Chapter 1

1825

Moon of Ice

_January_

1

The Lodge of the Turtle

The black bearskin, softened by countless wearings, clasped Gray Cloud's arms and shoulders, protecting his body from the cold that cut like knives into his cheeks and forehead. The upper half of the bear's skull covered his head and weighed heavily on it, as heavily as the awful fear of the vision quest weighed on his spirit.

His moccasins whispered over the fallen brown grass that covered the trail. He had walked a long way, and his toes were numb in spite of the leaves stuffed into the moccasins.

Abruptly the path stopped, and he was facing sky. He stood at the edge of the bluff looking eastward over the frozen Great River. He gripped the deerhorn handle of his hunting knife.

For the feeling of strength it gave him, he slid the knife out of the sheath of hardened leather tied to his waist. The steel blade glistened, colorless as the sky above him, in the fading light.

_The knife my father left for me_, he thought. _Where are you tonight, my father?_

The clouds seemed close enough to touch. They rippled like snowdrifts painted with light and shadow. Upriver the sky was darkened almost to black, and Gray Cloud smelled snow in the air.

He saw the silhouette of a hawk, wing-tip feathers spread, circling over the Illinois country across the river, hunting in the last moments before nightfall.

_Hawk spirit, help me to live through this testing. Help me to see a great vision and grow to be a mighty shaman._

The tiny spot of black dwindled in the sky, till he could no longer see it.

_Perhaps it flies over the winter silence of Saukenuk village._

He sheathed the knife. Turning his back on sky and river, he looked westward over the way he had come. A prairie of waving tan grass almost as high as his head stretched as far as he could see. Killed by the cold, the grass yet stood, held up by the stiffness in its dead stalks. Like a fur cloak, the brown covered the hills that rolled away to the west.

He could not see his people's winter hunting camp from here; it nestled back among those hills, sheltered in a forest that grew along the Ioway River. Looking in its direction, he saw Redbird in his mind. Her eyes, black as obsidian arrowheads, shone at him. He felt a powerful yearning just to see her, to speak to her and hear her voice, to touch her cheek with his fingertips. The thought that he might never see her again, never go back to his people, chilled him more than the winter cold.

_O Earthmaker, grant that I live to return to Redbird._

He knelt and peered over the edge of the bluff, the bearskin cloak bunching around him. Gray limestone, wrinkled and pitted like the face of an old man, swept down to dark masses of leafless shrubbery at the river's edge. His eyes searched out and then found an especially black shadow in the bluff wall. If he had come any later on this day, he might not have been able to find the cave mouth in the dark.

Then he might have had to wait till morning. Or, trying to climb down to it, he might have missed the way and fallen to his death. A cold hollow swelled in his belly. It would be so easy to slip.

Enough of what might have been. It was what would be that frightened him now. He might die, not of falling, but of what he found in the cave.

Or what found him.

Forcing that thought, too, out of his mind, he lowered his body over the edge of the bluff, dug his toes into footholds and carefully climbed sideways and downward. In places, the path along the bluff face widened out and was almost as easy to walk on as a forest trail. But then the crumbling stone would slant steeply, so that he had to grip hard with his buckskin-shod feet, feeling as if he were clinging to nothing at all.

A wide ledge spread before the entrance to the sacred cave. He let out a breath of deep relief as his feet stepped firmly on the flat stone.

From outside he could see nothing of the cave. But when he entered, he felt a sudden warmth, as if he were walking into a well-sealed lodge with a bright fire going. He could smell old fires--and something else. An animal smell that sent a ripple of cold through his bones. But not a fresh smell. He thanked Earthmaker for that, because he was sure it was the smell of bear.

But Owl Carver had been using this cave for his vision quests for winters beyond counting. And he had never spoken of a bear.

Gray Cloud stood uncertain in the entryway, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He saw round, gleaming shapes clustered against the back wall, and a motionless figure about as high as a man's waist, with a sharply curved beak and spreading wings.

Again, seeing these things, he felt the coldness of fear. Now he saw that the round objects on the floor were skulls, and he knew them for the skulls of ancestors, great men and women of the tribe. Green and white stones that had long ago been necklaces glittered around the jaws of the great dead ones. And the winged figure standing over them was the Owl spirit, who guided the footsteps of the dead along the Trail of Souls. Owl Carver had earned his name by carving this statue of the spirit and setting it here.

From a pouch tied to his belt Gray Cloud took a handful of sacred tobacco grains and sprinkled them on the cave floor as an offering.

He said, "Give me leave to enter your cave, Fathers and Mothers. You know me. I am your child."

He hesitated. Only through his mother, Sun Woman, was he the child of these ancestors who guarded the sacred cave. His father was a pale eyes, and the pale eyes had no ancestors. Would the ancestors reject him?

There was no sign or sound from the skulls on the floor, but now he could see farther into the shadows, and he saw that the cave went on around a bend, and that bend was guarded by another sacred figure. He peered at the shadowy figure for a moment and decided that it was a bear, but a bear such as he had never seen before. From head to foot this bear was white. Owl Carver had said nothing about this statue.

He sighed in his dread, feeling a trembling in his stomach.

It was good for him to be here, he tried to tell himself. He had come here to learn the shaman's secrets. This was the moment he had dreamed of ever since the first time he had seen Owl Carver, with his long white hair and his necklace of small shells of the lake-dwelling megis and his owl-crested cedar stick, step into the firelight. That long-ago night Owl Carver had spoken, not with the voice of a man, but with the voice of a spirit, an eerily high-pitched singsong that frightened and fascinated Gray Cloud.

The shaman of the tribe was greater than the bravest brave, greater than any chief. He had the power to heal the sick and to foretell the future. Gray Cloud wanted to stand high among the Sauk and to go where the shaman went, into the spirit world. He wanted to penetrate the deepest mysteries and know the answer to every question.

After he began teaching Gray Cloud, Owl Carver had tried to discourage him--as a way of testing him, Gray Cloud was sure.

Owl Carver had said, _Many times the people do not want to listen to the shaman. The truer his words, the less they hear him._

The warning had disturbed Gray Cloud. But he never saw the people refuse to listen to Owl Carver. And he did not lose his determination to become a shaman himself.

No one could gain such a great reward without risk. A warrior must kill an enemy at great peril to himself to gain the right to wear the eagle feather that marked him as a brave. A hunter had to kill an animal that could kill him before the tribe would consider him a man.

How, then, could one speak to these spirits of the tribe unless he, too, had faced death?

But what kind of a death? Would he freeze and starve here in this cave, his dead body remaining until Owl Carver came and found it? Or would an evil spirit come and kill him?

Whatever might come, he could only sit and wait for it in the way that Owl Carver had taught him.

He turned his back on the unknown depths of the cave and seated himself at its entrance, pulling the bearskin cloak around him for warmth. He dipped his fingers into a pouch at his belt and took out the bits of dried mushroom Owl Carver had given him from a medicine bag decorated with a beadwork owl. The sacred mushrooms grew somewhere far to the south and were traded up the Great River. One by one he put them into his mouth and slowly chewed them.

_You do not need to swallow_, Owl Carver had said. _Hold them in your mouth until they slide down your throat without your knowing how it happened._

His mouth grew dry as the mushrooms turned to paste. And it was as Owl Carver had said; they were gone without his knowing when they disappeared into his body.

His stomach heaved once and he thought with terror that he might fail this first small test. But he held his breath and slowly the sick feeling died away.

The last light faded from the sky, and the far horizon across the river vanished. Blackness fell upon him like a blanket, thick, impenetrable. It pressed against his face, suffocating him.

The notches in Owl Carver's talking stick, which the shaman had taught Gray Cloud to count, said that tonight the full moon would rise. It would make no difference. Gray Cloud would not see the moon in this sky filled with clouds.

A small spot of cold struck his face, then another and another. His nose and cheeks felt wet.

Snow.

The snow would fall while he sat here, and he would freeze to death.

He must overcome his fear. He must enter the other world. There, Owl Carver had promised him, he would be safe. Without his spirit in his body, he could not be hurt by the cold. But if fear kept him tied to this world, the cold would kill him.

He heard something.

A thumping and scraping behind him in the cave.

Something heavy shuffling around that bend. He felt his heart beating hard and fast in his chest.

There _was_ something in the cave. He had smelled it when he first entered. All the magic in the world could not save him now.

He heard breath being drawn through huge nostrils. Long, slow breaths of a creature whose chest took a long time to fill with air. He heard a grunting, low and determined.

The grunting changed to a rumbling growl that made the floor of the cave tremble beneath him.

Gray Cloud's breath came in gasps. He wanted to leap up and run, but Owl Carver had said it was forbidden to move once he seated himself in the cave. Only his spirit was permitted to move.

Perhaps if he did everything exactly as Owl Carver had told him, he would be safe. But Owl Carver had not told him to expect such a thing as this.

He must not look up.

The scratching of those giant claws was right behind him now. He could not breathe at all. There was a bright light all around him, and yet he could not see anything.

He felt--

A heavy hand--no, _paw!_--weighing down on his shoulder and gripping it.

He did not willingly turn his head, but his head turned. He did not mean to lift his gaze, but his eyes looked up.

He saw something like a vast white tree trunk beside his head. It was covered with white fur. Claws gleamed on his shoulder.

He looked up. And up.

Above him, golden eyes blazing, black jaws open and white teeth glistening like spearpoints, towered a Bear.

Gray Cloud was in the presence of a spirit so mighty that his whole body seemed to dissolve in dread. He wanted to shrink into himself, bury his face in his arms. But he had no power over his limbs.

The Bear's paw on his shoulder lifted him, raising him to his feet. Together they walked out of the cave.

What had happened to the clouds and the snow?

The sky was full of stars that swept down to form a bridge ending at his feet. The starlight cast a faint glow over the ice on the river, and he could see the horizon and the opposite shore. Through the dusting of tiny sparkling lights, he saw the ledge outside the mouth of the sacred cave. Two steps forward and he would fall over the edge and be killed.

The White Bear, on all fours beside him now, seemed to be waiting for him. Gray Cloud knew, somehow, what was expected of him. He must put his feet on the bridge of stars and walk out over empty air. He could not do it. Terror clawed at his stomach as he thought of standing high above the river with nothing to support him.

This, too, was a test. The bridge would be safe only if Gray Cloud trusted it. From now on everything that happened to him would be a test. And if he did not master each one in turn, he would never be a shaman.

And what would he be, then, if he lived? Only a half-breed boy, the son of a woman with no husband, the child of a missing father. The boy they called Gray Cloud because he was neither one color nor the other, neither white nor red.

This trail was the only way for him. He must walk on this bridge, and if he fell and died, it would not matter.

He took the first step. For a terrifying moment his moccasin seemed to sink into the little sparks of light rather than rest upon them. But it was as if the bridge were made of some springy substance, and the sole of his foot did not fall through it. He took another step. Now he had both feet on the bridge. His heart was thundering, the blood roaring through his ears.

How could a bridge be made of nothing but light? How could a man stand on it?

One more step forward. His leg shook so hard he could barely put his foot down. His knees quivered. His body screamed at him to go back.

Another step, and this would be the hardest. Now he could see the abyss below him. He was out over it. He looked down, his whole body quaking. He breathed in quick bursts, and saw little clouds in front of his face in the starlight.

Another step, and another. For balance, his trembling hands went out from his sides. He looked down. The river was solid ice, and the stars reflected on its smooth black surface. If he fell he would hit that ice so hard every one of his bones would break.

He teetered dizzily. He looked to the left and the right and saw that the edges of the bridge were just on either side of him. He could topple over and nothing would stop him. Where was the White Bear?

Fear would make him fall. Even if this bridge of lights still held his weight, it was so narrow that he must surely lose his balance and die.

_But if it holds me, I must be meant to live. And if I am meant to live, I will not be allowed to fall._

It was only his fear that was making the bridge feel so precarious. He knew that the more he believed, the safer it would be for him.

_Never turn your back on fear_, he remembered Owl Carver saying. _Never try to drive it away. Fear is your friend. It warns you of danger._

_But what about when I must face the danger and not be warned from it?_ he asked.

_As long as you listen to its warning, fear will not stop you from doing what you have to do. But if you try to pretend you do not hear it, fear will trip you and bind you with rawhide cords._

Gray Cloud, still afraid, stepped forward more boldly. Whatever spirits were making this happen to him, surely they were not showing him these wonders only then to destroy him.

He was out over the middle of the river, and he heard a deep muttering behind him.

He turned, and it was the White Bear, as big as an old bull buffalo, moving with him on its huge, clawed feet. It came up beside him, and he reached up to touch its shoulder. He knew now that it was a great spirit, and that it was his friend. He dug his fingers into the thick fur and felt the warmth and the enormous, powerful muscle underneath.

Joy flooded through him. Where he had been nearly overcome with fear, strength and excitement had entered. He ran up the rising curve of the bridge. He felt an impulse to dance, and he broke into the half trot, half shuffle of the men when they welcomed the harvest of good things to eat that the women had planted around Saukenuk village. He flapped his arms like the wild goose.

The bridge, he saw now, did not cross the river, but followed it. He looked up. The trail of stars ended at the one star in the sky that, as Owl Carver had pointed out to him, remained fixed when all the other stars danced around it. And therefore it was called the Council Fire Star.

The little lights twinkled all around him, like flocks of bright birds, and his heart was full of happiness. It was all so beautiful, he wanted to sing.

And he did sing, the only song he knew that seemed right for this moment, the Song of Creation.

"Earthmaker, you fill the world with life. You put life in earth and sky and water. I do not know what you are, Earthmaker, But you are in me and everything that lives. Always you have dwelt in life, Always you will dwell so."

He sang and danced and the White Bear rose up on its hind legs and strode heavily along beside him.

The light from the Council Fire Star grew brighter and seemed to dispel the blackness of the sky around it. The star grew until it was a sphere of cold fire that filled the sky.

He heard a roaring sound and saw that from the bottom of the shining globe water was pouring. The water gave off a light of its own. His eye followed its plunge. He was far, far above the earth now. The Great River was a shiny black ribbon, barely visible, winding over the earth. Straight as a spear the water from the Council Fire Star was falling down to the place where the Great River began its winding course.

He exulted. Already he had learned a secret no other Sauk knew, unless it be Owl Carver himself--the true source of the Great River.

He saw a square, dark opening in the glowing surface of the star. The path led to it. Still walking on its hind legs, the White Bear pressed inexorably on toward that doorway, and Gray Cloud walked beside it.

The colors of the rainbow shimmered in the light from the star, and it pulsed faintly like a beating heart. When he thought of what a mighty spirit must dwell in this magnificent lodge--perhaps Earthmaker himself--Gray Cloud's heart was once again full of fear.

He trembled and his steps slowed. He could not come face to face with such a being. It would be like staring into the sun. His eyes would be burned out of his head. He felt himself weakening.

The star-studded surface under his feet shook a little. He took a step and it quivered under his footfall. The White Bear was ahead of him now, leaving him out here alone among the stars, high above the earth on a bridge that was beginning to fall apart.

He looked back over the way he had come.

There was no bridge behind him.

Nothing but a blackness. He screamed, waved his arms, staggered.

He started to run forward after the Bear, his only protector, and his feet were sinking _into_ the bridge. The Bear and the doorway and the Council Fire Star itself seemed farther and farther away.

He fell to his hands and knees, afraid to stand any more.

But what was the fear trying to tell him?

It was right that Gray Cloud should be afraid, meeting a spirit so much more powerful than himself. And now he must trust that the spirit would not hurt him.

With that thought, he felt the bridge growing more solid under his hands. He pushed himself back to his feet.

He was standing before the doorway. All above him and to the sides stretched the curving, shimmering, many-colored surface of the Council Fire Star.

He did not see the White Bear. It must have gone into the star. He took a deep breath, and taking his fear with him, he plunged through the doorway.

For a moment light blinded him. The air was full of a fluttering and a rustling.

His eyes grew used to the light and he saw that he stood at the edge of a pool full of fish swimming in circles.

They were not fish, he knew, but fish spirits. The spirits of trout and salmon and bass and walleye and sunfish and pike, all the fish of lakes and streams that fed his people.

Full of fear of what else he might see, Gray Cloud raised his eyes.

He saw a Turtle.

The Turtle was frightfully big. He was on the other side of the rushing pool, but still he loomed over Gray Cloud, his head high in the air. His front feet rested on a blue-white block of ice. Behind him rose a mountain of ice crystals. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth told Gray Cloud he was immeasurably old.

"Gray Cloud," the Turtle said. "You are welcome here." His voice was deep as thunder.

Gray Cloud fell again to his hands and knees.

"Do not be afraid, Gray Cloud," said the rumbling voice.

He looked up again and saw kindness in the enormous, heavy-lidded yellow eyes. The exposed belly of the Turtle was the pale green of spring leaves. On his bone-encased chest a bright drop of water formed, like a dewdrop or a teardrop, but big as a man's head. After a moment it fell and splashed into the pool. Gray Cloud looked into the bottom of the pool and saw the blackness of a deep pit in its center. He realized that it must be from this pool that the stream of water poured down into the Great River. And the drops of water falling from the Turtle fed the pool. The true source of the Great River was the Turtle spirit's heart.

Owl Carver had told him of the Turtle. After Earthmaker he was the oldest and most powerful spirit. He had helped to create the world and to keep it alive.

Scarcely able to believe that he was actually looking upon the Turtle, Gray Cloud lifted his gaze and saw that all manner of beasts and birds occupied the ledges on the ice-crystal mountain. All creation was here. Trees--maple, ash, elm, oak, hickory, birch, pine and spruce--clustered on the mountainside, roots somehow drawing nourishment from the ice.

He said, "Father, I thank you for letting me come here."

Instead of answering him, the huge reptilian head swung to one side. He followed the gaze of the yellow eye.

A man was standing near the Turtle's head on one of the ledges. He was tall and thin. His eyes were round and blue, his face white. A pale eyes! What would a pale eyes be doing here in the lodge of the Turtle? The man had long black hair streaked with gray, tied at the back of his head. His thin figure was dressed in a blue coat, pinched at the waist by a black leather belt with a sword and a pistol hanging from it. His white trousers were tucked into shiny black boots that came up to his calves. Seeing the sword, Gray Cloud thought this man must be one of the long knives, the dreaded pale eyes warriors.

The man was looking at Gray Cloud. His face was narrow, with deep lines. All the pale eyes Gray Cloud had seen had hairy faces--thick mustaches growing under their noses, and sometimes beards that spread out over their chests--but this man's face was clean. His nose was large and hooked like a hawk's beak. Gray Cloud saw that the man was weeping. Tears were running down his creased cheeks as he stared at Gray Cloud. The look in those blue eyes, Gray Cloud realized, was not sadness, but love.

Returning the man's gaze, Gray Cloud felt a warmth in his own chest like the heat suddenly rising from a fire that has taken hold.

"I have brought you to hear a warning," said the Turtle, his voice shaking Gray Cloud's very bones. "You must carry my words back to my children, the Sauk and Fox." As the Turtle spoke, another huge drop splashed into the pool, to add itself to the Great River.

"Evil days are coming for my children."

Gray Cloud quailed, thinking that he did not want to bring that back to his people. But perhaps there was some good word he could tell them.

"How may we escape this evil, Father Turtle?" he asked.

"This evil is from the pale eyes."

At this, Gray Cloud turned to stare at the pale eyes man, who looked sad now, even sombre. Who was this man, and why was he here?

"The pale eyes and my children cannot live on the same land," said the Turtle. "Because they do not live in the same way. Most pale eyes do not wish harm to my children, but they do harm by coming into the land where my children dwell."

Gray Cloud at once grasped what the Turtle spoke of. Generations of Sauk and their allies, the Fox, had lived in towns at the joining of the Rock River and the Great River, where in summer they raised corn, beans, squash and pumpkins. Each fall they would leave their towns and fields for winter hunting camps in the West. But the pale eyes warriors, the long knives, had been telling the Sauk and Fox that they must give up all their land on the east side of the Great River, even their principal town, Saukenuk, and move forever west, into the Ioway country. And the war chief Black Hawk had defied the long knives, leading his people each spring back across the river to farm the land around Saukenuk.

Gray Cloud knew that even the kindliest pale eyes were not to be trusted. Owl Carver was suspicious of the black-robed medicine man, Père Isaac, who talked about the spirit called Jesus and who spent many afternoons with Gray Cloud, teaching him the words and signs of the American pale eyes.

The Turtle's voice broke in upon these memories. "Tell my children that a great clash is to come between them and the long knives. The people will suffer, and many of them will die."

Gray Cloud gasped as the horror of that sank in. He looked again at the pale eyes, and now where there had been love he saw lines of sorrow carved deep into the thin face.

_Is this man, then, a danger to me?_

"Is there no escape, Father Turtle?" he asked again.

"The people must walk their path with courage," said the Turtle. "Black Hawk will lead them. And he and his braves will show the greatest courage, such courage that the name of Black Hawk will never be forgotten in the land where he was born."

The Turtle's golden, heavy-lidded eye seemed to fix itself on Gray Cloud.

"And you will find your own path. For some of the people the path you find will be good. But many others will journey in sorrow into the setting sun. And there they will disappear forever."

Bewildered, Gray Cloud looked from the Turtle to the pale eyes near him and back to the Turtle again. These things the Turtle had said were strange, like the words Owl Carver would chant before the council fire. Must he bring his people a message of suffering and sorrow? Would they listen?

He wanted to ask more questions but he felt a gentle pressure from the great body of the Bear beside him, and he knew that his visit to the lodge of the Turtle was ended.

2

The Spirit Bear

Redbird stood at the edge of the hunting camp, beside the grove of trees where the band's horses were sheltering from the falling snow. Her tears mingled with the snowflakes melting on her face. Wherever she looked, a white curtain hid the land.

Would Gray Cloud die? The thought made her heart feel as if a giant's fist was squeezing it. Yesterday, at midday, her father had sent Gray Cloud on his vision quest, and in the most dangerous time of the year, the Moon of Ice, when the spirits harvested the living, leaving only the strongest to survive through to the spring. And just as night fell, the snow had begun. Would the spirits take Gray Cloud?

Tears burned her eyes and she felt dizzy. She had not slept all last night, and she had waited and watched through the day.

As she stood looking eastward, where Gray Cloud had gone on his spirit journey, it came to her that he might already be dead. The wind must have been blowing snow into the sacred cave all night and all day. Gray Cloud, in a trance, might already have frozen to death. She might be weeping for a dead man.

She sobbed aloud and put her hands, in squirrelskin mittens, to her face. The snow on the mittens felt barely colder than her cheeks.

A flash of light, brighter than the sun, blinded her. A tremendous roar of thunder almost knocked her to the snow-covered ground. Another bright flash made her cover her eyes in dismay, and in a moment there was another long, rolling, earth-shaking rumble.

People stood at the doorways of their dome-shaped wickiups, murmuring to one another. Thunder with a snowstorm. This was the heaviest snowstorm of the year so far, and a snowstorm with thunder and lightning foretold some great event. Much snow lay on the rounded roofs of the wickiups, and some women took whisks of bundled twigs to brush it away so that it would not break down the framework of poles or melt through the roofs of elm bark and cattail mats and wet the people inside and their possessions. The snow was dry and powdery because the air was so cold, and it brushed away easily.

The snow was already halfway up Redbird's laced deerskin boots. She felt the bitter cold numbing her feet and legs. What must it be like for Gray Cloud?

She saw him as vividly as if he were standing before her. How very tall he was, almost as tall as her brother, Iron Knife. But Gray Cloud's frame was slender, not broad and powerful like Iron Knife's.

She saw Gray Cloud's tender mouth curving in a tentative smile, his sharp nose giving strength to his face, his large eyes glowing. His skin so much lighter than any other man's in the British Band of the Sauk and Fox.

And--she asked herself--was it not partly because of the mystery of Gray Cloud's father that she found herself drawn to him? Pale eyes fascinated her, the few she had met, Jean de Vilbiss the trader, the black-robed medicine man called Père Isaac.

Every summer, when Père Isaac visited Saukenuk village, he took Gray Cloud aside, teaching him strange words, showing him how to understand the meaning of marks on paper and how to make such marks. How she envied Gray Cloud, and wished that Père Isaac would teach her those things, too.

