Chapter 2

1831

Moon of Ripe Cherries

_July_

8

Homecoming

Rejoicing at the sight of Victor, Auguste stepped up to the gangplank of the paddle wheeler _Virginia_ and paused there a moment to look around. He couldn't help himself: he smiled broadly. The settlement hugging the bluff was not home, but it was closer to home than he had been in a long time.

And this summer, he had decided, he would go back to his true home. He would end the sorrow of being cut off from his people.

This was the sixth spring since Pierre de Marion had come and taken him to Victoire, and, as with every spring before it, he missed Saukenuk terribly. He longed for his mother, for the teachings of Owl Carver, for the arms of Redbird, whom he had lost almost as soon as he made her his.

For six years--he had learned to count years as white people did--he had obeyed his father and the promise made with the calumet and had not tried even to send a message to the British Band. He even felt it was a wise rule. To communicate with his loved ones would have torn him in two. But more than a month ago in New York City, strolling in the warm evening air on the busy cobblestone streets, past dooryards where lilacs were blooming, he made up his mind that when he returned to Illinois he would visit Victoire only briefly and then would go back to Saukenuk. He was twenty-one years old now, and among white people that meant he was master of his own life.

He gazed up at the bluff. There were more houses up there than when he had last come out here, two years ago. Some were built on the bottomland itself, in spite of the danger of flooding.

He saw the palisade and flags and towers of Raoul de Marion's trading post at the top of the bluff, and felt his joy fading. He would have to face Raoul's insults and threats, as he had every other time he came back to Victor. His belly tightened as he remembered, as if it had just happened, that first encounter six years ago, the burning-ice feel of the knifepoint slicing into his cheek, his hand gripping his own knife, Aunt Nicole and Father holding him back.

Seemingly with a will of its own his hand went to the scar and his finger traced the ridge that ran from eye to mouth.

He brought his gaze down from the top of the bluff and saw a more welcome sight--Grandpapa, Aunt Nicole and Guichard in a black open carriage from the estate, waiting to take him up to Victoire. He ran down the gangplank and strode over to them.

"Auguste! My God, you're beautiful!" Aunt Nicole exclaimed, and then her face reddened and she looked downward.

He felt that he looked good, though "beautiful," as he understood English, was not the right word for a woman to use about a man. But he supposed she admired his new clothes, the fawn-colored cutaway coat and vest, the ruffled silk shirt, the tight, bottle-green trousers. He wished he were not already holding his tall beaver hat in his hand, so that he could tip it to her with the graceful motion he'd learned watching the dandies on Broad Way.

Grandpapa leaned out of the carriage and hugged Auguste. His embrace felt strong, and his eyes were bright. Auguste was happy to see him in good health.

_But where is Father?_

Auguste shook hands with Guichard, who had climbed down stiffly from the driver's seat.

"Your trunk, Monsieur Auguste?"

Auguste pointed out the big wooden chest with brass fittings that had been unloaded at the Victor pier along with bales and barrels from the hold of the _Virginia_.

Guichard approached two buckskin-clad men lounging by a piling. He pointed out the trunk as Auguste had done.

"For _him_?" said one of the men, glowering at Auguste from under his coonskin cap. "White men don't wait on goddamn Injuns." He spat tobacco juice at Guichard's feet and turned away, as did the other man.

Auguste wanted to throw the man who had spat at Guichard into the river. He had no doubt that he could do it, though like most men who lived in Victor, the man was armed with knife and pistol. Auguste had been taught to fight as a Sauk, and he had been a champion boxer, wrestler and fencer at St. George's School. But he was not going to get into a brawl in his first minutes ashore. Time enough for that if he met Raoul.

"Come on, Guichard. The trunk's light enough. We don't need any help." The old servant taking one end and Auguste the other, they loaded it into the back of the carriage.

"Good to see you again, Grandpapa," Auguste said as he dropped into the seat facing Elysée and Nicole, his back to the driver. "Aunt Nicole, it's you who are beautiful. But where's Father?"

Grandpapa patted him on the knee. "Not feeling well, I'm afraid. He sends his apologies. We will go to him now, at once."

Grandpapa was trying to make his voice sound unconcerned. But Auguste heard an undertone of sorrow, the anguish of a father who had lost one of his children years ago and would soon lose another.

With understanding, grief sank into Auguste's marrow. Father--Star Arrow--had hung on these past six years, growing sicker and sicker, the evil in his belly swelling up like a poisonous toad. Now the end was near.

Auguste found himself looking deep into Aunt Nicole's eyes, full of shared sorrow.

Guichard flicked the reins, and the carriage started off, turning away from the dock, passing the warehouses and rattling down the long dusty-white road that led across the bottomland fields to the bluff. It must have been a good spring out here; though this was only the beginning of July, the corn was already up to a man's waist.

Auguste felt he would look better wearing his beaver hat as they rode along. He put it on his head, pulling the rolled-up brim down with both hands, and set it in place with a pat on the crown.

"So, you are now a finished graduate of St. George's School?" said Elysée with a smile. "Monsieur Charles Winans has sent long letters full of good reports about you."

Aunt Nicole reached over and squeezed his hand. "We're proud of you, Auguste." Her soft, fleshy hand was warm, and her eyes sparkled at him. He sensed a feeling in her that was more than the affection of an aunt for a nephew. She now had eight children, he knew, and every time he had seen her and Frank together, they had seemed very much in love. But Aunt Nicole was a big woman. She had room in her big heart, perhaps, for more than one love.

Embarrassed by what he felt radiating from her, Auguste turned to Elysée.

"If I learned anything at St. George's, I owe it all to the way you prepared me, Grandpapa. Anyone who could take a boy who could barely speak English, and in two years cram enough knowledge into his head for him to go to secondary school in New York City--such a man is no ordinary teacher."

"You were no ordinary pupil, my boy," said Elysée, leaning back in the carriage, his hands resting one on top of the other on his silver-headed cane. "And Père Isaac laid down a solid foundation in that head of yours. Those Jesuits are good for that, at least, black-hearted rogues though they may be in most other respects."

"Papa!" Nicole gave Elysée a reproving frown.

Elysée quickly patted her knee. "Forgive me, my child. Let me not shake the faith that sustains you."

"It would take more than your wicked tongue to disturb my faith, Papa," Nicole said with a wry smile.

It was amusing to hear Grandpapa and Aunt Nicole bicker about what the whites called "faith." As the carriage rolled along, Auguste recalled the many lectures he had listened to on Jesus and the Trinity at St. George's, which was affiliated with the Episcopal Church. But Auguste had walked with the White Bear and talked with the Turtle. He _knew_ them as he had never known the white people's God, and what went on in their dimly lit, waxy-smelling churches had no attraction for him.

