Shaman Part 115

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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Hawk at the right end of their line and Auguste on the left. The arrangement told Auguste that the long knives considered him the least important member of the Sauk delegation, an estimate with which he agreed. A dozen long knife colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants, all in blue jackets and gold braid, stood in two groups flanking the Sauk.

Even though he had never had any reason to doubt his shaman's vision, Auguste was surprised at how exactly he had seen the room they were standing in--its rows of windows with blue and yellow drapes, its three glittering chandeliers and the four huge mirrors in gilded frames facing each other across an immense blue and yellow carpet with a red border.

Under each mirror was a fireplace. Four fireplaces, to keep one room warm in winter.

The long arrow on Owl Carver's watch had moved from XII to VI, and the old man was uttering doubts of its power to tell him anything when a black servant opened a door at the far end of the room and all the long knives in the room drew themselves up stiffly, clicking their heels together. Sharp Knife came slowly into the room.

Andrew Jackson in person looked just as he had in Auguste's vision, only more terrifying. Whatever unknown red man had first called him Sharp Knife had chosen aptly. With his long, narrow face and his extraordinarily tall, thin body, he looked like a blade come to life. A shock of white hair stood up as stiff as Wolf Paw's crest on top of his head, and thick white eyebrows shadowed eyes as bright as splinters of steel.

Raoul's words of over a year ago came back to Auguste: _I'd like to see what an old Indian killer like Andy Jackson would say to you._

Auguste felt he was face to face with the power that had destroyed the Sauk. This man, with his own hand, had slain Indians by the hundreds, had uprooted whole nations and driven them westward. This was the leader of those endless swarms of murderous, grasping pale eyes who, territory by territory, were driving the red people from their homes. This was the man who willed that white people should fill all the land from ocean to ocean.

But Sharp Knife was also frail as an icicle. He moved one step at a time, as if in great pain, and Auguste sensed that he was afflicted with many ailments and troubled by many old wounds. Auguste saw in him an immeasurably powerful spirit that kept him going in spite of so much sickness and pain.

"Which of you is the one that can speak English?" Jackson asked. Auguste had expected his voice to be like thunder, but it shrilled like a knife on a grindstone.

Feeling a painful hollow in his belly Auguste said, "I am, Mr.

President." Only this morning Davis had told him that was the way Jackson was to be addressed. "I am White Bear, also called Auguste de Marion."

When Jackson turned his gaze on him, Auguste felt it with the force of an icy gale.

"Colonel Taylor wrote me a long letter about you. I want to have a talk with you later. Now, tell the chief I am happy to greet him as a friend.

Tell him there will be peace between me and my red children as long as the gra.s.s shall grow and the rivers shall run."

A talk later? What did Jackson have in mind for him? Auguste wondered as he translated for Black Hawk.

"Now shall I speak to him in his tongue?" Black Hawk asked.

"This would be a good time," said Auguste.

Black Hawk took a step forward, leaving Owl Carver, Flying Cloud and Auguste standing behind him. Auguste saw that Black Hawk was shorter than Jackson, but broader in chest and shoulders. And, Auguste believed, stronger and healthier though they were about the same age.

Black Hawk raised his right hand in greeting and said in English, "I am a man. And you are a man like me."

Jackson looked startled, then stood very straight and stared intently at Black Hawk's bronze face as the war leader spoke the memorized words slowly, one at a time.

"We did not expect to conquer your people. I took up the tomahawk to avenge great wrongs that we could no longer bear. If I had not been willing to fight, the young men would have said Black Hawk is too old to be chief. They would have said Black Hawk is a woman. They would have said he is no Sauk. So I raised the war whoop. You are a war leader, and you understand me. I need say no more. I ask you to give me your hand in friends.h.i.+p and to let us return to our people."

"A very fine speech," said Jackson. "I was not told that you spoke English, Chief."

Auguste repeated the President's comment in Sauk.

Black Hawk said, "Tell him that you taught me how to say what I wanted to say in the pale eyes' tongue."

Jackson grunted. "I see. Yes, White Bear, you and I will have to talk.

Well, tell him that we will send him back to his people when we are certain we'll have no more trouble from them."

Auguste wanted to say, _Almost all the people who caused you trouble are dead_. But he merely translated Jackson's words for Black Hawk.

_Why does Jackson want to talk to me?_ Auguste did not like the sound of it. Did Sharp Knife have in mind some treachery against Black Hawk?

Black Hawk said, "Tell the Great Father that the Sauk will be quiet as long as the pale eyes do no more harm to them." Auguste had a sinking feeling, as he translated this, that he might well be reopening hostilities right here in the President's House.

Jackson answered, "We never have done any wrong to your tribe. When we buy land from people we expect them to honor their agreements."

_Two stubborn men_, thought Auguste. Black Hawk was right in saying that they were alike.

When he told Black Hawk what Jackson had said, the chief answered, "Say to him that I have thought much about this. I do not think land can be bought and sold. Earthmaker put it there for our use. If people leave their land, then someone else can take it and use it. But it is not something like a blanket or a pot, that can be carried away by its owner. It belongs to all Earthmaker's children."

Black Hawk's words worried Auguste, giving him the feeling that a storm was about to break. Jackson, he knew, was a hot-tempered man, a man who had killed others in duels. Black Hawk might be bringing further trouble on himself, on all of them, by speaking so candidly to Sharp Knife.

He considered changing Black Hawk's words to a speech more agreeable-sounding. But that would be a kind of treachery, he decided.

Out of loyalty to Black Hawk, he must convey his meaning exactly to Sharp Knife. So, watching with inner trembling as Jackson frowned and shook his head, he faithfully translated.

Jackson looked directly at Auguste, not at Black Hawk, as he answered.

"You Indians just do not understand that land is the source of all the goods of civilization. That's why the white man is so much richer and more powerful than the red man. Among us, every piece of land is owned by a particular man, and that man makes good use of his land to produce wealth. Never mind, don't translate that," he ordered. "It's just as well the chief and I have no more words on this point right now."

Auguste felt deep relief that Black Hawk's words had not angered Jackson. Unsmiling, the President took a stiff step toward Black Hawk and thrust out his hand. Black Hawk reached out to him, and they clasped hands solemnly, staring into each other's eyes. Auguste felt a s.h.i.+ver run through him at the sight of that handclasp. Now Black Hawk's war with the pale eyes was truly at an end.

The white officers standing on either side of Jackson and Black Hawk clapped their hands, and after a moment of hesitation Auguste, Owl Carver and the Winnebago Prophet applauded too.

Jackson said, "Lieutenant Davis, take the chief and these two older medicine men on a tour of the President's House and the gardens." He turned his blue eyes on Auguste. "White Bear--Mr. de Marion--I'd like you to accompany me to my office for a private word."

Now Auguste's heart pounded as he followed Jackson, accompanied by two soldiers, up a flight of stairs. He sensed that Jackson must have demands in mind, and knew that because of what he had been--_old Indian killer_--the Sauk would not be helped by his yielding to those demands.

But what might refusal mean? Imprisonment? Death?

Jackson's office was a large room, well lit by big gla.s.s windows, where the President's polished oak desk was piled high with papers. The two soldiers stationed themselves on either side of the door, and as Auguste entered behind Jackson he saw a guard with a bayonet-mounted rifle standing like a wooden statue in one corner of the room. Auguste wondered whether there was always a guard there, or only when Jackson had an Indian visitor. Jackson folded his tall body inch by painful inch into a large mahogany chair. With a gesture he invited Auguste to sit opposite him in a comfortable chair with curving wooden arms and legs.