Redbird wondered why pale eyes were so different and why they had so much power. No Sauk craftsman could make anything like the steel swords that pale eyes warriors carried, whence they were called long knives. The steel tomahawks that the pale eyes traded for furs could shatter a stone-headed Sauk tomahawk into fragments. A pale eyes fire weapon, of course, was something every warrior of the Sauk and Fox tribes yearned for.

But what interested Redbird most were the steel sewing needles and iron cooking pots and calico dresses and wool blankets. She wondered why Earthmaker had given the knowledge of how to make such things to the pale eyes, but not to the Sauk and Fox. Her people wore the skins of animals, scraped and pushed and pulled and tanned with the animals' brains and women's urine until they were soft and pliant and could be worn comfortably next to the skin. But the clothing of the pale eyes was more comfortable, and easier to keep clean. And more colorful. Sauk and Fox shirts and leggings and skirts, unless painted or decorated with dyed quills, were usually the brown or tan of animal skins. The best deerskin garments were worked till they were white. The dresses and shawls and blankets the pale eyes traders offered were of many colors--blue and yellow, red and green, with flowers and other pictures and designs on them. Redbird often spent long moments staring at the good calico dress her father, Owl Carver, had gotten for her from the pale eyes traders, just delighting in the tiny red roses printed on its pale blue background.

For a moment, lost in thought about the pale eyes, she had forgotten Gray Cloud's danger and her own pain. Now it came back to her like a war club crushing her chest.

Soon it would be night again. Gray Cloud had been in the cave a whole night and a whole day, while the snow fell. And the snow was falling still. If someone did not rescue him, he would surely die.

She would go to her father, Owl Carver, and demand that Gray Cloud be brought back from the sacred cave.

She turned and pushed her feet through the fresh snow, hurrying past the round-roofed, snow-covered wickiups of the British Band's winter camp in Ioway country. A dog burst out of Wolf Paw's doorway and floundered through the snow, its short pointed ears flattened, barking at her. Wolf Paw's dogs were a nuisance, barking and snapping at anyone who passed near his dwelling.

The dog stopped barking, and she heard footsteps squeaking in the snow. She stopped and turned. Wolf Paw himself was standing before his wickiup beside the tall pole from whose top hung six Sioux scalps he had taken last winter.

Wolf Paw glowered at her, arms folded under a bright red blanket. Three short black stripes near one edge were the pale eyes trader's guarantee that the blanket was of highest quality. Despite the snow, Wolf Paw's head was uncovered, all shaved except for the stiff-standing crest of red-dyed deer hair in the middle. Three black and white eagle feathers were tied into it.

Redbird did not like Wolf Paw. He never let people forget that he was the son of the great war chief Black Hawk, whose wickiup lay only a short distance from his own. He never smiled, and she knew very well what he was thinking when he looked at her.

She turned without a greeting and walked on, kicking the snow as she went. But the sight of Wolf Paw had reminded her that though Owl Carver was her father, she still had only a woman's influence. The spirit journey of Gray Cloud was a matter for men.

Owl Carver loved her and was good to her, but if she tried to interfere in his holy calling, he would be furious. He would never agree to bring Gray Cloud down from the cave before he came down on his own. Such a thing was against the way of the shaman.

She was still wondering what she dared say when she came to her family's wickiup and found Owl Carver standing beside it, hands clasped behind his back, staring eastward toward the Great River.

As she shuffled through the snow toward him, he turned and held out his hands. When she reached him, he put his hands on her shoulders. She peered into his face, hard to see now that night had fallen, and tried to read it.

Owl Carver's face was flat. His long white hair was bound at his forehead with a beaded band and fell from there to his shoulders, spreading like a white shawl. His necklace of little round, striped shells of the water creatures called megis rattled in the wind.

She trembled inwardly in his presence. The shaman of the tribe could both heal and kill.

"How can he live in this blizzard?" she said, almost weeping.

"Did you not see the lightning, my daughter, and hear the thunder? Do you think that merely betokens a young man freezing to death? Hear me--once in a thousand years a man comes among us who is capable of being a Great Shaman. Of being to other shamans, like myself, what Earthmaker is to the lesser spirits of beasts and birds. But to be known, and to discover the greatness of his powers, such a man must be as greatly tested. I saw in Gray Cloud a man beyond the ordinary."

Owl Carver's willingness to talk made Redbird feel bolder. "Surely Gray Cloud has been in the sacred cave long enough, my father. Will you not go now and bring him down?"

He pushed her away, staring at her. "Earthmaker decides what is enough. A man must _suffer_ to be worthy of the power his spirit guide bestows on him. When I first began to walk the shaman's path, I wandered far away into the great desert of the West and nearly died of hunger and thirst. I did not suffer as much as Gray Cloud is suffering. But that is because he can be a much greater shaman than I, if he lives. If he does not live, he is like a foal born lame in the springtime. The wolves must get him. It is Earthmaker's way."

Frightened though she was, Redbird forced herself to speak up. "There is suffering that even the strongest cannot bear."

Owl Carver took a step toward her, his eyes round with anger. "Remember what the law of the Sauk and Fox decrees for anyone who disturbs a man on a spirit journey, even to help him. They take you to the Great River. In the summer they would throw you in with rocks tied to you. In this season they chop a hole in the ice and they push you in. The current flows swiftly under the ice. It carries you away from the opening, and you drown there in the cold and dark."

Redbird shrank back. Owl Carver had felt her pain when she first came to him, but now he was angry. She sensed that behind that anger there lurked fear. Fear that she might risk her life for Gray Cloud.

"Your mother has been calling for you," he said. "Go and help her with her work."

Afraid to say any more, Redbird hurried past him and lifted the heavy buffalo skin that covered the doorway of the family's wickiup. She looked over her shoulder once and saw that her father was once again looking toward the river where Gray Cloud had gone. Owl Carver held his hands behind his back, knotting them together.

He was afraid for Gray Cloud, too. As she sensed that, her heart sank further.

Entering the wickiup she saw, silhouetted against the light of the low fire in the center, a figure rising up big as a buffalo, her half brother, Iron Knife. Redbird took his hands in greeting.

"Gray Cloud will be well," Iron Knife said in a low, gruff voice.

Iron Knife was always kind to her. She was grateful for his words, but she knew they were no more than a well-meant wish. Though Iron Knife was the son of Owl Carver by his first wife, he had not a trace of the shaman's ability to foretell events. Iron Knife could see only with his eyes, hear only with his ears. His mother had died giving birth to him, and there were those who said the spirits had chosen to give him no gifts because he had killed his mother. Redbird had even heard that while in mourning Owl Carver had predicted that Iron Knife would one day be killed by a man whose mother had also died giving birth to him. No one dared speak of these things in Iron Knife's presence.

Redbird knew she had more of the shaman in her than Iron Knife. She knew, as her father did, that right now Gray Cloud was in terrible danger.

"Where have you been?" Wind Bends Grass called out from the shadows. She and Redbird's sisters were already bedded down for the night on buffalo-robe pallets along the wall of the wickiup. Wind Bends Grass and her two little girls, Wild Grape and Robin's Nest, slept together for greater warmth.

"I was down in the woods, seeing to our horses," Redbird lied. She had been near the horses, but only to watch for Gray Cloud.

"I needed you here," Wind Bends Grass said crossly. "I was stringing beads for a new sash for your father, and your sisters are too small to help me."

_Does my mother want me to string beads while Gray Cloud freezes to death?_

"The snow was heavy on the horses' backs," Redbird said. "They needed someone to brush them off."

"Nonsense," said Wind Bends Grass, sitting up. "You were waiting and worrying for that pale eyes boy. And meanwhile Wolf Paw came again to speak to your father today. How can you refuse the son of the mighty Black Hawk and think of marrying that boy who has no father? His mother lay with a pale eyes and got Gray Cloud. The pale eyes lived with her only five summers and then ran away. He would have run away sooner, but our people held him prisoner because of the war."

Redbird heard muffled giggles from the bedding beside her mother. Her little sisters thought the story of Gray Cloud's parentage funny. Wind Bends Grass struck with her hand at the two shaking bundles.

"Wolf Paw already has a wife," Redbird said.

"He is a _man_," said Wind Bends Grass. "A brave. He can make two wives, three wives, _four_ wives happy."

Rage at her mother for belittling Gray Cloud when he might be dying boiled up inside her and almost choked her. She bit her lip and held back the angry words. She hurt too much to want to quarrel.

She took off her fur cap, wet boots and mittens and laid them near the fire. Keeping on her buffalo-hide cloak, her doeskin dress and leggings, she lay down on her own pallet, padded with blankets and prairie grass. Curling up her legs, she wrapped the heavy cloak around herself.

The wickiup was quiet, except for the popping of burning twigs.

Redbird knew that her fear for Gray Cloud, deepening as the night deepened, would keep her awake. She decided that when they were all asleep, she would go back to the wickiup of Sun Woman and watch with her.

She lay staring at the blackened ceiling that arched over her head. Partly obscured by drifting smoke, the curved poles cast deep shadows in the flickering light. Iron Knife had laid fresh branches on the fire. Smoke stung her eyes.

Sometimes she thought she saw spirit messages above her in the patterns of the twigs interwoven with the larger poles, and in the cracks in the sheets of bark that lined the inside of the wickiup. But tonight her mind was too absorbed in Gray Cloud's fate to try to read the patterns.

Over the breathing of the others she could hear the voice of the wind humming across the roof. From time to time it would rise to a howl, and the framework of the wickiup would creak and crackle under the strain. Even though there was a fire and the wickiup was tightly sealed, Redbird felt the cold seeping up from the earth. Its icy fingers touched her body through the buffalo robe. Her dread for Gray Cloud turned to heart-pounding panic.

_If I feel the cold, here in my warm wickiup, what must it be like for him?_

After the snow stopped falling, the cold of this night would be the cold that killed without mercy. Such a deepening cold often seemed to follow a great snow. After a night like this, women would find rabbit and deer lying in the drifts near the camp. The animals trying to get close to warmth had overcome their fear of people, but the cold had leeched the life from their bodies. Even the strongest animals might die. Only people, to whom Earthmaker had given the knowledge of how to shelter themselves and make fire, could withstand this death-dealing cold.

Her fists clenched on the blanket. Her heart filled up with anger. Anger against the cold, against her mother, who despised Gray Cloud, against Owl Carver, who had sent him to almost certain death. Against the spirits, who had permitted this. Out of her anger blazed up a fierce resolve.

_I will not let you take him from me._

If everyone else accepted Gray Cloud's death, she did not. She would go to him. She would go to Sun Woman and gather what medicines she might have, anything that would keep the cold from draining the last bit of warmth and strength out of Gray Cloud.

_Have you not been told what the tribe decrees for anyone who disturbs a man on a spirit journey, even to help him?_

Her anger turned to fear, and she lay there, not wanting to move, knowing that if she threw off the blankets and stood up, she would be taking the first step on a path that might be her death.

But then she thought of that terrible wind, sharp as a pale eyes' steel knife, shrieking around Gray Cloud's body. If she did something now, he might live; and if she did nothing, he was sure to die.

She had loved Gray Cloud for as long as she could remember. To be without him--she could not bear to think of it.

She had heard tales of women who died fighting beside their men. Yes, better to die with Gray Cloud, to walk the Trail of Souls into the West with him, than live a long life grieving for him.

She listened to the sounds of the sleepers, Iron Knife's rumbling snore, Wind Bends Grass's heavy breathing that sounded like her name, the rustlings and murmurings of Wild Grape and Robin's Nest.

Owl Carver still had not come in, and he might stay out there most of the night. She dared not wait any longer. She would have to face him.

Silently she pushed off her coverings and stood up. She quickly put back on her fur cap, boots and mittens.

The deepened cold bit into her cheeks like a weasel's teeth. While she had lain in the wickiup the snow, which had been falling continually for a night and a day, had stopped at last. The clouds overhead were breaking up, and she could see the full moon, round and bright as a pale eyes' silver coin. The Moon of Ice. It seemed frozen in place in the black sky. Stars glittered, little chips of ice. With her first indrawn breath the insides of her nostrils seemed to freeze, the air burned in her nose and throat. Her heart quailed for Gray Cloud.

The black figure of Owl Carver stood just where she had left him. How could he stand the cold this long?

Owl Carver turned to her. "Where are you going?"

"To Sun Woman's wickiup, to watch with her."

She hated Owl Carver. He was the one who had sent Gray Cloud on this spirit journey, and now would do nothing to save him from death.

As if sensing her agony, he said, "The spirits will watch over Gray Cloud."

She wanted to believe him, but she could not. She had begged him to help Gray Cloud, and he had commanded her to be silent. Now she had no more to say to him. She turned from Owl Carver.

He could have forbidden her to go to Sun Woman. But he would not do that. There was an understanding between Redbird and her father that she could not put into words. She knew that when he looked at her, he was torn between pride that she, the oldest of his children by Wind Bends Grass, possessed the same gifts he did, and sorrow that she was a woman, and could never be a shaman. And she knew that of all his children, he loved her best.

The snow, blown off the roofs of the wickiups, piled up in long drifts on their western sides. The east wind battered Redbird as she plodded through the winter camp toward one low, rounded black structure that rose out of the snow a bit apart from the others, on the north side of the camp.

The skinned quarters of small animals hung frozen from a rack outside Sun Woman's doorway. Redbird went up to the flap of buffalo hide and called, "It is Redbird. May I come in?"

Redbird heard Sun Woman undoing the sinew laces that held the flap down. She bent and entered.

In the firelight within Sun Woman's wickiup, Redbird saw agony in the tightness of the older woman's wide mouth and the clenching of her strong jaw. Gray Cloud's mother was built big, with broad shoulders and hips and large hands, but there was a helplessness now in the way she stood staring into the fire. Hanging from the curving bark wall behind her were her craft objects, a medicine bundle of deerskin, the carved figures of a naked man and a naked woman, clamshells to mold maple sugar, a horse's tail dyed red, a small drum and a flute.

Redbird spoke in a rush. "If he dies I do not want to live." She feared that if she tried to address Sun Woman properly, her voice would be choked by sobs before she could say what demanded to be said.

She should not even suggest to Gray Cloud's mother that he might die. And she should not even hint to his mother of her love for Gray Cloud, when neither Sun Woman nor Owl Carver had spoken to each other of plans for their children. The band would be appalled at such rudeness.

"Forgive me for speaking so to you," she said timidly.

Sun Woman smiled, but Redbird saw that there was much sadness in the smile. "You know you can."

"Yes, you are different," Redbird said.

_Even though the pale eyes killed your husband, you took a pale eyes into your wickiup._

This had happened more than fifteen winters ago, and Redbird knew it only as a story that her mother and other women liked to repeat while they did their work together. Sun Woman's husband, a brave named Dark Water, had been killed in a quarrel with pale eyes settlers. In spite of that, when Gray Cloud's pale eyes father came to live with the Sauk, Sun Woman had come to love him.

"I am different, too," said Redbird. She wondered if Sun Woman knew how different she was. Most women lived from season to season, while Redbird sometimes thought about what the tribe might be doing, where they might be, ten summers from now.

Only two kinds of people thought the kind of long thoughts that came often to Redbird--chiefs and shamans. She sometimes imagined what it would be like to be a shaman. To live in accord with the gift Earthmaker gave her. She thought so often about it that it became a longing within her, even though she knew that such a thing could not be.

This, Redbird thought, was the most she could hope for--to become a medicine woman, like Gray Cloud's mother. A medicine woman had an important place in the band, but she was not listened to, as the shaman was.

Sun Woman reached out and laid her bare hand on top of Redbird's, which was still in a mitten. "That is why I would be pleased if you and my son shared a wickiup."

Redbird was startled and, amidst her fear and grief for Gray Cloud, delighted. Truly, no mother ever spoke like this before words between parents had been exchanged. And to know that Sun Woman would accept her as her son's wife--wondrous!

But Gray Cloud might already be dead. "How can we talk and smile so?" she cried. "He is up in the sacred cave, and the snow fell all last night and all day today."

Sun Woman shook her head. "When I gave the boy to Owl Carver, I gave up the right to say what was to be done with him. Like Owl Carver, Gray Cloud belongs to the spirits now."

"But the spirits--" Redbird waved her hands helplessly. "They protect as they like and they let death strike as they like."

A shadow of pain crossed Sun Woman's face. "Do you say such things to hurt me?"

Redbird was shocked. "No!"

"Do you think I feel no pain?"

Redbird felt tears filling her eyes, burning them. She wiped her face. "I know you do."

Sun Woman brought her face closer to Redbird's, took Redbird's chin in her hand, and said, "I do not show pain because I do not want to make others suffer with me. But you know what I feel."

Sun Woman opened her arms, and Redbird pressed her body against the bigger, older woman's. She felt Sun Woman's strength flow into her and she knew that she had found more comfort here than she ever would in the arms of her own mother.

In the firelit wickiup, Redbird looked around her, thinking that this was where Gray Cloud had been a baby. She looked at the bench where she knew he slept every night. Where he must sleep again.

"Do you have anything to give a person who has been very cold for a long time?" Redbird asked urgently.

"Ah." Sun Woman went to the back of the wickiup and came back with a bundle of long, dark red peppers.

"These peppers are grown far to the south, where the sacred mushroom and the bright blue stones come from. The longer you boil them, the hotter the water will get. He is to drink the water, but not swallow the peppers. If he is very cold, give him one pepper to chew on. That would bring the dead back to life. If you meet him before I do, this is how you can help him."

_She thinks I mean to try to meet him when he comes back._

"I will go to him," Redbird said abruptly.

Sun Woman stared at her. "You must not. If you interrupt his spirit journey it might kill him."

"He has been in a cave for a night and a day, and this is the second night, colder than any night I can remember. My father watches for him, but he does not come. He could still be sitting in that cave. He has no fire. He has no food or water. The wind blows in from the river. The snow here at the camp is so deep that in some places the drifts are over my head. The cave could be full of snow. When he is suffering all this, how can you say that _I_ am a danger to him?"

Sun Woman sat cross-legged on the rush mat floor and stared down at her hands folded in her lap. After a silence she looked up, and her grave, dark eyes held Redbird's.

"You are a good young woman, and you love my son. But you must understand that the greater danger to Gray Cloud is not from the cold. If you try to wake Gray Cloud's body when his soul is gone from it, his spirit will never come back to his empty body. It will set its feet on the Trail of Souls and walk west, to the land of the dead."

Sun Woman's eyes shone, and the shadows and firelight gave her the face of an angry spirit. Redbird drew back.

"I will not do that," she said. "I promise you." But if she saw that Gray Cloud would surely die anyway, of freezing, would it not then be best to take the risk of waking him?

And what if he did wake on his own, but was too frozen to climb out of the cave and walk back to the camp by himself? Then he would need her help.

She decided that if she got to the cave and his spirit was still out of his body, she would do everything to help him short of waking him. She would build a fire near him. She would cover him with warm cloaks, try to warm his body if she could do that without disturbing him.

She boiled the peppers in a small tin pot set on stones over Sun Woman's low fire. After she had filled a skin with the pepper water, she rolled tinder and a pale eyes fire striker into a blanket. She put her hand on Sun Woman's snowshoes, leaning against a wall of the little wickiup, and Sun Woman nodded silently.

Redbird paddled over the snow with her head down, watching the long shadow she cast under the full moon on the sparkling white surface. Ahead, the leeward sides of the wickiups were rows of snowdrifts, all the same size. When she looked over her shoulder, their windward sides were like black holes in the snow. She could see her family's wickiup, but Owl Carver was no longer standing outside watching. She lifted her round wickerwork snowshoes high with each step. Even though she could walk over the snow, she would be exhausted, she realized, long before she pushed her way to the sacred cave.

Dogs barked. Fear made the back of her neck tingle, and she stood motionless. They might be Wolf Paw's dogs. But they did not come after her.

She heard no sounds of voices, or of people moving. She felt safe enough to keep walking.

But a feeling grew on her that someone was following her. She stopped again and listened and looked around. The wickiups were silent under their glistening blue-white hummocks. Being able to sense when she was being watched was one of the gifts she, like her father, possessed. But her eyes and ears did not confirm what her inner sense told her. She decided fear was confusing her, and she walked on.

She left the camp behind. On her right was gently rolling, snow-covered prairie. On her left were the woods that grew along the Ioway River. She saw the shadows of the horses among the trees, heard them snort and stamp their feet. Beside the woods ran the long trail leading to the bluff where the sacred cave overlooked the river. This close to the trees, she hoped, the snow would not be so deep.

A shadow appeared on the snow beside her. A bolt of terror stabbed her.

A powerful hand seized her arm. She felt paralyzed, like a rabbit about to be torn apart by a wildcat. She did not try to pull away. She could feel that the grip on her arm was too strong.

She turned slowly.

The moon was behind the man who held her, shadowing his face, but she could make out the glitter of piercing eyes, a stern mouth with strong lips under his brown fur turban.

"Where are you going?" Wolf Paw's fingers hurt her arm.

No words came to her. Frantically, she tried to think of some excuse for walking out so late on a night like this. He could have her killed, she thought, and terror made her feel like sinking into the snow.

But then she remembered some of the lore Sun Woman had taught her.

"My father sent me--to look for a certain herb whose power is greatest when the moon is full."

He barked disdainfully. "Gathering herbs when the snow is up to your knees?"

"It grows under the snow."

He brought his face so close to hers that his black eyes seemed to fill the world.

"You cannot lie to me, Redbird. I see what you are doing. You are going to _him_."

"No, no, I am looking for herbs."

"What is _this_?" With his free hand he tore away the blanket roll she had tied to her back and threw it into the snow. "And _this_?" He jerked on the water skin so hard that the strap broke, and he threw that down, too.

"Do you need those things to help you find herbs?" he shouted.

Trembling from head to foot, she felt herself starting to cry. She hated herself for showing such weakness in front of Wolf Paw. If she was to die, she wanted to be strong.

To her surprise, the sense that she was being watched from a distance came back again. There was someone else out here in the frozen darkness besides herself and Wolf Paw.

"It is death to interfere with a spirit quest," Wolf Paw growled. "The shaman's daughter of all people should know better than to break a holy law."

Her fear made her feel as cold, as breathless, as if she were already plunged into black, freezing water, swept along, an enormous weight of ice between her and the air.

"I have done nothing."

"You meant to. That is as bad."

She saw the hunting knife at Wolf Paw's belt. She could make a grab for it, try to stab him.

No, he was one of the tribe's mightiest braves. He would be too quick and strong for her. And, at least, up to now she had done no harm to anyone but herself. To try to murder the son of the war leader would be a great crime.

His grip on her arm still cruelly tight, he gestured back behind him toward the snow-covered camp. "Think of your mother's weeping over what I caught you doing. Your father, his heart torn in his chest. But he, the shaman, would have to say that you must be killed."

Hopelessness crushed her. Now she would never be able to help Gray Cloud. He was going to die. And she was caught by Wolf Paw and would be dishonored before the whole tribe and then killed.

She hung her head.

"But it is true, Redbird, you have done nothing," Wolf Paw said more softly. "I am the only one who knows that you were about to break the law."

_Sun Woman knows. But Wolf Paw will never learn that from me._

"I do not want you to die, Redbird," said the low voice from the figure towering over her.

She looked up at him. Was he going to be merciful?

He said, "It makes me angry that you throw your life away for that fatherless pale eyes boy. To wed the son of Black Hawk would bring you honor."

She understood now. He was going to offer to spare her life, if she would marry him and give up Gray Cloud. He did not understand that she would rather be dead twice over than spend her life mourning Gray Cloud and married to Wolf Paw.

She was about to tell him so when she heard a rumble, almost like thunder, from the trees nearer the camp. With much whinnying and cracking of shrubbery, all the band's horses burst out of the woods and ran, floundering and kicking up clouds of snow, out on the prairie.

"Be still," Wolf Paw cautioned in a low voice, "until we see what frightened them." He stood with his head high, listening.

Whatever it was, she was grateful that it had taken Wolf Paw's mind off her.

She heard a crashing in the forest, branches breaking, snow crunching. Something large was coming toward them.

She turned. Through the trees she saw a bulky, hunched figure. It seemed to be a large animal, but it was walking on its hind legs. It came forward slowly, a step at a time. Its forelimbs swung at its sides. It was a little taller than a man.

