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

quivered with anger and could barely keep himself from letting out a shout. Did that mean Scott wasn't going to hang Black Hawk and the rest of them? Was he taking the Sauk leaders to meet the President?

Well, if he does, the mongrel won't be with them, Raoul thought, comforting himself with the picture of a hempen rope around Auguste's neck.

[419]

My baby!

Auguste felt as heavy as if he had turned to stone. He sat hunched over on the plank bed covered with a corn-husk mattress, in his cell in Victor's village hall, clutching his stomach as tears ran from his eyes.

After what Frank Hopkins had just told him, he no longer cared what happened to him here in Victor. These people had killed Floating Lily. Let them kill him too. He did not want to live in a world that had killed his baby daughter.

He felt a comforting hand on his shoulder. He glanced at it and saw Frank's ink-blackened fingers pressing into the blue calico shirt his captors at Fort Crawford had given him.

He looked up to see lawyer Thomas Ford's sad eyes on him, but kindly gestures and looks meant nothing to him now. How could people tear a baby girl from her mother's arms and beat her to death?

But the Sauk war parties killed children too. All people are cruel, white and red.

"I would be better off on the Trail of Souls," he said in a low voice.

My mother and my daughter, Sun Woman and Floating Lily, both dead.

"Nancy and Nicole and I tried to stop them," Frank said, his eyes moist, "but the crowd was too big. We couldn't get through until it was too late. Nancy told us the baby was your daughter. Nicole and Nancy tried as best they could to comfort your wife."

For all he knew, Redbird might think him dead. He had asked his guards at Fort Crawford to pass word to her that he was alive, but he had no idea whether any of his messages had reached her.

Ford, the lawyer from Vandalia Frank had hired to defend Auguste, said, "What happened shows how angry the people of Victor still are against the Sauk. I still think we have to ask for a change of venue." Ford was a short, slender man with a round face and bright, intelligent eyes. Leaning against the rough-hewn log wall of Auguste's cell, he wore a dark brown frock coat with a high collar that came up to his ears.

Frank said, "Many people here feel terribly sorry for Auguste. And a lot of us decided, after we survived the siege, that we wouldn't[420] put up anymore with the lawlessness that Raoul and his crew represent."

But Raoul is back now, Auguste thought. He'll start to take control again.

Ford said, "Well, Auguste ought to tell us what he thinks. It's his neck."

Auguste took a deep breath. The clean smell of fresh-cut wood filled his nostrils. A good smell, but it reminded him that this village hall was only recently rebuilt, that last June Wolf Paw's raiding party had burned down everything in Victor except Raoul's trading post. How could he possibly get a fair trial here?

Auguste said, "At least here I have some people who know me and care about me."

Ford sighed. "So be it. Frank, I want a list of every man who was in the mob that attacked the Sauk prisoners. We don't want any of them sitting on the jury."

As Frank and Ford discussed trial tactics, Auguste gazed around at this dark little chamber on the second floor of the village hall. It might be his last home on earth. The only window was a square barred hole high up on the south wall, too small to let much light in—or for a man to climb out through. This morning a light rain falling outside spattered through the window, and the cell felt damp and cool.

When Frank built this cell, he could never have thought his own nephew would be a prisoner in it.

"We have a power of work to do, Auguste," Ford interrupted his thoughts. "So far I can't find anyone who confirms your story of what happened at Old Man's Creek. This Otto Wegner fellow whose life you saved, he and his family have moved down to the Texas country in Mexico."

Frank said, "We do have two people who'll testify that you protected them and never went on any war parties while they were prisoners of the British Band—Miss Hale and the boy Woodrow."

At the mention of Nancy's name Auguste felt a wrench in his heart. He knew that she had stayed in Victor, teaching in a new schoolhouse Frank had built for her on the site of her father's church. Her absence in the week he had been here had hurt him deeply.

"Frank," he said, "why hasn't Nancy come to see me?"[421]

Thomas Ford said, "Miss Hale is a very bright young lady, and instead of rushing down here to visit you when you arrived, she waited till I got here and then she asked me what she should do. I told her that there must not be even a breath of a suggestion that there was anything between you two. If people believed she had, ah, been intimate with you, they'd consider her a loose woman—doubly so because you're an Indian—and they wouldn't listen to a word she said."

"I understand," Auguste said, feeling bitter, but also feeling that the load of grief he'd borne since arriving at Victor had lightened a little. Nancy had not forgotten him, as he'd feared she might after she got back among whites. He felt shame that he had even imagined she might turn against him. And when the trial started, at least he would see her again.

The smell of fresh-cut wood pervaded the courtroom on the first floor of the village hall, as it did Auguste's cell. Frank must have worked seven days a week since last June, Auguste thought. Even though he'd hired half a dozen assistants, it was a wonder he'd found time to write and publish his newspaper.

Judge David Cooper, a man with a square, muscular face and piercing blue eyes, sat at a long table with the flags of the United States and the state of Illinois on stands behind him. A carpenter's mallet lay on the table. Probably borrowed from Frank, Auguste thought. He had a vague memory of Cooper's being present and saying something to Raoul the day he'd been driven from Victoire. Auguste stood as Cooper read out the charge of complicity in the murder of 223 citizens of the state of Illinois by the British Band of the Sauk and Fox Indian tribes.