He knew that Christians, for the most part, saw his beliefs about the spirit world as rubbish sprung out of ignorance--or, worse, inspired by the Evil One. Père Isaac's efforts to persuade him to walk in the way of Jesus had prepared him for that. At school he did not speak of things sacred to him, so as not to expose them to white scorn. When teachers and fellow students tried to persuade him to take instruction in Christianity, he was polite and evasive.

And when he felt he was smothering in the noise and crowding and dirt of the huge city of New York, he would borrow a pony from the lady he called Aunt Emilie--his father's cousin, actually--and ride out of New York along a trail that led to the north end of the island of Manhattan. There in a forest cave he had found, he would chew a bit of the sacred mushroom Owl Carver had given him and restore his link with the spirit world by journeying with the White Bear. All through these six years, _his_ faith had remained strong.

Nicole broke in on his thoughts. "You're still studying medicine?"

"Just a beginning: I've read some books, attended some lectures. I assisted a surgeon--Dr. Martin Bernard--at New York Hospital. I bought myself a surgeon's box of instruments--got it in the trunk, there. But if anybody came down with anything worse than an ingrown toenail, I'd be scared to do anything about it."

Elysée said, "You can pull teeth, I hope, like any proper surgeon?"

Auguste shrugged. "I do have a turnkey for that. But I've never actually used it."

"The only person in town who knows anything about treating the sick is Gram Medill, the midwife," Nicole said. "Tom Slattery, the blacksmith, pulls teeth. We need a real doctor."

Auguste felt a fluttering in his stomach as he wondered when he should tell this white family of his that he wanted to leave them. Nicole was thinking, he realized, that he would stay here at Victoire.

The steel-reinforced wooden wheels of the carriage bumped mercilessly over the rutted road, and Auguste hoped Nicole wasn't pregnant at the moment. The fact that his shaman's sense did not tell him reminded him that he had been too long away from the Sauk. As they began to climb the road that ran up the bluff, Nicole pointed out to Auguste that the newer houses were made of boards rather than logs, because Frank had set up a sawmill and workshop on the Peach River. Frank was now a master carpenter, with four workers to help him when there was a house to be built.

"But he'd sell the mill in a minute if printing alone would provide him with a living," she said. "That's where his heart is."

Elysée said, "Pierre and I offered Frank a regular income, so that he could give all his time to his newspaper and to printing, but he wouldn't hear of it. He got a bit haughty when I pressed him, and informed me that the system of feudal patronage is dead. I assured him that I was well aware of that, and that is why I am here and not in France."

"Frank is proud, Papa," said Nicole.

Elysée nodded. "I fear he is too often a proud papa."

Auguste roared, and Nicole, though she blushed, could not help laughing.

"The town grows bigger every year," Auguste said. Nicole nodded sympathetically; she seemed to have guessed what he was thinking: How numerous the whites were, as he had seen for himself in the East, and how inexorably they were filling up this part of the country, like a river in flood. Last year the New York papers had reported the results of the 1830 census; the United States was over twelve million, Auguste had read, a number he could not even imagine. And 150,000 of those were here in the state of Illinois, balanced against the six thousand Sauk and Fox. Black Hawk's people, the British Band, numbered only two thousand. Hopeless.

"Victor had a hundred or so people the year you came here," said Elysée. "Now there are over four hundred. As you see, the bluff is completely covered with houses. And we have many new industries and crafts. A preacher, a Reverend Hale, has put up a church on the prairie to the east of us. I am not sure whether his work counts as an industry or a craft. There is Frank's sawmill, as Nicole said. There are also a flour mill and a brewery, and a mason works at a limestone quarry nearby. And your father is planning to set up a kiln on the estate, so we can build a new Victoire of brick."

"How sick is my father?" Auguste asked abruptly, dreading the answer he would get.

"Ah, Nicole, there are your children waiting to greet us," Grandpapa cried, as if he had not heard Auguste's question.

Where the road made a sharp turn and started upward on a higher level, stood a two-story frame building painted white. A sign over the door read, THE VICTOR VISITOR, F. HOPKINS, PUBr, PRINTING AND ENGRAVING. CARPENTRY.

Auguste could hear the press clanking away inside the house as they approached. The three younger children, John, Rachel and Betsy, were lined up by the door, Rachel holding in her arms a baby that must be Nicole and Frank's newest. Three of the older ones, Benjamin, Abigail and Martha, leaned out a window to wave to Auguste from the second story. Auguste felt proud of himself, being able to remember all their names and which was which.

As Guichard reined up the horse and pushed the brake lever on the carriage, the sound of the press stopped and Frank came out through the open door wiping his ink-stained hands on his leather apron. His forehead was shiny with sweat. The oldest son, Thomas, followed him, pushing his hands down his own apron with the same gesture.

Auguste climbed down from the carriage and took Frank's hand, then shook with Thomas and the three little girls. The baby was Patrick, he learned. He lightly rubbed Patrick's fine hair.

"No wonder the town's population grows so fast, Aunt Nicole," Auguste said with a smile. "How many more do you think there will be for you and Frank?"

But as he spoke, his pleasure at his aunt's handsome family was dimmed by the thought that if all white families were as fertile as this, there was no hope at all for the red people.

"None, I hope," said Frank firmly. "We've got too big a tribe as it is."

Aunt Nicole's face reddened again, and Auguste reminded himself that white women were generally reluctant to talk about pregnancy and childbirth. Auguste recalled his mother, Sun Woman, speaking of a kind of tea that would keep a woman from getting pregnant. When he went back to Saukenuk he could find out more about it. He would surely come back here to visit, and then he could tell Aunt Nicole about it. If white women knew about that tea, maybe there would be fewer whites in years to come, and they would not have such a hunger for land.

As they drove on up the road to the top of the bluff, Auguste saw Nicole's face brighten, and he turned to see what she was looking at. A black buggy drawn by an old gray horse was coming toward them, having just rounded the bend in the road at the trading post palisade. Auguste caught a glimpse of blond braids under a red and white checkered bonnet.

Nicole said, "Auguste, here's a newcomer to our county. I think you'll enjoy meeting her."

"Ah yes," said Elysée. "Reverend Hale and his daughter, Mademoiselle Nancy. He came here over a year ago, Auguste, declared the town too corrupt for his church and started holding services for the farmers out on the prairie. They built him a church about five miles from town. Painted white, with a steeple one can see for miles. Its very simplicity makes it beautiful."

Nicole said, "As much could be said for Nancy."