It looked very much like a bear. A new fear, greater than the fear of what Wolf Paw might do, assailed her.

A bear in coldest winter, when all of that people withdrew to their dens and slept? Once in a while, she had heard, a very hungry bear would awaken and forage for food and then go back to sleep again. Such a bear would kill anything it met. She tensed herself to run, though she knew she could never outrun a hungry bear.

The shambling tread of the bear, or whatever it was, had brought it closer, and she saw that it was all white, glittering in the moonlight like a snowdrift.

She glanced at Wolf Paw and saw his eyes glisten as they widened. The look on his shadowed face was one she never thought to see on him--fear.

He sucked in a shuddering breath. The hand that had held her arm suddenly released her.

No wonder Wolf Paw was afraid. This was a white bear, a spirit bear. Its eyes, reflecting the moonlight, seemed to glow.

Wolf Paw uttered a terrified, inarticulate cry. She turned to see him racing over the snow. Were she not so frightened herself, she might have laughed to see how his knees flew up, first one, then the other, as white clouds sprayed from his snowshoes. Strong as he was, he could never outrun a bear. Especially not this bear.

As for herself, she was surely doomed. She thought, _May this be a better death than drowning under the ice_.

And she turned to face the spirit bear.

3

Claw Marks

The white bear was out of the forest now. Redbird had seen bears run, and she knew it could cover the distance that separated them in a few bounds.

It did not seem to be looking at her, and she wondered if it saw her. It sparkled in the moonlight. Its breath came in huge frosty clouds, obscuring its head. Did spirit bears breathe?

She looked around again to see where Wolf Paw was. He had become a small, dark spot against the white at the edge of the village. His snowshoes had carried him far quickly. She, too, would have run, if she could run like Wolf Paw.

She did not think Wolf Paw a coward. His courage was well known. Facing a being like this, the bravest man in the world would run.

_It doesn't seem to see me. Maybe it is best to stand still._

She trembled from head to foot, unable to decide what to do. She felt dizzy, as if she might collapse into the snow. The bright light that seemed to come from the bear dazzled her.

But would a spirit bear attack people in the night and kill them? Devils and cannibal giants would, but she had never heard of a spirit doing any such thing.

She was learning to be a medicine woman, and a medicine woman must deal unafraid with the beings of the other world. Talk the bad spirits out of a sick person's body and call upon the good spirits to aid in healing.

She took a deep breath. Whether this be a good spirit or a devil, she would stand here holding herself proudly. Wolf Paw, if he looked back, would see the maiden he had threatened standing in the place he had run from.

The white bear took a step toward her.

In spite of her fear, she made herself look at the spirit as it came on. It walked so slowly. Perhaps, after all, she could run away from it.

Under the pointed snout she saw eyes that seemed to glow out of a shadowed face.

It was a man she was facing.

She saw that its path was taking it past her. It--he--did not seem to see her at all. But he was close enough now for her to see the face under the bear's skull. The large, round eyes, the long, thin features ending in a pointed chin, the bony beak of a nose, the down-curving, tender mouth. His face was covered with a mask of frost.

Gray Cloud.

How could she have forgotten that when he walked out of the camp yesterday he had worn a black bear's skin draped over his arms and shoulders? Snow and frost had turned the fur white. The night and her terror had tricked her into thinking she saw a white bear spirit. Wolf Paw, the seasoned warrior, had been tricked and terrified, too.

Gray Cloud was alive!

A scream tried to force its way out of her chest, but her windpipe was so tight that all she managed was a gasp.

Joy blazed up in her like a summer campfire.

But no--he could not be alive and look like that. What she was seeing must be the ghost of Gray Cloud, or his dead body walking. The cold and snow had killed him there in the sacred cave, and this shuffling, frozen husk was all that was left of him.

"Gray Cloud," she whispered, unable to speak aloud, "talk to me."

If he walked right past her without seeing her, he must be still on his spirit journey. She had always heard that the bodies of men on a spirit journey remained motionless, sitting or lying down. But she was certain that Gray Cloud was not fully awake.

She stood staring at him, her mouth open, as he shambled on past her.

She slowly turned to follow him, and now she was facing into the moonlight and seeing the shadows of the snow-covered wickiups. He was walking in that frighteningly slow, measured way toward the village. Wolf Paw was nowhere to be seen.

The feeling came to her again of other eyes upon her. Besides Wolf Paw, besides the strange creature Gray Cloud had become, someone else seemed to be out here in the snow-covered field with her. She shuddered.

She looked around to see if she could guess where the secret watcher might be hiding. Someone might be crouching behind one of the long snowdrifts that rippled across the prairie like waves on a lake. Or in the trees by the river.

She must not let herself be caught out here. She picked up the blanket roll and water skin that Wolf Paw had thrown into the snow and padded on her snowshoes after the lumbering white figure. She must hurry and try to get to a place where her presence would be unnoticed, or if noticed, not questioned.

Her legs ached. She did not have the strength to run. Gray Cloud had left a trail of two shallow furrows in the snow where he had pushed his legs through and the snow had fallen in behind him. On her snowshoes she pressed on behind him.

Even though the snowshoes helped her, her legs ached. She wanted to throw down her burdens of blanket roll and water skin, but they were too valuable for her to let them be lost out here. Merciless pain shot up from her shins through her knees to her hips. Still, the miseries felt by her body could not touch the joy of her spirit. Gray Cloud lived.

A wall of fur coated with white snow loomed up before her. As Gray Cloud lumbered along, she quickly stepped to the side and hurried around him.

She turned for a closer look at him. His steaming breath obscured his face. He stopped. He swayed, and the bear's skull fell back from his lolling head. She screamed, a sound that rang distantly in her ears.

Gray Cloud dropped to his knees, then fell forward on his face, sending up a great puff of powdery snow that glittered in the moonlit air.

The silence after his fall was as stunning as thunder. Redbird felt tears stream from her eyes--and freeze at once on her cheeks. That he should have lived through two nights of blizzard and cold, that he should come down alive from the sacred cave, only to die within sight of the village under her very eyes, was more than she could stand.

"Oh, no!" she whispered. "He must not die."

She fell to her knees beside him.

He lay face down, half buried. She put her hands under his shoulder and pushed to raise his head. He was heavy, but her fear and her love for him made her strong enough to move him. She lifted his upper body and turned him on his side, and she saw the beloved features, frost-white. Hope made her heart beat faster as little clouds of warm air puffed from his nostrils. But his breathing was ragged and shallow. She had to get him in out of the cold. Gasping with the effort, she rolled him over on his back.

She would have to try to drag him to the village.

Sobbing with near-exhaustion, she sat by his head, shoved her hands under his shoulders and tried to stand, pulling him up with her.

All at once there was no weight on her arms. Someone else was there, lifting Gray Cloud.

She looked up, thankful, yet afraid she might see Wolf Paw returned to do them harm.

No, it was Iron Knife.

Seeing the broad face of her half brother, a cry of relief burst from her throat.

"Oh, Iron Knife! It is so good you are here."

He smiled grimly, grunting as he hauled Gray Cloud to his feet. Gray Cloud's eyes were shut, his mouth hanging open.

"Lucky for Wolf Paw that Gray Cloud came when he did," Iron Knife said. "I was getting an arrow ready for Wolf Paw." He jerked his head at the bow slung over his shoulder.

"Even the son of Black Hawk?" She vividly remembered Wolf Paw's threats, but the thought of Iron Knife murdering him horrified her.

"Do you think I'd let him drown my sister?" Iron Knife put an arm around Gray Cloud's shoulders, bent down and picked him up under the knees, bearskin cloak and all. Blowing a cloud of steam out of his mouth, he straightened, cradling Gray Cloud in his arms. Though Gray Cloud was nearly as tall as Iron Knife, he was much lighter.

It was Iron Knife, she realized, whose eyes she had felt on her after Wolf Paw ran away.

They started off for the camp. She heard the voices of men and women raised, calling to one another. Wolf Paw must have given the alarm.

"How did you know I was out here?" she asked. "You were sleeping when I left the wickiup."

"Father woke me," Iron Knife said, striding stolidly along, his calf-high outer moccasins of buffalo hide breaking through the snow. "He knew what you were going to do. He told me to go after you, to see you came to no harm."

As they plowed steadily onward, Redbird saw figures moving about in the village. They must be terribly sleepy, she thought. Dawn was still a long way off. Still, more and more people were running back and forth among the wickiups. They were crowding in this direction, coming to meet Gray Cloud and Iron Knife and Redbird. A mass of people, dark against the moonlit snow.

In the front rank walked Owl Carver himself. The sacred necklace of megis shells swung on his chest. In one hand he held his medicine stick, a cedar staff decorated with feathers and beads, topped with the carved head of an owl. His long white hair spread out over his shoulders.

She could hear a murmuring of voices, and above them, the shaman, her father, singing:

"Let the people welcome him. He has walked the spirit trail. He comes back From the sky, From the water, From under the earth. He comes back from the seven directions. Let the people welcome him."

Owl Carver was dancing as he approached them, a slow, heavy shuffle alternating with sidesteps, his upper body rising and falling. His hands, one holding his medicine stick, the other a yellow and red gourd rattle, were lifted high over his head. The necklace of small black and white shells bounced on his chest.

Iron Knife, carrying Gray Cloud, came to a stop before Owl Carver. Redbird, not wanting people to know how she cared for Gray Cloud, drew away from Iron Knife and tried to melt into the crowd.

Taking a few more steps, Owl Carver placed himself facing east, with Iron Knife and Gray Cloud on his right. He danced in a sunwise circle around them, from east to south to west to north, bobbing his head and singing.

"The Great Wise One has sent him. He has walked the spirit trail. He brings wisdom From the sky, From the water, From under the earth. He comes back from the seven directions. The Great Wise One has sent him."

Nine times Owl Carver danced around Gray Cloud and Iron Knife in the circle that represented the sun, the horizon and the cycles of life and the seasons.

Then in his normal voice, not breaking step, he said, "Bring him to my medicine wickiup."

He turned abruptly and danced through the crowd that had gathered. The people parted to let him through and they stared at Gray Cloud's body in Iron Knife's arms.

The people who had followed Owl Carver had stamped down a path through the village. No longer needing Sun Woman's snowshoes, Redbird bent and unstrapped them from her feet. She was suddenly so exhausted by her efforts and by the fear and sleeplessness of two days that she could hardly stumble along behind Iron Knife. She felt that at any moment she might faint.

The light of the full moon, shining down from directly overhead and reflecting on the snow, seemed to make the whole village almost as bright as day. Sighing, Redbird looked up and saw Wolf Paw staring at her from beside the path.

His black eyes pierced her like arrowheads. Under his sharp nose his mouth was tight.

She nodded her head at him, hoping he would understand that she was saying that they should keep each other's secrets.

"Redbird!" A hand seized her arm roughly, and pain shot through up to her shoulder.

Her mother, Wind Bends Grass, glared at her furiously.

"Why did you leave our wickiup?"

Redbird felt that if she stopped walking to talk she would never be able to move again. She pulled her arm free. Her sisters, clinging to either side of her mother, stared up wide-eyed at her as if she herself had returned from a spirit journey.

Her mother walked beside her, scolding her in a shrill voice, but her words meant nothing to Redbird. She only wanted to see Gray Cloud brought safely to the shaman's wickiup.

Someone else took her arm, squeezing it gently, and she looked up into Sun Woman's face. Tears streaked the strong cheekbones.

"You saved his life," Sun Woman said, so softly only Redbird could hear the words.

"I did nothing," Redbird protested. Silently, Sun Woman took the snowshoes, the water bag and the blanket roll from her.

Owl Carver stopped at the doorway of the medicine wickiup. He danced from one foot to the other, shaking his staff.

He nodded at Iron Knife, and motioned him to carry Gray Cloud into the dark interior.

Redbird followed. The owl-headed stick barred her way.

"Go with your mother," Owl Carver said softly. "You have done enough this night."

She could not tell whether he was praising or reproaching her.

_Will he live?_ she wanted to ask. But his solemn face forbade her to speak.

She turned away from his remoteness and faced her mother's anger. Her heart was still full of terror for Gray Cloud, but she knew that the instant she lay down she would fall into an exhausted sleep.

* * * * *

It seemed that no time had passed when Wind Bends Grass shook her awake.

"Your father calls the people together," she said in a voice still hard with anger.

Redbird's eyelids felt as if they were made of stone. She forced herself to sit up, and then with immense effort got to her feet.

She was still fully dressed, even in her fur cloak and mittens. She had collapsed in the wickiup without removing anything. The wickiup was now empty. Her mother and her sisters had gone ahead without her.

Her heart hammered in her chest. Owl Carver might be calling the people to tell them that Gray Cloud was dead.

Outside, the air was still deathly cold, but the sun was a bright yellow disk rising above the distant gray line of trees that marked the bluffs overlooking the Great River. The light made her blink, and she turned away from it. She stumbled in the direction all the other people were going--to the medicine wickiup in the center of the camp circle.

She found that the open area before the wickiup was crowded, and she could not get close. The spaces between nearby wickiups were also filled with people, all waiting for Owl Carver to speak.

She seated herself between two women, both of whom had small children on their laps. Redbird knew one of the mothers, Water Flows Fast, a stout woman with a round, cheerful face and shrewd eyes.

Water Flows Fast said, "You are the daughter of Owl Carver. You should go up and sit close to him." Redbird sliced her hand flat across her body to say no. She knew Water Flows Fast to be a keen observer and a gossip, always looking for signs of trouble in other people's families. The less Redbird said to her, the better.

Redbird looked over her shoulder and saw that now there were many more people packed in behind her. Everyone was talking at once, and the hundreds of voices beating upon her ears made her head hurt. About five hundred people were here, everyone in this camp, which was one of four that made up the British Band of the Sauk and Fox tribes that would come together in Saukenuk after the winter snow and ice melted.

The medicine wickiup was built on a low hill in the center of the camp, and when Owl Carver appeared, everyone who was standing sat down. Redbird's eyes devoured Owl Carver's face, trying to read in it whether Gray Cloud was alive or dead.

Another man emerged from the medicine wickiup to stand beside Owl Carver. His head was bare even on this terribly cold day, and he wore his hair in the manner of a brave, his dark brown scalp shaved except for a long black scalplock that coiled down the side of his face. His eyes were shadowed and sad-looking, and there were heavy blue-black pouches under them. His cheekbones jutted out and his mouth was wide, curving down at the corners where it met deep furrows that ran from nose to chin.

Redbird's heart beat faster as she saw that to honor this moment he had attached a string of eagle feathers to his scalplock and wore strings of small white beads around the rim of each ear. He stood with his arms folded under a buffalo robe, skin side out, painted with a red hand proclaiming that he had killed and scalped his first enemy while still a boy.

His sombre gaze fell upon Redbird like a stone striking her from a great height. She felt as if the war chief of the British Band knew every one of her secrets. She ducked her head and looked down at her mittened hands in her lap.

Owl Carver raised his arms, and the people fell silent.

"I have called on Black Hawk, our war chief, to see Gray Cloud, and he has heard great prophecies from Gray Cloud's lips," the shaman cried in a high, chanting voice.

Then Gray Cloud had lived through the night!

Owl Carver blurred in Redbird's sight, and if she had not already been seated, she might have collapsed. Relief made her heart swell up in her chest, feeling as if it might burst.

The people around her murmured in surprise, pleasure and curiosity.

The shaman stretched out his hand. "Sun Woman, stand before the people."

Nothing happened for a long moment. Then Owl Carver beckoned insistently. There was another silence. Then Black Hawk's hand emerged from under his buffalo mantle, and he crooked his finger.

A tall woman wrapped in a buffalo robe rose from among the seated people. People sighed happily and called out a welcome to her.

Sun Woman turned to face the crowd. To Redbird she seemed calm and unruffled, even though she had hesitated about standing up.

"This woman brought her son to me and asked me to train him as a shaman," Owl Carver declared. "I did not want to, because he is not a pure Sauk. She said to me, only try him for a little time and see what he can be. I tried him for a little time and I saw something in him. I saw sleeping powers!"

The people murmured in wonder. Water Flows Fast and the woman with her whispered to each other, darting curious glances at Redbird, who carefully kept her face as impassive as Sun Woman's.

"I tested him and saw that his dreams could foretell the future, that he could send his spirit walking while his body lay still, that he could talk to the spirits in trees and birds. I saw that he had the power to be a shaman and more ..."

Owl Carver paused and stared at them fiercely.

"And so I sent him up to the sacred cave, knowing that he might meet spirits so powerful that to encounter them destroys the souls of men.

"And Gray Cloud went into the sacred cave, and he met the great spirits, and he journeyed with them," Owl Carver cried. People gasped.

"He has met the White Bear. He has spoken with the Turtle, father of the Great River. He has brought back a message for Black Hawk," said Owl Carver. "The Turtle told Gray Cloud that Black Hawk might tell others as he saw fit." The rumble of voices rose at this, and then quieted as Owl Carver raised his medicine stick.

"After the Turtle created our Mother the Earth, he mated with her, and all tribes were born in her womb," Owl Carver said. "They lived there in a warm darkness, but they had to go forth and find their way out of our Mother. Then there came to our ancestors an elder spirit, the White Bear, who led them out the womb of our Mother.

"When they were in the light, they found themselves in the midst of a ring of fiery mountains. Our people are called Osaukawug, or Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire, because that fiery place is where we first walked in the world. There was nothing to eat. There was nothing around the people but stones and fire. And they were hungry and greatly afraid, and they were angry at the White Bear for leading them out of our Mother to this place.

"But the White Bear showed them a way through the fiery mountains and over many fields of snow and ice, until he brought our ancestors to this good land where there is fish and game, where the grasslands are green and the woods are full of berries and fruit. And our friends the Fox, the Yellow Earth People, came to be our allies and to unite with us. And the Turtle opened his heart and the Great River flowed forth. Our ancestors hunted and fished in the land where the Rock River flows into the Great River. On the Rock River they built our village of Saukenuk, where they would dwell in the summer and their women would grow the Three Sisters, corn, beans and squash, in the fields around the village. And there at Saukenuk, as our ancestors died, they were buried.

"The White Bear told us we should spend our summers in that land east of the Great River. In the winter it should be our custom to cross to the west of the Great River and hunt here in the Ioway Country. And here by the Great River we Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire, have lived ever since."

Redbird felt warmth on her back through her buffalo robe. The sun had risen higher.

Owl Carver called out in his high voice of prophecy, "The White Bear has come again. He has led Gray Cloud on his spirit journey. Now Gray Cloud is a true shaman. He still must be trained to use his powers, but his powers no longer sleep. And in sign that he is a shaman with another self, he shall have a new name. Let him be known to all the people as White Bear!"

Redbird heard cries of assent from the people around her.

Owl Carver crossed his arms before his chest to show that he was finished speaking, and turned to Black Hawk.

"So let it be," said Black Hawk in his harsh, grating voice. "Earthmaker has willed that the British Band shall be blessed with a mighty new spirit walker. Let his name hereafter be White Bear."

_If I could make a spirit journey_, Redbird thought, _I too could stand before the people and advise them_.

She came to a sudden resolve. _One day I will._

"Now you shall see our new shaman," Owl Carver declared. He stepped back and pulled aside the buffalo-fur curtain that covered the door of his wickiup.

A tall young man came out, stooping to pass through the doorway and then standing straight before the people. Redbird's heart beat faster, and she half rose to her feet.

His slender body, despite the cold, was bare to the waist. Redbird gasped as she saw what was on his chest.

Five long, deep scratches, side by side. The blood had dried and turned black. Five long black marks down the middle of his pale chest, running almost from the base of his neck to the bottom of his rib cage.

Cries of awe and wonder arose from the people. They had all seen such marks, sometimes scratched in the bark of trees, sometimes on the half-eaten bodies of animals found in the forest in summer.

The claw marks of a bear.

And now his name was White Bear. She whispered it to herself. Her eyes saw nothing but the shining slender form, and her ears heard nothing but the sound of his name.

4

Master of Victoire

Raoul threw himself into the lake, the giant Potawatomi chief Black Salmon roaring behind him. The water resisted his legs like molasses. Black Salmon seized Raoul's neck, cutting off his breath. Strangling, he was helpless as the Potawatomi dragged him back to shore.

The huge Indian's whip tore into Raoul's back. Raoul felt the skin ripping and the blood running. He was nothing but a helpless lump of bleeding flesh, paralyzed with pain.

Other Potawatomi had torn Helene's clothes off. The warriors danced around her on the beach as she cowered, white skin, shining blond hair, trying to cover herself.

The Indian bucks were naked, too, and flaunted their erect purple cocks, big as war clubs. One of them darted into the circle and bit a piece out of poor Helene's shoulder. Bright red blood flowed down her arm.

Raoul ran to save his sister. He broke away from Black Salmon and fought his way through the Potawatomi warriors around her. She lay on her back on the sand, twisting her body from side to side in pain. Hideous bite wounds all over her body lay open like red mouths silently screaming. One breast was covered with blood.

The Indians fell upon Raoul. They had their scalping knives out and they threw him down on the ground beside Helene. Black Salmon caught up with him and whipped him till every inch of his body was slashed. The redskins tore away the last few rags of Raoul's clothing.

A circle of grimacing dark faces painted with yellow and black stripes closed in on him. They bared sharp teeth like snarling dogs. They were going to eat him alive.

Raoul's father and Raoul's brother, Pierre, faces marble and calm, appeared in the midst of the Indians. They looked down at Raoul's agony. Just curious.

Raoul tried to cry out, "Papa! Pierre! Help us! They're killing us!"

No sound came out of his mouth but a useless little wheeze. He had lost his voice.

"You should not have angered them," Papa said.

One of the savages, holding high a long, thin skinning knife, seized Raoul's balls. He brought the knife down, slowly.

Raoul kept trying to scream at his father and brother. Again and again he forced air through his aching throat. Nothing came but a silly squeak. Then a groan, a little louder.

Pierre reached out a marble hand to him. Thank God!

Just as their fingers touched, Pierre jerked his hand away and disappeared.

Raoul felt the Indian's blade like cold fire slicing through the sac between his legs. At last he let out a full-throated scream.

"Raoul!"

His body cold and wet with sweat, he sat up in darkness. He felt arms clutching at him and fought them off.

"Raoul! Wake up."

Panting, he said his name in his mind. _I am Raoul François Philippe Charles de Marion._ He repeated it over and over again to himself.

He was sitting in bed in the dark, someone beside him. Not an Indian, and not his long-dead sister Helene. He gasped again and again, as if he had run a race.

He tried to pull his mind together. His heart was still pounding against the wall of his chest, his hands trembling, his skin ice cold. That terrible dream! He hadn't had it in a year or more.

"Lordy, what a nightmare you must have had! You did a right smart of hollerin'."

In the dim light seeping in through cracks in the shuttered window, Raoul saw a woman with long blond hair sitting up beside him, staring at him with pale blue eyes.

Clarissa. Clarissa Greenglove. He looked down at her. A warmth began to creep back into his body, rising first in his loins, as he remembered what they had done together the night before. Five times! No--six! Never before had he done it that many times in one night.

He was still panting in the aftermath of the horror, but the sight of her naked body was helping him get the dream out of his mind.

Never done it with such a good-looking woman.

She looked down at herself and drew up the sheet to cover her breasts.

"Don't do that," he said, and pulled the sheet down again, none too gently.

He began to rub her breast with the palm of his hand, feeling the nipple get bigger and harder. She closed her eyes and gave a little murmur of pleasure.

How she'd enjoyed it last night! She'd sighed and groaned and whimpered and screamed and licked him and bit him and twisted her body from side to side like a soul in perdition. Her frenzy had fired him up like never before. No wonder he'd been able to mount her so many times. And somewhere near the end of it all she'd sobbed into his shoulder for what seemed like an hour. He figured that was a tribute to what he had done to her. The sheets were still damp with their sweat, and the air in the little bedroom was thick with the musky odors of their secret juices.

But the redskins were still stalking in his brain, and he was still a little frightened. He didn't want to sit here in the dark.

"Light a candle, will you?" he said. "The striker's on that table."

She hesitated. "Can I get dressed first?"

