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

White Bear, not upon getting back this land, but just upon walking your path."

The deep lines in Owl Carver's face were drawn downward with pain, and Auguste felt the crushing weight of grief as he realized they were both thinking the same thought—that they would never see each other again.

[459]

24
Challenge

Following the dimly seen figures of Guichard and his horse, Auguste breathlessly climbed a narrow, steep pathway that switched back and forth up the steep, wooded hillside. He led his horse by the reins. Halfway up the hill they came to a flat place, an open clearing. Auguste smelled wood smoke. The windows of a cottage glowed yellow, promising safety.

While Auguste waited in the dark, Guichard stabled the horses, then knocked on the cottage door.

"We have arrived, monsieur," he called, and pushed the door inward.

Auguste blinked in the light of a dozen candles set on a circular chandelier. Across the room by the fireplace a book fell to the rug, a Kentucky quilt was swept back and a pair of long, skinny legs draped in a nightshirt swung over the side of a chaise longue.

"Grandpapa, don't get up." But Elysée was already hobbling across the room to Auguste's outstretched arms.

Elysée buried his white head in his grandson's chest. Auguste held his grandfather tightly; the answering embrace was not as strong as it had been even a few months ago when the old man had visited him in his cell. The fragility and weakness saddened Auguste.

Bare feet peeping from under another nightshirt pattered down a ladder from the second-story loft. Before he reached the bottom, Woodrow jumped and rushed to hug Auguste.

"I been staying here ever since we found out you were coming. So I could tell Miss Nancy right away when you got here."[460]

Nancy. His heart raced as he remembered her in the witness chair defending him and standing up to Raoul's abuse. He badly wanted to see her, to hold her in his arms.

But could he allow himself to feel so much for Nancy, when he hoped to bring Redbird here?

That is looking too far down the trail. I may not live to see Redbird again.

Out there in the dark the enemy might be gathering even now.

"You still live with Miss Nancy, Woodrow?"

"She's adopted me." The boy stared down at Elysée's small Chinese rug. "I guess that makes me your son too."

Auguste understood what Woodrow meant. Auguste had taken Nancy as his wife according to Sauk custom, and Woodrow knew it. He saw Elysée's puzzled look, and knew that he might have difficulty explaining later. But he must not hesitate now. He squeezed Woodrow's bony shoulder.

"I'm proud."

"I'm proud of you, White Bear. I'm glad you came back. I'm off to Miss Nancy's soon as I get my britches on." The boy scampered back up the ladder.

"Guichard, go get Nicole and Frank," said Elysée as he drew Auguste across the room and gently pushed him into a chair.

"They'll be sleeping, Grandpapa," Auguste protested.

"They would be furious if we did not wake them," said Elysée, his falcon's face severe. "And it is safest that we meet late at night."

Auguste wondered, was any time safe? Did not the enemy have eyes and ears for the night?

Auguste threw off the riding coat Guichard had given him in Galena and sat down in a straight wooden chair by the chaise longue, close to the welcome warmth of the fire. He noticed a pistol and a rifle mounted on brackets over the mantel, with two powder horns hanging beside them. Guichard filled three small glasses with an inch of brandy apiece, drained one quickly and left the other two and the decanter on a small table within easy reach.

"I felt ten years younger when I saw Raoul's face turn purple when he came into court with his rogues and heard that you had been spirited away." Elysée wiped his wet cheeks with a blue kerchief. "I cry so easily. I am getting old."

"I am crying, too, Grandpapa."[461]

Elysée turned a stern but still moist eye on him. "Enough crying, then. Tell me everything you have seen and done since the trial."

Auguste described his journey to Washington City and the meeting with Andrew Jackson.

Woodrow, dressed now for riding, lingered to listen as Auguste repeated Black Hawk's speech to Jackson. Then he solemnly shook hands with Auguste and left.

"Be careful out there," Auguste called after him.

Elysée said, "President Jackson, what sort of man is he?"

"His nickname, Old Hickory, is apt. He's hard, very hard."

Auguste told about his refusal of Jackson's offer of a post and being cut out of Black Hawk's touring party.

Elysée shook his head doubtfully. "To take a position in the government might have opened up an excellent career for you."

Auguste shook his head. "I knew what Jackson wanted to use me for. The Bear spirit would tear my heart out if I ever consented."

Elysée raised an eyebrow. "You still believe in such things—bear spirits and all that?"

Auguste thought of his resolve to succeed as a white man. Even so, the Bear spirit was as real as his grandfather.

"I don't just believe, Grandpapa. I know."

Elysée's reply was cut off when a weeping Nicole pushed the door open, followed by Frank and Guichard. Auguste held his aunt in his arms, rejoicing in the strength he felt in her ample body. Guichard brought more chairs from a rear room and set them close to the fire. They sat in a circle, their backs to the dark outside.

"All this going from house to house isn't safe," said Nicole. "Raoul is probably having all of us watched. He won't feel he really owns Victoire as long as Auguste is alive."

Frank said, "He might know that President Jackson sent you back from Washington City. We've been getting regular reports from back East about Chief Black Hawk's tour, and your name wasn't mentioned."

"Do you have any news about the rest of my people?" Auguste asked.

Nicole said, "The Sauk prisoners who walked through here are being held at Rock Island."

