bedding down with her.

If only Nancy—

But Nancy had made it plain that she despised him.

Damn shame. Of course, old Eli here would slit his throat if he had any idea what Raoul was thinking.[231]

Eli said, "You figger the Prophet's Town Injuns have joined up with Black Hawk's bunch?"

"Of course," said Raoul. "And that means Black Hawk now has about a thousand warriors behind him."

A movement on the south edge of the village in the surrounding woods caught Raoul's eyes. He swung around in that direction, pointing his pistol.

"Eli, get your rifle ready," he said.

"Loaded 'n' primed," said Greenglove, pulling his bright new Cramer percussion lock rifle—another present from Raoul—from its saddle sling, controlling his pony easily with his knees alone.

Indians walked out of the woods, four men. They held their empty hands high over their heads and shuffled forward slowly.

"Watch 'em," said Eli. "They may just be trying to get close enough to jump us."

Raoul studied the four advancing men. Two had their heads wrapped in turbans, one red, one blue. All four wore fringed buckskin leggings and gray flannel shirts. He saw no weapons.

Then he caught sight of more shadowy figures in the trees beyond the Indians. Instantly, he straighted his arm in that direction and pulled the trigger. His pistol went off with a boom, puffing out a cloud of gray smoke. He handed it to Armand to reload it while he reached for his own new rifle, a breech-loading Hall.

The Indian with the red turban was shouting something. Raoul recognized the language—Potawatomi. The sound of it made the blood pound in his temples.

"Those are only squaws and papooses," the Indian called in Potawatomi. "Please do not shoot them."

Raoul felt like shooting them all, just for being Potawatomi, but he held the impulse in check. He had to find out whatever they could tell him.

He addressed the Indians in their language, indelibly engraved in his mind by the acids of fear and hatred. "Tell them all to come out. We will kill anyone who hides from us."

The red-turbaned Indian called over his shoulder, and slowly a group of women and small children came out of the woods.

Raoul took his reloaded pistol back from Armand and walked Banner over to the little group. They started to lower their hands.

"Keep them up." He gestured with the pistol. Slowly the copper-skinned[232] men straightened their raised arms again, looking at one another unhappily.

Probably thought we'd welcome them with kind words and gifts. The muscles in his neck and shoulders were so rigid they ached, and his stomach was boiling. In his mind he saw again the scarred face of Black Salmon, the brown fist raised, holding a horsewhip to beat him. The sounds of Potawatomi speech brought it all back.

He handed his horse's reins to Armand, who tied Banner to an upright post in front of a nearby lodge.

"Who are you?" Raoul demanded.

"I am Little Foot," said the Indian wearing the red turban. "I am head of the Deer Clan. We live here in the town of the Winnebago Prophet."

Little Foot's skin was dark, and he had a wide, flat nose. He wore no feathers on his head, probably not wanting to look warlike. Black hair streaked here and there with white hung down from under his turban in two braids to his shoulders. Raoul judged him to be in his fifties.

He could have been at Fort Dearborn twenty years ago.

One thing was certain. Little Foot was Potawatomi. Raoul felt his fingers tightening on his pistol as he held it at waist level.

Raoul turned to Levi Pope and some of his other Smith County boys who were seated on horses nearby. "Tie them up."

Levi, who wore six pistols at his belt, all primed and loaded, got down from his horse and unhooked a coiled rope from his saddle. "The squaws and little ones too?"

"Put their families in one of the lodges and keep a guard on them." Another thought occurred to him. "Eli, take some men and search these huts. Make sure there aren't any more Indians hiding out somewhere in this town."

Levi went to the red-turbaned Indian and pulled his arms down roughly to his sides. In a moment he had Little Foot's hands securely tied behind his back, while other grinning Smith County boys had done the same to the other three Indian men.

"Ankles too," said Raoul, and Levi and his men cut lengths of rope and knelt to hobble the Indians.

With his free hand Raoul took another long drink from the whiskey canteen hanging from his saddle.

He walked close to Little Foot and looked him in the eye. He did not like the way the Indian looked back at him. He saw no fear.[233]

With a sudden movement he hooked his boot behind the Indian's hobbled ankles and pushed him hard. Little Foot fell heavily to the ground on his back, wincing with