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

reach a verdict today. You are found not guilty."

Not guilty! Joy flooded through him as he stood, so amazed that he could not move, staring at the open cell door.

When he had recovered enough to move, Auguste followed Davis out of the village hall, to where the two corporals waited with horses in the silent street. The river rippled black and silver in the light of a three-quarter moon. The Ioway bluffs opposite were black bison shapes under a sky spangled with stars.

The moonlight helped Auguste guide his horse up the steep road out of the village. Davis led, followed by Auguste, the two corporals bringing up the rear. After weeks of imprisonment, Auguste reveled in the cool night air blowing in his face.

They passed the trading post. The road was wider here, and the three soldiers bunched around him. Raoul was surely in there getting drunk, laughing as he looked forward to seeing Auguste swinging at a rope's end.

They trotted along the ridge leading to Victoire. Auguste's heart started to beat harder as he approached the place that had been his home.

The remains of the mansion sprawled on its hilltop like the skeleton of some huge animal, blackened timbers rearing up in the moonlight. People had died bloody, horrible deaths there. Was the place haunted now? Accursed?

A longing came over him to climb that hill again, to sweep away that ruin and rebuild. Put up a fine new house like the ones he'd seen in the East.[443]

I could do so much with this land, but I'm running away from it again. Leaving it to Raoul again.

Then they were past Victoire, but the yearning for it clung to him like a lover's scent.

"By morning you'll be far out of your uncle's reach," said Davis, riding beside him.

Auguste's heart swelled in his chest with the thought that he was more nearly a free man than he had been in weeks.

"If I'm not guilty, why must I run away?"

"Surely you realize that your uncle and his cronies were planning to take you straight from the courtroom to the nearest tall tree if the court didn't sentence you to death. The foreman brought Judge Cooper a note stating their verdict. The judge wrote back, telling them he would say they hadn't reached a verdict, and he wanted them to remain in seclusion overnight while we spirited you out of town. They were willing to put up with the inconvenience. After all, who'd want to find a man not guilty and then see him taken out and hanged?"

Auguste's heart felt like a cup that was overflowing. The jury had understood him; they had believed him.

"I never even got a chance to thank Mr. Ford."

"Main thanks he'd want is knowing that you got away safely."

As they rode on, Auguste's happiness faded. The town that had been his home for six years had exonerated him. But he still had to run away from it at night, for the second time in his life. He hated to do this.

This was something else Raoul had taken from him—his moment of vindication.

Pain throbbed in Auguste's chest with the jouncing of the horse under him. He remembered his mother's body, like a castaway doll, her eyes pathetically wide, the gash in her throat, the splash of blood on her doeskin dress. She must be avenged. How could he let the man who murdered her walk free? Silently he called on the Bear spirit to avenge Sun Woman.

Again he remembered it was wrong to ask a spirit to harm any person. Even so, if he could not hurt Raoul himself, he wanted him hurt, whatever price he himself might pay.

And once again he was fleeing from people he loved. Elysée. Nicole and Frank.

Nancy.[444]

"Soon I must go back," he said.

Davis turned his head to stare at him. "Go back? In the name of the great Jehovah, what for?"

It was Auguste's turn to be surprised. It seemed so obvious that he had to return to Victor and face Raoul.

"I belong in Victor as much as I belong with the Sauk."

He could not, he decided, turn his back on Victor a second time.

"Why are we going east?" he asked.

"You've have been found not guilty in Victor, but you're still a prisoner of war, Auguste. Your future is in the hands of the President of the United States."

Auguste remembered now. General Winfield Scott at the hearing at Fort Crawford had said, If the people of Smith County don't hang you, I think President Jackson would find a meeting with you most interesting.

A chill spread across his back at the thought of meeting Andrew Jackson himself. What would he and Sharp Knife have to say to each other?

Auguste leaned into a small window cut in the thick stone wall of Fort Monroe. He stared through iron grillwork at a blue-gray expanse of rippling water. Eastward on the horizon lay low land, the other side of Chesapeake Bay. Pressing his forehead against the bars he could see the bay opening to the south into that vast open ocean the pale eyes had crossed in their relentless search for new land.

A faint breeze cooled Auguste's sweat-beaded brow. This was the Moon of Falling Leaves, but it was still hot as summer.

Black Hawk had said little since their arrival. No doubt, Auguste thought, the old war leader was comparing this huge stone fortress with the log forts of the long knives he had besieged in his own country. He must be absorbing the lesson it taught of the true magnitude of the long knives' power. But when he did speak he sounded as defiant as ever.

"Why must I wear the clothing of my enemies?" Black Hawk stood in his loincloth staring at the uniform that a soldier had laid out on his bed. Auguste admired Black Hawk's lean, muscular body. It was hard to believe that he had seen sixty-seven summers and winters. His wide mouth was drawn down with distaste as he eyed[445] the tall, red-plumed shako, the dark blue jacket with its gold-trimmed collar, gold lace chevrons on the upper arms and brass buttons, the lighter blue trousers, the white leather belt.

"Sharp Knife wishes to show his respect for you by giving you the dress of one of his war chiefs," said Auguste.

It is also his way of reminding you that you are subject to him.

Owl Carver said, "It is a mark of hospitality. Just as Chief Falcon gave us new doeskin garments when we surrendered to the Winnebago."