Curious, Auguste tried to see the face under the red and white bonnet. Every day, and many times a day, he thought of Redbird and the joy they so briefly shared, but many of the young white women he had seen in the past six years had made his heart beat faster. Just last winter he'd gone with a group of his classmates to an elegant old house on Nassau Street where he discovered that the body of a white woman, under her many-layered dress, was in all important respects as interesting as the body of a woman of his own people. Even though he planned to leave Victoire as soon as he could, he was eager to meet the new minister's daughter.

The two carriages pulled side by side, and the drivers, Guichard and the Reverend Hale, a slab-faced man dressed in black, reined up for the customary exchange of greeting.

"Reverend Hale, Miss Hale," Elysée said, "may I present my grandson, Auguste de Marion."

The reverend stared at Auguste for a moment from under bushy brows before grunting an acknowledgment. Auguste suspected he had heard about his parentage and was looking for traces of Indian blood.

_Indian._ Auguste had never heard that word before he went to live among white people. His people were the Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire. And their allies were the Fox. And besides these there were Winnebago, Potawatomi, Chippewa, Kickapoo, Osage, Piankeshaw, Sioux, Shawnee--each a separate people. And besides these, hundreds more, whose names he did not even know. But the whites had one name for all these peoples--Indians. And that name, Grandpapa had explained to him with gentle irony, was altogether a mistake. The explorer Columbus had thought he had landed in India.

_They do not even respect us enough to call us by an honest name._

But the sight of Nancy Hale drove the bitterness from his mind. Her braids, emerging from her red and white bonnet and lying on either side of her white lace collar, were yellow as ripe corn, and her face, while too long for ideal beauty, was pink and clear. Her mouth was wide, and her teeth were white when she smiled at Nicole and Elysée. She looked straight at Auguste for an instant, then she looked down, but in that moment he saw eyes a vivid shade of blue, like the turquoise stone from the Southwest he carried in his medicine bag.

"Visiting the members of your flock, are you, Reverend?" Elysée asked. Auguste noticed that he put the tiniest humorous inflection on the word "flock."

Hale's thick gray brows drew together as he nodded sourly. "Trying to bring the Word to that wilderness you call a town."

Here was an unhappy man, thought Auguste, whose life was dedicated to persuading those around him to be equally unhappy.

"Ah, yes," said Elysée with a broad smile. "Quite a population of sheep gone astray in Victor."

"In all of Smith County," said Hale.

_It must scandalize him to think that my mother is an Indian woman and that my father, by the lights of this man, isn't even married to her._

Auguste suddenly wanted to defy the disapproval he felt from the reverend. He jumped out of the carriage and in an instant was standing on the road beside the minister's buggy. He swept off his high-crowned hat with the flourish he'd seen in New York and bowed deeply.

"Miss Hale," he said. "Auguste de Marion. At your service."

The blood rose to Nancy Hale's cheeks.

"My pleasure, Mr. de Marion," she murmured. Her large blue eyes looked frightened and her flush deepened, but she did not take her eyes away, and his gaze was locked to hers. His heart beat as hard as it had the first time he saw the White Bear.

"The Lord's work awaits us in Victor," said the Reverend Hale loudly. "You really must excuse us." And without waiting for a reply he snapped the reins of his buggy, and the old horse ambled off.

Auguste stood in the road waiting to see if Nancy would glance back at him. She did. Even at a distance and through dust he could see the blue of her eyes.

Elysée said, "Well, Auguste, close your mouth, put your hat back on and get back up here."

_I'm going to meet her again_, Auguste thought.

He still wanted just as much to go back to his people. He had not forgotten Redbird. By now, though, she had probably forgotten him. And so, what harm could there be in getting to know this white young lady a little better?

Then their carriage was passing the log wall around the trading post. A shadow fell over his enjoyment at meeting Nancy Hale. He ran his finger down the scar on his cheek.

"Is _he_ in there?" he said abruptly to Nicole.

Her face paled. "He's down-- You know about what's going on in the Rock River country, don't you?"

Auguste stiffened. "Has something happened to my people?"

He saw Nicole close her eyes and sigh when he said "my people."

"There has been trouble," said Elysée. "Did no news reach you in New York?"

_O Earthmaker, let them come to no harm._

Twisting his hands in his lap, Auguste said, "The New York papers only report what happens on the eastern seaboard." He remembered now overhearing remarks by some of his fellow passengers on the _Virginia_ about "Injun trouble." But he'd kept to himself on the trip up from St. Louis.

_We steamed right past the mouth of the Rock River, and I never guessed!_

Elysée nodded. "Well, your father insisted that no one write you about it. He feared it would distract you from your studies."

Auguste felt a sudden flash of anger at Pierre de Marion. _He does want me to forget that I am a Sauk. Not even telling me when my people are in danger._

He gripped Elysée's arm. "What happened?"

Nicole said, "Frank has a correspondent who writes him regularly from Fort Armstrong."

The American fort, Auguste remembered, was at the mouth of the Rock River, six miles downriver from Saukenuk.

Nicole went on, "Black Hawk's band once again crossed the Mississippi to Saukenuk in the spring, even though the Army has told them over and over that the land now belongs to the Federal government and they must not return to it. This time they found settlers actually living in some of their houses and farming their fields. Black Hawk drove them out. Black Hawk's warriors destroyed settlers' cabins nearby, shot their horses and cows, told them to move away or be killed. Now Governor Reynolds has called up the militia to drive Black Hawk and his people out of Illinois. His proclamation says, 'Dead or alive.'"

Auguste's heart suddenly felt as if ice had formed around it.

Elysée said, "And Raoul and most of his cronies have gone to join the militia."

Auguste whispered, "O Earthmaker, keep my people safe." The carriage had reached the top of the hill and was passing the front gate of the trading post, shut and locked with a chain. He trembled at the thought of Redbird--Sun Woman--Owl Carver--Black Hawk--all the people he had known and loved all of his life, facing the rifles of men like Raoul.

"I must go there now," he said in a low voice.

"You can't," Nicole said quickly. "You can't get through the militia lines. You'd be shot."

Auguste, fists clenched in his lap, shook his head. "If they are in such danger, how can I stay away? I _must_ be with them."

Elysée seized his wrist in a grip so powerful it startled him. "Listen to me. You cannot help them. You simply can't get there before matters are settled, one way or another. And I am sure that when your chief Black Hawk sees the size of the militia force, he will go peacefully back across the Mississippi. The Sauk and Fox have many young men. You are your father's only son. _He_ needs you now."

Auguste's heart ached as he saw the plea in Grandpapa's eyes. How could he deny the old man? And his father's need for the love of his son in his last days.