Behind Auguste sat three blue-coats, Lieutenant Jefferson Davis and his two corporals. The prosecutor, Justus Bennett, and his assistant occupied a third table. The courtroom being not quite finished, the twelve jurymen sat on one side of the room in two pews carried over from the Presbyterian church.

Auguste knew only three of the jurors—Robert McAllister, a farmer whose family had survived Wolf Paw's raid by hiding in their root cellar; Tom Slattery, the blacksmith; and Jean-Paul Kobell, a stableman from Victoire. He had no reason to think any of those[422] three bore him any special ill will, though they might have good reason to hate any Sauk. The others he knew not at all, which meant they must have moved to Victor since he left.

Behind the trial participants about fifty citizens of Smith County were crowded into the courtroom, sitting in chairs or on benches they had carried into the village hall themselves. More stood along the walls.

During the first hour of the trial Raoul de Marion, the first witness for the prosecution, testified. He lounged in a chair beside the judge's table.

Auguste sat in a cold fury as he heard, for the first time, an account of the war between the British Band and the people of Illinois as many pale eyes must have seen it. A murdering band of savages had invaded the state. The brave volunteers had pursued them, endured the loss of comrades, but eventually had triumphed, administering a righteous retaliation by exterminating most of the invaders.

Bennett, a lean man whose rounded shoulders gave him a serpentine look, turned to Thomas Ford. "Your witness, sir."

Ford, very erect in contrast to Bennett, stood up and walked toward Raoul. "Mr. de Marion, why on the night of September fifteenth, 1831, did you offer a reward of fifty pieces of eight to anyone who would kill your nephew, Auguste de Marion?"

"Objection," Bennett called from his seat. "This has nothing to do with the defendant's conduct in the Black Hawk War."

"On the contrary Your Honor," said Ford. "It explains how my client got involved in the war."

"I'll allow it," said David Cooper.

After Ford repeated his question, Raoul said, "I don't remember offering any reward."

"I can produce at least ten witnesses who heard you and saw you hold up a money bag."

"Well, he provoked me. He'd tried to cheat me out of my inheritance."

"Apparently you'd already got control of the estate. By force of arms. Was it necessary to go on and incite men to kill him?"

"I figured he might do just what he did—stir up the Sauk against us and try to use them to take the land away from me."

Ford turned to the jury, and the spectators could see the incredulous[423] look on his face. Auguste felt a warmth for Ford. He seemed to know what he was doing. But it still made him uneasy to know that his life was in the hands of another man, no matter how competent.

"And why were you going to shoot Auguste, when he came to you with a white flag at Old Man's Creek?"

"He was trying to lead us into an ambush."

Ford sighed, clasped his hands behind his back and took a few paces away from Raoul. He threw an exasperated look at the jury, as if to say, What can I do with this man?

Then he turned suddenly and said, "Mr. de Marion, in 1812, when you were just a boy, were you not present at the incident known as the Fort Dearborn Massacre?"

"Objection," said Bennett. "This certainly has nothing to do with the man who's on trial."

"Goes to the character of the witness, Your Honor," said Ford.

"I'll let you ask the question," said Cooper. "Please answer, Mr. de Marion."

Raoul hunched over and his face grew darker. "God knows I was at Fort Dearborn."

"And did you not see your sister horribly murdered by Indians. Were you not subjected to two years of captivity and slavery?"

"I did. I was." The words came out in a hoarse whisper.

Ford said, "Mr. de Marion, after those terrible boyhood experiences, to have your brother attempt to bring an Indian into the family must have seemed the crowning insult. I put it to you that your accusations against Auguste stem, not from any misdeeds of his, but from your hatred for him because he is an Indian."

Justus Bennett was on his feet. "Objection. The honorable defense attorney isn't asking questions. He's making a speech defaming the witness."

Cooper nodded. "Sustained." He turned to the jury and said, "The jury will forget about everything they just heard the defense attorney say."

Auguste shook his head. How could any man forget something he had just so clearly heard? In all his years of living among the pale eyes, he had never attended a trial. Now, on trial for his own life, he saw that the ways of the pale eyes were even stranger than he had ever realized.[424]

The next prosecution witness was Armand Perrault.

At the sight of Armand, Auguste broke out in a cold sweat of fury. This man, Frank had said, was the one who snatched Floating Lily from Redbird's arms. Walking up to the witness chair, Armand avoided Auguste's eyes. Always before he had shot Auguste looks of hatred. Today he was showing his guilt.

Aching knots spread through all Auguste's muscles. Were he alone with Armand, he would hurl himself at him and try to kill him, barehanded. But in this crowded courtroom he was helpless. His hands tightened on the links of his chain till they hurt.

He felt a firm grip on his forearm; Ford, sitting beside him, letting him know that he sensed his pain.

Led by Bennett's questions, Armand repeated Raoul's claim that the three peace messengers were actually the vanguard of a Sauk attack.

"Why do they keep harping on this?" Auguste asked Ford in a whisper.

"Makes you out a murderer," Ford said out of the side of his mouth, "if you tried to lead the white militiamen into a trap at Old Man's Creek."

When it was Ford's turn to question Armand he said, "You pulled the trigger on