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

Helene. Did they do that to Nancy? The red devils! Probably did. Horrible!

He saw the naked, slashed, violated body lying on the prairie. Nancy Hale's body. Just like Helene's.[325]

But it could be, too, she was alive. And if he kept after Black Hawk, he might be the one to rescue her. There was comfort in that.

A little comfort.

And then a black bile of hatred for himself trickled up into his throat.

Great God in Heaven, this man he was sitting with—he'd had this man's daughter in his bed for six years. And now she was murdered. And already he was figuring how to replace her.

Maybe I am as bad a man as Papa said I was.

That's what Nicole meant by "All happens as God ordains." This was to punish me.

He took a drink to wash that thought away.

He winced when he came to the name Marchette Perrault on the list of dead. Maybe she had died trying to help Clarissa. Did Armand know yet?

Eli stood up. "Well, poor Clarissa. Poor little boys. It was a black day in our lives when Clarissa and me met up with you, Raoul de Marion."

The words tore at a wound that was fresh and bleeding.

"Look here, now, Eli. Don't you know that I feel as bad as you do?"

"No, I don't know that. Clarissa was all I had in the world. I kept hoping you'd find it in your heart to marry her, but you never treated her decent. Never cared enough for them kids to give them your name. Your brother, he did more for that half-Injun son of his than you did for your two that was all white."

All white they were, but half Puke, Raoul thought, feeling his disdain for the man who stood slumped before him.

Puke, a good nickname for Greenglove's breed. Missouri puked up the worst of its people, and they landed in Illinois. Clarissa's breasts flattening and sagging, her shoulders round, her teeth stained by pipe smoke. So slatternly she'd gotten to be, he hardly cared to take her to bed. And Phil and Andy growing up with that same washed-out, weak-boned Greenglove look.

How could I think that way about my own kids? What kind of a man am I? And now they've been murdered, and I'm still despising them.

He had to quit this. He was torturing himself. Wasn't it bad enough? It was the goddamned Indians he should be hating.[326]

"We'll have our revenge, Eli. We'll kill a hundred Indians for each of ours who died."

"Like you murdered them three at Old Man's Creek. I warned you not to do that. That was what got Clarissa and her kids killed. I won't be helping you get your vengeance, Colonel Raoul de Marion. Because if I did stay around you, sooner or later I'd want blood for blood of mine that's been spilled."

Raoul felt a chill, facing Greenglove's implacable, dull-eyed hatred. But he was damned if he'd back down before this human weed.

"You'll leave this company when your term of enlistment is up and not one damned day sooner. You're captain of the Smith County company."

Greenglove's mouth curled in a cold smile.

"By tomorrow there won't be any company. The Smith County boys heard about what happened at Victor. Most of them'll be quitting."

Raoul felt the heat rising in his neck and head.

"The hell they will! My Smith County boys will want Indian blood just like I do. And just like you would if you hadn't taken a notion to blame Clarissa's death on me."

Auguste. The half-breed. Raoul felt his blood boiling as he saw the olive-skinned face mingling Pierre's features with Indian looks. The face he'd never stopped hating from the moment he first saw it. Auguste was dead. Eli, here, had shot him. His body was rotting away somewhere on the prairie behind them.

But the Indians of the British Band were alive—Auguste's people. They snuck up on Victoire, Raoul's home. Burned it to the ground. Tomahawked his woman. Chopped his children, his two boys, Andy and Phil, to pieces.

To pieces.

He saw that, for a moment, too vividly, and almost screamed. He grabbed the jug and burned the bloody picture out of his mind with a swallow.

Auguste's band, skulking around up the river somewhere.

Why, Auguste might have given them the idea. Told them all about Victoire and Victor. Lots of helpless women and children there. A rich trading post. A big white man's house to burn down.

My uncle kicked me off the land, Auguste might have said. Avenge me. Go kill his woman and his children and burn his house[327] down. And while you're at it, kill every one of those white dogs in Smith County.

Sure, he probably put the idea in those devils' heads before he got shot.

It hadn't been enough to kill Auguste. Wasn't enough.

He had to kill off every last one of Black Hawk's Indians. Exterminate the whole band—bucks, squaws and papooses.

And he would shoot any shirker who refused to go with him.

Greenglove shrugged. "Go chase Injuns, then, if that's your heart's desire." Then he smiled in a knowing way Raoul found strangely disturbing. "But you'll maybe find a surprise waiting for you up there in Michigan Territory. Almost makes me want to stay with you, just so's I could see the look on your face."

Raoul felt a chill. Why the hell was Greenglove grinning like that?

"Damn you, you can't just walk off, Eli! You took an oath. You signed up for another thirty days when your enlistment was up in May. I can have you shot for desertion."

"Go ahead. Shoot me yourself."

Eli slowly raised the tent flap and stood there a moment, turning to give Raoul one last, strange, unmirthful smile. Raoul eyed the pistol at Eli's belt. Most likely all primed and loaded. His own pistol, unloaded, was hanging from a tent pole behind him.

If I went for my pistol, that'd give him an excuse to put a ball in me. And he'd do it before I could even get a damned cap in place.

Eli gave Raoul one final nod, as if he knew what Raoul had been thinking, and let the tent flap fall behind him.

Raoul reached for the jug. It felt light in his hand, and he shook it. Empty.

Everything. Empty, empty, empty!

