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

flecks of gold onto the blackened faces of White Bear's two companions. It would be almost nightfall by the time they encountered the long knives.

Three Horses said, "A man must be more brave, I think, to do this than to ride up to an enemy in battle and strike the first blow at him." His nose curved inward where the bridge should have been. White Bear had learned that a Sioux war club had done that to him while Auguste was studying Latin and geometry at St. George's School.

"I would much rather be fighting the long knives than trying to make peace with them," said Little Crow. "I do not trust them."

White Bear tried to reassure them and himself. "We must do[246] this. It is the only way we can get our people safely back across the Great River."

Little Crow said, "It seems you were right and we who wanted to take up the tomahawk were wrong."

In spite of his fear, White Bear felt a satisfied glow at Little Crow's words. Little Crow had been the one who brought the woman's dress that Wolf Paw had put on him that wretched night of the council.

They did not listen to me that night. The Turtle told me I would not be able to persuade the people not to cross the Great River, but I tried my best.

They entered the wood by way of a narrow trail, riding single file. Little Crow lowered the white flag to keep it from getting caught in the branches.

As they rode among the trees, the tightness of fear in White Bear's chest and stomach grew worse, until he had to struggle for breath. His palms sweat so much, the reins were slippery in his hands.

He turned and waved farewell to Iron Knife and the four other braves following them, who had halted their ponies at the edge of the woods and dismounted. They waved back. A moment more and White Bear looked back and could see them no more.

At least if I die today Iron Knife can tell Redbird how it came about.

He tried to guess how the long knives would greet them. They might shoot them down in spite of the white flag. He hoped they would be glad to learn that Black Hawk wanted to surrender and return in peace to Ioway. After all, that was what they were trying to force him to do, was it not? But some of the long knives, undoubtedly, wanted to kill "Injuns." Men like Raoul.

When they came out of the south edge of the woods, they found themselves on a grassy rise sloping down to a winding stream called Old Man's Creek. The sun was lower now and directly in White Bear's eyes. Across the creek was a sight that made him want to jerk his pony's head around and ride back into the trees as fast as he could go.

On high ground he saw the silhouettes of peaked tents and many men, some on horseback and some on foot, rifles in hand. The smoke of campfires drifted like gray feathers into the pale blue sky.[247] He heard voices calling to one another in English. One man shouted and pointed in their direction.

White Bear said, "Don't wait here at the edge of the trees, or they will think we are attackers. Ride forward slowly, waving the flag."

The men across the creek were yelling excitedly now. Rifle fire crackled and smoke billowed. A ball whizzed past White Bear and cracked a tree limb behind him. He held himself rigid.

Long knives rode toward them, urging their horses down the far side of the creekbank. White Bear and his companions rode into the creek to meet them.

In a moment bearded white faces, angry eyes, coonskin caps and straw hats were whirling about the three emissaries in the middle of the creek. Rifles and pistols were pointing at them from every side. Little Crow, his face tight, held the white flag high with both hands.

"We surrender!" White Bear shouted. "We are not armed. We have come to talk to General Atkinson."

"Listen to that, he's talking English," a blond boy exclaimed.

Another man yelled, "Shoot 'em. Then let 'em surrender."

White Bear's knees trembled against his horse's flanks. These were not regular U.S. government soldiers, but the volunteers, the armed settlers who had come out in answer to their governor's call. They would not wait for orders from their commanders. They would do whatever they felt like doing.

A red-bearded man stuck his face in White Bear's. "Get down off that horse, Injun! Now!" His shout blew a stink of whiskey into White Bear's face.

Others joined the outcry. "Get off them horses!"

"Ought to put a bullet in them right here in the creek."

"Look at them black faces. I thought they was niggers at first."

"Not even useful like niggers, damn redskins."

The man with the red beard grabbed White Bear's arm and jerked him half out of his saddle. White Bear slid down from his horse.

He stood up to his knees in the cold, rushing water of Old Man's Creek.

"We want to surrender," he said again. "We want to talk to your officers."

"Just shut up!" the red-bearded man roared, eyes rolling drunkenly.[248]

White Bear felt a man grab him from behind. A rope scratched his wrists and tightened around them till the bones were crushed together.

He turned to see whether Little Crow and Three Horses were all right. The militiamen had bound them too. Both braves' black-painted faces were expressionless, but White Bear read fear in their eyes and in the set of their mouths—the same fear he felt, and tried not to show.

The red-bearded man leaned down from his saddle and grabbed a handful of White Bear's long hair. He jerked on it, dragging White Bear toward the bank. White Bear stumbled on the stony creekbed, bruising his feet through his moccasins.

"You wanna see our officers? Then step along!"

What had happened to the white flag? Without it, what did they have to show that they had come in peace?

"Will you bring our white flag?" he called desperately to a clean-shaven man wearing spectacles, who looked a little calmer than the others.

The man's face twisted into a snarl, and White Bear's heart fell.

"You'll get your white flag up your ass, redskin!"

"You sound just like a white man," said another militiaman. "You sure you ain't a white man in paint?"