"Hell no," he laughed. "What difference would that make after last night? I know you outside and in, Clarissa."

She giggled and got out of bed while he sat hugging his knees watching her.

"It's cold out here," she whined.

"Well, hurry and get that candle lit and get back in bed." The March air whistled in through chinks in the log walls and shutters, and even though the inn's chimney ran up through this room it didn't seem to help. He guessed that downstairs in the taproom someone had let the fire die.

Clarissa's pale, rounded shape as she moved through the shadows made him feel stronger by the moment. The women he'd had up to now--many of them right here in this bed--had been older and well-used, and he hadn't enjoyed the look of their bodies that much. Clarissa was just the right age, old enough to be filled out, young enough to be slender and firm. He guessed she must be sixteen or seventeen. Raoul had been bedding women since he was sixteen, for seven years now, and he'd never had a better night than this last one, with Clarissa.

Then why, after such a shining night, did he have _that_ dream?

As the oil-soaked cotton ball flared up and Clarissa held a candlewick to the flame, the nightmare came back to him, and out of the roiling images of red limbs and painted faces and blood and torn white bodies, he dragged the reason for what he had dreamed. When he remembered it, he slumped a little, his delight in waking up next to a pretty young woman wiped away.

He heard again the stunning, infuriating words that had tumbled out of Armand Perrault's bushy brown beard.

_I overheard your brother, Monsieur Pierre, talking to your father this morning. He spoke of how he has always felt that he had abandoned his Sauk Indian wife and their son, when he came back here and married Madame Marie-Blanche. Now that he is a widower, he says, he wants to "do right by her and the boy."_

This thing about having a Sauk woman and a son--Pierre had never said anything about that.

To call some Indian whore a _wife_!

_My brother, the master of Victoire, a squaw-man! Father of a mongrel son!_

Armand had remarked sourly to Raoul, "It seems Monsieur Pierre is a great one for doing _wrong_ by women."

Raoul knew what he meant. He'd heard the rumor that after Marie-Blanche had died, Pierre, a little crazy in his grief, had taken Armand's wife to bed a time or two, to comfort himself.

But that was nothing compared to what Pierre was threatening now.

_Indians living in our home! A squaw in the bed where Pierre slept with good Marie-Blanche!_

How could Pierre do such a thing, after what the Indians had done to Helene? After Raoul had spent two years beaten and enslaved by Black Salmon? How could Papa permit it?

Clarissa turned, holding out before her a lighted white candle in a little pewter dish. She didn't seem so shy now about letting him see her naked. He let his eyes linger over her melon-shaped breasts, narrow waist, the brown puff of hair where her long legs joined her wide hips.

He'd often felt a hankering for Clarissa since he'd hired her father, Eli Greenglove, to help him run the trading post. But he'd thought it unwise to get mixed up with her. Eli was a dangerous man. Last night that hadn't seemed to matter.

After Armand had brought him the bad news, he'd turned to Kentucky whiskey--Old Kaintuck--and to Clarissa, dancing with her to Registre Bosquet's fiddle in the taproom to take his mind off this sudden insult Pierre had flung at him. Late in the evening he'd stumbled upstairs behind Clarissa to his bedroom in the inn, his hands up her skirts, feeling the satiny skin of her legs.

And then down on the bed, and--whiskey and all--six times!

But this morning his pleasure in her was spoiled by this treachery of Pierre's.

A squaw and a redskinned mongrel. Raoul wouldn't want Indians on the estate even as servants. Now Pierre was talking about these savages living in Victoire as part of the family.

He felt a sudden, stinging bite down near his rear end, under the covers. Angrily, he slapped at himself. Damned fleas and bedbugs. Levi Pope's wife made a piss-poor job of laundering the bedding for the inn.

_If I had a wife I'd make sure she kept the bugs out of my sheets._

Clarissa set the candle down on the table and climbed back into bed. She ran her hand over his back.

She brought her face close to his, and he decided that, though he liked her arms and legs and hips and breasts, he didn't care for her weak chin, her washed-out blond hair and light blue eyes and the brown stain on one of her front teeth.

She said, "You've got scars all over your back. Somebody beat you. Your paw?"

"My papa?" The thought made him smile. "No, the old man's not that sort."

_But he's the kind of man who might forget about me for a while. Who might let me be captured by Indians in 1812 and not manage to find me and ransom me till 1814._

_The kind of man who might actually let my brother bring Indians into our home._

The scars. The scars reminded him every day of Fort Dearborn, August 1812. The memories left scars inside. Memories of being ten years old, cowering in an Indian encampment with the other white captives from Fort Dearborn while the warriors with their clubs and tomahawks approached, grinning.

It hadn't happened the way he dreamed it. The Potawatomi had pulled a man, an army private, to his feet, while he begged for his life, and dragged him over to the campfire. In an agony of terror Raoul had pressed against Helene, seated beside him on the ground. She put her arm around his shoulders and held him tight.

His sister Helene had seen her husband's throat cut and his scalp slashed away that very morning, when the Indians fell upon the retreating soldiers of Fort Dearborn and the civilians fleeing the tiny village called Checagou. But somehow Helene kept herself calm and strong after witnessing Henri's terrible death. Raoul knew it was for his sake.

Raoul had shut his eyes, and heard the clubs thud into the head and body of the soldier at the campfire, heard his screams, heard the silence of death when the screams stopped. A man's life had ended, just like that. Raoul trembled, hiding his face in Helene's side. Around him the other prisoners, men and women, sobbed and prayed.

The Indians took another soldier. They tied him to a stake and cut away bits of his flesh with the sharpened edges of clam shells. They worked at him for hours, until he bled to death.

The warriors came back for their next victim, sauntering among the prisoners, eyes aglow, painted faces like masks of monsters, stinking of the whiskey they'd been drinking all night. This time he was sure they were coming for him.

But they took Helene.

He had never forgotten her last words to him, spoken serenely as the Potawatomi seized her arms.

"I am going to join Henri. Pray to the Mother of God for me, Raoul."

The Indians dragged Helene into the woods. They took another woman as well.

The Potawatomi squaws, seated around a nearby campfire, chattered among themselves. They laughed whenever one of the women in the woods screamed. Raoul could not believe that any of those sounds were coming from his sister's throat.

The helpless white prisoners covered their faces and prayed and wept--and the men cursed.

He had hated himself for not trying to help Helene, but he was too frightened to move. Too frightened even to cry out. Brooding about it now, nearly thirteen years later, he told himself once again that if he'd tried to help Helene the Indians would have clubbed him to death. He told himself that he had been only ten years old. That did not make any difference to the shame he felt when he remembered that night. He should have gone to her. He should have fought to the death for her. He could never forgive himself.

_Why didn't we all fight and die? Wouldn't it have been better to attack the Indians barehanded and be killed than to let that happen?_

But neither could he forgive Papa and Pierre. His father and brother had left Raoul in Helene's care at Fort Dearborn, where her husband, Henri Vaillancourt, ran the trading post of Papa's Illinois Fur Company. When it became apparent that a second war between England and the United States was about to break out, Papa declared that land prices in Illinois were now as low as they would ever be, and he set off in search of likely land to buy for a family seat. Pierre had gone to the Sauk and Fox Indians on the Rock River to talk about trade and land purchases with them. Raoul had been happy enough to be left with Helene, who had been a mother to him as far back as he could remember. His own mother, Helene had gently explained to him, had gone to Heaven when he was born.

When Raoul heard no more screams from the woods, he knew Helene had gone to Heaven, too.

The next morning, as the Indians began the march back to their village, dragging their bound captives, Raoul had seen Helene's naked body, with stab wounds in a hundred places, lying face down, half submerged in Lake Michigan's surf. He saw a round, red patch on top of her head. Later he saw a brave who had tied to his belt a long hank of silver-blond hair, surely Helene's, a circular piece of skin dangling down.

The Indians had chosen not to kill Raoul, perhaps because at ten he was too young to be a satisfying victim, but old enough to work. And so Black Salmon had taken him for his slave. It made no difference whether he worked well or poorly; Black Salmon let not a day go by without whipping him, and fed him entrails and hominy grits. Only after Raoul had endured two years of slavery did his father, Elysée, find him and ransom him from Black Salmon.

And when Raoul was older he came to understand the full horror of what the Indians had done to Helene. They must have raped her over and over again. And he hated himself and Pierre and Elysée all the more for letting it happen.

But most of all he hated Indians.

Indians living at Victoire? He had to kill that notion of Pierre's right now. He would put on his clothes and saddle Banner and ride up to the château and set his father and brother straight.

But would they understand? Pierre, with his oh-so-tender conscience, who had lived with the damned Sauk and Fox for years and slept with one of their dirty squaws? Elysée, buried in his books? Raoul remembered their marble faces, as he had seen them in his dream.

They'd never understood him.

"Where did you get them scars?" Clarissa asked, interrupting his thoughts as she ran her fingers lightly over the hard ridges on his back.

Raoul told her about Black Salmon. "He liked whipping me even better than he liked whiskey. And when he got hold of whiskey he liked beating me even better."

"Poor Raoul! And such a little boy." Clarissa's face drew down with sympathy. "I'm powerful sorry for you." She pulled him to her.

He lowered his head to her breast and drew the nipple into his mouth, pressing it with his teeth. They lay back together, and he enjoyed the feel of the soft, feather-filled mattress and pillows billowing up around them.

By God, if he didn't feel himself getting big and hard to do it again. Proudly he threw back the sheet and let her see what he had for her. She smiled up at him, welcoming, her pale blue eyes shining in the candlelight.

He could use her to help him forget a little longer about Pierre and his redskin wife and son.

A sharp rapping at the bedroom door brought an end to his new surge of desire.

Clarissa gasped and pulled away from Raoul, dragging the bedclothes toward her.

Raoul put his finger to his lips and called out, "Who's there?"

"It's Eli," said a voice through the door.

Raoul's heart began hammering again, as hard as when he woke from his nightmare.

"Oh, Lord, my paw," whispered Clarissa.

She sounded frightened--but only a _touch_ frightened, and Raoul eyed her suspiciously. Her eyes were wide, like a child trying to deny mischief after being caught red-handed. Could Eli and his daughter have planned this?

Did Eli know that Clarissa was in here? Raoul had been too drunkenly careless to worry about who was watching when he took her upstairs last night.

Feeling a quaking in his stomach, Raoul walked over to the door. "What, Eli?" He hoped his voice sounded strong. He no longer took pleasure and pride in his nakedness.

"Thought you should know about something I heard over to the fur store, Raoul."

"Who's minding the furs now?" The place was full of bundles of pelts, beaver, badger, fox, raccoon, skunk. And valuable trade goods. Indian bucks walking in and out all the time, this time of year. Raoul had been happy to turn most of the fur trade work over to Eli. He couldn't stomach dealing with Indians.

"I left Otto Wegner there. Raoul, there's Injuns out digging in your lead mine."

At once Raoul forgot his fear of being caught with Clarissa. In its place he felt a rage so powerful his body seemed to fill up with boiling oil. Indians, more Indians! Worming their way into his family, and now stealing from his mine.

"Came looking for lead, did they?" he growled. "We'll give them lead. Round me up a couple of good marksmen and I'll meet you down in the taproom."

He heard no sound for a moment, and wondered what Eli was doing and thinking on the other side of the plank door.

Then Eli's voice came, "I'll be a-waiting for you, Raoul."

_That gets him away from here for now._

But if Eli and Clarissa were planning to try to push him into a marriage, he knew he wouldn't get out of this that easy.

Pierre bringing an Indian wife and son home, Clarissa trying to trap him into a marriage--he began to feel as if he had walked into some kind of an ambush.

And Indians at the mine.

He eyed Clarissa, who sat with a pillow between her bare back and the rough-hewn log wall, sheet and blanket pulled up to her shoulders. He walked over to her to make sure he could not be heard from outside.

"I'm going to have to ride out to the mine, and I'll be taking your father with me," he said, keeping his voice soft. "Wait till you hear us ride away, then get out of here. And make sure nobody sees you."

She was still wide-eyed. "Oh, Raoul, if he was to catch me with you he'd beat me worse'n that Injun ever beat you."

Raoul leaned forward and put his hand, gently but firmly, on her throat. "If he ever finds out from you that you and I were together," he said softly, "I'll beat you even worse than that."

* * * * *

In the taproom on the first floor of the inn, Eli, a short, skinny man whose thinning blond hair was turning gray, gave no sign of knowing that Clarissa was in the room upstairs. Where did he think she was? Raoul wondered. Maybe he knew, but was biding his time.

"Winnebago with a bundle of beaver pelts come in this morning," Eli said. "Said that for an extra cupful of whiskey he'd tell me a thing I might like to know. I obliged, and he told me riding over here yesterday he'd seen smoke rising from the prairie. He went for a look-see and it was three Sauk bucks carrying galena out of the mine and smelting it down."

Eli had rounded up three big men to ride out with Raoul. Levi Pope, a tall, hatchet-faced Sucker, an Illinois man, carried a Kentucky rifle that almost came up to his shoulder. Otto Wegner, a veteran of the army of the King of Prussia, was six foot three with broad shoulders. He wore his brown mustache thick and let it grow back over his cheeks to join his sideburns. Hodge Hode, like Eli, was a Puke, a Missourian. Huge as a grizzly bear, he dressed in fringed buckskins. Under his coonskin cap red hair, wild and knotted, hung down to his shoulders, and his red beard hid three quarters of his face. Besides their long rifles, Eli, Levi, Hodge and Otto had pistols stuck through their belts, powder horns slung over their shoulders, hunting knives sheathed in pockets in the front of their buckskin shirts.

Raoul let them each have a glass of whiskey, his good whiskey, Old Kaintuck from a canvas-wrapped stone jug, not the terrible-tasting corn liquor he dispensed from the barrel in the taproom. Then the five of them went out to mount their horses in the courtyard of the trading post. Raoul rode his chestnut stallion, Banner.

_My domain_, Raoul thought proudly, as he looked around. Surrounding the trading post was a palisade twenty feet high made of logs set vertically, with a catwalk running all around it and a guard tower in each corner. From a pole atop the southwest tower flew the flag of the United States, thirteen stripes and twenty-four stars, and below it the flag of the de Marions' Illinois Fur Company, an arrow and a musket crossing behind a beaver pelt.

Dominating the buildings inside the palisade was a blockhouse, limestone at ground level, with an overhanging second story of logs and rifle slits all around. Raoul had built it to fortify the trading post against his memories of Checagou. Pierre and Papa might have thought it foolish expense and effort, but where had they been when he needed them?

Near the east side of the blockhouse was the inn they'd just left, a log house, food and drink on the ground floor and lodgings above. On the west side, the fur store. Over in the northwest corner was the magazine, a windowless cube of limestone blocks, surrounded by its own little palisade the height of a man. Here were stored the bags and barrels of gunpowder that passed through the trading post.

They rode out through the gateway, arched over by the name DE MARION, formed out of small bits of log by Raoul's brother-in-law, Frank Hopkins, carpenter and printer. Raoul glanced down at the town of Victor, built on the steep slope below the trading post. From here he could see mostly half-log roofs and clay-lined log chimneys following the road that zigzagged across the face of the bluff. The houses all faced west, with their backs to the limestone slope. North and south from the base of the bluff stretched miles of bottomland along the Mississippi River. The spring floods that left the bottom some of the richest farmland in the world also made it necessary to build almost everything on the bluff above the high-water line.

Raoul pulled Banner's head around and led his little troop at a trot along the ridge that ran east. Now Victoire came into view, the château his father and brother had built on the edge of the prairie, its first floor, like that of the blockhouse, of stone, its upper two stories of square-hewn timber. Some day, he thought, as he rode past the hill crowned by the great house, he would enter Victoire as master.

They rode on, passing big log barns and animal sheds Raoul had helped build. They followed a narrow trail through fields planted in corn and wheat, through orchards, the trees as yet only a little higher than a man but already yielding apples and peaches. Farther out still, cattle and horses grazed on grassland that rolled eastward like the waves of the ocean.

Five miles from the Mississippi they came to the boundary stone with an M carved on it that marked Victoire's easternmost extent. From there Raoul could see, a good ten miles or more away, the sign of the Indians, a long finger of gray smoke leaning northeastward among the fluffy white clouds. The mine entrance was at the bottom of a ravine carved in the prairie by the Peach River, and the smoke doubtless meant the Indians were smelting lead.

After a long ride they reached the little river. The five men reined up and tethered their horses downwind from the smoke; an Indian, it was said, had a sense of smell as keen as a dog's. Raoul led his men to the edge of the ravine.

They walked quietly along the ravine until they sighted Indians down at the bottom. Sauk or Fox, Raoul saw, recognizing their shaven heads with tufts of hair in the center. One of the bucks was standing at the mine entrance holding a skin sack that appeared to be full of chunks of galena, lead ore. The other two were adding logs to the smelter's fire. Their six horses--three for riding and three for carrying lead--were standing at the edge of the river about ten feet from the smelter.

The Indians' smelter was simply a square pit dug in the hillside, lined with rocks at the bottom and filled with logs and brushwood. They were melting down the galena, letting it flow through the rocks into a slanting trench that led to a square mold dug in the earth. Raoul counted five pigs of lead already formed, cooled and stacked beside the mold. They'd probably been at this ever since the end of winter, thinking the mine was so far from town that no white man would notice.

Lead was selling at seventeen dollars per thousand pounds at the pit head up north in Galena, the new boom town named for the ore, and if these Indians had been working since the snow melted, they might have robbed Raoul of as much as two hundred dollars.

Raoul thought he recognized the two bucks at the smelter. Last fall they had come to him as he was bossing the crew he'd put to work expanding the mine before he shut it down for the winter. The Indians had claimed it was their mine. He had told them to be off, and when they hadn't moved quickly enough, he and his men had cocked their flintlocks. Should have killed them then.

Raoul gripped the gilded butt of the cap-and-ball pistol that hung at his waist and slid it out of its holster.

"Get them!" he called, standing up suddenly. He stretched out his arm, sighted along the barrel of his pistol and fired at the nearer Indian standing by the smelter.

Four rifles went off at once. Raoul was enveloped in the bitter smell of gunpowder and a cloud of smoke. The Indian Raoul had aimed at jerked, fell to his knees, then collapsed face forward beside the smelter. The other one at the smelter ran for his horse and leaped on its back. They must have all aimed at the same one, Raoul thought, cursing himself for not thinking of pointing out targets for each man.

The third Indian had disappeared. The skin sack of galena lay beside the mine entrance.

"Dammit," said Raoul. "If that redskin on the horse gets away there'll be raiding parties coming here. Whoever digs here'll have to have eyes in the back of his head."

"I'll put an eye in the back of _his_ head," said Eli as he poured powder from his measure down the muzzle of his rifle. He grinned at Raoul--two upper front teeth missing and one lower. Did he know about Clarissa? Raoul still couldn't tell.

The other men were also reloading. Raoul pushed powder and shot down the muzzle of his pistol, then took a percussion cap out of a pouch at his belt and pressed it onto the nipple in the breach. By the time he was ready to fire, the Indian was galloping down the riverbed and had disappeared around a bend.

Hodge Hode, Levi Pope and Otto Wegner ran for their horses. Eli stayed where he was, smiling down at the rifle in his hands as if he were holding a baby.

"If we all chase after the one on horseback," Eli said, "the one that's hiding will run off in the other direction."

"True enough," said Raoul. By this time Hodge, Levi and Otto had ridden off.

"Another thing," Eli said. "Our boys is on the wrong side of the ravine. When the Injun comes out, he'll come out on the south side. By the time they ride down and in, and up and out again, he'll be a mile away."

"So what do we do?" asked Raoul.

"It's all flat land hereabouts."

Before Raoul could demand an explanation of that, he saw the fleeing Indian on his mount scramble out of the ravine and ride southward, just as Eli had predicted. Raoul glanced at his men as they came to a halt, puzzlement showing in their gestures. Hodge fired at the Indian, who rode on unharmed. Though Raoul would not have known what else to do, he despised his two men for their uselessness.

Soon the Indian, riding hell-bent south, was a tiny dark silhouette against the yellow prairie. Eli raised the barrel of his Kentucky long rifle. It was an impossible shot, Raoul thought, but he said nothing. Eli seemed to be aiming slightly high, not straight at the redskin. Raoul heard the Puke suck in a deep breath through his missing front teeth.

The rifle boomed. The muzzle flash made Raoul blink, and a cloud of blue-white smoke drifted across the canyon.

A long time seemed to pass with nothing happening. But maybe it was only a heartbeat or two. Then the dark, distant figure threw up his arms and toppled sideways from his horse. The horse kept running and was gone over the horizon a moment later.

"Right through his noodle," Eli said. "I couldn't of made that shot if he hadn't been riding due south. Too hard to get a lead on him _and_ arch the bullet just right."

Eli made it seem just a simple matter of skill, but Raoul felt as if he had just seen a miracle.

The faces of the other men, as they climbed down from their horses, showed as much awe as Raoul felt.

"Pretty good shooting, for a Puke," said Levi Pope.

"Better'n any Sucker could do," Eli returned genially.

Raoul said, "Otto, go get that Indian's body and bring it back here."

Otto Wegner turned at once to remount his horse. Raoul liked the way the Prussian obeyed every order instantly.

But Hodge Hode glowered at Raoul. "Waste of time. Coyotes and buzzards have a taste for Injun meat."

Annoyed at being questioned, Raoul said, "I don't want anybody to know what happened to these redskins."

As Otto rode off, Eli, pointing to the mine entrance, said, "We got one still alive. At least one."

"I'll take care of him," said Raoul.

Eli, Hodge and Levi looked at him, surprised.

Eli's fine shot had not only awed him; he felt it, uneasily, as a challenge. The law was absent in Smith County, which was the way Raoul liked it. Gave an edge to a man who could handle a rifle as well as Eli. But now, to make sure his own word remained the closest thing to law in these parts, Raoul felt he had to equal Eli's accomplishment.

He checked the load in his pistol. He gripped the hilt of the thirteen-inch knife at his belt and loosened it in its sheath. A blacksmith in St. Louis had made it for him, assuring him it was an exact replica of the knife designed a couple of years ago by the famed Arkansas frontiersman Jim Bowie.

Raoul's mouth was dry. His heart was beating so hard he thought his men must be able to see his woollen coat quivering. His hands were cold and sweaty.

"Ain't but one way out of that mine, is there?" said Eli. "If we go in four abreast he can't get past us, and it's a hell of a sight safer."

"I'll take care of him," Raoul repeated. Every word Eli said against his going into the mine alone made him even more determined to do it. He needed to keep Eli in line, especially if it should turn out that Eli knew about him and Clarissa.

"He might have a rifle," said Eli. "Might shoot you when you walk in there."

"If we all go in, one of you might get shot," said Raoul. "This is my property."

_And fighting for it will make it more truly my property than any government grant could._

But that Indian in there--what was he armed with? Rifle, knife, bow, tomahawk? How strong was he, how fast, how skilled in fighting hand to hand?

_I'm a fool to put myself through this._

"Could be more'n one in there," said Eli.

Raoul felt the blood run hot through his veins as he thought of Pierre's bastard son, of Black Salmon, of the Potawatomi who raped and murdered Helene. His men had killed two Indians today, but there was a third waiting in that mine, and Raoul de Marion meant to be the death of him.

Ignoring Eli's warnings, he moved toward the black square of the mine entrance.

He walked slowly, pistol at waist level. He needed his knife out, too, he decided. Even though he was right-handed, it would be better to have a second weapon ready than have his left hand empty. He drew his knife, taking heart from its well-balanced feel.

He stepped under the logs he'd set last fall to brace the entrance. Should he light a candle? No, that would make him an even better target. He tried to pierce the blackness with his eyes; it was thick as a wool curtain.

This was foolish, he thought. If they all went in together, the way Eli said, a couple of men could carry candles, and they could flush out the Indian in no time. This way, he was going to get himself killed. If the Indian had a rifle, Raoul was dead for sure. He felt an urge to back out and call the others to help him. He stood there a moment, legs trembling.

No. He had to kill his Indian by himself. He had to show Eli and the rest.

He forced his feet to slide forward as silently as he could manage. His hesitation had given his eyes a chance to get used to the dark. He tried to remember the layout of the mine. In the dim light from the entrance he made out the downward slope of the long tunnel. About twenty feet in, another tunnel branched off to his left. His eyes ached as they tried to find the enemy hiding somewhere ahead of him.