But the thought of thousands of armed and angry whites going to drive his people out of Saukenuk smote him like a war club. Grandpapa didn't know Black Hawk; Black Hawk was not likely to yield peaceably. And whether or not Auguste could be any use at Saukenuk, he had to be there.

Nicole said, "At least see your father and talk to him before you decide what to do."

Auguste nodded. "Of course." He saw more pain in her face than he could bear to look at. He turned to stare out at the hills as the carriage carried them to Victoire.

Now they could see Victoire, the great stone and log house rising out of the prairie on its low hill. Elysée and Pierre liked to call it a château, but Auguste had learned that it was nothing like the castles in the land they had come from. And, much as he had marveled at Victoire when he first saw it, he had seen still bigger and finer houses in New York. But it was still the grandest house north of the Rock River's mouth, and Auguste couldn't help feeling proud when he realized that the blood of the men who built it flowed in his own veins.

Their carriage rattled through the gateway in the split-log fence. Auguste saw with pleasure that the maple tree that shaded the south side of the house was bigger than ever.

Most of the servants and field hands were gathered before the front door to greet Auguste. He remembered how they had assembled this way six years ago, when Star Arrow first brought him here from Saukenuk.

Every time he thought of Saukenuk, of his beleaguered people surrounded by an enemy army, his breathing grew fast and shallow.

But he was frightened, too, by the silence of the house. It whispered of his father's dying. He must face Pierre's death and suffer with him now. Auguste wanted to rush upstairs to Pierre and hold him tight. And also he did not want to go into Pierre's room at all.

Auguste and Elysée climbed the stairway from the great hall of the château to Pierre's second-story bedroom, Nicole following. At the door Auguste hesitated, and Elysée stepped forward and firmly knocked. A woman's voice called them in.

As Grandpapa pushed the door open, Auguste closed his eyes. He dreaded what he was about to see. His heart fluttered anxiously. Would there be anything, he wondered, he could do for his father?

Now the door was fully open, and he saw the long, thin figure stretched out under a sheet on a canopied bed. Marchette was sitting with a basin of water on her knees. She had been wiping Pierre's face with a damp cloth.

A flash of bright red caught Auguste's eye. On the floor by the bed was a second basin, partly covered by a towel which, Auguste suspected, Marchette must have hastily thrown over it. But part of the towel had fallen into the basin, and blood was soaking into the white linen.

A knot of grief filled Auguste's throat, blocking it so he could not speak. He rushed to the bed.

Pierre lay on his back, his head propped up by pillows, his long nose pointing straight at Auguste, his eyes turned toward him. His bony hands looked very large, because his arms were so thin. Pierre's gray hair, what was left of it, spread out on the pillow.

Pierre lifted his head a little.

"Son. Oh, I am glad to see you."

He raised his hands, and Auguste, biting his lip, leaned over the bed and put his hands under his father's shoulders. He held Pierre close and felt Pierre's hands come to rest on his back, light as autumn leaves. They held each other that way for a moment.

His father felt so light, as if he was starving to death. Auguste released him and sat on the edge of the bed. He said the first thing that came into his mind.

"Did you eat today, Father?"

Pierre's voice was like the wind in dead branches. "Marchette keeps me alive with clear soups. They are all that I can keep down."

A half-empty bowl of broth, Auguste now saw, stood on a table beside the bed. Next to the soup lay a Bible bound in black leather, and Pierre's silver spectacle case with its velvet ribbon.

What would Sun Woman and Owl Carver do for a man this sick? What would they feed him?

"Maybe I can help you, Father," he said.

"I don't think anyone can help me, son," Pierre said. "It's all right. Just having you here makes me feel better."

Auguste had learned enough about cancer to be sure that Pierre's condition was hopeless. Dr. Bernard--any of the other white physicians at New York Hospital--would say that nothing more could be done except to make the patient comfortable, give him laudanum perhaps, and wait for the end.

But that was merely what white medicine had taught Auguste. White doctors had sharp lancets to draw blood, scalpels to cut into sick people's bodies, saws to cut off infected limbs. They had huge thick books listing hundreds of diseases and prescribing treatments for them. But after spending many hours treating the sick in New York, Auguste had seen that there were many things the white physicians did not know how to do, had never even thought of doing. Perhaps greater hope for Pierre lay in the way of the shaman.

At the very least, Auguste, as White Bear, could speak to Pierre's soul, could summon the aid of the spirits, especially his own spirit helper and that of the sick man, to cure him if possible; if not, then to ease his suffering, help him to accept what was to happen to him and prepare him to walk in the other world.

With a jolt, the thought hit him anew: _If I stay here with Father, what of Saukenuk?_

Pierre said, "God has kept me alive because I must talk to you about our land, Auguste."

Auguste did not like the sound of that. The thousands of acres the de Marions owned had nothing to do with him, and he wanted to keep it that way.

Marchette stood up, pushing her chair back. "Perhaps the rest of us should leave you and Monsieur Auguste alone."

Auguste saw in her face the anguish of a woman who was losing a man she loved. Auguste had long suspected, seeing the looks that passed between Pierre and Marchette, and the way her husband, the brown-bearded Armand, glared at both of them, that there was--or at least had once been--something between the master of Victoire and the cook.

Pierre raised a tremulous hand. "Au contraire. I want the three of you--Papa, Nicole, Marchette--to hear what I say. Besides, you are the three I trust most. I want you to know my wishes, my true wishes, because after I am gone there are those who will lie about me."

Auguste took Pierre's hand, so big and yet so weak, in his own strong, brown one.

"Father, you must believe that you will live."

Auguste heard the others move closer to the bed. Nicole went to stand at the foot. Elysée seated himself in an old spindly-legged armchair brought over from France, his cane across his knees.

Pierre pointed a skeletal finger above his head to a shelf mounted on the white-painted plaster wall, where an Indian pipe lay, its bowl carved of red pipestone, its stem polished hickory.

"Take down the calumet," Pierre said. "Let me hold it."

Auguste took the pipe reverently, with a hand at each end of its three-foot length. Two black feathers with white tips fluttered from the bowl as he put the pipe into Pierre's hands. From the moment he touched the pipe, Auguste's hands were shaking as much as Pierre's. Only he and Pierre understood how much power was in this pipe--power to bind men for life to whatever they promised when they smoked the sacred tobacco.

Pierre let the pipe lie on his chest, his fingers touching it lightly.

"This pipe was given me a few years after you were born, Auguste, by Jumping Fish, who even then was one of the civil chiefs of the Sauk and Fox. It is the sign of an agreement between our family and the Sauk and Fox, fully understood and freely entered into by both sides."

Auguste looked in wonderment from Pierre to Elysée, and Grandpapa nodded solemnly.