"Listen to me," White Bear said hopelessly. He wanted to say, If we don't fight it will save your lives as well as ours. But how could he talk to these men, maddened by whiskey and war? His eyes met those of Little Crow and Three Horses. Again the red-bearded man jerked his hair, so hard White Bear thought he would pull it out of his scalp. He had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. Worse than the pain was the indignity.

Horses splashing water, mud and pebbles on them, long knives shouting curses and threats, the three Sauk stumbled out of the creek and through shoulder-high prairie grass into the militia camp.

The sun's last rays fell on flushed, sweating white faces, on glistening rifle barrels. To White Bear, most of the men looked younger than he.

"Somebody get the colonel," said the man with the red beard. "Tell him they claim they want to surrender. Might be we could catch old Black Hawk himself."

The three Sauks' only hope, White Bear thought, was that the[249] commanding officer might be more willing to listen to them than his men were.

The Sauk and their captors stood in a circle where the grass had been trampled flat. A short distance away stood supply wagons and tents. The prairie surrounded them.

Some militiamen went to one wagon on which five kegs with spouts stood, filled tin cups from the kegs and drank from them. Whiskey, White Bear thought, seemed to be as important to these men as food.

The sun was down now, and the three stood in twilight, in the midst of the shouting mob.

"Look alive, you men! It's the colonel!"

The crowd opened up, and two men came through.

One of them, short, skinny, wearing a coonskin cap and a blue officer's coat, came up to White Bear and peered at him.

"I know you!"

Half his teeth were rotten and the rest were missing. White Bear knew him too. Eli Greenglove.

"By God, Raoul! I'll be a son of a bitch if it ain't that half-breed nephew of yours."

And there stood Raoul de Marion, gold epaulets glittering on his broad shoulders.

At the sight of that broad face with the black mustache, last seen looking at him over a pistol barrel, White Bear knew his life was about to end.

Could my luck be any worse?

All hope vanished as light faded from the sky.

Raoul stood before White Bear with his thumbs hooked into the white leather belt that cinched his blue uniform coat. His huge knife—the one that had cut White Bear's face years ago—hung at his left side, a pistol at his right. He grinned at White Bear.

"Well. I was hoping to meet you. I'd have liked it better on the field of battle, but here you are, in my camp. What were you doing, spying on us?"

White Bear sighed. Something crumbled inside him.

"Do you know this long knife?" Little Crow said in Sauk.

"Yes, he is my father's brother." A glimmer of hope appeared in Little Crow's eyes, but vanished when White Bear added, "And he is my worst enemy."[250]

"Talk English around me!" Raoul shouted. "No Indian jabber."

"Black Hawk sent us," White Bear said. "He doesn't want to fight. We've come to make peace."

"The hell with that!" one of Raoul's men yelled. "We come out to fight Injuns."

"Well, hold on now!" cried another. "If they come peaceable, that means we can all go home and nobody hurt."

Raoul turned on the man. "I'll be the one to decide why they're here."

White Bear realized that the men with Raoul were barely under his control. There was no hope of talking to Raoul, but there might be others in this crowd, like the man who had just spoken, who would listen. He must keep trying.

Raising his voice White Bear said, "Chief Black Hawk knows you militiamen outnumber his warriors. He doesn't want to fight you. All he wants is to be allowed to go back down the Rock River and cross the Mississippi. He will never come back."

"Where'd that black-faced redskin learn to speak English so good?" one of the militiamen said.

"He's a renegade," said Raoul. "A part-white mongrel. He ought to be hanged as a traitor. Don't believe a word he says."

"They did come with a white flag," one of the men said.

"White flag, hell!" Raoul shouted. "They're trying to put us off guard." He swept a pointing finger across a group of men that included brown-bearded Armand Perrault. Among them White Bear recognized Levi Pope and Otto Wegner, the thick-mustached Prussian who worked at the trading post. He remembered Wegner had not wanted to kill him when Raoul offered a reward for his death, and he felt a little tremor of hope.

"Get on your horses," Raoul told his men. "Go out across the creek and look. If you don't find Indians skulking about in those woods, I'll be mighty surprised."

As Raoul's men rode off, White Bear was torn by indecision. Should he tell Raoul that other braves had followed them here, to see how they were treated? Or would that just endanger the lives of Iron Knife and the others?

He'll use everything I tell him against me.

Raoul's eyes stared death at White Bear. "Black Hawk's a damn liar. He's broken every treaty we ever made with you people. There's[251] only one way to deal with your kind. If you can't be trusted to keep treaties, you have to be exterminated." He drew his pistol.

"Starting here."

Bear spirit, walk with me on the Trail of Souls.

Little Crow said, "What do they say, White Bear? Are they going to kill us?"

"It is our fate to have fallen into the hands of a bad man," said White Bear. Having to tell them hurt him all the more. It grieved him that these two good men must die along with him, their lives thrown away because of a bit of bad luck.

"We were fools to come here," said Three Horses.

"Not fools—braves," White Bear reassured him. "A man who gives his life to protect his people is never a fool. Whether or not he succeeds."

"You are a prophet, White Bear," said Little Crow.

Raoul was staring at White Bear's chest. White Bear wondered if his heart was beating so hard that Raoul could see it hammering.

"Look at those scars. Looks like a bear tried to get you a long time ago. Too bad he didn't finish you,