Shaman Part 134

Ginnie, the middle Fleming girl, had followed a cardinal into the mine entrance; once the child had seen the body, the little redbird had flown out again and disappeared.

Raoul's rifle and his pistol, both of which he apparently had fired just before he died, lay beside him. His Bowie knife had fallen a short distance away, as if he had thrown it.

When Auguste and Grandpapa had gone to see the body laid out in Dr.

Surrey's examining room, Auguste had been shocked to see the grimace of terror frozen on Raoul's face--jaws wide apart, lips drawn back from his teeth, eyes bulging. A good thing the light in the mine had been dim and the Fleming girl hadn't gotten a good look at that face.

Auguste and Dr. Surrey had both carefully examined the body and could find no cause of death. Surrey opined that Raoul had gone mad hiding in the mine and had been frightened to death by his own hallucinations.

Auguste knew what had killed Raoul. He vividly remembered his wanderings in the other world, in that endless prairie, with Redbird.

Auguste could only imagine what the encounter between Raoul and the White Bear had been like. It had taken place in the other world. The White Bear spirit must have attacked and destroyed Raoul's soul--if a soul could be destroyed. Like the men on spirit journeys who died because their souls never returned to their bodies, Raoul's body had been deprived of life. The White Bear could leave its mark in this world when it chose, but usually it left tangible signs as a mark of favor.

This time the only mark it had left was that look of terror on Raoul's dead face.

And Auguste had paid the price for having sent the White Bear against Raoul: he had lost Redbird.

_For the rest of my life I will never see a cardinal without my heart breaking all over again._

They would bury Raoul, with a ma.s.s, in the little cemetery overlooking the river, just like any other member of the de Marion family. There would be no revenge after death. Pere Isaac was coming up from Kaskaskia to officiate.

_And I'm afraid it will not be long before Grandpapa lies down to rest not far from Raoul._

Even as Auguste had begun to get out of bed and walk about, Elysee seemed to be spending more and more time sleeping. One day, Auguste expected, he would simply not wake up at all. Though he mourned in expectation of the old man's pa.s.sing, it was with a warm feeling that Elysee had done much, had walked a long trail with honor. It was now right that his spirit move on and his body return to the earth.

_I am thinking like a Sauk._

And then it all swept over him in a wave of anguish. He saw the happiness he had lost. He saw the gardens and long houses of Saukenuk, cool and pleasant in the summer, the snow-covered, warm winter wickiups in Ioway. The hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, the feasts, the dances. The beloved faces drew close before his eyes--Sun Woman, Floating Lily, Eagle Feather, Owl Carver, Black Hawk.

Redbird.

He gave an agonized shout that reverberated in the stone chimney that towered over him. He beat his chest with his fist again and again, until a bolt of pain shot through him where Raoul's bullet had pierced him. He did not want to stop hurting himself, but he could not hit his chest anymore. His head hung down and he sobbed brokenly.

He had sacrificed too much. He had given up everything he really loved to become a prisoner of this place. He was trapped on this land. The ancient wealth of the de Marions held him in golden chains.

_I could ride away from all this, even now. I could take a horse and swim it across the Mississippi--the Great River--and I could find the Sauk and live with them again. I could be free._

Redbird had said she had become Wolf Paw's woman. Anger boiled him at the thought of that. But he knew it was the healer in her who had chosen that path. As she had said, Wolf Paw was one of the last braves of the British Band, and by healing him she healed the people.

And was he not lying to himself to think he could do anything for the Sauk here? How could he resist the immense power of men like Sharp Knife, who, he was sure, were bent on exterminating the Sauk, on exterminating all the red people on this continent?

To make the de Marion estate prosper he would have to learn to perform a thousand tasks about which he knew almost nothing. He must give all his heart and mind and strength to this domain if it was to flourish. That was the burden Star Arrow, Pierre de Marion, had laid on him. In taking up that burden, might he not forget his other tie, to the Sauk, so far away?

