Shaman Part 33

Pierre said, "You did a Sauk ritual for me just now, did you not?"

"Yes," said White Bear. "It was meant to heal you. Or, if not, to give you strength to bear the pain."

"I do feel better today," Pierre said. "But I must also have a certain rite of the Church if I am to pa.s.s over into G.o.d's love. I sent a week ago to Kaskaskia for your old teacher, Pere Isaac. He should be here any day. I have been a great sinner, White Bear."

It gladdened White Bear's heart that his father called him by his Sauk name.

"You are a _good_ man, my father," he said in the Sauk tongue.

Pierre raised his head, and White Bear saw that the effort pained him.

The burning, sunken eyes turned on White Bear.

"Son, I must have my answer now. Earthmaker let me live all summer, that you might have time to decide. Now you must tell me."

"Can you not let me go back to my people, Father? Why do you ask me to stay here and fight for something I do not want?"

"I see what Raoul has become, and I do not want him to be the master here. I am proud of you and ashamed of him. I want you to be the future of the de Marions, not him. And what of this land that we have loved together, the land that Sun Woman's people have cherished for generations? Shall it fall to Raoul?"

White Bear remembered what Owl Carver had said to Pierre at Saukenuk: _If your land keeps you from doing what you want, then it owns_ you.

"Why couldn't you will the estate to Nicole? She's a de Marion."

"Nicole cannot do battle with Raoul when she has eight children to care for. Her husband is an excellent man, but not a fighter. White Bear, you are the only one."

"I still think as a Sauk, Father. Among the Sauk one man may not own land. And to claim so much would be a great crime."

"In you the heritage of the de Marions and the Sauk claim to this land are indissolubly united. You will be doing this for the Sauk as well as for me and for yourself. I believe that it was G.o.d's plan that I father you, that you spend the first fifteen years of your life among the Sauk and then these past six as a white. Now you have a chance to be rich and to have power. You can learn how to use your wealth to protect your people. You can do much for them if you stay here and fight for what I give you."

Standing over his father, White Bear lifted his head and gazed up at the great stone and log house on the hilltop. He wondered whether he was not being foolishly stubborn, refusing Victoire and the land the chateau governed.

Pierre looked sad and weak and very old. All summer long White Bear, heartbroken, had watched him suffer and diminish. He knew he could do nothing to cure his father, and that his refusal to give him the answer he wanted to hear was prolonging his pain. White Bear felt he would agree to anything, if only it would give peace.

Looking into his father's pleading face, he saw that Pierre was using up his last strength. White Bear could not let the final word Pierre might hear from him be no.

White Bear could no longer separate his own anguish from Pierre's.

He drew a deep breath in through his nostrils. "Yes, Father. I agree. I will take what you offer me."

The look on Pierre's face was like a sunrise. White Bear saw a warm, pink color flowing back into the pallid cheeks.

Pierre took White Bear's hand. His touch felt cool, but his grip was firm.

"Thank you, my son. I will walk the Trail of Souls with a happy heart."

_Yes, you will go in peace, but I must stay to fight and suffer_, White Bear thought. But he was glad that he could make his father happy. He leaned back against the tree and watched huge white clouds drift over the distant river.

"Let us make this a sacred agreement, son," Pierre said. "Bring the calumet and let us smoke together."

"Yes, Father." White Bear sighed and stood up. Slowly, as if he were dragging chains, he walked up the gra.s.sy slope to the front door of the house.

As he pa.s.sed through the great hall he saw Armand Perrault, seeming almost as broad as he was tall, staring at him. Armand's eyes were as small and full of hatred as a cornered boar's. Feeling a chill, realizing this man was one of those he would have to fight when the time came, White Bear nodded to him as he went up the stairs to Pierre's room. Armand stood motionless.

A short time later White Bear was back at Pierre's side with the feather-bedecked calumet and a lit candle protected by a gla.s.s chimney.

From his own room he had brought down the deerskin pouch holding his small supply of Turkish tobacco, purchased in New York. It would serve.

All tobacco was a sacred gift of Earthmaker.

He dribbled the moist brown grains through his fingertips into the pipe's narrow bowl and packed the tobacco down gently. Pierre's faded blue eyes, the whites a sickly yellow color, watched him closely.

He held the candle flame to the tobacco and drew in a series of rapid puffs, feeling the smoke burning his mouth. When the pipe was well-lit, he turned it and held the mouthpiece to Pierre's lips.

Pierre took a long puff, held it in his mouth and let it out. White Bear's heart lurched with fear as Pierre began to cough. Holding his throat with one hand, Pierre gestured with his other hand for White Bear to draw on the pipe.

The sight of beads of blood on his father's lips horrified White Bear.

He took a corner of Pierre's blanket and wiped away the bright red drops. Then he took the pipe from his father's hands.

Grieving for the freedom he was giving up, he pulled the hot smoke in till it filled his mouth. He let its bitterness sink into his tongue as bitterness sank into his heart--the realization that this promise would cut him off forever from Redbird, from Sun Woman, from Owl Carver, from the life he longed to return to. He let the smoke out with a long sigh and laid the pipe down. He felt as if his life was over.

But he felt some relief, too, because he was no longer torn by indecision. Now Pierre and he were content to talk of small things--how full the corn bins were this year, what White Bear had seen and heard in New York City, whether it would rain again tomorrow.

Pierre's voice grew softer and softer, and gradually he drifted off to sleep. His grip on White Bear's hand was still strong. White Bear let his head rest against the tree trunk and returned to a favorite childhood pastime, trying to see animal shapes in the clouds.

He was not surprised when the Bear appeared at his side. The huge head, covered with fur white as the clouds, pushed past him, poking its black nose into Pierre's shoulder. Somehow White Bear knew that Pierre would feel no fear when he awoke, even though he had never seen the Bear before.

Pierre's eyes opened, and he looked up at the Bear and, as White Bear had expected, only sighed and smiled.

"Eh bien, je suis content." And Pierre got to his feet as easily as if he had never been sick.

Pierre did not say good-bye, but White Bear had not expected him to.

They had said their good-byes already. White Bear remained where he was, sitting with his back to the maple tree.

With his left hand lifted to rest on the high hump at the Bear's shoulder, Pierre walked down the slope. White Bear saw, rising from the rim of the hill, the arc of a rainbow.

Pierre walked the rainbow path with the long, vigorous stride of a young man. The Bear accompanied him with a rolling gait, looking like the biggest dog that ever lived walking beside a hunter. White Bear smiled to watch them.

They climbed the archway of color that leaped out over the Great River until at last they disappeared in the dazzling disk of the sun.

White Bear's head fell back against the bark of the tree, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, his father was lying beside him, still holding his hand. But Pierre's grip was without strength. He lay with his head sunk in the pillow, his mouth fallen open, the whites of his eyes showing between half-closed lids. He was not breathing.

White Bear's tears came hot. He heard a voice--his own voice--rising in his chest.

"Hu-hu-huuuu ... Whu-whu-whuuuu ..." It was the sound mourners made at Sauk funerals.

He wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth, sobbing and keening in the way of his people. Soon he would have to get up and go into the chateau and tell people Pierre de Marion was dead. He must be the first to bring the news to poor Grandpapa. But for a while he would sit alone with his father and wail for him.

Sitting on the ground under the maple tree, he looked down and was not surprised to see marks in the bare, damp earth. The prints of wide pads twice the size of a man's feet. At the end of each print, deep holes left by five claws.