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

and he had to stand up and be killed, because you took all the men who could shoot away with you. I hope those papers ruin you."

Spots of red stood out on her cheeks. She covered her face with her hand and rushed out of the courtroom.

"How come you didn't shut her up, Judge?" Raoul shouted after she was gone.

"I figured she deserved to have her say," said Cooper calmly.

Ford said, "The defense calls Miss Nancy Hale."

Auguste's heart started to beat harder as he watched Nancy, tall and straight in a pale violet dress, walk to the witness's chair. Just what he had feared a year ago, when Nancy first asked him to make love to her, had happened. He felt a love for her—an impossible love, now—that was as strong in its way as the love he felt for Redbird.[431]

In answer to Ford's soft-spoken questions, Nancy told how she had been captured and how Auguste had intervened to protect her, and later to protect Woodrow. She told how he had risked his life to escort her and Woodrow to safety, and had ended up being captured.

Bennett got up to cross-question.

"Miss Hale, this may be a hard question for you to answer in open court. But it is important to this trial. It's well-known that Indians are no respecters of the virtue of white women. So, what I'm asking you is ..." He paused and leaned over her. "Were you subjected to anything of a shameful nature while you were a prisoner of the Sauk?"

"Objection," called Ford. "The question itself is shameful. It has no possible bearing on this case."

Judge Cooper glared at Bennett. "What call do you have to ask her that?"

"Defense counsel has taken us down a lot of winding roads, Your Honor. I'm attempting to determine facts about the defendant's character."

"I'll allow it," said Cooper, his voice low and reluctant, and Bennett turned with a look of satisfaction to Nancy and repeated his question.

Nancy looked him coldly in the eye. "I've already said. Auguste de Marion protected me. I was never harmed."

Bennett narrowed his eyes. Raoul had chosen the man well for his purposes, Auguste thought, hating Bennett for tormenting Nancy.

"Well, but what about Auguste de Marion himself? Didn't you live in one of their huts with him? Did he ever approach you with lewd intent?"

"Certainly not!" said Nancy. "Yes, I did live in his—the word is wickiup, Mr. Bennett. But the situation was perfectly proper. His wife and child were with us all the time."

From the back of the hall Raoul brayed, "She probably enjoyed it. She always had an eye for the mongrel."

Auguste felt his neck grow hot. He wanted to kill. But someone would stop him before he reached Raoul; and even to try to attack him would only confirm the picture Bennett was trying to paint, of a murderous savage. He forced himself to sit still.[432]

And yet, he thought, as he breathed deeply to calm himself, it was Nancy who was concealing the truth and Bennett and Raoul who sensed what had really happened. But their very words for it—"shameful," "lewd intent"—turned the truth into a lie.

He and Nancy had proclaimed their love in honor before the British Band. Now he felt as if he were tied down on a forest floor and weasels and crows were biting and pecking at him. Why must he and Nancy hide their love from these hate-filled people?

He heard indignant murmurs provoked by Raoul's outburst.

"Shocking!" someone said.

"No gentleman would talk that way."

Auguste heard Lieutenant Davis sitting behind him, say to one of his men, "If I weren't on duty, I'd teach that scoundrel a lesson."

Someone with the accent of Victoire called out, "Raoul, your father is right! Tu es un sauvage!"

Cooper pounded on his table with his wooden mallet until there was silence.

Thomas Ford called, "Master Woodrow Prewitt, will you take the stand, please?"

Woodrow walked past Auguste, who felt a warmth for him and, again, a pang of longing for Eagle Feather.

Under Ford's questions, Woodrow told how White Bear and Redbird had treated him like a foster son, and how White Bear had helped them escape.

When it was Bennett's turn, he stood threateningly over Woodrow. "Have you forgotten, young man, that you had a real, white, Christian father and mother? Have you forgotten what the Indians did to them?"

"No, sir," said Woodrow in a small voice.

"Well, then, how can you make it out that this half-Indian and his squaw were such fine people? They held you prisoner!"

"Sir, my pa used to whip me before breakfast and after supper. My ma laid in bed most days, drunk. White Bear—Mr. Auguste—he was kind to me. So was his missus. Living with them was shinin'."

"Shining!" Bennett looked disgusted.

Woodrow shrugged. "Well, would'a been, if the soldiers hadn't always been chasing us."

Auguste heard the thump of boots. He turned to see Raoul storming up from the back of the room.[433]

"That boy's lying!" Raoul roared. "Indians took me prisoner when I was his age—I know firsthand how kind they are, I got the scars to prove it. The half-breed's white squaw has made it worthwhile for the kid to lie. If I get my hands on him, I'll beat the truth out of him."

"Sit down, sir!" Lieutenant Davis jumped up from his seat behind Auguste and blocked Raoul's way. Auguste turned to see Raoul's big frame just a few feet from him, close enough for him to smell whiskey fumes.

"This is none of your business, Davis," Raoul growled.

"General Winfield Scott and Colonel Zachary Taylor commanded me to see that this man receives a proper trial," said Davis in a calm, steady voice.

Judge Cooper rapped his mallet. "De Marion, I won't allow you to disrupt this court."

Raoul shouted at Cooper over Davis's shoulder. "Don't you forget, Cooper, that when you're not wearing that black robe you're just a small farmer who bought his land from me and sells his crop to me."

Cooper was standing now, his jaw clenched. "That's enough, de Marion. Sit down."

Raoul's head turned slowly from side to side. For a moment he stared at Auguste, his eyes full of hate. Auguste felt an answering hatred boiling up in his chest.