Elysée said, "We had spent years exploring the more unsettled parts of the Illinois Territory, and we had decided that here was the land we wanted as our family seat in the New World. In 1809 we bought this land for a dollar an acre at the Federal land office in Kaskaskia. Thirty thousand dollars. The Federal government claimed that the Sauk and Fox had signed a treaty a few years earlier with Governor William Henry Harrison, selling fifty-one million acres, including all of northern Illinois, to the United States for a little over two thousand dollars, a shockingly paltry sum."

Pierre said, "But we knew that the Sauk and Fox disputed that claim."

Auguste said, "Yes, Black Hawk says Harrison cheated the Sauk and Fox. He says the chiefs who signed the treaty were drunk and could not speak English or read or write it, and did not know what they were agreeing to when they made their marks. He says that anyway those chiefs had no permission from the tribe to sell any land."

"Exactly," said Elysée. "And we wanted to live in peace with the Sauk and Fox. And that was why your father went to Saukenuk. We hoped to make reasonable payments for the land we would live on to those from whom it had been taken."

Pierre said, "I was still there with your mother, by my own choice, when war broke out in 1812, and then they required me to stay with them. You were already two years old. After the war, and after I left them, I sent the Sauk and Fox chiefs what they asked for--thirty thousand dollars, partly in coin and partly in trade goods, knives, steel axes, tin pots and kettles, blankets and bolts of cloth, rifles and barrels of gunpowder, bags of bullets. So, we paid for this land twice over. Despite that, I think it is far more valuable still than all the money we spent for it. The chiefs recognize our right to live on the land and use it. And Jumping Fish gave me this calumet, and I gave him a fine Kentucky long rifle with brass and silver inlay on the barrel and stock."

Auguste nodded eagerly. "Yes, yes, I've seen it. Jumping Fish uses it to shoot the first buffalo every winter to start the hunt."

"And I gave Black Hawk the compass your war chief still treasures, from which I received my Sauk name."

"Yes."

Auguste looked across Pierre's bed and out the windows, of costly clear glass shipped from Philadelphia, that gave a view south across grass-covered prairie. Once all that prairie belonged to my people, he thought.

As if knowing his thoughts, Pierre said, "I did not say the Sauk and Fox sold us the land. I said they recognized our right to use it. Do you understand?"

Auguste nodded, repeating what he had so often heard Black Hawk say in the tribal meetings. "Land is not something to be bought and sold. So we believe."

Pierre closed his eyes wearily, his fingertips still resting on the calumet that lay across his chest. Auguste grieved. The father who had left him when he was a little boy and then come back for him was leaving him again, slipping away. Marchette wiped Pierre's face with a damp cloth.

Nicole's lower lip trembled as she said, "My big brother. You've always been here for me."

Elysée's face was crumpled by an unbearable sadness. He wishes, Auguste thought, that it was him lying there dying, instead of his son.

Pierre opened his eyes and lifted his head to look at Auguste. Auguste gently pressed his hand against his father's balding brow.

"Rest, Father, rest."

"Not till we are done. You know that your grandfather turned the estate over to me when I was forty years of age. Now I must pass it on. Until recent years I had thought that the land would go to Raoul when I died.

"But the enmity between me and Raoul has grown deeper and deeper. A few times he and I and Papa have met together, trying to come to terms. Each time, the words that passed between us were more cruel. Then, a year ago, he even boasted to me that he killed three Sauk Indians who were taking lead from that mine he has been working, which they believe to be theirs."

Auguste gasped.

_Sun Fish and the others! That must have been what happened to them._

Pierre said, "What is it?"

"I think I know those three. One of them was my age, and a friend of mine." His hatred for Raoul burned fiercer than ever.

Pierre said, "For a long time now there have been no words at all between Raoul and me."

Auguste said, "It was my coming here that turned you against each other."

Nicole spoke up. "Not you. Raoul has had a grudge against Pierre for as long as I can remember."

Elysée said, "Yes, Raoul has many quarrels with me--over land and how it is to be used, our paying the Sauk and Fox for it, the Fort Dearborn massacre. Yes, you are part of it, Auguste, but there is much more besides."

Auguste shook his head. "But before I came, Father and Raoul were speaking to each other and the question of who would get the estate was settled. And it still can be. Father, after you are gone I will go back to my people. You can tell Raoul that, and there will be peace between you."

With pain that tore all through him like lightning burning through a tree, Auguste realized that he had committed himself to stay here as long as his father lived. His Sauk family and loved ones were in terrible danger four days' ride from here, and he wanted to be with them. But he couldn't leave Pierre now. His fear for Sun Woman and Redbird and the others in peril, his shame at not going to help them, would be a terrible torment, but he would have to endure it. He could not leave his father to take his first steps on the Trail of Souls alone.

Pierre reached out suddenly and seized him by the wrist.

"You must not leave, even after I am gone. You must stay here as my heir."

Auguste gasped as the enormity of what Pierre was saying hit him. Heir! He tried to stand up, but Pierre's grip held him fast. Just as this huge house and all the land around it would hold him captive, forever parted from his people.

"No!"

"Listen, please, Auguste. I cannot will the land to Raoul."

Auguste lifted his free hand pleadingly.

"You can't will it to _me_. I know nothing about managing farms and raising livestock. Nothing about business. Raoul has been trained from childhood to do all the work of this estate. I can't do it, and I don't want it."

He looked around the room, hoping the others would help him persuade Pierre that what he wanted was impossible. Nicole and Marchette were both wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Elysée leaned forward in his chair, his eyes intent on Auguste.

Pierre said, "Once the land is your responsibility, you will do what is right with it. I know you will. I want to turn the estate over to you now, as Papa did with me, while I am still alive. I would be here to help you, for a little while. Your grandfather will advise you, as he has advised me all these years. There will be others to help you. Nicole, her husband, Marchette, Guichard."

Auguste said, "Grandpapa, tell him I can't do it."

Elysée, who had been sitting slumped and miserable in his fragile-looking armchair, roused himself and said, "I knew your father was going to propose this to you today, Auguste. This is what he wants. It is no mere whim. He has been thinking about it for a long time. And it is not impossible. You have shown yourself capable of learning quickly. I can only promise you that if you take up the burden your father offers you, I will be at your side to help you every way that I can."

For a moment Elysée's words made Auguste's resolve waver. Thirty thousand acres, he thought. And the United States stole fifty million acres from my people. Should not one Sauk get some of it back?

But he had some idea of the crushing responsibility a huge estate would entail. It was absurd to think of himself occupying such a place.

"But Raoul is also your son, Grandpapa," he said. "Don't you want him to inherit your land?"

