Shaman, Robert Shea [new ebook reader .txt] 📗

can't tell you how much this means to me, Marchette. There were things in my trunk—sacred things—very important to me. Very precious. I thank you a thousand times."

Her swollen lips parted in a half smile. She reached into a pocket in her apron and brought out a large pocket watch gleaming a dull gold. Then she took out a familiar oval silver case with a velvet ribbon.

"These were your father's, monsieur. I believe he would wish that you have them."

Auguste opened the case and saw the round lenses for only a moment as his eyes blurred. He put his hand over his face and held it there until he no longer felt like weeping. Then he looked at the engraving on the watch—"Pierre Louis Auguste de Marion, A.D. 1800"—and his eyes filled up with tears. This, he thought, should go into his medicine bundle with the other sacred objects.

"Where were Raoul and Greenglove when you took my trunk and things in the carriage?"

"Before Armand got drunk, Monsieur Raoul made him look through Monsieur Elysée's room for the paper that says you are to inherit the estate. Armand found it and gave it to your uncle, and he threw it into the fire while Armand and Eli Greenglove watched and laughed. Then Monsieur Raoul, he got into a most furious argument with Eli Greenglove about Greenglove's daughter. They nearly fight, but I think they are afraid of each other. They are both great killers. So finally they went down to town. Monsieur Raoul agreed to bring his woman, Greenglove's daughter, and the two boys to the château."

"Disgraceful!" snorted Reverend Hale. "Publicly living in sin."

"I wonder why he didn't bring them to the funeral?" Nancy said.

Auguste thought he knew why. Clarissa Greenglove had been a pretty, full-bosomed girl when he first arrived at Victoire. But in[166] the years during which she had borne two boys to Raoul, she had turned into a lank-haired, snuff-sniffing slattern. Years ago Raoul had said he was going to marry Clarissa, but he never had. And Auguste had seen Raoul bending a hungry look on Nancy throughout the funeral mass this morning. The thought of Raoul laying even a hand on Nancy angered him. It would anger Eli Greenglove, too, for a different reason.

Eli Greenglove, it was said, could shoot the wings off a fly one at a time at fifty yards and was wanted in Missouri for over a dozen murders. He might take orders from Raoul, but it would not do for Raoul to offend such a man. So if Eli persisted, Raoul probably would take Clarissa into the château.

Auguste felt a sinking in his stomach as he touched his fingers lightly to his throbbing head. He was alive now only because Greenglove had chosen to hit him instead of shooting him down—or instead of letting Raoul have that pleasure.

"Will you stay the night, Marchette?" Nancy asked.

"No, I must go back to the château before Armand wakes up. Otherwise he will beat me worse."

"I'm going with you," said Auguste.

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

Auguste looked across the table at Nancy, staring at him with round blue eyes full of the yearning, now mixed with fear, that he'd seen in them earlier. "Pale eyes," the Sauk term for her people, did no justice to her eyes, the color of the turquoise stone he kept in his medicine bag. Her blond hair made his blood race. His fingertips tingled with the desire to touch the white skin of her cheek.

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

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

My mother did, he reminded himself.

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

Marchette's urgent tone refocused his thoughts. "Monsieur Raoul, he stood up on the table and held up a bag full of Spanish[167] dollars—he said there were fifty—and said he would give it to the man who shoots you. And there were many men who cheered at that and boasted they would be the one to win the silver."

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm not going to the château. I'll just see that Marchette gets there safely. Traveling at night, she should have someone go back with her. Then I'll go on to town. To Nicole and Frank's house. To Grandpapa. I must see him." He turned toward the cook and felt a stabbing in his gut at the sight of her bruised face. She'd suffered that out of love for his father, he thought, and for his sake too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been dispossessed. Just as my people have been dispossessed.

Nancy was waiting for him to speak.[168]

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

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

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

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

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

Hale said, "An unwise decision, it seems to me. You've been educated. You've had an opportunity to learn about white Christian civilization. Your uncle can't take that away from you, and you should not throw it away."

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

Nancy started speaking rapidly, as if she was trying to hold back tears. "Well, what about these things of yours that Marchette brought here? There's no way you can carry a trunk on foot even as far as Nicole and Frank's house. Would you like us to keep your things here for you? Perhaps someday, after you've settled with your tribe"—she swallowed hard—"you could send for them."

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

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

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

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

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

"What happened to my knife?"[169]

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

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

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

Marchette and Reverend Hale both said at the same time, "I can do that!" The coincidence made everyone laugh nervously.

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

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

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

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

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

"Come away from the house," she said.

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

Holding tight to his hand, Nancy led him around to the rear of the house, beyond which rows of corn stood, their tassels silvery in the moonlight.

"You and your father grow all this corn?" Auguste asked.[170]

"It's our land, but a neighbor does the work. He sells it in Victor and we share the proceeds." She led him into the corn, brushing past the crackling leaves. The concealment of the leaves and stalks made him feel closer to her than ever. He wanted to reach out to her.

But the corn evoked another feeling, as well.

She can't know it, but this field reminds me of the corn bottoms around Saukenuk. It makes me want to go back all the more.

When there were leafy stalks all around them, hiding them from the house, she turned to him again and said, "Please, Auguste, I don't want you to go away for good." Her eyes were bright in the moonlight.

Her nearness was thrilling. He wanted to forget the worries that made him hesitate, and take her in his arms.

"You don't want me to stay here and risk getting killed," he said.

"You could go to Vandalia," she said. "Tell Governor Reynolds what happened. If he can't do anything for you himself, maybe he can help you find a lawyer who will fight Raoul for you in the courts."

How innocent she was, he thought bitterly. "It was Governor Reynolds who called out the militia to drive my people from Saukenuk. It's just as Raoul said, he would be the last man to want to help an Indian fight for land with a white man."

"Your father sent you to school in the East because he wanted a different future for you than just spending your life hunting and living in a wigwam. You'll be throwing all that away."

He felt a flash of anger at her. She did not understand the Sauk way of life at all. She was just repeating what her father had said.

He remembered the way Nancy's eyes had shone each time they met on the prairie last summer. He had known then that if he