He could see nothing but black walls lined with logs to brace the ceiling, a floor littered with chunks of rock. As he moved forward, the tunnel got narrower, the ceiling lower. He could almost feel the weight of the rock and earth above him; these logs could suddenly give way and the prairie come down on him like a boot on a bug. He began to be more afraid of the mine than he was of the hidden Indian.

He came to the branch tunnel and peered into it.

With a high-pitched shriek the Indian sprang at him.

Raoul glimpsed a steel tomahawk edge coming at his head. He jerked the pistol's trigger and jabbed with the knife in his left hand to parry the axe blade.

The blast of the pistol deafened Raoul, and in the momentary blaze of light he saw the face of a young Indian, distorted with anger and fear.

It was a face he hated on sight--dark skin, narrow black eyes, flat but for a beak of a nose, shaven skull. A face like those in his nightmares. It stayed vivid in his mind's eye when the flash of light was gone.

The Indian's war whoop ended in a cry of pain.

_Got the sonofabitch!_ Raoul exulted. He'd been holding his pistol low, must have hit the Indian in the gut.

The flash had temporarily blinded him, but reflexes honed in dozens of riverfront brawls took over. He jammed his pistol into its holster and switched the knife to his right hand. Every fiber of him hungered to kill. He lunged forward, knife straight out in front of him. He could feel his lips stretching in a grin.

The knife hit something solid, yet yielding. With a yell of triumph he drove the point in, was rewarded with a scream of agony. He was beginning to see again. The shadow facing him lifted the tomahawk. Raoul jerked the knife free and swung; it chunked into the Indian's arm like a meat cleaver. He heard the tomahawk clang on the rock floor.

Raoul threw himself on the Indian, stabbing, stabbing. His enemy's body, smaller and lighter than his, crumpled under his weight. The fingers of his left hand dug into smooth skin and hard muscle. He felt hands pushing against him, but their efforts were weak, the struggles of a dying creature. The cries and groans of pain made him eager to hurt the Indian more. It was too dark to see where his knife was going in, but he brought it down again and again. His hands felt wet. Some of his thrusts sank deep, others were stopped by bone.

A pulse pounded in his brain. It did not matter that he was fighting in the dark; fury blinded him anyway. He forgot everything but the knife in his hand and the soft, bloody body under him. He screamed with rage and triumph, drowning out the agonized shrieks of his enemy.

After a while, no more cries. The body under him did not move. Raoul lay on top of the Indian, panting.

He began to think again. Carefully he slid his hand over the Indian's chest, the buckskin shirt slippery with warm blood. No heartbeat, no lifting of lungs.

_By God, I did it, I killed him!_ He felt as if rockets were going off in his head, and he laughed aloud. He'd fought for his mine and spilled his enemy's blood to make it his own.

_No goddamned Indian is ever going to steal what belongs to me._

He climbed to his feet. His knees were shaking violently under him.

His head ached so badly he felt as if his eyes were being pushed out of his skull. He realized that in the fight he'd completely lost control of himself. He'd become a wild thing, a creature without a mind. It had happened to him several times before, in fights that had ended with his killing a man.

Thoughts of triumph that he had killed his enemy, of terror at the realization that this fight could have gone the other way, chased each other around in his brain, but he felt even more alive and happier than he had last night with Clarissa.

Sudden light dazzled him. An arrow of fear shot through him. More Indians?

"Raoul!" It was Eli Greenglove's voice.

His eyes adjusted, and he could see Eli, Hodge Hode and Levi Pope standing at the entrance to the side tunnel. They looked at the body at his feet and the bloody knife in his hand, and then up at him and their eyes were wide and their lips parted.

_Those looks are worth as much to me as this whole mine._

"You really chopped him into mincemeat," Eli said. "I'll have to get me one of them Arkansas toothpicks."

"Get the other two bodies in here," Raoul said, making an effort to keep his voice steady. "We'll find some place to bury them."

"Better search the whole mine, make sure there's no more redskins," said Eli.

Raoul agreed, but he felt certain this one he'd killed was the only one in the mine. He looked down at the dead face. The Indian wasn't much more than fifteen or sixteen years old. Good, he thought. Hadn't had long enough to do much harm.

But why, Raoul wondered, had this young buck thrown his life away attacking him near the entrance to the mine? He'd have had more of a chance of escaping if he'd hidden deeper.

Maybe he'd figured there was at least a little light to see and fight by near the entrance. If he'd gotten Raoul, then somehow managed to get away, he'd probably have claimed the right to wear a brave's feather.

The thought of himself lying dead in the dark and his scalp hanging on a pole in front of a lodge down at Saukenuk made Raoul shudder.

But it was Raoul who'd won his feather. No Indian would ever kill Raoul de Marion.

And any redskin sluts, and any mongrel bastards, that showed their face around Victoire would have to deal with a man who killed Indians as easily as he killed any other sort of vermin.

Time to have it out with Pierre.

* * * * *

Pierre wanted to weep as he saw what was about to happen. He rushed forward and thrust out his hand to stop Raoul.

"Not the vase!" he cried. Maman had loved it so.

Raoul was too close to the mantel for Pierre to reach him in time. He got to it in two strides and, just as Pierre had expected, seized the vase that had been in the family for four generations, had stood on the mantel ever since they built this château.

"Raoul!" Papa cried. "Think what you are doing!"

Raoul turned, holding the vase high over his head. He fixed Pierre with the wide-eyed stare of a madman. His teeth flashed under his black mustache in a grimace of fury.

He dashed the vase to the flagstone floor. The white egg shape vanished with a hollow crack, and shards scattered, some hitting Raoul's boots, others flying into the huge stone hearth.

A sudden silence filled the great hall of Victoire. Pierre felt as if his heart had broken with the vase.

_You killed Maman_, he wanted to cry out, _now you would kill the memory of her_.

But he held his tongue and hated himself for even thinking what he had almost said. What an evil thought! How could he blame Raoul because Maman died giving birth to him?

_Think what you are doing!_ Papa had cried. That was precisely what Raoul never did. Thought was for afterward, for escaping the consequences of his actions. Now he had worked himself into a rage, lost all governing of himself, because, somehow, he had heard about Sun Woman and Gray Cloud.

Pierre had to try to win Raoul over, to find a way to break through the anger that divided him from his younger brother. Raoul had to be persuaded that it was only right that Sun Woman and the boy be brought here to Victoire. If Raoul did not accept that, his rage would tear their family apart.

But how, in one afternoon, batter down a wall that had been building over the past dozen years?

Pierre realized that he was still standing with his hand held out to Raoul. He lowered it slowly, feeling his shoulders slump at the same time. He had been reading with Papa when Raoul came in. Now he took off his spectacles, put them in the silver case that hung from his neck by a velvet cord and dropped the case in his vest pocket.

Elysée de Marion clutched the arms of his leather wing chair with clawlike hands, half rising from it. Raoul stood staring at the two of them, panting and trembling.

Elysée said quietly, "Why did you do that, Raoul?"

"To make you listen." Raoul's voice was deep and strong, and it resounded powerfully against the beamed ceiling and stone walls of the great hall. But in its tones Pierre heard the screams of that hysterical boy whose tantrums and nightmares, after they'd finally succeeded in ransoming him from the Potawatomi, had wrenched the hearts of the whole household and renewed their grief over the loss of Helene.

But now that painfully thin, frightened child was a broad-shouldered man over six feet tall with a knife as big as a broadsword and a pistol strapped to his waist. A very dangerous man. A man who, they said, had killed half a dozen or more opponents in fights up and down the Mississippi.

"We have been listening," Elysée said.

"Pierre hasn't," Raoul said resentfully. "_You_ tell him, Papa. Tell him he'd better leave his damned squaw in the woods where she belongs."

_Damned squaw._ The words pierced Pierre's chest like arrows.

Elysée sat back down in his wing chair and stroked his jaw. He looked like an old turkey cock, with fierce eyes, a hooked nose and a long, wrinkled neck. The leather-bound copy of Montaigne's essays that had been lying in his lap had slipped to the floor to join newspapers piled around his feet like autumn leaves, a mixture of local papers like Frank Hopkins's _Victor Visitor_, and the Galena _Miners Journal_, months-old papers from the East--the _New York Evening Post_, the _Boston Evening Transcript_, the _National Intelligencer_ from Washington City, the even older copies of _Mercure de France_ from Paris.

"Come here, both of you," Elysée sighed.

Hoping his father could reconcile them where he had failed so dismally, Pierre went to stand before Elysée's chair. After a moment's hesitation Raoul approached too. But Pierre saw that he was pointedly keeping more than an arm's-length distance between the two of them.

Elysée said, "That's better. I can't see you when you stand far from me. These eyes are good for very little but reading, and when I can no longer read, I will shoot myself. And if I cannot see well enough to load the pistol, one of you must do it for me."

As he often did, Elysée was attempting to use humor to put out the fire. Pierre glanced at Raoul to see if their father had drawn a smile from him. But Raoul stood with arms folded across his chest, his mouth hidden under his black mustache, his eyes narrowed. Except when he smiled--and today he was far from any smiling--the mustache made him look perpetually angry.

"Raoul," Elysée said. "Be assured that we are listening to you. Tell us what has driven you to destroy one of our family treasures."

"Just because Pierre soiled himself with a squaw," Raoul demanded, "do we have to live with what came of it?"

Pierre felt his face burn. He wanted to slap Raoul.

_My life with Sun Woman was as honorable as my life with Marie-Blanche._

He forced himself to control his temper. If he became as angry as Raoul was, this day would surely be the ruin of the house of de Marion.

Pierre felt a sudden twinge of pain in his belly. He fought down an urge to rub himself there. He wanted no one to know about his illness. Worse than the pain was the fear it brought on, the chilling suspicion that he was a dying man.

Fearfully he wondered what death would be like. Though Père Isaac said such notions were foolish, he could not help seeing God the Father as an enormous white-bearded judge, seated among the clouds. And what would the Father's sentence be if Pierre de Marion turned his back on a wife and a son?

He wished he could tell Raoul that he thought he was dying. Then perhaps his brother would understand why he had to do his duty to Sun Woman and the boy. But he feared that if Raoul was aware of his weakness, he would try to take over the whole estate at once.

Praying that his brother would understand, he said, "Ever since Marie-Blanche died, I have been thinking of Sun Woman. After five years of life together, I left her and our little son. Lately I have been seeing her and my son, Gray Cloud, in dreams. I know God wants me to make amends to them."

Pierre felt sweat break out on his forehead and upper lip. Why must Raoul stir up such turmoil with his hatred? Couldn't Raoul understand that not all red people were like the ones he had encountered? Pierre saw Sun Woman in his mind, so strong and wise, holding the hand of their grave, brown-eyed boy. How beautiful they were.

Elysée said, "I do not believe that Le Bon Dieu announces his intentions in dreams, Pierre."

Always the cynic. Papa had read too much Voltaire.

Elysée turned to Raoul. "But, Raoul, it does seem simple justice, what Pierre wants to do."

"What about justice for me?" Raoul came back. "Isn't this my home as much as Pierre's?"

Stung by Raoul's bluster, Pierre said, "Raoul, you live more at your trading post than you do in this home."

To Pierre's surprise, Raoul's face reddened, making Pierre wonder what, exactly, Raoul was doing at the trading post. It had seemed natural that he would spend most of his time there, since Papa had given him the Illinois Fur Company when he divided his property between the two of them. But perhaps it was not only work that kept Raoul at the trading post night after night. A woman? Pierre found himself hoping it might be. A woman could be good for Raoul, civilize him a bit.

He had slept there last night. How, then, could he have learned about Pierre's plans for Sun Woman and Gray Cloud?

_Is someone in our household spying on me?_

Pierre turned to Raoul. "How did you learn about this? I was going to tell you, but you found out before I could."

Pierre took some small satisfaction in seeing Raoul's cheeks flush a deeper red, in seeing his hesitation. He had come storming in here unprepared to explain just how he knew about Pierre's plans.

Raoul said, "I overheard you and Papa talking about it."

"Absurd! We did not speak of this till this morning. You were not here."

Could Armand have heard, and told Raoul?

Armand must certainly know about Marchette, Pierre thought. But he knew Armand would never directly attack him. Armand's ancestors had come to America when this part of the country was still New France, and such people retained a feudal outlook. The poor fellow doubtless considered him far superior in birth and breeding. But he was capable of seeking some kind of revenge, such as turning Raoul against him.

Pierre opened his mouth to chide Raoul for setting one of the servants to spy on him, but he closed it again when he saw the look of self-righteous reproach in Raoul's face.

His brother felt betrayed too. He had never stopped feeling betrayed since the massacre at Checagou. Then how could Pierre expect him to be reconciled to what must be done now?

Perhaps it would be best to leave Sun Woman and Gray Cloud where they were. He could just send them gifts. Doubtless they were content. His own years with the Sauk and Fox had shown him what a good life they had, so simple, so closely attuned to Nature, so constantly aware of the things of the spirit. Those years had been the happiest of his life.

No, sending gifts from afar would not be enough. It would be as if he was hiding his Indian wife and son away, concealing his sin in the wilderness. As he had been doing all these years, to his shame. The boy, Gray Cloud, was flesh of his flesh, the only child he had in the world. He was a de Marion as much as he was a Sauk Indian. He had a right to come here and to know what his heritage was. He had a right to know his father, in the time his father had left to him.

_I cannot face God and tell Him I turned my back on my son._

And that beautiful Sauk way of life, what a fragile thing it was! Powers were massing, Pierre knew, to drive them from their homeland, to force them to choose--exile in the Great American Desert, or annihilation. Knowledge might help Gray Cloud meet that threat.

From the depths of his chair Elysée said, "Pierre, it is quite obvious what is at the bottom of this. It is distasteful to speak of wills and inheritances, but it is best to be candid. Raoul is afraid that you will marry this Indian woman and make her son your heir in place of him. Can you set his mind at rest?"

Pierre stared at Raoul. Ten years ago, on the day of Pierre's wedding to Marie-Blanche Gagner, Papa announced that he was getting on in years and was transferring ownership of the de Marion estate to Pierre, the older of his sons. This January, consumption had taken poor, frail Marie-Blanche, still childless. The place of Raoul, fourteen years younger than Pierre, in the line of inheritance was now a certainty.

Surely Raoul could not be afraid that Pierre would take a Sauk Indian boy who knew no other life but woodland and make him heir to the de Marion fortune. The notion was so bizarre that it had never even crossed Pierre's mind. Papa, sitting in his chair by the fire day after day, reading, reading, would sometimes entertain the most ridiculous fantasies.

Pierre observed that Raoul looked equally startled.

Then Pierre saw Raoul's expression change from surprise to dawning anger. Papa had inadvertently given Raoul a new reason to be angry.

Hoping to pluck out the suspicion before it took root, Pierre quickly said, "My God, Raoul, I have no intention of changing my will. The boy, who is called Gray Cloud, is my natural son, that is all. Since I have no legitimate children, you are my heir. Surely you see that."

Raoul's black mustache drew back from his teeth. "What I don't see, brother of mine, is why in hell you couldn't get a proper son in almost ten years of marriage with Marie-Blanche. That squaw use you up?"

Again Pierre felt like striking Raoul. His face grew hot.

Elysée asked, "How old would this--Gray Cloud--be?"

Pierre frowned, subtracting dates. "He was born in 1810. So he would have just turned fifteen." He turned again to Raoul. Perhaps knowing what he really did have in mind for Gray Cloud would calm his brother somewhat.

He said, "Père Isaac, the Jesuit, visits the British Band regularly. I make offerings to the Jesuit mission in Kaskaskia, and I've asked him to teach the boy a little English, some elementary letters and ciphering. Now I want to see Gray Cloud for myself. See what sort of person he has become. And I want him to know me. And, if I thought he could benefit from it, I might help him to be educated. I might send him to that secondary school in New York where our cousin Emilie's husband is headmaster."

"Educate him so he can take over here?" Raoul demanded, and Pierre's heart sank. Perhaps he should not have said anything about educating the boy. He had momentarily forgotten what a disaster Raoul's year in New York had been, what with whores, drink, money thrown away at cards, brawls with street toughs and the police. The effort to educate Raoul had ended when he beat his Latin teacher so badly the man was in New York Hospital for a month. It had cost Papa a fortune to persuade the teacher not to press charges. Of course Raoul would be insulted at the suggestions that a savage Indian boy might succeed where he had disgraced himself.

"No, Raoul." Pierre shook his head vigorously. "At the most, I might want his mother and him to have a small bequest. Not even as much as will go to Nicole. So little you would never miss it. Surely you would not let greed for wealth and property come between us."

"I came here today to protect our family honor, and you call me greedy!" Raoul's broad chest heaved.

"What I propose _is_ honorable!"

"How could you consider it honorable to make Indians part of our family after what they did to us?"

It hurt Pierre to call those awful memories to mind. Yes, perhaps if he had been there and suffered as Raoul had, and had seen Helene raped and murdered, he might hate Indians as his brother did.

Pierre said, "Raoul, when I was with Sun Woman I knew nothing of what happened to Helene and you. Once the war broke out in 1812 I was in effect a prisoner and had no word from the white world. The Sauk held me for three years from the start of the war. And then, when I found out--why do you think I left Sun Woman and Gray Cloud? And never returned, only sent messages through the priest, never tried to see them? It was because after I learned about Helene--about what they did to you--I, even _I_, Raoul, could not be with Indians anymore. It has taken all these years before I could face them again."

Elysée said with a frown, "Raoul, you keep mentioning that this woman and her child whom your brother wishes to help are Indians, as if that in itself made them intolerable. Now, I could quite agree, if they were Englishmen--"

Raoul spoke in a low, steady growl. "Being Indians does make them intolerable. They're animals."

Pierre felt anger growing inside him. He was trying to understand Raoul, but Raoul's insults were becoming more provocation than he could endure.

"Animals?" said Elysée incredulously. "Come now, Raoul. Surely you do not believe that. The red people are as human as we are."

Raoul laughed bitterly. "Sure, you'd have to say they're human. Otherwise Pierre's mating with one of them would be like a half-witted farmer mounting one of his sheep."

Something exploded in Pierre's brain and he heard his own cry of anguish as if from a long way off. He felt tears running from eyes blinded with fury.

And when his eyes cleared, all he could see was Raoul's sneer. He burned to smash his fist into those so-white teeth under that black mustache, silence that filthy tongue. He lunged forward, fist drawn back.

Raoul caught his arm in an iron grip, but the force of Pierre's rush threw his brother back against the great chimney. Pierre reached to grab Raoul's neck and slam his head against the stone.

"Stop!" Elysée cried.

The old man stood up more quickly than Pierre had seen him do in years and pushed himself between them.

Suddenly afraid that his father might be hurt, Pierre forced himself to let go of Raoul. Every muscle in his body went rigid, and he trembled from head to foot.

"You must control yourselves," Elysée said. "Pierre, you raised your hand against your brother."

Pierre took a step backward, still shaking. How could this father reproach _him_, after what Raoul had just said?

_The voice of Reason_, Pierre thought bitterly. _He does not know there are some feelings that cannot be reasoned with._

Pierre realized that he was still crying. Raoul, having let go of his arm, was looking at him with disgust.

"I loved Sun Woman," Pierre stammered. "For him to speak of her so--to speak so of our love--"

"Surely," Elysée said, "Raoul spoke in the heat of anger."

"I don't take back a word," Raoul said in a hard, flat voice.

But, though it was hard to read the features behind that fierce black mustache, Pierre thought he saw uncertainty in Raoul's face. As if Raoul finally understood that he had gone too far.

_He drove me to try to hit him. He's never pushed me that far before._

Perhaps, Pierre thought, Raoul would now apologize. Appalled at his own words, he might seek to be reconciled.

_I will make no more overtures. He meets every attempt with insults._

Pierre waited. He could see Raoul struggling within himself. Perhaps Papa's suggestion that he might lose his inheritance had made him realize what consequences a rift between them could have.

_Of course, I would never disinherit Raoul. There's no one else who could manage the estate after I die. And I may be gone sooner than anyone expects._

Pierre saw Raoul's broad chest swell as he took a deep breath. Now, thought Pierre, surely Raoul was going to apologize and ask forgiveness, and they would work out some way that Sun Woman and Gray Cloud could be brought here without stirring up old hatreds.

Raoul said, "Don't bring Indians into this house, Pierre, I warn you. If any Indian tries to claim he's a member of my family, I'll make him wish he had never been born at all."

The pain that might one day kill him sank its teeth deep into his guts. Raoul's words seared him like a branding iron. He felt his shoulders sag.

Raoul turned his back on his brother and his father, and the clump of his hard leather boot heels echoed through the great hall.

"Raoul!" Elysée cried. He held his hand outstretched, as Pierre had when Raoul was about to smash the Limoges vase.

Looking down at those glistening white shards scattered over the flagstones, Pierre wondered what would happen when Raoul inherited the de Marion fortune. Would he destroy it in one of his rages as he had this beautiful object that had been part of the family treasure? Or would he use its power as he used his fists and pistol and knife, to destroy others?

The de Marion fortune.... Once it had been a huge tract of land in northeastern France dominated by the château of the Counts de Marion, held by them so long that no one knew when or how they first obtained it. Just as the origin of the de Marions themselves was something of a mystery.

Converted into gold, the de Marion fortune had sailed, with Elysée, the last Count de Marion, his countess and his children, across the Atlantic. Elysée, in the early 1780s, had foreseen the bloody upheaval that would sweep away the king and the nobility of France. He had made a friend of the American ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, and had thought much about Jefferson's new nation. Their revolution was over and done with. The de Marion fortune might thrive in those United States.

And on the American prairie the de Marion fortune had purchased a vast new estate and built a new château.

Elysée sighed and took a step toward his chair. Pierre turned the chair toward the fire so that its wings would gather in the warmth of the small fire and hold it around his father's body.

"Would you consider not bringing this woman and this boy here?" Elysée said as he sat down. "To keep the peace in our family?"

Pierre hesitated. For ten years Sun Woman and Gray Cloud had lived in their world, and he in his. Why provoke so much strife now by trying to change that?

But Gray Cloud was the only son he would ever have, and if he left things as they were, he would die without knowing him.

"She is my woman--in truth, my wife--and the boy is my child," Pierre said. "Raoul has much. They have little. Raoul is wrong to cling to this hatred. To give in to him would mean abandoning these two people to whom I owe so much. As soon as the weather is a little warmer, Papa, I mean to leave for Saukenuk. And I do dread what may happen, but, yes, I still mean to come back with my wife and my son."

5

Star Arrow

_White Bear. My name is White Bear._

The sun, shining down through branches dotted with budding leaves, warmed his back. He wore the knife his father had left him sheathed at his waist. His eyes searched among the branches of the trees. He did not know exactly what he was looking for, but Owl Carver said that he would know it when he found it. He stopped at the base of an oak tree and looked up.

He thought he heard something moving through the bushes on the upriver side of the island. He stopped peering at the branches and looked up at the sky.

The black trunks of the oaks and hickories rose above him. He felt as if he were standing in a circle of wise old men, who were there to advise and protect him. Ever since that time of sitting in the sacred cave when his soul had gone out of his body, whenever he was by himself he never felt alone. He felt the presence of spirits in all things--trees, birds, plants, rocks, rivers.

After a moment's listening he heard nothing strange and went back to his search. He had chosen this island because he had come here many times at different seasons with his mother, gathering plants for medicines. Today he was looking for one thing. Somewhere on this island grew the branch from which he would cut his medicine stick. Owl Carver had carefully instructed him.

_It will call to you out of the forest. It may be of oak or maple or ash or cedar or even hickory. You will know it because it will not be like any other branch you see, and your eye will be drawn to it._

A cloud drifted over the sun, and his arms and shoulders suddenly felt cold. The coldness felt strange, and he remembered that his spirit guide, the White Bear, was said to live in a very cold place. He stood still. He felt he should wait for something to happen.

A shaft of sunlight fell on the black trunk of a tree a short distance in front of him. Where the light struck the tree, a branch was growing out, pointing right at him. He might not have noticed it if the light had not fallen in just that way.