Auguste said, "I must go there and find Redbird and Eagle Feather."[462]

Hearing that she was still in Illinois, he wanted more than ever to rescue her from hunger and fear and captivity, to bring her and Eagle Feather here to Victoire.

If I live to do that.

"Will you join the other Sauk in Ioway after you find your family?" Frank asked.

Auguste shook his head. "No, I must take my rightful place here. I can no longer live as a Sauk. If we are to live and prosper, we must live as the whites do, each man holding and tending his own land. I want to show my people how it can be done. I want to take Victoire back."

A silence filled the room. A log on the fire broke in two with a loud crack, spattering sparks on the screen.

Auguste looked at each of them in turn. There was worry in Elysée's eyes. Nicole's full face was pale with fear, and Frank looked bewildered. Guichard, standing against the wall, sipped brandy.

Frank said, "But Raoul—he'll try to kill you."

"I mean to let him try. I mean to challenge him."

"You can't." Nicole's voice was shrill. "He's got dozens of men behind him."

"He will have to fight me man to man. Raoul can hold his place only as long as his followers think he is the strongest and bravest. They don't respect him the way they used to. He made too many mistakes. And some of those mistakes have cost lives among his own men. If he tries to kill me without fighting me, he'll slip further in their eyes. If he loses the respect of his men, he loses everything."

Nicole said, "But you're going up against someone who has killed many times."

True. And he killed Iron Knife, the biggest and strongest brave in the British Band.

"I must do this," said Auguste. "I have never killed, but I know how to use weapons. I must do it for my mother. For all the Sauk that he has killed. And so that my father's will may be done. I believe the Bear spirit will help me."

He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. If he let these people persuade him, he might give up and run away.

Elysée groaned. "The Bear spirit again. Auguste, think how many men have gone into battle believing God and the saints and the angels would help them. And have died."[463]

Auguste wished he could explain. Maybe for white men the spirits did not exist. But he knew that his visions were real. The Bear spirit was not just another part of his mind. It had a life of its own. It had left the marks of its claws on his body. It had left its paw print in the earth beside Pierre's body when it took his spirit away.

"If it was wrong for me to try to fight Raoul, Grandpapa, I would receive a warning."

Elysée shook his head sadly, disbelieving. Auguste was sad, too, thinking how much more there was to the world than Grandpapa would ever let himself know.

The Seth Thomas clock on the mantel over the fireplace chimed once, making them all jump. One o'clock in the morning. Auguste, at the end of a journey by railroad, steamboat, coach and horseback that had taken weeks, felt a bone-deep ache of exhaustion. But it was only bodily fatigue. Now that he was in Victor he was excited, and his mind was wide awake.

Frank put an ink-stained hand on Auguste's shoulder.

"Listen, Auguste. Even if you were to succeed in killing Raoul, you wouldn't get Victoire back."

"Why not?"

"Things have changed around here. People don't hold with the idea that every man should carry a gun and be a law unto himself. They've seen that only leads to a gang like Raoul and his rogues running things. They've decided they wanted the county run by those they've picked. And men like David Cooper and Tom Slattery came forward. Slattery is our new sheriff."

Elysée said, "The Victor Visitor has had much to do with this change."

Frank shrugged modestly and went on, "Right after your trial a group of men in Victor and on the farms hereabouts, mostly newcomers, formed an organization called the Regulators. They said it was a disgrace that the Army had to guard you during your trial and that you had to flee from the town when it was over. They're determined to keep order in Smith County, and Slattery has sworn them all in as deputies to make what they do legal. Things are tense now between the Regulators and Raoul's men, but the Regulators have more numbers and more spirit."

"Well then," said Auguste, exasperated, "why wouldn't these Regulators support me if I kill Raoul?"[464]

"Because dueling is against the law. You'd stand trial again, for murder. And, by God, much as it might pain him, Cooper will hang you."

"And if you don't kill Raoul," said Nicole, "you'll die and he will still have Victoire."

Auguste felt as if he were struggling in a net of heavy ropes. His hands and heart ached for revenge on Raoul. Even if he did not get Victoire back.

But that was madness, to kill Raoul and be hanged for it.

"What can I do, then?" he asked in a low voice.

Nicole said, "David Cooper still has the papers that prove Pierre adopted you and left Victoire to you."

For just a moment Auguste felt his burden of fear grow lighter. He would fight Raoul in a courtroom. No one need die.

But no—he waved the idea away.

"They acquitted me of murder, but a jury of new settlers in Illinois is not likely to make an Indian the biggest landholder in the county."

Nicole said, "They would, because they would know that if they found for you and against Raoul, they would be finding for the whole family, not just you."

Auguste said, "Even if I could get a fair trial, I wouldn't live to hear the verdict."

"Yes, you would," said Frank. "Fear of the Regulators would stop Raoul from murdering you."

Auguste felt the ropy net tightening. Three moons ago his life had been in the hands of twelve white men. Now Frank was asking him to trust unknown white men again. And again, it seemed, he had no choice.

"Is there nothing else I can do?" The words came out as a cry of pain.

"You said you want to live as whites do," said Frank. "Then you have to start to think and act like a civilized white man. Seek your remedy in the law."

More than once, Auguste thought, he'd seen that civilized white men were as quick to flout the law as to seek a remedy in it. But, resigned, he slumped in his chair, his hands hanging down between his knees.

"I will