Shaman Part 39

"No," said Nancy. "They'll kill you."

Auguste looked across the table at Nancy, staring at him with round blue eyes full of the yearning, now mixed with fear, that he'd seen in them earlier. "Pale eyes," the Sauk term for her people, did no justice to her eyes, the color of the turquoise stone he kept in his medicine bag.

Her blond hair made his blood race. His fingertips tingled with the desire to touch the white skin of her cheek.

Though Nancy's very differentness made him desire her, he knew that he and she could never belong to each other as completely as he and Redbird did. He could have a deep and lasting union with Redbird, a union that would make him feel whole.

But it had been six years since he had seen Redbird, and no woman of the Sauk would go without a man for that long.

_My mother did_, he reminded himself.

But Redbird had probably given in to Wolf Paw and married him. After all, she hadn't had a word from White Bear in all that time.

Marchette's urgent tone refocused his thoughts. "Monsieur Raoul, he stood up on the table and held up a bag full of Spanish dollars--he said there were fifty--and said he would give it to the man who shoots you. And there were many men who cheered at that and boasted they would be the one to win the silver."

Auguste pictured men scattering out all over Smith County, hunting for him. He could almost feel the rifle ball shattering his skull.

"I can't hide in your house forever, Nancy. Sooner or later they'll come looking for me, and I don't want to bring that down on your heads."

Reverend Hale said nothing, but Auguste saw relief in his square face--and grudging respect. But Hale's respect, he thought, would do him little good when he lay dead on the prairie.

Nancy's full lips quivered as she said, "You'll go to the chateau and let them shoot you?"

Auguste realized that his hands were cold with fear, and he rubbed them together to warm them. Hale's house was about ten miles across the prairie from the Mississippi. Could he cover all that distance without being seen and shot?

"I'm not going to the chateau. I'll just see that Marchette gets there safely. Traveling at night, she should have someone go back with her.

Then I'll go on to town. To Nicole and Frank's house. To Grandpapa. I must see him." He turned toward the cook and felt a stabbing in his gut at the sight of her bruised face. She'd suffered that out of love for his father, he thought, and for his sake too.

"If you're seen you'll be shot," said Hale.

_Don't you think I know that?_ he wanted to scream at the minister. What choice did he have? He was like a rabbit surrounded by wolves. He forced calm on himself and spoke with sarcasm.

"Surely you know, Reverend, that Indians are good at getting about unnoticed."

He felt his fear turning to a rising excitement as he recalled the lessons of stealth and cunning he'd learned as a child of the Sauk.

"But what will you do then?" Nancy asked. "How will you get back here?"

Auguste hesitated. Remembering that he was a Sauk had moved his thoughts in a new direction.

_I have been dispossessed. Just as my people have been dispossessed._

Nancy was waiting for him to speak.

"Raoul told me to go back to the woods with the other Indians. Even though the advice came from him, I think that is just what I should do."

Nancy gasped as if he had struck her. There was silence in the cottage for a moment.

"How will you get back to your people?" she said. "How will you find them?"

He smiled, trying to get her to smile back at him. "I know exactly where they are. They've crossed the Mississippi to their hunting grounds in the Ioway Territory. I spent the first fifteen winters of my life there with the British Band."

Auguste remembered his dream of becoming a shaman. It had come back to life a bit with his effort to heal Pierre. Among the pale eyes there was no room for magic. But now he felt he could go back to his own people and find magic again.

Hale said, "An unwise decision, it seems to me. You've been educated.

You've had an opportunity to learn about white Christian civilization.

Your uncle can't take that away from you, and you should not throw it away."

Auguste said, "Reverend, you know what I'm leaving behind. But you don't know what I'm going back to."

Nancy started speaking rapidly, as if she was trying to hold back tears.

"Well, what about these things of yours that Marchette brought here?

There's no way you can carry a trunk on foot even as far as Nicole and Frank's house. Would you like us to keep your things here for you?

Perhaps someday, after you've settled with your tribe"--she swallowed hard--"you could send for them."

Auguste heard the anguish in her voice but decided to take her words at only face value. "Yes, I'd be truly grateful if you'd keep them for me.

The only thing I want to take now is my medicine bundle."

Reverend Hale pursed his lips and snorted, but Auguste ignored him.

Auguste thought a moment. "And I can use the surgical instruments. And at least one book."

"Let it be a Bible," said Hale. Auguste made no answer to that.

As Eli Greenglove struck him down, Auguste remembered, he had been charging at Raoul with his knife in his hand.

"What happened to my knife?"

"I picked it up," said Nancy in a clipped tone. She stood up and went over to an elaborately carved oak sideboard, a handsome piece of furniture that seemed out of place in this simple cabin, and took Auguste's knife out of a drawer. She handed it to him and he slipped it into the leather sheath at his belt.

"Thank you, Nancy. My father gave that to me a long time ago." Their eyes met, and he felt a warmth spread through him. It was going to be hard to leave her.

Nancy remained standing. "Let's go out to the wagon and see what Marchette has brought. I can help you carry your trunk in."

Marchette and Reverend Hale both said at the same time, "I can do that!"

The coincidence made everyone laugh nervously.

"No," said Nancy firmly. "Marchette, you're hurt and tired. Father, why don't you see what consolation you can offer this poor, mistreated woman. Auguste's trunk can't be that heavy. Come on, Auguste."

Before either Hale or Marchette could answer, Nancy had Auguste out the door. He glanced back into the room just before the door closed and saw Hale's fists clenched on either side of his open Bible.

Auguste stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust from the lamplight inside to the darkness out here. A fat moon hung overhead; he judged it would be full in two nights. With this much light he'd be in even more danger tonight. The white-painted steeple of Reverend Hale's little church, next to the cottage where he and Nancy lived, gleamed in the moonlight.

Beside him in the dark Nancy whispered fiercely, "I don't _want_ you to go."

Sadly he said, "I know." He took her hand and squeezed it. Perhaps it was a mistake to do that, but he could not stop himself.

"Come away from the house," she said.

Now he could see the wagon Marchette had come in, the horse tied to a fence post beside the Hales' garden on the south side of the house. The horse s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot and burbled its breath out through its lips.