At the end of the branch three bright bur oak leaves were growing. This was the Moon of Buds, and the limbs of most trees bore only the many round swellings that would, as the days grew warmer, open and spread into the first leaves.

But the three oak leaves at the end of this branch were fully grown, fat leaves with deep, irregular lobes.

It was as Owl Carver had said. This branch called out to him from the forest.

He went up to the tree, and as Owl Carver had taught him, he said, "Grandfather Oak, please let me have your arm, to take with me to make strong medicine for our tribe. I promise I will not hurt you, and I will leave all your other arms untouched so that you can grow strong in this place."

It was a small, new branch growing out of the tree at eye level. When trimmed and stripped it would be just the right size for a medicine stick. He would dry the leaves and keep them, too, he decided, as part of his medicine bundle.

With his knife he reverently cut the branch away from the tree trunk.

A voice behind him said, "My son."

He jumped, startled.

At once he recognized Sun Woman's voice. As always, a warmth flooded through him at the sound.

Still, he was angry with himself. How could he let someone slip up on him like that?

He turned. He looked into his mother's brown eyes, level with his. Not so long ago, he remembered, he had to look up to see into her eyes.

He saw pain tightening the muscles of her face. Her lips trembled as they parted. Only a few times had he seen her in such distress, and his heart beat harder. What was wrong?

"You must come back to Saukenuk, my son," she said.

"I have found my medicine stick, Mother. But now I must trim it here and peel the bark in the place where I found it. Owl Carver told me how it must be done."

She swept a hand across her body to say no to that. "It is Owl Carver who says you must come now. Leave the stick here. The spirits will protect it, and you can come back to it later. A man has come to our village. You must meet him."

Tears on her brown cheeks reflected the bright sun.

"What is wrong, Mother? Who is this man?"

Again the hand gesture, rejecting his question. "It is better you see for yourself."

"But you are sad, Mother. Why?"

She turned away, the fringe of her doeskin skirt swirling about her shins.

He laid the severed oak branch at the base of the tree he had cut it from, and with thanks to Grandfather Oak, turned away.

Baffled and apprehensive, he followed Sun Woman through the forest to the edge of the island, where he saw her small elm-bark canoe pulled up beside his.

Silently they paddled their canoes side by side upstream along the narrow stretch of black-green water that separated the island from the riverbank. The Rock River was in its spring flood. Paddling against the powerful current strained White Bear's muscles. He glanced over at his mother and saw with envy how easily she wielded her paddle. She seemed to know how to do everything well. But an expression of sorrow was frozen on her face.

They left the island behind, and soon White Bear saw the hundred lodges of Saukenuk through the weeping willows, hackberries, maples and oaks that grew along the riverbank.

They grounded their canoes on tree roots growing on the edge of the river. Sun Woman beckoned, turned her back on him abruptly and started walking through the woods by the riverbank. White Bear followed.

They passed two newly made graves in the shelter of the trees, mounds of earth, each marked with a willow wand with a strip of deerskin attached to it. Coming out of the woods, they walked, amidst the band's grazing horses, through the blue-grass meadow surrounding the village. Beyond the meadows, as far up and down the river as White Bear could see, stretched stockade-fenced fields where the first shoots of corn, beans, squash and sweet potatoes dotted the freshly turned black earth like pale green stars in a night sky.

White Bear followed Sun Woman into the concentric rings of long lodges with peaked roofs, built of wooden poles and walled with bark sheets, laid out in the sacred circular pattern. Here the Sauk lived all summer, three or four families to a lodge. But today the outskirts of Saukenuk seemed empty. White Bear was surprised to see no one at the riverbank or about the lodges.

Sun Woman walked past the lodges with back straight, legs stiff, her arms rigid at her sides, her head high. Never once did she look back at him.

Reaching the heart of Saukenuk, he saw that all the people were gathered in the central clearing around Owl Carver's medicine lodge. As Sun Woman approached the crowd, a child spied her and tugged its mother's skirt. The mother looked first at Sun Woman, then at White Bear, then whispered to another woman standing next to her. That woman turned, and then the whispers spread in every direction and more and more people looked. The crowd parted, making a path through which Sun Woman walked with her stiff stride. White Bear followed.

At the end of the pathway through the crowd sat Owl Carver and another man, side by side at the door of the sacred lodge. Owl Carver's long white hair spread like a snow-covered spruce tree. His chest was bare save for his necklace of megis shells, and was painted with diagonal stripes of blue and green, the colors of hope and fear.

White Bear slowed his steps, studying the man seated beside Owl Carver. His heart thumped hard when he saw who it was.

This was the man he had seen in his vision with the White Bear and the Turtle. He stood still, his mouth open.

The vision-man had black hair streaked with white, tied with a ribbon at the back. His face was dominated by a powerful beak of a nose. He must have spent much time in the sun; his skin was tan, though not as rich and dark as the skins of White Bear's people.

A beloved face caught White Bear's eye. Redbird was standing among the people, looking not at the stranger, but at White Bear. Their eyes met, and hers were wide with worry. He wanted to take Redbird's hand and run with her into the forest, away from all these people and from whatever made Redbird and his mother look so miserable.

And especially away from the thin, pale man who was now staring at him as intently as a hunter with drawn bow watches a stag.

And yet, the pale eyes stranger had been part of the vision that had given White Bear his new name and put him on the path to becoming a shaman.

_He must be a good man if he appeared to me with the White Bear and the Turtle. And he must be important to me._

"Sit here, White Bear," said Owl Carver, and White Bear walked slowly toward him. Owl Carver gestured that he was to sit beside the pale eyes. White Bear felt his heart fluttering as he sat down. Owl Carver pointed to a place beside himself for Sun Woman. The four formed a semicircle, backs to the medicine lodge, faces toward the crowd of curious people.

As was the way of the Sauk, the four sat for a long time with no one speaking. White Bear's body grew colder and colder, and he had to fight to keep from trembling.

After a time, White Bear turned to the stranger and saw in the gaunt face a mixture of pain and joy. The man's pupils were a strange, almost frightening gray-blue color. From such eyes, White Bear knew, the Sauk took their name for this man's people.

As the man looked at White Bear and then over at Sun Woman, it seemed that his heart was glowing with happiness. But it was a happiness tinged by regret, the glow of a setting sun.

White Bear's inner sense told him that something was hurting more than the pale eye's spirit, was draining his life away. White Bear wished at once that he could work a healing of this good man's body.

But why was Sun Woman so unhappy? And why was Redbird frightened?

Owl Carver whispered to a small boy who stood beside him. The boy ran off.

Now the shaman sat nodding his head slowly. White Bear could see that Owl Carver stood at the branching of several paths and was trying to decide which one to take. White Bear's fear grew.

Owl Carver turned to White Bear. "This man is your father."

_Yes!_

Taught by Owl Carver that rather than puzzle over a vision it is best to let it reveal its meaning in its own time, White Bear had chosen months ago not to ponder who the pale eyes in the Turtle's lodge might be. Owl Carver must have known when White Bear described the vision to him, but thought it better not to tell him.

White Bear turned and looked again at the man seated beside him, who raised his arms tentatively, as if he wanted to reach out to him. White Bear kept his hands in his lap, and the man lowered his arms again.

White Bear felt a strangeness, such as he had never known before. This man looked at him with love. He was certain, now, that because this man had come today, everything was going to be changed.

"Your father is called Star Arrow," said Owl Carver. He turned to Star Arrow and said, "Your son is called White Bear."

"I greet you, White Bear," Star Arrow said. White Bear was glad to hear this man speaking the Sauk language.

"I greet you, Star Arrow, my father," White Bear said. The word _father_ felt strange on his tongue.

_Star Arrow._ He liked that name and wondered what it meant. _Father._ A shiver of joy went through him.

He spoke in the English Père Isaac had taught him. "Good day to you, Father."

"My son," said Star Arrow in the same tongue. White Bear saw now that tears were running down his father's face, just as they had in the vision.

He heard a commotion at the back of the crowd. People were stepping aside.

A thrill went through White Bear as he saw that Black Hawk was coming toward them. The leader's careworn face glowed as if he were seeing a long-lost brother. He shifted his feather-adorned war club to his left hand and raised his empty right hand in greeting to Star Arrow. White Bear was amazed. He could not remember seeing Black Hawk smile so happily.

Star Arrow raised his hand in reply. White Bear felt himself surrounded by giants--Black Hawk, Star Arrow, Owl Carver. He remembered the circle of trees he had been standing in when Sun Woman called to him.

"Star Arrow has come back to us," Black Hawk declared. "It is well."

Wolf Paw, Black Hawk's oldest son, now strode down the line of people. His presence, as always, made White Bear uneasy.

Sun Woman made room for Black Hawk to sit beside Owl Carver. The chief handed his feathered war club to Wolf Paw, who sat down behind him and rested the club across his knees.

Three more men pushed their way through the crowd. When they came to the front, White Bear saw that they were three chiefs, members of the council that ruled the day-to-day affairs of the Sauk and Fox in peacetime. One, Jumping Fish, was older than Black Hawk. Another, Broth, was a deep-chested man and a well-known orator. The third, Little Stabbing Chief, was a prominent member of the Fox tribe.

With a courteous gesture Black Hawk invited the three chiefs to join the sitting circle.

The nine sat quietly for a time before their people while a breeze whistled over the bark rooftops of Saukenuk.

Black Hawk broke the silence. "Our fathers and our grandfathers have known many kinds of pale eyes. The French pale eyes traded with us. The British pale eyes made us their allies in war. But the American pale eyes drive us from our land and kill us when we resist. American pale eyes are not our friends. But this man, Star Arrow, we call friend. We trust Star Arrow.

"Thirteen summers ago the British long knives made war on the American long knives. The great Shawnee chief, Shooting Star, led braves and warriors of many tribes to fight on the side of the British against the Americans. We among the Sauk and Foxes who followed Shooting Star have been known ever since as the British Band. This man was living among us then, seeking to trade with us and to know us better. When the war began there were some who said, 'He is an enemy. Kill him.' And I might have said so, too, but I did not, because already I knew that he was a good man. We could not send him back to the Americans, but we let him live among us. We even let him share the bed of Sun Woman.

"After the war, when Star Arrow went back to his own people, he left with us this boy, White Bear." Black Hawk turned to White Bear, and when their eyes met, White Bear trembled under Black Hawk's gaze. The chief's eyes were infinitely black, like a night without stars.

"He left us another gift," Black Hawk said.

He reached into a beaded bag hanging at his belt. He took out a shining metal disk on a thin silvery chain and held it up so that the people could see it.

"Inside this disk of metal there is an arrow that points always to the north. Even on a day when I cannot see the sun, on a night when I cannot see the stars, I know where the sun should be and I know where the Council Fire Star is, the star that does not move all night long. He gave us this magical gift. And so we give him his name among the Sauk--Star Arrow. His heart is as constant as the Council Fire Star and as true as the arrow."

There was a murmur of assent among the people.

Black Hawk raised his hand. "Let Star Arrow now tell us why he comes back." Black Hawk folded his arms.

White Bear, his heart beating as hard as a drum in a dance, turned to the pale eyes. Star Arrow turned his own head to look long and gravely at Sun Woman, then at White Bear.

Star Arrow said, "Chief Black Hawk, I lived with Sun Woman as her husband, and then I left her with a son, this young man, White Bear. I wronged Sun Woman and White Bear. He should have had a father as well as a mother. I went back to my people and married a pale eyes woman. Earthmaker has punished me by giving me no children by my second wife and at last taking her from me. Because of this my heart is like the ashes of an old fire."

He held out his arms toward Sun Woman. "Now I want to make it right."

Owl Carver leaned forward into the circle of speakers. "You want to come and live with us again, Star Arrow?"

At the thought of Star Arrow returning to the band, White Bear's heart leaped with happiness. All his life he had been hoping to meet his father, waiting for his father's return, but never believing it possible. So that his father, returning, might be pleased with him, he had even let Père Isaac teach him things he could never use.

To have this strange new man who was so respected by the Sauk living with him and Sun Woman--this was almost as thrilling a prospect as his dream of becoming a great shaman.

Star Arrow said, "No, I cannot stay among you. Nothing, I think, would make me happier, but I have many things to do among my own people. I own much land."

Owl Carver said, "If your land keeps you from doing what you want, then it owns _you_."

Star Arrow smiled ruefully. "Owl Carver speaks truly, but I cannot change this. I must care for my land myself, because there is no one who can do it for me."

Star Arrow turned to look at White Bear, who sensed a question: _Could you be one who helps me care for my land?_

Again White Bear felt the presence of a death-with-claws that had its grip on Star Arrow's body. He must speak to Owl Carver. Perhaps Owl Carver could tell him how to help his father.

Owl Carver said, "We know about your land, Star Arrow. You traded honorably with us, and gave us many valuable goods, so that you and your family could live on that land to the north and farm it and graze your animals on it."

"That is so," said Chief Jumping Fish. "Star Arrow gave me a fine rifle, and he made our tribe rich with what he paid us."

White Bear felt a chill of fear when he heard that Star Arrow lived to the north. There was danger, it seemed, in the north. Three Fox men, including Sun Fish, a youth his own age who had been a playmate of his, had gone north two moons ago to work a lead mine and had not been heard from.

Star Arrow said, "I have come to ask Sun Woman and White Bear to live with me in my home."

White Bear heard an amazed murmur from the crowd, and he himself felt his heart drop as if he plummeted unaware into a deep pit.

Leave the tribe? He could not picture it. It made no sense. Being without the tribe would be like trying to live without his arms or legs.

White Bear's eyes met Redbird's. Her slanting eyes were big with fear, and he tried to tell her with a look that he did not want this. Now he understood why she looked so unhappy. She must have guessed what Star Arrow would ask.

To leave Redbird. No longer to learn from Owl Carver. Give up hope of being a shaman. Leave the forest. Leave Saukenuk. He had heard that no spirits lived among the pale eyes. In the land of the pale eyes the tall prairie grass was burned away and the trees were cut down.

Black Hawk and Owl Carver looked at each other. In the glances that passed between them White Bear saw surprise, questioning, but no disapproval. He felt his hopes sink. Would he have to fight this fight alone?

No--his mother would say no to Star Arrow.

She stood up to speak, tall and stately. She turned to Star Arrow, and White Bear saw love mingle with the pain in her dark brown eyes.

"I am happy to call Star Arrow husband. He has not wronged me. It is right that a man should live among his people."

White Bear thought, _Now she will say that we must stay with our people and cannot go with him_.

"I am glad that Star Arrow remembers me and White Bear, that he comes to ask us to live with him. But I cannot go. I have my work, the gathering of medicines, the healing, the teaching of what I know." She turned to Redbird, who smiled uncertainly.

Sun Woman spoke on. "I could not look into pale eyes faces all day long. My heart would dry up."

In the long silence that followed, White Bear waited uneasily. Why had his mother not spoken of him?

Star Arrow unfolded his long, thin limbs, went over and stood before Sun Woman. He put his hands on her shoulders. A sudden breeze rattled the bark walls of Saukenuk.

"I understand what Sun Woman says."

Sun Woman and Star Arrow both looked at White Bear. He felt as if the ground were trembling under him. He wished it would open up and swallow him.

"This young man," said Sun Woman. "Your son, White Bear. Half of him is you. It is right that he should see the pale eyes who are also his people."

The earth was tilting. White Bear was falling.

His own mother--betraying him. Sending him away.

"I have always believed that Earthmaker meant some special destiny for White Bear," Sun Woman said.

The shout burst from White Bear. "No!" He did not even remember getting to his feet, but he was standing.

Heads turned toward him. Eyes opened wide. He saw Black Hawk lift a hand to silence him, then lower it again. The three chiefs stared angrily.

Words tumbled out of him. He spoke to his mother, who had turned against him.

"Earthmaker meant me to be a shaman. How can I learn to be a shaman if I live among pale eyes? If I spend many summers and winters away from the tribe I will no longer be a Sauk."

White Bear could see the pain-taut lines in Sun Woman's face. This was hurting her, he knew that. But his anger at her burned in his chest. She was trading his life for hers. She would stay here in Saukenuk, but she would give Star Arrow part of what he wanted--his son. Why should he be sacrificed to make Star Arrow happy? It was she who had chosen to take this pale eyes into her lodge.

Sun Woman turned to Owl Carver. "We need to learn much more about the pale eyes if we are to protect ourselves from them. Some of us must live with them and come to understand them from within their tribe. Such a one must be young enough to learn new ways. And he should be specially gifted, a favorite of the spirits."

Then Owl Carver stood up to speak, facing White Bear.

"White Bear, listen to the words of your teacher. There is more than one way to become a shaman. Here in Saukenuk live many people of the Fox and some of the Winnebago, Piankeshaw and Kickapoo tribes. Who says their lives are over because they live among the Sauk? If you live with the tribe of pale eyes, it will make you a man of greater knowledge. To go among them will take the courage of a warrior and more. Of knowledge, of courage, is a shaman made."

Owl Carver turned to Black Hawk. "Sun Woman is right. Let the boy go with Star Arrow. I know Earthmaker has blazed this trail for White Bear." He crossed his arms before his chest and sat down again.

White Bear cast about desperately for words that would answer Owl Carver. He felt helpless to fight the current that was sweeping him away.

"If Earthmaker wants this for me, how is it that _I_ do not know it?" he cried. He went cold inside, realizing that in his desperation he was defying Owl Carver before all the people. He was questioning Owl Carver's powers.

He wanted to say that he hoped to be the great prophet of the Sauk after Owl Carver had departed to the land of the spirits. But he did not dare say such a thing. Earthmaker himself might punish him for such presumption.

"Did I not come back to you from the sacred cave with the very words of the Turtle?" he said, holding his hands out in appeal. "Surely I will bring you other great visions if I stay with you. Among the Sauk I have grown to manhood. Why does this man come now to tear me away from the only tribe I have known?"

He was surprised to see Star Arrow smile warmly at him.

"This man is your father," Owl Carver declared. "You are a Sauk. A Sauk never shirks the demands of honor. A Sauk is loyal and respectful and obedient toward his father."

"I am proud of my son," said Star Arrow. "He speaks with power before the people."

At that, a hopeless feeling swept over White Bear. Star Arrow was not fighting him, any more than water fights a drowning man. Star Arrow was a current dragging him away from his people, his village.

And the village was not trying to hold him. Sun Woman, Owl Carver, Black Hawk, were pushing him out, as they would a man who was so wicked he could not be allowed to live with the people. He felt utterly alone.

What did he know of the pale eyes? Only the little that Père Isaac had taught him. And that they were great land thieves. Always they were scheming to take land away from the people who had held it since the Great River first began to flow from the Turtle's breast. Why must he live among his people's enemies?

Owl Carver sprang from his seat. He leaped at White Bear and crouched before him. His eyes opened wide as those of his totem bird. White Bear felt himself pulled toward their black centers, as if they were whirlpools in the Great River. Owl Carver's long white hair fanned out like wings on either side of his head.

"_You will listen!_" Owl Carver said in a soft voice of terrible intensity. "_You will hear!_"

Silently White Bear stood looking at the shaman.

"You are the son of my spirit as much as you are the son of Star Arrow's body. I tell you to live with this man as I told you to go to the sacred cave in the Moon of Ice. This is a far greater test for you. Going to live with the pale eyes will be like journeying to another sacred cave. And you will bring back other visions."

White Bear saw in the blackness of Owl Carver's eyes that if he defied this decision he would lose his place in the tribe. There was no way to break free from the current that was sweeping him away from Saukenuk.

White Bear felt as if something in him had broken. He held his face expressionless. He did not want to show his hurt before the tribe. But he knew he would soon be unable to stop himself from weeping.

Among the witnessing people he saw anguish and determination struggling in Sun Woman's face. Others looked at him only with curiosity, not sympathy. In all the people around him, the only face that shared his unrelieved wretchedness was Redbird's. His gaze met hers, and the pain they felt together deepened his despair.

Black Hawk spoke in a low voice over his shoulder to Wolf Paw, who stood up. As he left the circle before Owl Carver's medicine lodge, Wolf Paw glanced at White Bear, and White Bear saw the light of triumph in his eyes.

Black Hawk held a hand out to Star Arrow. "If we let you take White Bear, you must one day let him return to us, bringing his new knowledge to help the Sauk."

Owl Carver moved from his crouching position before White Bear and sat down again, facing Star Arrow. "This young man is most precious to us. The mysteries have been told to him, and he has seen visions of the past and future."

At this White Bear's heart was eased a bit. The tribe did want him to return.

_I am both red and white._

And both his tribe and the pale eyes wanted him.

_To go among the pale eyes will make you a man of knowledge_, Owl Carver had said, and Black Hawk had agreed. Perhaps he could become a star arrow, pointing the way for his people in the troubled days the Turtle had foretold.

"I promise to keep him with me only for a time," said Star Arrow.

_He has not long to live. That is why he can promise._

And that meant that White Bear's time of exile from the Sauk would be short. But knowing that brought White Bear no relief. He did not want his father, whom he had just met, to die so soon.

"I ask one more thing," said Star Arrow. "It will be harder for the boy to learn the ways of the pale eyes if he always feels the pull of his Sauk people. For the first few summers and winters that he is with us, I ask that he not return to you even for a visit, and that you send no messages to him and he send none to you."

"That is much to ask," said Owl Carver. "That is hard. The boy may die of longing for his people."

Star Arrow shook his head. "I would never let that happen. If I see that it is unbearable for him, I will send him back to you. But I will do everything I can to make him happy, and if he does not see the British Band or hear from them, the pain of parting will go away sooner."

"I understand what Star Arrow says," said Black Hawk. "It is granted."

White Bear sat down slowly, feeling as if he had been mortally wounded. Never to have a word from his mother or from Redbird--how could he bear it?

Star Arrow continued, "He will go to a fine school in the East. And when he has learned all he can learn, I will send him back to you."

"Let it be done," Black Hawk said.

Wolf Paw came through the crowd, holding up in both hands a calumet, a sacred pipe. Its hickory stem was as long as a man's arm, wrapped in blue and yellow bands, and its high, slender bowl was of dark red pipestone, quarried in a valley far to the west.

Black Hawk took the pipe from Wolf Paw and filled the bowl with tobacco from a beaded pouch at his waist. Owl Carver went into his lodge, and brought back a burning twig that Black Hawk used to light the pipe.

Black Hawk said, "By the smoking of the sacred tobacco let all these promises be sealed."

White Bear went cold as he saw the light gray smoke curl up from Black Hawk's pipe and smelled its sweet scent. Once he put the pipe to his lips and drew the smoke into his mouth, he would be bound to go with Star Arrow as firmly as he was bound to the Sauk tribe.

Holding the pipestem with one hand in the middle and the other at the end, Black Hawk ceremoniously drew on the pipe and let a cloud of smoke out of his mouth. He handed the pipe to Star Arrow, who fixed his gaze on White Bear and did the same. Next the pipe went to Owl Carver, who took the single puff that bound him to the agreement. Owl Carver took the pipe in turn to Jumping Fish, Broth and Little Stabbing Chief. Each puffed on it, bearing witness.

Then Owl Carver walked over to White Bear and handed him the pipe.

Trembling with fear that what he was about to do might be the ruin of him, White Bear took the pipe in his hands. His fingers felt the ridged wrappings and the smooth, warm stone of the bowl. He had never smoked a sacred pipe before.

He could hand the pipe back to Owl Carver and refuse. But he knew that this had gone so far that if he did that, not only would he never be accepted as a shaman, he might not even be accepted as a Sauk.

He wanted to look at Redbird, but he dared not. He looked instead at Sun Woman and saw her eyes warm with the wish that he would smoke the pipe.

He put the calumet to his lips and pulled the hot smoke into his mouth. It burned his tongue and the insides of his cheeks. He took the pipe away and held the smoke for a moment, then puffed it out. As he did so, a sigh went up from the watchers.

Black Hawk was standing before him. White Bear handed the pipe up to him.

"May you walk this path on which we send you with courage and honor," Black Hawk said.

He turned to the people. "This council is at an end."

White Bear knew he could not hold back his tears any longer. He sprang to his feet and blindly hurled himself into the crowd that was already beginning to disperse. He felt a hand on his arm, but he pulled away from it.

