Shaman Part 112

"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 pa.s.sage 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."

_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 Elysee 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.

"h.e.l.l, there weren't no Injuns in ambush in the woods," Greenglove drawled. "'Twas plain as day what was going on. They was a few scouts that come to watch what happened to the peace party. Most of our men were carrying a right powerful load of whiskey. Some of the men saw the scouts hiding in the woods and got excited. Colonel Raoul, he used that as an excuse to order us to finish off the Injuns with the white flag."

"And you shot Auguste?" Ford asked.

"I give him that ear." Greenglove pointed in the general direction of Auguste's right ear. "Hoped he'd be smart enough to play possum after he was. .h.i.t."

"Why did you choose not to kill Auguste? Did you think it would be murder?"

Greenglove cackled scornfully. "h.e.l.l, that never stopped me before. No, it was real simple." He paused, and the courtroom was still. "I saved that boy's life because I wanted Colonel Raoul to marry my daughter, Clarissa."

And suddenly Eli Greenglove started to cry. Tears ran down his bony cheeks and sobs shook his lean frame.

Ford stood looking wide-eyed, turned to stare at Auguste, who himself was dumbfounded, having never seen a man like Eli Greenglove cry.

Bennett broke the embarra.s.sed silence. "Your Honor, I don't see what this man's daughter has to do with the case."

Greenglove's moist eyes narrowed to angry slits. "Just shut up a minute, lawyer, and I'll tell you. My daughter lived with Raoul de Marion for seven years and bore him two kids, but he wouldn't marry her because she weren't good enough for him. No, he had to have the preacher's daughter.

That lady, Miss Hale." He pointed toward the spectators. "But she was sweet on Mr. Pierre's boy, Auguste, and I could see he had an eye for her too. As long as Auguste was alive, I figured there'd be a chance that Miss Hale would run off with him. So I made sure to keep him alive."

Auguste's heart sank. If the jury believed what Greenglove was saying now, wouldn't that make them think that there must have been something between him and Nancy when she was kidnapped by the Sauk?

Greenglove's lips drew back from his stained teeth. "But then that sonofab.i.t.c.h Raoul had to go and kill Black Hawk's men that brought the white flag. There weren't no real war before that happened. If he'd sent them messengers on to General Atkinson, the whole thing would've been over in May. Every one of them white people, soldiers and farmers, men, women and children, was killed by that man there." He pointed a skinny finger in Raoul's direction. "Meanin' my daughter Clarissa and my two grandkids."

"Your daughter was a s.l.u.t, Greenglove," Raoul shouted. "I'd've never married her if she lived to be a hundred." Auguste turned and saw him standing in the back of the courtroom, Perrault and a few more of his bully boys flanking him.

"Oh?" said Greenglove in a whisper that somehow was loud enough for the whole court to hear. "You are very lucky they took my rifle away from me, Colonel Raoul."

Ford said, "I think that's all. Mr. Bennett, do you wish to cross-examine?"

Raoul, from the back, cut in, "Judge, this man is a deserter from my militia battalion. He's been on the run for the past three months. What he's said here is worth nothing."

Cooper frowned at Greenglove, then at Raoul. "I don't see what difference that makes. They bring convicted criminals out of prison cells to testify."

Ford said, "In fact, if this man risked arrest to come here, that makes his testimony all the more believable. To say nothing of going all the way to New Orleans to bring Mr. Wegner back."

"No, it doesn't show him any more honest," Bennett spoke up. "It just means he wants revenge against Raoul de Marion."

Cooper rapped with his mallet. "The testimony can stand. The jury'll decide what it's worth. Lieutenant Davis, have your corporals see that Mr. Wegner and Mr. Greenglove reach the town limits safely. And then, Lieutenant, I'd like a word with you. Meanwhile, the lawyers for each side can sum up."

Flanked by the two blue-coated corporals, Greenglove and Otto Wegner started side by side toward the courtroom door, Wegner's peg leg thumping on the plank floor.

"You go to h.e.l.l, Eli!" Raoul snarled as Greenglove pa.s.sed him.

Greenglove laughed. "I got a better idea from ol' Otto here. I'm a-going to Texas!"

The two men walked out the door as a silence fell over the courtroom.

Auguste wondered, had their testimony saved him? They had told the truth about what happened at Old Man's Creek, but since when had truth meant anything to the pale eyes? If those twelve men sitting in church pews on the right side of the courtroom decided they wanted to hang him, they would hang him even if their Jesus spirit himself came into the courtroom and told the truth about him.

And after seeing the slaughter at the Bad Axe, could Auguste doubt that killing all red people was what all pale eyes most wanted to do?

Cooper and the lieutenant talked quietly at the judge's table. When Cooper called on Bennett to sum up, the prosecutor rose and sidled over to the jury.

"About the supposed adoption papers and Pierre de Marion's alleged will, Mrs. Russell's claim that Mr. Raoul de Marion ordered these papers destroyed is hearsay. She has no direct knowledge that Mr. de Marion gave any such instructions to her husband. More important--if Pierre de Marion adopted Auguste, that makes Auguste a U.S. citizen, and his partic.i.p.ating in acts of war by the Sauk nation against the United States is treason. Auguste made war on his own flag.

"Whether Raoul de Marion did right or wrong in running his nephew off Victoire, gentlemen, one thing is sure. Auguste went back to the British Band carrying a powerful grudge against this place and these people.

So, I put it to you, he decided that if he could not be a white landowner, he would destroy the white landowners.

"And he had the power to do it, because the Indians would listen to him.

They knew him as a witch doctor, and they also knew that he had been educated among whites. And so he used his power to push Black Hawk toward war. He is an accomplice to the murder of every white man, woman and child killed by his fellow tribesmen.