He got up, weaving slightly, and walked to the opening of the tent.

"Armand!" he shouted.

Oh my God, now I'll have to give Armand the news about Marchette.

Raoul awakened, sweating. One side of his tent was glowing white, the sun beating down on it; he had been sleeping in an oven. He sat[328] up, and his vision went black and his head spun. He swung his feet, still in dirty gray stockings, over the side of his cot. He nearly stepped on Armand, who was lying flat on his back on the straw-covered floor, his beard fluttering as he snored through his open mouth.

Standing, Raoul saw Nicole's letter and the Victor Visitor lying on his camp table beside a burned-down candle and four empty jugs. He remembered what had happened at Victor. He fell back onto his cot and pounded his fist on his chest, trying to numb the pain in his heart.

God damn the Sauk! Damn them! Damn them!

Armand, when he learned what happened at Victoire, had not blamed Raoul as Eli had. He'd wept over Marchette—whom he'd beaten almost daily when she was alive—and had sworn vengeance on her murderers, the British Band. And he had sat with Raoul till both of them were drunk enough to sleep.

Raoul's head and body felt as if they were on fire. His fingers curled, grasping at empty air.

He buckled on his belt with his pistol and his Bowie knife, stumbled out of his tent and stood beside it, pissing in the tall grass.

He was facing the Rock River, less than a quarter-mile wide here, a sheet of sparkling blue water bordered by forest. Lined up along the bank before him were a dozen big box-shaped flatboats. The tents of his own militia battalion and of two others were spread over the grassland around him.

He suddenly sensed that something was wrong. He hadn't heard the bugler blow the dozen notes signaling the start of the day. He saw now that the men weren't assembled but were wandering aimlessly about the camp.

What the hell was it Greenglove had said?

By tomorrow there won't be any company.

Down near the flatboats a big crowd was gathered. One man, standing on a barrel, was addressing them. His voice, shrill and insistent, carried to Raoul on the warm June air, but he couldn't make out what the man was saying.

Raoul didn't like this. He didn't like this at all.

He started walking toward the river and found Levi Pope and Hodge Hode squatting in front of a fire, making coffee simply by boiling water with coffee grounds in it.[329]

"Sorry for your loss, Colonel," said Pope.

Hearing Pope speak of what happened at Victoire was like being kicked in a spot that was already bruised. Raoul had to pause a moment before he could speak.

"Thank you. Your family come through all right?" He dreaded what he might hear in answer.

"Your sister wrote a letter for my missuz," Pope said. "They came through tolerably. Thanks to the way you fortified the trading post. That was mighty foresighted, Colonel."

Raoul's chest expanded and he felt a little better. This was how he'd hoped the men would react, not blaming him for the tragedy as that bastard Greenglove had.

"Levi's letter told as how my boy Josiah made it to the trading post too," Hodge said. "Mr. Cooper even let him do some shootin' at the redskins."

Mr. Cooper? Since when did David Cooper get to be so high and mighty?

"I need some of that coffee," Raoul said. Hodge strained the grounds out of the coffee by pouring it through a kerchief into a tin cup and handed the cup to Raoul.

The black liquid scalded Raoul's lips and tongue, and didn't treat him any better when it bit into his whiskey-burned stomach.

"Anything to eat?"

With a bitter grunt, Levi Pope took a square biscuit out of a paper wrapper and held it out. "These worm cakes is pretty lively, but dip 'em in the coffee a couple of times and you'll boil the little buggers to death."

Raoul shut his eyes and waved the weevil-riddled hardtack away.

"What the hell is that bunch doing down by the river?"

Hodge Hode grinned. "They call it a 'pub-lic in-dig-nation' meeting." He drawled out the words, amused. "Say they won't go across the river into Michigan Territory. Say they want to go home."

"Any of our men talking that way?"

"Oh, a heap of them, Colonel," said Levi.

"I'll see about that."

"Hodge and me ain't quittin'. We won't go home till we've killed us some Injun trash." Levi lovingly stroked the handles of his six holstered pistols, three on each side of his belt.

But Levi and Hodge made no move to get up and join Raoul.[330] They would go with him across the river, he saw, but they were not about to help him discipline the other men. He thought of ordering them to come with him, but decided not to test their loyalty that far. Eli had walked out on him. He didn't know who he could trust.

Hell, he could do it without these two, anyway.

For reassurance Raoul took a grip on the handle of his Bowie knife as he approached the crowd. Could he cow dozens of men if they were determined not to obey him?

Sure. Might have to carve a few bellies, but the rest will fall into line.

That was how he ran Smith County.

The man standing on the barrel was saying, "You know what the Injuns call that country up there? The Trembling Lands. It's all swamp, water and quicksand. You take a horse out on what looks like solid ground, before you can blink, he sinks belly deep."

That kind of talk made Raoul want to use his knife. But that would probably only rile these rebellious bastards all the more.

Got to put a stop to this. Line them all up by the boats. Tell the first man to get in. If he won't, shoot him. Then go on to the next. That'll change their minds in a hurry.

He told himself disgustedly to quit dreaming. Not even in Smith County could he get away with shooting white men just because they wouldn't obey him. Not in broad daylight, anyway.

The man standing on the barrel said, "If Black Hawk has holed up in that country, that means he's finished. Hell, his people will starve to death up there. What do we got to follow him for?"

Pushing his way through the crowd, Raoul heard a man near him