Elysée shook his head. "Raoul is a murderer many times over, who has escaped punishment only because Smith County is on the frontier, where there is no law. He hates Indians with a passion that is close to madness. He is a crude, violent, greedy man. He shames our family. He is far less worthy than you."

Auguste felt anger boiling up under his dismay. Father and Sun Woman and Owl Carver and Black Hawk had promised him he would live among whites only for a time and then go back to the Sauk. They had all smoked the calumet, making that agreement sacred. He had lived for that homecoming, through these six years. He freed his wrist from Pierre's grip and held out his hands, pleading for understanding.

"But I can't stay here with white people for the rest of my life."

Pierre said, "You are not the same person you were when I took you out of the forest. You have been educated. You may yet become a doctor."

"Yes, and I want to be a doctor for my people."

"You can do more for them if you stay here, my son. The Sauk will need friends among the whites who have knowledge and wealth and power."

Auguste shook his head violently, as if to drive out Pierre's words. "I will never be happy, living as a white man. I must go back to my people. I beg you to let me go."

But even as he spoke he realized with a sudden pang that these loved ones, Pierre, Grandpapa, Nicole, were his people too.

Pierre's sunken eyes blazed at Auguste. "I have already written my new will, Auguste. There is one copy with the town clerk, Burke Russell, and one copy in your grandfather's keeping. It names you my sole heir. To all that I possess, the entire de Marion estate. If you accept what I am offering you, you will have to fight Raoul. It will all be upon your shoulders. I can only beg you with these last breaths to take what I would give you. You must decide."

A voice inside Auguste screamed, _You must not do this to me, Father. You will destroy me._

He stood looking down at his father with his arms hanging at his sides, his shoulders straight, his head bowed. He could not say no so finally, so bluntly, to his dying father. He needed time to work his way free of this trap.

"Father, you know we Sauk never decide quickly. When it is a very important decision, we think, we go on with our work, we walk the sunwise circle, we wait in silence for the answer to come. You must give me time."

Pierre closed his eyes and his head fell back to the white pillows. "You have as much time as I do," he whispered. "But only that much."

Auguste turned away from the bed. His eyes met Nicole's. He saw sympathy for him in her face, but only another shaman could know the pain he was feeling inside.

9

Bequest

White Bear crouched over the brown blanket he had brought down from his room and unrolled it. Bare-chested and barefoot in white sailcloth workman's trousers he had bought in New York, he took from the blanket roll his powerful necklace of megis shells and hung it around his neck. Next he opened his soft leather medicine bag.

Propped up against the big old maple tree on the south side of Victoire, Pierre lay on his mattress with his head and shoulders resting on pillows. His cotton blanket, all he needed on this warm September day, was tucked around his chest, leaving his arms free. He had begged to be taken outside; the weather was so fine. As soon as the servants had carried him out and left him and White Bear alone, he had fallen asleep. These days, Pierre slept most of the time, as a baby would. But a baby slept to build up its strength, Pierre because he was losing strength.

White Bear--he did not think of himself as Auguste now--laid out the objects from his medicine bag on the unrolled blanket and contemplated them. They represented the seven sacred directions. First, East. He picked up a sparkling white rock and placed it on the east side of the tree. The color of East was white and therefore was White Bear's own color. Next was South. He took up the green stone on which the mound builders had long ago carved the figure of a winged man. This he laid on the earth next to the mattress on Pierre's left side. The ground under the maple tree was bare, and an early morning rain had left it damp and soft.

Now West. The spirits of men and women went West when they died, and the color of West was red. He set the red stone, with dark honeycomb markings that looked as if they had been painted on its highly polished surface, on the ground at Pierre's feet. By the north side of the mattress he placed a black stone, itself from the North, that Owl Carver had engraved with an owl image. The fifth direction, Up, was blue, and he put a blue stone, the color of Nancy Hale's eyes, on the pillow beside Pierre's head. He set a piece of brown sandstone for the sixth direction, Down, beside Pierre's blanket-covered feet.

Now for the seventh sacred direction--Here. He picked up the last and largest item from his medicine bag--the claw of a grizzly bear that had been killed by Black Hawk himself many years ago. After White Bear had come back from his first spirit quest with the prediction that Black Hawk would do deeds of courage and that his name would never be forgotten, the war chief had made him a gift of the grizzly claw. White Bear laid the saber-shaped claw on Pierre's chest, over his heart, with the brown tip toward the cancerous lump in Pierre's belly that was killing him.

He went back to his blanket and took out a dried gourd painted black and white. Slapping the gourd against the palm of his hand to make it rattle, he danced in a circle around Pierre and the maple tree, sunwise from east to south to west to north and back to east again, keeping Pierre on his right, singing softly, almost to himself:

"Earthmaker, you made this man, Now we ask your help for him. He is a chief whose people need him. He still has far to walk. Lift him up, Earthmaker. Give him back his life."

When White Bear had danced the circle nine times, he put down the gourd. He had brought out from the château a kettle of freshly brewed willow-bark tea and a porcelain cup. It would ease the pain in Pierre's stomach and give him strength. Whenever Pierre ate solid food, blood would come trickling out of every opening in his body and he would grow weaker and paler. He was slowly bleeding and starving to death.

Smelling the tea as he poured it into the cup, White Bear remembered how he'd met Nancy Hale when he was collecting the bark yesterday along the bank of Red Creek. She'd been blueberrying. It was the fourth or fifth time he'd encountered her over the summer on the prairie near Victoire. The meetings weren't accidents; not for either of them. But he felt so uncertain about what he would do when Pierre died that he could only talk with Nancy about things of no importance.

He looked up to see his father's eyes open. They had sunk so far back in the skull-like face that they seemed like embers glowing in caves.

White Bear blew on the steaming cup and held it to Pierre's lips. He drank the tea down in small sips.

Pierre smiled faintly as his eyes traveled over his land. The nearby ground, covered with grass cropped short by sheep and goats, sloped down to the split-rail fence that surrounded the château's inner yard. To the west White Bear could see the two flags flying over Raoul's trading post on the bluff overlooking the river, and beyond that part of the river and the dark west bank, the Ioway country. In the other directions were orchards, farmlands, pastures, and the prairie, yellowing with fall, rolling on to the edge of the sky.

When Pierre had drunk most of the tea, White Bear put down the cup. He gathered up his sacred stones and put them back in his medicine bag.

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

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

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

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

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

Pierre raised his head, and White Bear saw that the effort pained him. The burning, sunken eyes turned on White Bear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A short time later White Bear was back at Pierre's side with the feather-bedecked calumet and a lit candle protected by a glass chimney. From his own room he had brought down the deerskin pouch holding his small supply of Turkish tobacco, purchased in New York. It would serve. All tobacco was a sacred gift of Earthmaker.