He began to run. He ran through Saukenuk, through the meadow, into the trees by the river's edge. He ran past the graves. He ran with the hard, steady stride of one carrying a message.

But a messenger did not run sobbing, with tears streaming down his face.

6

In the Ancient Grove

Redbird watched, an aching, empty place in her chest, as White Bear disappeared into the woods at the edge of the Rock River.

"What a fool!" Water Flows Fast, standing nearby, had spoken. "The pale eyes have steel knives and blankets and big sturdy lodges that are always warm and never leak. They always have enough food. I would be happy to go live with a pale eyes if he asked me."

"Is your prattling tongue never still, woman?" said her husband, Three Horses.

"It was my prattling tongue that agreed to marry you."

Redbird had no heart to listen to them bicker.

"Let me through!" she cried, and the crowd parted before her.

"Where are you going?" cried her mother. "It is shameful to run after him." She grabbed Redbird's sleeve. "All the people will laugh at you."

"Let me go!"

As Wind Bends Grass pulled at her, Redbird's eyes met those of Wolf Paw, standing beside his father, the war chief. He glared at her. She knew he, too, wanted to tell her not to run after White Bear. But if he showed that he cared that much, the people would make fun of _him_.

She turned her back on all of them--Wind Bends Grass, Wolf Paw, Black Hawk, Owl Carver--and began to run.

When she reached the riverbank she saw no sign of him. For one panic-stricken moment she thought, _Did he throw himself into the river?_

Then, downriver, she saw a canoe gliding over the glistening water. He was paddling hard and was almost out of sight around a bend.

Her own small bark canoe, on which she had painted a bird's wing in red, lay a short distance down the riverbank. She pushed it into the water, jumped into the rear and seated herself in the middle. The canoe's bottom scraped over the riverbank as she pushed off with her paddle.

She stayed a distance behind White Bear, just close enough to keep him in sight. He might not want her to follow him. She could not guess what was in his mind right now.

What would she do when she caught up with him? She had hoped to marry him, if not this summer, then the next. Ever since she was a small child she had found him endlessly fascinating. More so than ever since his return from his spirit journey. Nothing, she thought, would make her happier than living with him. Sun Woman had told her all about what happens when a man and a woman lie down together--knowledge that Wind Bends Grass had insisted that she did not yet need. It sounded painful, pleasurable, frightening and exciting. She had looked forward to lying down with White Bear.

But now she was going to lose him. How could Sun Woman send her own son away from the tribe?

_And send him away from me._ Redbird felt more hurt than if her own mother had turned against her.

And did White Bear truly mean to go with the pale eyes? He had smoked the calumet. He must.

The current carried her canoe through the water, brown with silt caught up in spring flooding, almost faster than she could paddle. Ahead the river divided, flowing around an island near the right bank, thick with trees. White Bear turned into the narrow channel that ran between island and shore, and she backpaddled to slow herself and watch.

His canoe rounded a huge fallen tree, whose exposed roots clutched at the island's shore like the fingers of a drowning man, and disappeared behind the trunk.

She let her paddle drag in the water, first on one side then on the other, holding her canoe back until he had time to land. Then she glided into the narrow channel and around the dead tree.

He had drawn his canoe up in a small sandy cove, and was gone. She landed on the patch of sand beside his canoe and pulled her canoe partway out of the water.

She listened, and for a moment heard nothing but the wind in the trees. A redbird, her namesake, trilled long and loud, and another answered from a more distant tree.

Then she heard a human voice. No words, just an outcry. A cry of pain.

She plunged into the forest that covered the island, pushing her way through the shrubbery toward the sound of his voice.

He was sobbing so loudly that she was sure he could not hear her coming. She had heard a man sob like that once before, a dying hunter whose leg had been torn to shreds by a bear.

She moved through some trees and saw him. He was sitting with his back against the big black trunk of an oak. He was in a grove of trees so big and so old that little grew in their heavy shade, and there was an open place to sit. The season was so young that their branches were still almost bare, and she could see White Bear clearly in the afternoon sunlight. He held a severed tree branch in his lap. His eyes were squeezed shut and his lips were drawn back from his teeth, and his cries of pain came one after another.

She stepped out of the bushes into the grove. He looked up, and the face he showed her was so twisted that she could not tell whether he saw her. He went on sobbing hoarsely.

Her heart hurt to see him suffer so. She sat down beside him.

For a long time she listened to him weep, waiting for a chance to speak to him.

She looked at the branch he was holding. It was almost as long as her arm, and, surprisingly, it had leaves at its tip, even though this was only the Moon of Buds. He clutched it as a child clutches a doll for comfort.

Gradually his weeping subsided. She reached out very carefully and patted his shoulder lightly. When he did not pull away, she rested her hand on him. She eased herself closer until they were pressed together side by side, and she slid her arm around his shoulders and held him tightly.

At first she felt no answering movement. He seemed only half alive. She wondered if he knew she was here. Then his head dropped to her shoulder. She felt the weight of his body yielding to her.

She put her other arm around him. She held him as if he were her child. In spite of his sorrow and her own, it was a great happiness to hold him like this.

He sighed and wiped his face with his hand. She stroked his cheek, brushing away the tears.

She wanted to talk to him, but waited for him to speak first.

"There is nothing I can do," he said. "I must go with Star Arrow, my father."

She studied his face as he stared off into the forest. She could see now the features of his father in him. There had always been something odd about his eyes, but she had never been quite able to decide what it was. Now she saw that they were rounder than most people's. They were shaped like his father's. His nose was thin and bony, with a high arch, and sharp at the end, like the beak of a bird. His eyebrows were thick, black and straight across. His chin was pointed. She loved the strangeness of his face.

She said, "When it gets dark we could go back to the village and fill our canoes with food and blankets and tools and weapons. There will be feasting tonight for Star Arrow. Everyone will sleep soundly after that. We could cross the Great River tonight, and tomorrow we could be far away."

He stared at her. "But I do not _want_ to leave my people."

She had not thought that far ahead, about what it would be like to be away from Owl Carver, Iron Knife, Sun Woman, her sisters, her mother, all the others. Yes, it would be a great loss. But she could stand the pain, she thought, if she were beside White Bear.

"But we would have each other. Would it not hurt you less if you had me with you?"

He did not answer at once, and that made her feel as if a rough hand had squeezed her heart. But then he smiled at her, and she felt better.

"Yes, if I could share my life with you, the pain of leaving Saukenuk would be less." Then his face darkened. "But we could not live on our own. A man or a woman cut off from their tribe can no more be happy than a flower after it is picked can continue to grow. And I would have dishonored the promise I made with the sacred tobacco. The spirits would turn their backs on me. My mother and Owl Carver say that if I go with Star Arrow, I may learn things that would help our people."

She was thunderstruck to realize that he actually wanted to go with Star Arrow. Then what was all this weeping for?

He did not care for her as much as she did for him. That made her angry. She pushed herself a little apart from him.

"I see that I have been a fool to chase after you, just as my mother said. It means more to you to go and live with the pale eyes than it does to have Redbird as your woman."

His eyes widened. "We have never before today spoken of this, you and I."

"Did we have to speak?" She felt herself getting angrier and angrier. "Why do you think I went looking for you when you went on your vision quest? Why do you think I followed you from the village today? And why did I say I would go with you across the Great River? Yes, I did want to be your woman. But you do not want me. You want to go away with this pale eyes father of yours, and maybe you want to take a pale eyes woman for yourself."

His mouth as well as his eyes opened up in amazement. "I have never even seen a pale eyes woman. How could I want one? I do want Redbird to be my woman. And I weep at leaving Saukenuk because I must leave you."

Again she reached out to him, putting her hands on his arms. "I would rather be cast out of our tribe than lose you."

He shook his head. "We do not have to lose our people or each other. It was part of the promise sealed with sacred tobacco that I am to come back. If we ran away now, Earthmaker would be angry with us."

She moved closer to him. She had seen Earthmaker in dreams. He was taller than the tallest tree, and he carried a great war club with a ball-shaped rock at the end of it and looked much like Black Hawk, with a long black lock of hair coiling down from the top of a shaved head.

"I wish I could meet and talk with the spirits, as you have," she said. "Sometimes I think I do meet them, in dreams."

"It can be dangerous to meet with the spirits," he said. His eyes seemed to be looking into the distance. He had seen so many things she had not. It was unfair, she thought sadly.

She had gone out to him in the bitter cold when the world was an endless white waste. She might have frozen to death. She might have been punished by drowning in the icy river. She had risked almost as much as he had.

"I do not say that I am as strong as White Bear, or as worthy to speak with the spirits," she said. "I only wish I had a chance to."

He took her hands in his and looked deep into her eyes.

"The real danger of a shaman's vision is not to the body."

"What is the real danger?"

"I did not want to come back."

She felt a cold wind blowing across her neck, as if spirits had quietly entered this grove with them and were standing about them, listening to them, judging them.

"It is so wondrous," he said in a voice so low she had to strain to hear it over the wind whispering in the tree branches. "You are there with them. The White Bear, the Turtle. You see them, talk to them. You see the Tree of Life, the crystal lodge of the Turtle and the spirits of all living things. Why would anyone want to return?"

Redbird shivered. But she still envied him.

"Your hands are cold," White Bear said, and he put his arm around her and drew her close to nestle on his chest. She slid her hands under the leather vest he wore and felt the smooth warmth of his skin and the firmness of his muscles. How powerful his arms were around her. She thanked Earthmaker that White Bear had found the inner strength to return from that other land.

A new thought occurred to her. "What if you find that the land of the pale eyes holds you fast? Then you will never come back to me, and to the Sauk you will be dead."

He smiled gently and patted her shoulder. She pulled herself closer to him.

"Can the land of the pale eyes, altogether without spirits, hold me, when the spirits themselves could not?"

"I do not think so."

"Can the land of the pale eyes hold me, when Redbird is not in it? _I_ do not think so."

Her body seemed to be melting. She wanted to flow together with White Bear as the Rock River flowed into the Great River.

His arms tightened around her. Then he raised his hand to brush the fringe of hair that fell over her forehead.

She moved against him until her cheek touched his. Slowly she slid one side of her face against his, then the other side. A hunger filled her. It was almost as if she wanted to devour White Bear, but all she could do was touch his smooth cheek with her fingertips.

His nostrils flared and his lips parted and she could hear his breathing. His hands were roaming over her body, awakening powerful feelings wherever he touched her, making her want more.

How did they come to be lying down? They must have moved without realizing it. She could see, feel and think only of White Bear. Her head was pillowed on his arm and her face was pressed against his. With his free hand he caressed her, seeking her flesh under her jacket and skirt. His hand became bolder, plucking at the laces that held her clothing together, baring places that only a husband should look at as he was looking now. And touching those places, sending ripples of delight all through her.

And she wanted him to do that. She felt no shame or fear, only happiness. She let him do whatever he wanted. She helped him. She moved her hands also, to touch more of him. Her hand found the oak branch that he had been holding just before she sat down with him. She put the branch aside and let her fingers feel the hardness pushing against his loincloth; he was ready to come into her in the way that Sun Woman had explained.

She could still stop him if she wanted to. She knew him and trusted that he would not do anything she did not want.

But she wanted this. She wanted his hand to go on skillfully preparing the way for him. She wanted this golden glow inside her to fill her more and more. This was happiness, and she was climbing toward a greater and greater happiness. She felt him move, and all at once her hand was not on his loincloth, but on his hot flesh. She wanted to open herself up to the part of him she held so tightly.

Then he was upon her, and she felt a sudden stabbing pain. She cried out. Almost at once his cry of pleasure followed on hers and his hips thrust forward violently and she felt him filling her. He let out a long sigh and relaxed, lying on top of her, resting all of his weight on her.

I am like the Turtle holding up the earth, she thought.

There had been mounting pleasure until her moment of pain. Now there was an ache and a faint memory of the good feelings. She wanted more pleasure. Sun Woman had told her it would hurt only the first time. And that from then on it would be better and better.

Slowly he withdrew from her and they lay on their sides looking at each other. His eyes were huge right before her face.

"For a moment," he said softly, "I felt as I did when I walked on the bridge of stars."

She thought of asking him whether it made him so happy that he would stay with her now instead of going to the country of the pale eyes with his father. But she knew what his answer would be, and that his saying it would only hurt him and her.

She said, "It was Sun Woman, your mother, who told me about this--about what men and women do together."

He laughed. "It was also she who told me." His face reddened. "I feel as if my mother were here watching us."

It was Redbird's turn to laugh. "What would she see that she did not know about already?"

He shook his head. "I would not want anybody to see us doing that."

"The spirits watch us."

"That is not the same. They watch everything, so it is not special to them."

"Is it special to you?" she asked.

"Oh, yes. Something has passed between us. I have given a part of myself to you. And I have a part of you too. Now, even if I must leave you, we will still be with each other."

She did not want to hear him speak of leaving. She wanted to stay here with him in this grove of ancient trees forever. When she had spoken to him of going off and being alone together, this was what she imagined it would be like. But then a dark thought crossed her mind.

"White Bear, they might send people looking for us. They might catch us together like this." Anxiously she started to pull her clothing together.

He sat up beside her and put his hand over hers. "I do not think anyone is coming." He sounded so sure that she thought he must be speaking as a shaman.

"They know I will come back to the village," he added. "They saw me smoke the calumet. And in a few days I will leave with Star Arrow."

He said it with such finality that the sun seemed to go out.

"And so there is time," he said, "If you want ..." and guided her hand to touch him. To her joy she felt him strong in his readiness to be within her again. This time, she was sure, it would not hurt. She would know the full delight that Sun Woman had told her of. The afternoon sunlight slanting through the budding branches was warm again, bathing her and making her feel joyful and free.

Their flowing together lasted longer this time, and gave her all the happiness she had hoped for.

And it came to her, as they lay peacefully side by side afterward, that this might have happened someday, but it would not have happened today if Star Arrow had not come to claim his son.

7

Raoul's Mark

On the morning of the fourth day of their journey north from Saukenuk along the Great River, when the sun was halfway up the sky, White Bear and Star Arrow emerged from a forest into a prairie. To their right were gentle hills covered with new green buffalo grass and prairie flowers of every color. To their left the hills stood taller, then dropped suddenly to the Great River. White Bear saw a large boat with great white wings above it to carry it along.

Star Arrow brought his tall black stallion to a sudden halt and climbed down, gesturing to White Bear to dismount from his brown and white pony.

"Look at this stone," Star Arrow said, pointing to a large gray rock that stood upright on the edge of a bluff overlooking the river.

White Bear saw carving on the rock and, remembering Père Isaac's lessons, recognized it as the pale eyes' letter M.

"M for de Marion," said Star Arrow. "We are now on land belonging to the de Marion family. You see no fences here because we could not cut enough wood to fence off all our land. There is so much of it."

He reached out and rested his hand on White Bear's shoulder, his fingers squeezing through the buckskin shirt. "But before we come to the place where I live, and where you will live, we must speak of names. Among the pale eyes I am called Pierre de Marion. My full name is Pierre Louis Auguste de Marion."

He made White Bear say "Pierre de Marion" after him.

"According to our custom you should call me Father," Star Arrow said, saying the word in English. White Bear already knew it.

"Now I will tell you what your name will be among the pale eyes."

White Bear pulled free of Star Arrow's hand and took a step backward.

"I already have a name. I was born Gray Cloud because I am neither white nor red." He could hear reproach in his voice, though he had not meant to sound that way. "But now I am White Bear. That is the name given me by the shaman Owl Carver after my spirit journey. I must keep that name."

"And you will keep that name, son. You will always be White Bear. But, just as I am happy to have the British Band call me Star Arrow, so you can have a pale eyes' name. One that tells pale eyes when you go among them who you are--that you are a member of the de Marion family--that you are my son."

_He is proud that I am his son._ White Bear's anger faded and he felt a warmth toward this man who wanted to give him a name. He decided that if Star Arrow could have two names, so could he.

"What is my pale eyes' name to be, Father?"

Star Arrow put his hand on White Bear's shoulder. "I wish you to be called Auguste de Marion. Auguste is a very old name. It means 'consecrated,' a sacred person, and that is a good name for one who has seen a vision and wishes to be a shaman. Say it after me. Auguste."

"O-goose."

As they rode on through the de Marion lands, people called out from cabins. Mounted men, who saluted Pierre with a wave of their hands, rode among herds of cattle and horses.

_Dozens of horses!_ Auguste thought, realizing he was seeing wealth that would amaze any man of the British Band.

Farther along they passed fields fenced off with logs split in two and piled one on top of the other. Sheep roamed over low hills and cropped the prairie grass to its very roots. Inside a smaller plot huge gray and pink pigs rolled in mud beside a pond.

They passed fields planted with crops. The whole village of Saukenuk with all the farmland around it would fit into one of those fields. He recognized one crop, corn. Corn as far as he could see. How much corn could the de Marions eat? They must be a huge tribe.

As they rode along, Pierre said, "One more thing for you to know, Auguste. You will meet the rest of your family today--your grandfather and your aunt, my sister." He stopped his horse. Auguste reined up his pony and waited. Unhappiness dragged down the lines in Pierre's face.

"I must tell you that I also have a brother, your uncle, who--" He hesitated. "Who may not be friendly to you."

"Why?" Auguste asked.

"Thirteen summers ago another sister of mine and he were captured by the Potawatomi during the war between the British and the Americans. My sister was murdered by them. Raoul, my brother, suffered greatly until we found him and ransomed him. He hates not just the Potawatomi, but all red men. He did not wish me to bring you back here to our home."

"I do not understand," said Auguste. How could a man hate all tribes because of what the men of one tribe had done to him? Again he realized what a mystery the pale eyes were, and he felt fear.

Pierre said, "He probably will not be there when we arrive. I had to tell you about Raoul, but I do not want you to be afraid of him."

But he _was_ afraid, he told himself as they rode on. His belly felt hollow, and his heart beat faster than his pony's trotting hooves. He was afraid of the pale eyes and their strange ways. He felt more fear now than he had when he walked on the bridge of stars with the White Bear.

"There!" Pierre suddenly held out his hand. Auguste's eyes followed the gesture, and his mouth dropped open.

What at first he thought he saw was a forest of trees covered with snow. In their midst something rose like a great gray hill. Snow in the Moon of Buds? Perhaps the pale eyes did have a magic of their own.

As they rode closer, the snow on the trees turned into flowers. He had seen wild apple trees in bloom and knew that many trees flowered around this time. But these trees were all planted in straight rows, and each one was a mass of white blossoms.

What he had thought was a gray hill was the biggest lodge he had ever seen. He jerked the reins of his horse to stop, so that he could sit and wonder at what he was seeing. He felt Pierre stop beside him.

The great lodge seemed to be made of three or four lodges all joined together with one central building higher than all the rest. Its high peaked roof was of logs split in half with the flat sides turned outward. The lower part of the lodge was made of stones, the upper part of logs.

Dread filled him, seeing that these people could do so much. They could hold so much land that a rider needed half a day to cross from edge to center. They could make the land obey their wishes, fence it, fill it with animals, plant huge fields with crops, enjoy a forest of flowering trees. And in the very center of all this they could make a lodge gigantic enough to hold a hundred families.

The pale eyes could do anything. They were magicians so mighty as to make a shaman like Owl Carver look childish. How could he ever hope to know all that they knew?

Despair crushed him. He wanted to see no more.

Pierre patted Auguste's pony on the neck, and the little horse started forward again. Numbly, Auguste felt himself being led toward the great lodge, his pony's hooves falling softly on white petals.

Pierre pointed proudly. "We call our house Victoire."

Closer and closer they came until the house blocked out part of the sky. It was gray, the logs it was built of having weathered. Auguste saw that there were many smaller buildings scattered around the giant lodge--smaller only compared to the huge one in the center. Some of the smaller houses were connected to the great one by sheltered walkways. The smallest was much bigger than the biggest lodge in Saukenuk.

In a moment they would emerge from among the flowering trees. Auguste saw a log fence ahead. The fence surrounded a low hill covered with close-cropped grass, leading up to the house. One large old maple tree shaded the south side. He checked his pony. He could go no farther.

"What is it?" Pierre asked him.

"I cannot," Auguste said. "I cannot go there." He felt a quaver in his voice and his lips trembling, and he held himself rigid.

"Why not, Auguste?" Pierre said softly.

"I do not know what to do here. I have never seen such a place as this. I will do foolish things. All those people will laugh at me. You will not want me for a son."

"Let us wait," said Pierre. "Get down from your horse."

Biting his lip, Auguste dismounted.

"We shall sit here," said Pierre. They sat, facing each other. Auguste saw people approaching through the straight rows of trees. Pierre saw them, too, and waved them away.

They sat for a long time in silence while their horses grazed nearby. Auguste held his misery in until he felt calmer.

He looked at Pierre and nodded to say that he was in control of himself. Pierre nodded back. Auguste looked at the petal-covered ground, feeling crushed.

"All this is strange to you," Pierre said.

"Yes," said Auguste.

"And it is not foolish to fear. There are some people here who will hate you just because you are a red man. There are people who will be afraid of you. But there are dangers in the life you come from--fire and flood, sickness, bears and wolves, the Sioux and Osage, enemies of your people. You fear those things, but you have been taught how to live with those dangers. There are other people here, people like myself, who will care for you and protect you and teach you how to live with the dangers of the pale eyes' world. You must come to know these people who will help you. I want you to be glad you came from Saukenuk to Victoire."

Auguste did not answer. They sat in silence for a while. Then Pierre spoke again.

"The pale eyes are here, Auguste, and you must learn to live with us."

Auguste sighed and settled down again. He listened to the buzzing of locusts rise and fall.

_If my vision of this man meant something, then come to me now, White Bear, and tell me what I must do._

He carried a handful of bits of magic mushroom in a saddlebag, but several times since his spirit journey the White Bear had spoken to him without the help of the mushroom and without his mind leaving his body. All he needed to do, sometimes, was sit quietly and listen. He waited now, sometimes looking at Pierre, sometimes looking at the twigs and moss and grass on the ground.

_Perhaps no spirit can reach me here in the land of the pale eyes._

He was about to give up and get to his feet. He would beg Pierre to let him go back to the Sauk.

Then a voice spoke deep and clear in his mind, and it was not his voice.

_Go and meet your grandfather._

A warmth spread from the center of his body to hands and feet that a moment ago had been icy with fear. Knowing that he had not left his spirit helper behind when he left Saukenuk gave him new confidence.

He held out his hands, palms up. "Let us go to meet my grandfather."

The smile on Pierre's long face mirrored the glow Auguste felt inside himself.

They remounted and rode around to a gateway in the west side of the fence surrounding the house. Auguste, with his newfound strength, endured the curious stares of the men and women gathered at the gate to greet Pierre.

"Look, your grandfather is waiting for you," said Pierre, his voice ringing with joy.

Before a doorway sheltered by its own wooden roof, an old man, a very stout young woman and a plump young man awaited them.

The old man's eyes were blue like Pierre's but they seemed to glitter and to see deeply into Auguste. He was tall and thin and slightly stooped with age. His clothes were simple--a black jacket over a white shirt, and black trousers that tightened below his knees and ended in straps that ran under shiny black shoes. He leaned on a black stick with a silver head.

His heart fluttering with excitement, Auguste got down from his horse and took a tentative step forward. The old man approached him, his expression as fierce as a hawk's. He looked hard into Auguste's face.

The old man spoke to him in a language of the pale eyes, so rapidly that Auguste could not hope to understand him.

Pierre said, "Your grandfather says he sees at once that you are a member of our family. He sees it in the shape of your eyes. He sees it in your nose, in your chin. He sees that like all de Marion men you are very tall."

"What is my grandfather's name?" Auguste asked.

"He is the Chevalier Elysée de Marion."

"El-izay," Auguste said, and his grandfather clapped his hands and grinned.

"But you should call him Grandpapa," Pierre concluded.

"Grandpapa." That was another word Père Isaac had taught him.

Grandpapa gave a cackling old man's laugh, threw his arms wide and hugged Auguste. Auguste hugged him back, rather gingerly, fearing his bones might crack. A thought came to Auguste, and he let go of his grandfather. He hurried back to his horse and took out of the saddlebag the tobacco pouch he had packed along with his small medicine bundle.

He went back to Elysée and held the pouch out with both hands.