But it was his being a Sauk that chained him so irrevocably to Victoire--the afternoon he smoked the calumet with Star Arrow--the Turtle calling on him to be guardian of this land.

Somehow he must try both to be master of Victoire and to fulfill his destiny as a Sauk.

_This land, right here, once belonged to my people. If I leave it, it will never belong to them again._

_I will dedicate my possessions to them. I will send them what they need. I will use the influence my wealth gives me with the lawyers and politicians to protect them, so they will never be driven from their land again, never be ma.s.sacred again._

He stood up and walked away from the charred wreckage of Victoire into the fields that surrounded it. The farmhands had planted corn last spring, but the Sauk raiders had burned it, and some prairie gra.s.s had come back. It had only had time to grow chest high before the frost killed it, and as he pushed his way through it he could see fields beyond, where the yellow horizon met the sky.

Nancy would share this land with him. She would love him, and they would raise Woodrow together and have children of their own. He loved Nancy, though there were places in him that only Redbird could touch. Those places would be sealed off now. Hand in hand Nancy and he would walk their path together.

The World was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.

But he would never stop missing Redbird and Eagle Feather.

And he would never stop wis.h.i.+ng he could live out his life as a Sauk.

Inwardly he would always be a Sauk. The Bear spirit would always be with him to guide him.

_I failed the Sauk when they needed me. I warned them not to go to war, but I could not make them listen. They need a shaman who will make them listen._

He thought of the many, more than a thousand, who had died following Black Hawk, and a sudden, crus.h.i.+ng grief struck him to his knees.

"Hu-hu-hu-u-u-u-u," he wailed, stretching his arms wide and lifting his face up to look at long, faint streaks of cloud that stretched across the sky. "Whu-whu-whu-u-u-u-u."

He tore open his coat and his s.h.i.+rt. Kneeling, he could see only a patch of blue directly overhead, framed by the ta.s.sels of the prairie gra.s.s that rose up all around him. Staring up into the blue he wailed for the dead for a long time.

He felt something wet running down his chest. He felt the cold grip of fear on his heart. When he had struck his breast before, had he reopened the hole Raoul's bullet made?

He looked down. Beads of dark red were pus.h.i.+ng their way through the five claw scars. Further down his chest they ran together as rivulets.

Five streams of blood trickled down his stomach.

The sight of flowing blood lifted his heart. It was a sign that the Bear spirit was still with him. He bent forward and put out his hands to grip the land at the roots of the prairie gra.s.s. His fingers dug into the ashes of corn stalks and the roots of gra.s.s. A bright red spot appeared on the ground between his hands and knees, and then another.

_My blood drips into the soil. I give myself to this land._

"I hold this land for the Sauk nation," he said. First he said it in Sauk, then he repeated it again in English.

He pushed himself to his feet and drew from its sheath at his waist the knife Star Arrow had left him long ago.

Standing, he could see over the waving gra.s.s. He flourished the knife blade at the vast dome of sky covering the prairie. He faced toward the east, whence came those waves of pale eyes that had driven his people from their homes. Whence, too, had come his father and one of his grandfathers.

The last Sauk shaman this side of the Great River held up his knife so the sun glinted from it.

"I will defend this land!" he shouted.

As long as he lived, he would give his blood to this earth.

Afterword

The reader may suspect the author of a bit of frontier-style exaggeration, with one President and three future Presidents--two of the United States and one of the Confederacy--playing parts in this novel.

But it's a historic fact that Colonel Zachary Taylor and Lieutenant Jefferson Davis were among the regular Army officers who pursued Black Hawk's people. The two ultimately drew even closer, when Davis married Taylor's daughter Sarah. Davis resigned from the military and took his new bride back to Mississippi, where they settled on a plantation. But the daughter of U.S. President Zachary Taylor was not to be First Lady of the Confederacy; she died of malaria a few months after the wedding.

And after the Civil War Jefferson Davis saw the inside of Fort Monroe once again--as a prisoner.