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

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

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

The sight of beads of blood on his father's lips horrified White Bear. He took a corner of Pierre's blanket and wiped away the bright red drops. Then he took the pipe from his father's hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pierre did not say good-bye, but White Bear had not expected him to. They had said their good-byes already. White Bear remained where he was, sitting with his back to the maple tree.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

Raoul did not think he could put up with much more of this funeral. He had to wait till it was all over before he could make himself master of Victoire, and he wanted desperately to act now. He tried to calm himself by remembering the Indians he'd stalked and killed at Saukenuk last May and June.

Raoul and the fifty men he'd recruited to represent Smith County in the state militia had arrived at the Rock River in style, carried up the Mississippi from Victor to Fort Armstrong, at the mouth of the Rock River, on Raoul's new steamer _Victory_. Paid for with the profits of the lead mine, the _Victory_ was propelled by two side paddle wheels, and it could make the St. Louis-Galena round trip in exactly a week.

They'd come to hunt Indians and Raoul had made sure they did, camping in the woods on the south side of the Rock River opposite the Indian village and shooting at redskins whenever they had a chance. It pleased Raoul to think they'd gotten half a dozen, maybe more.

Finally fed up with talking, General Gaines had ordered a general assault on Black Hawk's town at the end of June. The militia were eager to slaughter every Indian in Saukenuk, and they'd swept in.

And the damned, sneaking redskins were gone. Seeing themselves outnumbered, they'd slipped out of the village, down the Rock River and across the Mississippi the night before. The Smith County boys, along with the other militiamen, were in a fury of frustration. They had to be content with the poor-second satisfaction of burning the Indian town to the ground.

To Raoul's great annoyance, instead of pursuing Black Hawk, Gaines sent a message to the chief asking for yet another parley. Black Hawk and some of his braves came back across the river to talk peace. Just like he hadn't shown the whole world what a coward he really was, the stubborn old Indian had marched up to Gaines's tent walking like a peacock, with feathers in his hair.

_Hang the redskinned son of a bitch_, was what Raoul thought. Instead, Gaines just made him sign another fool treaty--as if the Indians ever honored any treaties--and even promised to send them corn because they hadn't had time to plant any.

The disgusted militiamen called it the Corn Treaty. Old Gaines must be almost as big a coward as Black Hawk.

Raoul and the Smith County boys hung around the Rock River, sniping at Indians in canoes till their provisions ran out; they flagged the _Victory_ down on her next northbound trip and rode her home.

Home, where what was going on made Raoul madder than ever. Pierre was dying and the mongrel--from the same tribe Raoul had been fighting down on the Rock River--was strutting around as if he already owned Victoire.

That would end today. If Raoul could pull it off.

Raoul eyed Nancy Hale, standing only a few feet from him among the two hundred or so mourners in the great hall of Victoire. What would she think, Raoul wondered, when he played his hand today? He pictured what the tall blond woman would look like naked under him in bed.

Oh, he'd make her sweat and moan and thank him for it.

But first, of course, he had to succeed today. He had to drive the mongrel away before he could court Nancy. Whether her preacher father approved of him or not, he couldn't turn away one of the biggest landowners in Illinois.

And that's what he'd be, after today.

He didn't see how he could fail. Surely the servants and the townspeople wouldn't take the mongrel's part.

Still warming himself by staring at Nancy Hale's straight back, Raoul thanked God he'd never been quite able to bring himself to marry Clarissa.

He felt a twinge of unease as he recalled that taking up with Nancy would mean kicking Clarissa out of his bed, and _that_ might mean trouble with Eli. To his relief, Eli had accepted Raoul's not marrying Clarissa, even after she bore him two kids. But that was only because Eli figured it would happen eventually, maybe after Raoul got control of the estate.

Well, once he had the estate, he comforted himself, he could see that Clarissa and their two out-of-wedlock boys were well taken care of.

It galled Raoul to be so dependent on a man like Eli, to be--he hated to admit it to himself--afraid of him. A heap depended on Eli's playing his part today in helping him get control of the estate. Today, Eli would be leading the Smith County boys, ones who'd been at the Rock River last June. Having been offered a good day's pay, they would do a little more Indian fighting.

Raoul felt as if he were going to burst. He couldn't stand this waiting, while the priest droned on in singsong Latin at the linen-covered table that had been set up as an altar before the fireplace. Let the fight begin, for God's sake.

_Indians are all cowards at heart. When I take over here, Pierre's precious little red bastard will slink away, like Black Hawk did last summer._

A chill spread across Raoul's back as he asked himself: What if Auguste doesn't slink away? He might try to rally the servants and some of the townspeople to fight for him.

They wouldn't fight for a mongrel bastard. People hated Indians. Look how many men rushed down to the Rock River to fight Black Hawk.

But many people had loved Pierre. This hall was filled, and there were more people outside who couldn't get in because there wasn't room. All of them paying their last respects to Pierre. And they knew that Pierre wanted Auguste to take his place. Would any of them fight to see that Pierre's will was done?

He felt colder still as he considered the odds. Just about every man in Smith County had his own rifle or pistol. And Raoul and the men he'd recruited for today were far outnumbered. He wished he had hired more men. But too many and the secret would be out, and then Auguste would be ready for him.

Raoul tried to calm himself. Everyone in Smith County might be armed, he reasoned, but not everyone wanted to use their weapons. A lot of men wouldn't fight unless their backs were to the wall. It was the ones who were willing to fight who got to give orders to the rest. The men Raoul had picked, Eli and Hodge and the rest of them, were born fighters.

There'd be those who would condemn him, he thought, for seizing the land the very day of his brother's funeral. It was indecent, he admitted to himself. But he had no choice. He couldn't allow Auguste to get his feet planted firmly. He couldn't allow Pierre's will to be read aloud.

He felt even better when he remembered that with Pierre dead the servants would be taking their orders from Armand. He looked around the hall for the overseer. There he was, near the door, most of his face buried by his thick brown beard. Armand's wife, Marchette, was standing next to him. Sporting a black eye, Raoul noticed with amusement.

Armand Perrault was one who didn't love Pierre.

That sanctimonious hypocrite Pierre. First the squaw, the mongrel's mother. Then he marries Marie-Blanche, and as soon as she dies, he's putting it to the cook.

Raoul took a deep breath of relief when he saw that Père Isaac had finally finished with the funeral mass. The old Jesuit was again sprinkling holy water on the black-painted coffin, heaped with wreaths of roses and chrysanthemums that lay on trestles in the center of the hall. Frank Hopkins, Raoul knew, had built that coffin of oak planks.