Auguste felt a thrill of pride as he recalled the amazing tale Owl Carver had told him about Eagle Feather's part in that surrender. A boy not yet seven summers old whose vision moved him and showed him how to bring a war to an end was surely destined for great things.

Owl Carver looked strange, with his long white hair and megis-shell necklace, in a peacock-blue cutaway coat and tight gray trousers. Auguste was also wearing a pale eyes' suit with a dark brown jacket. The Winnebago Prophet was dressed similarly in shades of green and gray. Auguste had shown Owl Carver and Flying Cloud how to don the pale eyes' clothing, and now they stood stiff and uncomfortable in the room they shared, waiting for Black Hawk to put on his military garb.

Owl Carver said, "And the American pale eyes are not your enemies any more. You have made your mark on the treaty paper."

"This time for all time," said Auguste, putting his heart into his voice, remembering that Black Hawk had signed and broken treaties before.

Black Hawk sighed. "The spirits of hundreds dead at the Bad Axe cry out to me that the Americans are still our enemies."

That was ever Black Hawk's way, Auguste thought, brooding on old wrongs, regretting agreements made with the pale eyes. Irreconcilable.

He will never change. But we must change.

One hope had preoccupied Auguste throughout the month-long journey east, by steamboat to Cincinnati, where he caught up with Black Hawk's party, by horse-drawn coach and finally by that astonishing new pale eyes' invention, the railroad. Auguste must find a way for the Sauk to live in a world where the pale eyes ruled[446] absolutely. He was the only one who understood both Sauk and pale eyes. It was up to him.

"Do you want to say again the words you will speak to Sharp Knife?" Auguste asked.

"Yes," said Black Hawk. "Will he be surprised to hear me speak to him in his own language?"

"Very surprised. He will know you are a very smart man."

Haltingly Black Hawk repeated his speech in English, which Auguste had, at the chief's request, been teaching him. Black Hawk had told Auguste what he wanted to say. Auguste had translated it, and the old leader had learned it word by word.

Smiling, Owl Carver said, "This is just what your vision foretold, White Bear, that Black Hawk would speak to Sharp Knife in Sharp Knife's own lodge."

Yes, and I told you then that it did not mean Black Hawk would conquer Sharp Knife.

But Auguste did not have the heart to remind Owl Carver of the unhappy reality. Silently he helped the reluctant Black Hawk dress.

He wished now that he might have another vision of the future beyond this moment.

It took Black Hawk and his companions two days to travel by steamboat from Fort Monroe to Washington City. As the meeting with Sharp Knife drew closer, Auguste grew more and more fearful. If Jackson and Black Hawk quarreled, the President might decide to throw all of them into prison for life. He might even have them quietly killed. He was the most powerful man between the two oceans.

They slept overnight in the ship's cabin. Auguste dreamed that he stood empty-handed and helpless while Raoul came at him with a huge dagger.

The next day, at about nine in the morning, Black Hawk and his three advisors were riding in an open carriage down Pennsylvania Avenue, with columns of long knives four abreast on horseback before and behind. Auguste felt bewildered listening to the rattle of hooves. Only a few moons ago the long knives were hunting Black Hawk and his band. Now they escorted Black Hawk with honor. The change was dizzying.[447]

Auguste looked about him curiously at the capital of the United States. It was a sprawl of large brick and frame houses, and Pennsylvania Avenue was a muddy, deeply rutted thoroughfare as wide as a cornfield. Behind them on its hill was the Capitol Building, an immense square stone structure topped by three low domes. The air was thick and damp and hot, and moisture-laden gray clouds lay overhead. Auguste longed for the drier climate of Illinois.

Pale eyes and many of their black-skinned slaves stood under the poplar trees lining the sides of the avenue. They waved cheerfully to Black Hawk and clapped their hands. From time to time Black Hawk raised a hand in solemn greeting.

Auguste had expected that they would have to endure jeers and cries of hatred when they were paraded through Washington City. But, surprisingly, people were welcoming them as if they were heroes. It gave him a feeling of hope. His people might learn to live with these people.

Auguste was awed by the size of the President's House, three or four times bigger than Victoire. It stood behind an iron fence at the western end of Pennsylvania Avenue. All this for the Great Father, thought Auguste. It seemed all the more impressive because the entire building was painted white.

Among the Sauk, colors always meant something. Auguste asked Jefferson Davis, who had ridden with their mounted escort, what the white of the President's House meant.

Davis smiled wryly. "Why, that's to hide the scorch marks from where the redcoats burned it in 1814."

But how fitting it seemed that the Great Father of the white people should live in a white palace. Auguste felt a tingle of excitement as the blue-coated officers ushered his party up the front steps.

Owl Carver stuck his hand into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out the gold watch that had once been Pierre de Marion's. He smiled, toothless, at Auguste.

"You told me I could use this to tell when the pale eyes will do things. See now. One of the long knife chiefs told me this." He pointed to the face of the watch. "When the long arrow is here and the short arrow is here, we will meet with Sharp Knife." He had pointed to the numerals XII and XI—eleven o'clock in the morning.

They awaited Sharp Knife in the East Room of the President's House. An officer told the four Sauk to stand abreast, with Black[448] Hawk at the right end of their line and Auguste on the left. The arrangement told Auguste that the long knives considered