Raoul and the lieutenant stood facing each other for a long, silent moment. Then Raoul turned abruptly and strode back to his seat. Auguste, whose attention had been fixed on Raoul and Davis, became aware of men sitting down all over the courtroom. He wondered whether they were Raoul's men.

Auguste felt his guts squirm as he realized what a thin barrier protected this trial from being abruptly ended. Raoul could call on his crew of rogues to drag him out and hang him at once. The judge and the three Federal soldiers might not be able to stop him.

Ford called Auguste to the witness chair. Auguste had sat rigid for so long that standing up made him stumble, and Ford put a steadying hand on his arm.

As he sat down he felt himself trembling at the sight of dozens of pale eyes faces, hard, solemn and expressionless, looking at him. Bearded men squirting tobacco juice into brass spittoons. Women[434] eyeing him from under bonnets. He looked for the friendly faces in the room—Nancy, Woodrow, Elysée, Guichard, Nicole, Frank.

Ford said, "We've heard bits and pieces of your story from many different people, Auguste. If you were just another Sauk Indian you wouldn't be on trial here today. You'd be with your people, what's left of them. But because you've lived with whites and your father was white and you have a claim to a white man's property, you're accused of being a traitor and a murderer. I want you to tell us about your life. How come you're both Indian and white man?"

As Auguste talked he forgot the watching faces and saw again Sun Woman and Star Arrow, Black Hawk and Owl Carver, Redbird and Nancy, Saukenuk and Victoire, Old Man's Creek and the Bad Axe.

When he was done, Ford thanked him quietly and sat down. It was Bennett's turn.

He shuffled toward Auguste, fixing him with small eyes that glinted with malice.

"We have to take your word for it that you spoke for peace in the councils of the Sauk and Fox Indians, don't we? And we have to take your word that you went to the camp of Colonel de Marion's spy battalion on an errand of peace, don't we?"

"That's right," Auguste said bitterly. "Because all my witnesses are dead."

"Don't try to get us to feel sorry for you," Bennett rasped. "This courtroom is full of people who've seen loved ones stabbed, shot, scalped, cut to pieces, burnt to ashes. At the hands of your Indians." He raised his voice to a shout. "And while that was happening, you were behind the red fiends! Urging them on to kill and kill some more!" He turned away, face twisted in disgust. "I have no more questions for you."

Cooper said, "Does the defense have any more witnesses?"

"No, Your Honor," said Ford, and Auguste's heart sank as he walked back to his seat. Bennett, he felt, had finished him with those few sentences reminding people what the Sauk had done to them.

Auguste turned to Ford, whose round face was blank, unreadable. No hope there. Ford had done his best, Auguste was sure. But he had no more chance against the hatred here in Victor than Black Hawk's band had against the armies of the United States.[435]

I am going to be hanged.

"Hold it there!" called a voice from the doorway of the courtroom. "He has got two more witnesses."

Auguste saw a tall, mustached man thumping up from the back of the court with the aid of a crutch and a peg leg. Beside him a skinny man with a small head and a gap-toothed grin shuffled over the plank floor. A rifle hung from one long arm.

It took him a moment to recognize Otto Wegner and Eli Greenglove.

Alert, wary, he watched them come up the aisle between the spectators' chairs.

Cooper raised a hand in warning, said, "Mr. Greenglove, you'll have to put that rifle down before you come any farther."

"So be it," said Greenglove, handing the rifle to one of Jefferson Davis's corporals who had risen to bar his way. "I just needed it to make sure I got this far alive."

Ford came over to Auguste and said in a low voice, "I take it these men are offering to testify in your defense. Do you want them?"

"I think Wegner must be here to help me," said Auguste. "But I don't know why Greenglove is here." He remembered his conviction that Greenglove had missed him on purpose, and shrugged. "I haven't got much to lose."

Ford began with Wegner, asking him how he came to be in Victor when word was he had emigrated to Texas.

"My family and I only got as far as New Orleans, where we are buying provisions to join the colony at San Felipe de Austin. Then this gentleman comes to me." Wegner pointed to Greenglove, now sitting in the front row of spectators. "He tells me Herr Auguste is to be tried at Victor. At once we take the steamboat. I pay for both his passage and mine, using money my family needs. I tell you this not to praise myself but to show how much that man means to me." Now Wegner pointed to Auguste, who looked down at the floor, his face hot and his throat choked.

Ford nodded gravely. "I understand you were at Old Man's Creek, Mr. Wegner. What happened to you?"

Wegner told the story just as Auguste remembered it, ending, "I lost my leg, but I still have my life, thanks to Auguste de Marion, for whom I never did a single thing good."[436]

If I could have taken him back to the Sauk camp, I might even have saved his leg.

Ford said, "Mr. Wegner, we've heard that Auguste de Marion is a murderer and a traitor to his country."

"Lies!" said Otto Wegner firmly. "By the rules of war he had every right to kill me and he did not. He is the most Christian man I have ever known."

I wonder if Wegner knows I have never believed in any spirits but Earthmaker and the Turtle and the Bear.

Returning from the witness chair, Wegner stopped to take Auguste's hand in both of his. "I am so glad I could come and speak for you. You are a great man, Herr Auguste."

Auguste, struggling to hold back tears, murmured his thanks. Perhaps Elysée could replace the money Wegner had spent getting here, if the Prussian was not too proud to take it.

Ford began questioning Eli Greenglove about Old Man's Creek.

"Hell, there weren't no Injuns in ambush in the woods," Greenglove drawled. "'Twas plain as day what was going on.