Old red-nosed Guichard came up to Raoul. "Your father requests that you be one of those who carries your brother's coffin to the wagon."

Raoul felt a momentary jolt of fear. Help pick up Pierre's coffin and carry it, when he was about to dispossess Pierre's son? If he laid a hand on Pierre's coffin, God might strike him dead. Or Pierre's ghost would rise up against him.

He shook his head. Fool's thinking.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Guichard."

He was angered to see Auguste standing opposite him when he went to the head of the coffin. It was infuriating to see Pierre's features in that brown-skinned face. The half-breed was wearing a green clawhammer jacket, with a black silk band around the left arm.

His arms and back strained as they took the weight of his corner of the coffin. A chorus of grunts arose from Raoul, Auguste, Armand, Frank Hopkins, Jacques Manette and Jean-Paul Kobell as they hoisted the coffin to their shoulders. They trudged out the door with it and slid it on the bed of a flower-bedecked farm wagon. Guichard helped Elysée climb up on the wagon. A snap of the old servant's whip started the two horses moving, as black ribbons tied to their harnesses fluttered.

Raoul walked alone, following the cart the half mile south along the bluffs to the burial ground. Some of the hands had cut a track through the shoulder-high prairie grass for the funeral procession to follow. The fiddler Registre Bosquet marched right behind the wagon playing hymns, and the servants sang in French.

Raoul cast his eye back over the long line of people following the coffin. His glance slid past Nicole and Frank and their passel of kids. With a feeling of satisfaction he saw two of his key men walking near the end of the procession, Justus Bennett, the county land commissioner, and Burke Russell, the county clerk. One copy of Pierre's will was in Russell's keeping, and Raoul had already told him what to do with that. Russell's wife, Pamela, was walking beside him, a handsome woman with chestnut hair that she didn't braid as most women did but allowed to fall in soft waves under her broad-brimmed hat. Strongly attracted to her himself, Raoul wondered how a bespectacled weakling like Burke Russell had ever been able to attract such a fine-looking woman. And what she'd do if she had a sporting proposition from an equally fine-looking man.

They were at the cemetery now. Raoul liked this hillside rising out of the bluffs, where Pierre's wife, Marie-Blanche, lay overlooking the bottomland and the river. The graves of about a dozen others who had worked and died at Victoire were surrounded by a low split-rail fence. Tall cedar trees shadowed the white gravestones. The flat markers with their rounded tops, names, dates and inscriptions were chiseled by Warren Wilgus, the mason who'd recently moved into the area. Auguste had already made arrangements to have Pierre's headstone carved.

The sight of a solid limestone cube in the center of the cemetery gave Raoul a twinge of guilt, as it always did. It was the first stone to have been placed in the cemetery, and was a memorial to his mother, Estelle de Marion, who was buried not here but in Kaskaskia, where she had died in 1802 giving birth to him.

_It wasn't my fault!_

Helene was also remembered, though not buried here. The Indians had thrown her poor, mutilated body into Lake Michigan. Her memorial marker stood next to Maman's stone. A carved angel spread his wings over Helene's name and dates, "HELENE DE MARION VAILLANCOURT, Beloved Daughter and Sister. 1794-1812. She sings before the throne of God." Below that were inscribed the name and dates of her husband, Henri Vaillancourt, whose body also had never been found.

Raoul carried inside himself his own inscription for Helene: _Murdered by Indians, August 15, 1812. She will be avenged._

And one act of vengeance would take place today, when the half-Sauk mongrel, whose presence was an affront to Helene, was thrown off this land.

It gave Raoul an uneasy feeling to be working with Auguste, lifting Pierre's coffin off the wagon. It might be bad luck. But the time to strike had not yet come, so he had to walk beside Auguste carrying the coffin to the newly dug grave. There, crouching in unison, the six pallbearers laid the coffin on a cradle of two ropes, each end held by two servants, over the oblong pit. Bending to let his burden down hurt Raoul's back, and he glanced over at Auguste, hoping to see him having trouble. But the mongrel's dark face was impassive.

When Raoul saw Elysée shuffling through the gate, leaning on his silver-headed walking stick, he felt a new tingle of dread. How would his father greet the move he was going to make? Except for a few brief and bitter meetings at which he and Papa and Pierre had tried and failed to settle their differences, he had not spoken to his father in six years. Armand often brought infuriating news of the old man's growing fondness for the mongrel, making Raoul hate the redskinned bastard all the more. Elysée would hardly be happy with what he did today, of course. But would Papa try to fight his only surviving son? If he did, Raoul would have to fight back, and then he might be punished by God.

_Nonsense. God doesn't side with Indians. What I am doing is right, because Pierre was seduced and deluded._

But it wouldn't hurt to try to get in good with the old man. Raoul walked quickly over to him.

"Take my arm, Papa."

Elysée looked up at him, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed, his face blank, his skin wrinkled parchment.

_The old man's had his share of grief. Too bad he couldn't find reason to be happy with me. But that's his fault._

In a low, hoarse voice Elysée said, "Thank you, son. It was good of you to come today."

Raoul sensed an accusation.

"Why wouldn't I come to my own brother's funeral?"

"Because you hated him," Elysée said softly.

At least the old man didn't seem to suspect that he had another reason for being here today. Containing his anger, Raoul helped his father walk to the grave. There he left Elysée with Guichard and went around to stand facing north, where he could see the château.

His nagging fear eased a little. So far he had seen no sign that he would meet with any opposition. It was hard to believe that the mongrel and his supporters could be planning anything in secret. Still he knew his heart would not slow down till this was all over.

Père Isaac stood at the head of Pierre's grave, next to Marie-Blanche's tombstone. A faint breeze from the river didn't disturb his gray-black hair or his beard, but rustled the tassels of the purple stole around his neck, the winglike sleeves of his white surplice and his ankle-length black cassock.

Trying to hold still as his heart pounded and his hands trembled, Raoul watched Père Isaac shake holy water over the coffin, which now lay at the bottom of the grave. The priest gave his sprinkler to one of the boys assisting him, opened a prayerbook bound in black leather and began the graveside prayers.

_Will this never end?_

Raoul stood with his head bowed. He puzzled over what Elysée had said about hating Pierre.

_Papa always loved Pierre more than me. Thought I was some kind of savage because I don't have all those French ways like him and Pierre. I'm the most American member of this family, and he should be proud of me._

_I didn't hate Pierre. It was just this damn business of him caring more about redskins than about his own people._

_And he wasn't there when I needed him._

Raoul found himself wishing he could talk to Pierre one last time, try to make him understand why he felt as he did and had to do the things he