Shaman Part 93

White Bear slumped in despair, realizing that he was no longer a free man. He looked about him. The trees, the birds, the Great River, they were all free, but he was in the power of his enemies. The world was a darker place. Black Hawk's war, for him, was over. He wished he could have warned his people about the approaching army of long knives. And also, his heart ached for the Sauk he was unable to warn of the second long knife army. A yearning for Redbird and Eagle Feather and Floating Lily seemed almost to pull his heart from his body. He prayed that they had safely left the Bad Axe country by now and headed north with Black Hawk. Probably he would never see them again. Probably the long knives would kill him. With a sigh, he turned his horse's head in the direction Wave had pointed.

While his regiment rode by, the long knife war chief, a stocky man with a long face, thick eyebrows and hard blue eyes, stood by the side of the trail facing White Bear. He was Colonel Zachary Taylor, he had told White Bear. A burly, red-faced soldier with a sergeant's three chevrons on his forearm stood beside Taylor staring at White Bear with open hatred.

"What are you, a renegade white man?" Taylor demanded. "How come you speak good English?"

"I am Sauk, Colonel. My name is White Bear. My father was white, and he took me to be educated among the whites for several years."

"Well, White Bear, what were you doing on this trail? Chasing the white woman and the boy we just picked up?"

"It was I who brought them to you."

Taylor snorted. "You expect me to believe that?"

"Miss Hale will tell you it is true."

"Well, we already sent her and the boy back to Fort Crawford with an escort, so that will have to wait. But you do have her name right. Where are the rest of the Sauk? Trying to cross the Mississippi?"

"I cannot help you, Colonel. Any more than you would give information to the Sauk, if we captured you."

Taylor's sergeant said, "Sir, let me and a couple of my men take this half-breed for a stroll in the woods. We'll find out what you want to know."

"No, Benson, no." Taylor brushed the suggestion aside with an irritated wave of his hand. "Showing how they can resist torture is a regular game with Indians. He'll just sing Indian songs till he dies, and listening to that would be worse agony for you than anything you could do to him."

"Well, then let's shoot the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, sir, and be done with him. The militia don't take no prisoners. Why should we?"

Taylor threw back his head, and even though he was shorter than the sergeant, managed to look down his nose at him. "We're professional soldiers, Sergeant. I trust we know how to conduct ourselves better than the state militia. No, we'll just take him along with us. An Indian who speaks both Sauk and English could be of use to us, alive. I see you have a full head of hair and you wear no feathers, White Bear. That mean you haven't killed anybody? Or just that you don't want the fact known?"

"I haven't killed anybody." White Bear thought of adding that he had saved more than one white life. But he couldn't expect them to believe that. He would not expose himself to their scorn.

He said, "I am a medicine man, a shaman."

Taylor looked at him gravely. "Educated as a white man and educated in the way of the spirits, too, eh? And with all that learning you couldn't warn Black Hawk away from this disaster?"

White Bear shook his head. "He listened to other voices."

Taylor's eyes narrowed. "Well, whatever advice you gave him, it's all over for your chief now. G.o.d pity your people."

White Bear said, "All they want now is to go back across the Mississippi and live in peace. Those who are left."

Taylor fixed him with an angry stare. "It's too late for that. Things have gone too far. You people are going to have to suffer for what you've done."

White Bear felt his limbs go cold as he heard the steel in Taylor's voice. This was not a bad man, White Bear sensed, not a man like Raoul.

But whatever mercy was in him had no doubt long since been washed away by the blood shed by Black Hawk's war parties.

_No doubt while he talks about making my people suffer he thinks of himself as quite a civilized man._

"Revenge, Colonel?" White Bear said. "I thought you were professional soldiers."

The sergeant balled his fists. "Please, sir, let me teach him some respect."

Taylor c.o.c.ked his head, listening to a distant sound, then turned to look downriver.

"He's got a much more bitter lesson to learn, Sergeant. As do all his people."

White Bear heard it too. A chugging sound. It had been a while since he had heard a noise like that. He followed Taylor's gaze down the river.

All he could see was a column of gray smoke in the sky to the south. But he knew what it was.

A steams.h.i.+p.

Because he could not ride to warn his people, he wanted to cry out in agony. He saw what would happen--those few frail canoes, the steams.h.i.+p bearing down on them, two long knife armies marching inexorably toward the mouth of the Bad Axe.

_The many who follow Black Hawk across the Great River will be few when they cross back._

20

River of Blood

Raoul uncorked the jug standing on the chart table and held it out to Bill Helmer, captain of the steams.h.i.+p _Victory_. A portly man with muttonchop whiskers, his hands firmly gripping the polished oak steering wheel, Helmer silently shook his head.

Raoul lifted the jug in a mock toast. "May we have a merry day of Indian fighting." He took two long swallows, and decided he felt strong and happy.

Helmer shook his head. "Mr. de Marion, there's nothing merry about fighting Indians."

"If that's your opinion, Captain, I'll thank you to keep it to yourself," said Raoul. He wanted a little warmth right now besides what he was getting from the jug, and he despised this dour man for not giving it to him.

Helmer shrugged and bent his gaze on the river.

Raoul knotted his fingers behind his back, and found that the effort relieved the tightness in his belly. He went to stand at the pilot house window and stared out at the forested bank where the Bad Axe River emptied into the Mississippi.

Militiamen were wading across the Bad Axe from south to north, holding their rifles, bayonets fixed, over their heads. The Bad Axe was more a creek than a river, shallow now in August, winding through a channel thick with bright green reeds. As the men slogged up the north bank, they leveled their rifles and plunged into the trees.

A blue haze of powder smoke already drifted amidst the pine and spruce north of the Bad Axe mouth. The popping of rifles carried to Raoul across the water over the wheeze and clank of the _Victory_'s steam engine, fueled with oak and split pine.

Raoul wondered what was happening in those woods. Were the Indians fighting back, defending their women and children? He hoped the militiamen would go on killing until they'd exterminated the whole band.

After four months of chasing the Indians across Illinois and the Michigan Territory, after all the innocents murdered--_Clarissa_, _Phil_, _Andy_--surely the militiamen would not be soft.

He felt tears starting up, and he quickly took another pull at the jug.

He wished he could be in at the kill instead of out here in the river.

_I want their blood on my own hands._

Lieutenant Kingsbury, in command of the gunnery crew a.s.signed to Raoul from Fort Crawford, came up the stairs from the foredeck to the hurricane deck and entered the pilot house. He mopped his brow as he set his cylindrical shako, sporting its red plume and gold crossed-cannons artillery badge, on the chart table.