In his best English he said, "Please, I give Grandpapa tobacco."

Elysée took the pouch and opened it, sniffed and grinned appreciatively. He and Pierre exchanged words.

Pierre said, "I have told him that among the Sauk, tobacco is offered to honored friends, to men of high rank and to great spirits. This pleases him."

"Thank you, Auguste," Grandpapa said. "I will smoke it in my pipe after we eat together." This time he spoke slowly enough for Auguste to understand him.

Grandpapa now took the stout woman by the arm and pulled her forward.

"This is your aunt, my sister, Nicole Hopkins," said Pierre.

Never among the Sauk had he seen a woman with such broad hips and such a vast bosom. She stepped forward and placed her lips, to Auguste's surprise, on his cheek, making a little smacking sound. Not sure what to do, Auguste put his arms around the woman as he had around his grandfather. She felt soft and comfortable and not at all fragile, and he hugged her hard. He felt powerful muscles under her ample flesh. His aunt returned the embrace with strong arms. She smelled of flowers.

All at once, Auguste sensed that there was a baby growing inside the woman holding him. Not because she was so big; it had nothing to do with the way she looked. It was a sensing, and he was pleased to know that, along with the White Bear, he had not left his powers behind at Saukenuk.

Pierre said, "Now meet Frank Hopkins, your uncle by marriage."

At Pierre's gesture the sandy-haired man approached Auguste. Auguste opened his arms to hug him, but the man stuck his right hand out. The man's fingers were black. That was odd; he had never seen painted fingers before. Was this another pale eyes custom? Auguste decided he was expected to hold out his own right hand. Frank seized his hand in a strong grip and shook it up and down.

"Frank makes the talking papers from which people may read and learn things," said Pierre. "He also builds things of wood. He built some of the newer buildings here on our land. Frank and Nicole and their children live over by the river in a town called Victor. He built many of the houses there, too."

The people had been so friendly that Auguste had gotten over much of his fear, but when he saw Pierre wave him toward the door, which yawned above him like an enormous cave mouth, he felt cold once again.

But he followed Pierre through the door, and his breath left his body in amazement.

It was like being in a forest clearing where the trees towered over you and their branches met high up, blocking out the sky. In a Sauk lodge he could reach up and touch the roof without straightening his arm. Here the ceiling was hidden in shadows, and huge square-cut timbers crossed the open space above his head.

Hung by ropes from those timbers were big circles of wood that Père Isaac had said were called wheels. These wheels were turned on their sides, and set on them were dozens of the little white sticks of wax that pale eyes used to make light. A few of the more prosperous Sauk families sometimes used such wax sticks to light their lodges.

Auguste looked around in wonder. The huge room was full of objects whose purpose he could not guess. Doorways led to other parts of this house or to attached houses. Cooking smells of many kinds of good food filled the air.

Pale eyes men and women stood about in the hall and watched Auguste and his father and grandfather enter.

Two small boys and a girl running through the hall stopped to stare at him. Frank Hopkins called to them and they approached slowly.

"These are Thomas, Benjamin and Abigail, Nicole and Frank's children," said Pierre.

_Their other children_, thought Auguste, wondering whether Nicole herself knew what he knew about her.

Abigail stood close to her father, her mouth and eyes wide open.

Thomas, the biggest of the three, said, "Gosh almighty, I got a real Injun for a cousin!"

Benjamin walked slowly over to Auguste, suddenly reached out and gripped the deerhorn handle of the knife at his belt. Auguste tensed.

But Benjamin grinned up at Auguste and let go of the knife without trying to pull it out of its scabbard. Then he ran back to his father.

Grandpapa Elysée beckoned, and as Auguste walked toward him he noticed that the soles of his moccasins were striking a hard surface. He looked down to see that the floor of the lodge was covered with flat stones. Auguste and the others followed Grandpapa across the length of the floor to a stone hearth so big a man could stand inside it.

They passed three long, cloth-covered platforms raised as high above the floor as the sleeping platforms in Sauk and Fox summer lodges.

"Those are tables," Pierre said. Auguste remembered the word from a book of words and pictures Père Isaac had shown him. On the tables lay a confusion of shiny objects.

A man standing by the hearth, who appeared as old as Elysée, stepped forward and bowed. He had a round, bright red nose and white whiskers that stood out on either side of his face.

"This is Guichard, our majordomo," said Pierre.

"Ma-ja domo," repeated Auguste.

"Guichard came over from France with us thirty years ago."

Guichard said, "I greet you, Auguste." Auguste was amazed to hear him speak in the Sauk language. He spoke with a lisp, though, and Auguste noticed when he opened his mouth that he had no front teeth.

Pierre clapped Guichard on the shoulder. "I do not know how he does these things, but he always surprises us with what he has learned. And by his care for us in so many ways."

Guichard stepped back with another bow, and Pierre turned to a short man and a plump woman also standing before the hearth. The woman's full lips curved in a smile of greeting for Pierre; then she plucked at her skirts, lifting them a bit, and bent her knees and ducked her head.

"This is Marchette Perrault," Pierre said, and Auguste noticed that his normally pale face was flushed. "She reigns over our kitchen." Auguste did not need to rely on his special sense to see that there was a loving secret between Marchette and his father.

The man standing beside Marchette, short and powerful-looking, with a bristling brown beard, was staring at Pierre with hatred in his face, his eyes narrowed. His mouth was invisible in his beard, but Auguste knew that his lips were pressed together, his teeth clenched. He also knew that this short man was as strong as a bull buffalo.

The look the brown-bearded man gave Pierre frightened Auguste, and he wondered if he was the only one who could see it.

"Armand Perrault, here, is the overseer of our estate," Pierre said, apparently oblivious of the man's expression. "He makes the crops flourish, the trees bear fruit and the cattle grow fat. He and Marchette come from French families who settled here many generations ago."

Armand bowed, a quick jerk of his head and shoulders, to Pierre. Somewhat to Auguste's relief, the angry man did not even look at him. Abruptly he turned his back and strode across the hall to a side door.

Pierre said, "Most of those who live and work here at Victoire are Illinois people of French descent. The town, Victor, grew up after we built our home here. Most of the people there are Americans from Missouri, Kentucky or back East. Everyone you meet in America is from somewhere else."

_Not my people_, Auguste thought.

Marchette made another bow to Pierre and left, too, to go into another connected house in which Auguste saw a fire burning under a huge metal pot in another hearth. There was much smoke and steam in that lodge, and he could not see everything, but the good smells were coming from there, and he remembered that he had eaten nothing today but a little dried venison.

Pierre took Auguste by the arm and led him to a place at the table near Grandpapa. Guichard pushed a wooden seat made of sticks toward him. A "chair," Auguste remembered, from Père Isaac's picture book.

_Why do they sit up high and raise their food up so high?_ Auguste wondered. Perhaps pale eyes did not keep their floors clean enough to sit on and eat from. But these appeared very clean.

"This is a special meal in your honor," said Pierre. "Most of the people who work on our land will be eating here with us." Men and women were seating themselves at the other tables.

_A feast!_ thought Auguste. Perhaps there would be dancing afterward.

"How many people live on your land, Father?" he asked in Sauk.

"About a hundred men, women and children live and work here," Pierre answered. "Beyond the hills to the west, by the river, is the settlement called Victor, where another hundred people live. Many of them work for us too. Nicole and Frank live in Victor."

Two hundred, thought Auguste. That was not so many, after all. There were nearly two thousand people in the British Band.

Nicole sat beside him, Pierre across the table from him. Nicole went through the names of the objects on the table--"plate," "glass," "knife," "fork," "spoon." Guichard was going around the table behind the people sitting there, filling each glass with a red liquid from a pitcher.

Auguste had seen beads and other small objects made of glass at Saukenuk, but here glass was everywhere. What was glass, and how did the pale eyes make things from it?

Even as he was wondering about glass he saw his father take out of his coat pocket an oval silver case hanging from a purple cord around his neck. Pierre opened the case and took out yet two more small, round pieces of glass in a metal frame. To Auguste's bewilderment, he put these over his eyes, like a transparent mask. He smiled when he saw Auguste staring.

"Spectacles. I have trouble seeing things that are near to me, and these help. I like to see what I'm eating."

Last night, as Auguste lay beside the sleeping Star Arrow in the tall prairie grass, he had thought of quietly climbing on his pony and fleeing back to Saukenuk, in spite of the tobacco-sealed promise. Now he was glad he had not run away. The people all looked kindly at him, except for that man Armand, and there were so many wonders to see. He could feel his heart beating hard and his hands trembling with excitement.

When Guichard filled his glass with the red liquid, Auguste drank from it. The liquid was cool and burned at the same time. It was bitter and puckered his lips, but was sweet in his throat. He was thirsty, so he drank more of it.

"Wine," said Pierre. "You've had it before?"

_This must be like that burning water the pale eyes call whiskey that I tasted at the council last Moon of Falling Leaves on the other side of the Great River._ The chiefs and braves and warriors had drunk much of the burning water from a barrel, he remembered, and they had grown merrier and merrier. The women and boys were each allowed one small sip and the young girls none at all.

"I have tasted it," he said. Pierre frowned and seemed about to speak, but he said nothing when Auguste held his empty glass out for more wine to Guichard, who was going around again with the pitcher.

Men and women brought food to the table on big plates and in bowls. There was turkey, duck, fresh venison, flat bread and round bread, dark bread, white bread and yellow corn bread, cooked fruit and raw fruit, loaves of maple sugar, fruit baked inside crusts, heaps of mashed-up vegetables. There were slices of fish burned almost black and piles of boiled crawfish. The food, Auguste saw, was coming from the connected lodge Marchette had gone into, where the big pot was with all the smoke and steam.

Auguste watched the way the people at the table with him were eating. He tried to use his knife and fork as they did and saw Pierre smile approvingly. The sight and smell of the food made water fill his mouth and his stomach growl. But when he put a slice of meat in his mouth it was unexpectedly very hot to the taste. Not just hot from being cooked, but hot because of something cooked into it.

_Peppers_, he thought. His mother kept some, traded up from the south, in her collection of medicine plants, and he had tasted their fire.

Pierre himself, Auguste noticed, put very small portions of food on his plate and ate little of what was there. Auguste was saddened. If only there was something he could do for his father. He had consulted Owl Carver before leaving Saukenuk, but the old shaman had only said gloomily that in his experience such an evil spirit in the belly was usually fatal.

The hot food made Auguste thirsty, and he drank more wine. Each time he held his glass out, Guichard, smiling toothlessly, seemed to be there with the pitcher.

Still hungry, he grew impatient with knife and fork and began picking the food up with his hands. He tried to take small pieces with his fingers and eat quickly so that people would not notice, but then he caught the two boys and the girl, at the other end of the table, watching him and giggling and whispering to each other. His face went hot.

Nicole, sitting on his right, asked him short, simple questions about how the Sauk and Fox lived, and he answered with the little English he had. She smiled and nodded at him many times as he told her the Sauk names for things, and she repeated them after him. She seemed to find pronouncing them easy.

The other people mostly talked among themselves in their own language. The pale eyes never stopped talking, it seemed. Would there never be a moment of thoughtful silence? The voices, all speaking so fast, gabbling like a flock of turkeys, made him dizzy.

A strange feeling was coming over him. He heard a buzzing in his ears, like locusts on the prairie. His face felt numb. He reached up and touched his cheeks with his fingertips, and it was as if he felt his face through a thin, invisible cloth.

His stomach started to churn. He felt with a sudden panic that he could not hold all the food he had eaten. The peppers and the wine were burning together in his stomach. He lurched to his feet, swaying from side to side. The vast room seemed to be spinning like a canoe in a whirlpool, and the voices around him faded away.

He felt Nicole quickly stand up with him, her hand firmly on his arm, steadying him.

He shut his eyes and held his hand tightly over his mouth, wanting to die of shame and embarrassment. His belly bucked like a wild pony. Hot liquid spurted through his fingers.

"Here, son, here," a voice said. He opened his eyes to look into the face of his father, full of pain for him. Pierre held a large wooden bucket under his chin. On the other side of him Nicole had a strong grip on his shoulder.

Auguste took his hand away from his mouth and let his belly give up what it had held. Stained red by the wine, the food he had just eaten poured into the bucket. The smell of vomit filled his nostrils, making him feel even sicker.

He fell to his knees, coughing, choking, tears streaming from his eyes. Pierre knelt beside him, still holding the bucket for him. Auguste's stomach heaved again and again, forcing the remnants of his meal through his throat and past his slack lips.

As he recovered a bit, he heard someone laugh softly in a distant part of the room, and someone else speak in the pale eyes' language. The tone of contempt was unmistakable.

He was overwhelmed with shame. He had made a fool of himself before his entire de Marion family and their whole tribe. He had disgraced the Sauk. He had embarrassed his father.

It was as he had feared. He could not stay here. It was too painful.

_Tonight_, he promised himself, holding his aching belly. _Tonight I leave the land of the pale eyes forever._

* * * * *

Reproaching himself, Pierre knelt beside Auguste, trying through the pressure of his hand on the boy's back to tell Auguste that he loved him.

_He said he had tasted wine, but I should have known he could not drink so much. The poor boy must be dying of shame, and it is all the fault of stupid Pierre._

Auguste coughed and wiped the back of his hand over his face. Pierre patted him gently on the back.

Nicole, kneeling on Auguste's other side, suddenly turned her head toward the door and drew in a frightened breath. Pierre looked up to see what it was.

A figure filled the doorway, silhouetted in the yellow rectangle of afternoon sunlight.

Pierre at once recognized the truculent set of Raoul's broad shoulders, the forward thrust of his head under the wide-brimmed hat.

Pierre had time for one more anguished thought of self-reproach as his younger brother strode toward them.

_For this, too, I should have better prepared Auguste._

Raoul's boots sounded on the flagstone floor.

Pierre tugged on Auguste's arm, helping him to his feet. He heard Nicole whisk away the bucket.

"So, this is the little mongrel?" Raoul's deep voice boomed in the cavernous log hall.

"Raoul," Pierre said, "this is your nephew, Auguste."

Pierre turned to Auguste and in Sauk said, "This is your uncle, Raoul. He lives here with me and your grandfather. He speaks with a rough tongue, but do not fear him."

How could the boy not fear a man like Raoul?

"Auguste, is it? A fine French name for a redskin." Raoul set his fists on his hips, throwing back his blue jacket to show his gilt-handled pistol and a huge knife in its scabbard. At the sight of the weapons Pierre's heart pounded.

Raoul went up to Auguste and stared into his face as Pierre stood tensely.

Raoul said, "Well, brother, you actually did it. You made yourself a son."

"I'm glad you admit that," said Pierre.

"Oh, I admit that. He's got de Marion written all over his dirty face. But don't call him my 'nephew.' I reserve that title for legitimate kin."

Pierre hoped Auguste's knowledge of English was not enough to let him understand how he was being insulted. The boy looked from Pierre to Raoul as they spoke, his large, dark eyes watchful, his face expressionless.

"Raoul, stop this." It was Nicole, back from getting rid of the bucket. "I'm Auguste's aunt and you're his uncle, and you might as well get used to it."

"And you are spoiling our dinner, Raoul," Elysée said. "Either sit and eat with us like a civilized man or leave us alone."

"Spoiling your dinner?" Raoul gave a bellow of laughter. "Mean to tell me it doesn't spoil your dinner to see that savage puking in our great hall? Mean to tell me _he's_ civilized?"

Pierre glanced across the table at his father and Frank Hopkins, who had both risen to their feet. Elysée's eyes burned with anger. Frank held his little girl's hand and looked sombrely at Raoul. The two Hopkins boys stared at their uncle.

_I pray God they don't admire him. Boys have a way of looking up to men who behave like brutes._

Raoul turned to Nicole, his teeth flashing white under his thick black mustache. "You really want an Indian nephew? Have you forgot what Indians did to your sister?"

"No, I'll never forget what happened to Helene," Nicole said. "None of us will. But Auguste had nothing to do with that."

"You didn't watch your sister die," Raoul said. "So that just the sight of an Indian makes you want to kill."

Pierre saw that Raoul was working himself up into a rage. He would talk and talk, and every word he said would make him angrier, until at last, the explosion. A spasm of pain shot across Pierre's stomach.

_Not now_, he prayed. _God, let the illness leave me alone until I can be alone with it._

Nicole's cheeks were an even brighter red than was usual for her, but she spoke gently. "Raoul, you do have a living sister. If it had been me at Fort Dearborn instead of Helene--if I had been raped and murdered--I would be looking down from Heaven, and I would be hoping your wound would heal. I would pray that you would welcome Pierre's son, your nephew, into your home."

"Stop saying that this filthy savage is my nephew," said Raoul. "Look at him standing there, staring at me. You know what the word mongrel means, redskin?"

Pierre felt a surge of pride as he saw Auguste standing straight and slender, gazing levelly at Raoul. Savage? Even though he had been sick only a moment ago, Auguste held himself as regally as a young prince.

"As for you, Nicole," Raoul went on, "don't ever think you can speak for Helene. She may be in Heaven now, but she got there by way of Hell. No decent woman could imagine what she suffered."

Pierre almost screamed aloud as the pain in his belly stabbed him again. He clutched at his stomach. Just when he needed all his strength!

Auguste looked into his eyes, then down at his hand.

"You hurt, Father," Auguste said in English. "Must sit down."

"Oh? He's already got a few words of English?" said Raoul. "You're training him to talk, eh? Like a parrot? Going to put him in a medicine show?"

Elysée suddenly spoke in a loud voice, "My friends--those who were invited to dine with us here today--will you please excuse us and give us privacy? We have family matters to discuss."

Silently, eyes cast down, the thirty or so servants and field workers who had been invited to celebrate the coming of Pierre's son filed out of the hall.

Pierre thought, _In so many things I have failed today_.

"Raoul," Elysée said, "I have not forgiven Helene's killers. But I am not stupid enough to hate all Indians, and neither should you be. Do you think whites have never tortured and killed Indian women?"

Raoul bared his teeth again. "If you can't hate the Indians for what they did to your daughter and to me, then you never loved either one of us."

Pierre felt a sudden surge of anger. "Raoul, I forbid you to speak that way to our father. You are cruel and unjust."

"You owe _me_ justice, Pierre, you and Papa. Where was he when you abandoned me to the Indians? Where were you?"

Pierre's legs shook. He could feel the rage radiating from Raoul; it was like standing too close to a red-hot stove.

Auguste said, "Father."

Pierre turned and looked into the dark young eyes.

Auguste spoke in Sauk. "Father, I am the cause of this man's anger."

"There is much to explain, son," said Pierre. "Be patient and quiet, and all will be well."

Pierre saw fear struggling with resolution in his son's face. A pallor in the fine olive skin showed that Auguste had not yet gotten over being sick. Auguste squared his shoulders and took a step toward Raoul. He raised his right hand in greeting.

"I greet uncle," he said solemnly in English.

"Keep this mongrel away from me, Pierre," Raoul said.

"Frank," said Nicole, "take the children out of here."

Frank picked Abigail up and carried her, with Tom and Benjamin trailing. He walked off toward the kitchen, looking back over his shoulder at Nicole.

Elysée said, "Remember, Raoul, this is my grandson."

"Your grandson!" Raoul spat.

Auguste held out his right hand to Raoul. "I sorry you angry. Want be friend."

In a moment, Pierre thought, he would have to get between them. But his stomach hurt so badly that he could hardly move.

"If you want to be my friend, you mongrel bastard, get as far away from this house and from me as you can," Raoul said.

Auguste took another step toward Raoul, still holding out his hand. He'd learned about shaking hands from Frank Hopkins just a little while ago, Pierre remembered.

"Auguste, no!" Pierre cried.

"Don't you try to touch me, redskin."

Raoul thrust out his own hand and struck at Auguste's. He grabbed Auguste's shirt, twisting the buckskin in his big hand.

Raoul had lost all control. The fury was upon him. Pierre forgot about his own pain and tried to throw himself between Raoul and Auguste. His chest hit Raoul's arm, hard as an iron bar.

"Let go of him, Raoul," Pierre said.

"Raoul, stop it!" Elysée shouted.

"All right." Raoul punched his fist into Auguste's chest and released him, sending the boy staggering backward to fall to the floor.

Rage blazed up inside Pierre. The sight of his son knocked to the floor swept away all constraint. To the Devil with trying to reason with Raoul. He rushed at Raoul and swung his arm with all his strength, bringing his palm against Raoul's mouth.

Though open-handed, it was a blow that would have knocked many a man down. Raoul only staggered back half a step.

But a trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"You still fight like a Frenchman, Pierre," said Raoul with a grin, wiping his mouth. "Slapping a man. Think you're still a count or something? Fight like an American."

He lunged at Pierre. Pierre barely saw, out of the corner of his eye, the fist coming at him. A cannon went off at the side of his head.

He was on the floor, flat on his back.

Nicole screamed, "No! No, Auguste!"

Pierre rolled his aching head to one side to see Auguste standing over him, his hand on the deerhorn hilt of the knife that hung at his belt, the knife Pierre had left for him when he was a baby. Nicole held his arm with both hands.

"Want to fight with knives?" Raoul said. He slid his own huge hunting knife out and held it upright, the point glittering in the candlelight.

"Come on, redskin!" Raoul shouted, but even as he spoke he charged at Auguste, as Auguste struggled to break free from Nicole. Raoul's knife flashed and Pierre heard a cry of pain, and Nicole was between Auguste and Raoul, and Auguste had his hand to his face and blood was running through his fingers.

Raoul stepped away from Auguste and wiped his knife on a white tablecloth.

"What have you done?" Pierre shouted.

"I was kind," Raoul said with a white-toothed grin.

Pierre rushed to Auguste. Blood flowed from a long cut that ran straight down Auguste's cheek from just below his eye to the corner of his mouth. The front of Auguste's tan buckskin shirt was stained red.

"If he'd pulled that knife, I would have taken his eye," Raoul said softly. "I just left a mark on him. So he won't forget me."

"Let go of me, Father," Auguste said in Sauk, in a level, terrible voice. "I have to kill him."

"No!" said Pierre, holding Auguste tighter.

_You're a brave boy, but I'm afraid it's you that would be killed, my son._

Blood pounded in Pierre's head. He wanted to take Auguste's knife--the knife he'd given Auguste long ago--and drive it into Raoul's chest.

_If I were like Raoul, I would do just that. Or try to._

"Raoul, for this I will never forgive you."

"Forgive me?" Raoul shouted. "Can I forgive you for bringing this savage here to cheat me?"

Nicole took Auguste from Pierre's arms. She pressed a white napkin to his bleeding face and took him to a chair to sit down. As he sat, Auguste turned to shoot Raoul a look of pure hate.

"Cheat you? What are you talking about?"

"Just remember, when you die--and I hope God makes it soon--I _will_ have this estate."

Pierre felt Raoul's words as if that blade had plunged into his heart. That his own brother should wish him dead ...

Pierre went to stand by Auguste, seated in a chair with Nicole wiping his slashed face.

Pierre said, "In the will I wrote years ago I named you as my heir. I never thought to change that will. Until today."

Raoul, still wiping his knife, snorted. "No court in Illinois would let a man disinherit a legitimate white brother in favor of a half-Indian bastard."

Pierre let his hand rest on Auguste's shoulder. The boy's eyes burned up at him. Pierre looked down at the blood-soaked napkin that Nicole pressed to Auguste's cheek.

Auguste, speaking in the Sauk tongue, broke the silence that had followed Raoul's words. "Even if he is your brother and my uncle, this man is our enemy, Father. I will stand side by side with you against him." Auguste put his hand over the hand that lay on his shoulder.

Raoul slammed his knife into its sheath. "You've driven me out of my home, Pierre. I'm not living under the same roof with an Indian. I won't be back till I can come back as master of this house."

He strode to the door and turned again. "And then I'll bring my own family with me."

"What do you mean--your own family?" Elysée called across the long hall.

"I'm marrying Eli Greenglove's daughter," Raoul said with a grin. "And that mongrel had better not try to touch my children's birth-right."

He was gone, leaving the door hanging open behind him, sunlight pouring in.

Pierre looked miserably down at Auguste and thought, _I hope your shaman's skills make you better at predicting the future than I have been, my son_.