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

the river they'd be helpless under enemy arrows and bullets, just like the redskins who had tried earlier to swim away.

The Sauk war cries had fallen silent, and the shots and arrows had stopped. Raoul peered through a chink in the tree trunks piled before him. All he could see was dark green boughs with no sign of movement.

"What you figger they're doing now?" Levi said. He had his six pistols laid out on a log in front of him.

"Probably getting ready to charge us," said Raoul.

How long before the Victory got back? From here at the south[378] end of the island he could see the white steamship anchored off the riverbank, her two black stacks giving off little white puffs, her side paddle wheels motionless. She looked very small and very far away. No chance Helmer or Kingsbury could see that Raoul and his men were fighting for their lives here.

What were the men, Levi and Armand and the others, thinking? Again and again, it seemed, his decisions cost lives. He remembered Old Man's Creek—de Marion's Run—and he felt his face get fiery hot at the shame of it.

And then there was Eli Greenglove's bitterness that night they parted, accusing him of putting Clarissa and the boys in harm's way. And something about a shock Raoul would get—what had Eli meant by that?

He heard a splash and turned to look behind him. His heart stopped. A near-naked Indian was rushing at him out of the water, scalping knife high.

Hands trembling, Raoul had barely time to roll over on his back and fire his rifle up at the screaming warrior. Sunlight glinted off the long steel blade. There was a moment of black terror after the rifle went off. Nothing seemed to happen. His hands had been shaking too hard, he thought, to aim well.

But then the Sauk dropped to his knees and fell over on his side. The knife dropped from his hand. Seeing he was safe for this instant, Raoul took another ball-and-powder cartridge out of his case and shoved it into the breech.

The Indian rolled over and pushed himself up on his hands and knees, a long string of blood and spittle dangling from his mouth. Calmer now, Raoul took careful aim and put a bullet in the shaven brown skull.

Two more dripping Indians were charging out of the water. Rifles went off beside Raoul. One Sauk fell, then the other, just as he was swinging his tomahawk at a man on the right end of Raoul's line.

The militiaman screamed. The steel head of the tomahawk was buried in his buckskin-clad leg.

"See to him, Armand," Raoul said.

Armand, crouching, ran over to the wounded man. But first he attended to the fallen Indian next to him. He grabbed the brave's head and twisted it around. Raoul heard the crack of bones.[379]

"To make bien sure," Armand said, teeth flashing in his brown beard.

Three men dead, two wounded. Eight men left. Maybe a hundred Sauk warriors out there, maybe more.

What a stupid time to die, right when the war's almost over.

Raoul gnawed on the ends of his mustache and peered into the impenetrable forest. He and his men were all going to die. He was sure of it. He felt fear, but more painful than the fear was an ache in his heart for all that he was going to lose—all that was due him that life hadn't paid out to him like he deserved. He wanted so much to live.

A line of Indians came out of the trees, some with rifles, some with bows and arrows. There must be twenty or thirty of them. They weren't whooping, as they usually did. They were silent, their eyes big, their mouths set in lipless lines. They were like walking dead men, coming at him. That was what they were. They knew they were going to die, but they were going to take this little band of white men with them.

Raoul had all he could do to keep from curling up behind his tree barricade, head in his arms, whimpering with grief and fear. He made himself aim and fire. The Indian he'd picked out as a target kept on coming.

We're done for, he thought, over and over again. We're done for.

Slowly—he did not seem able to move quickly—he inserted another cartridge into the breech of his rifle. All around him rifles were going off with deafening booms.

And from behind him there was more booming.

He looked up. Indians were falling. One here, one there, then three, then two more. Their line was breaking up.

God, the men are shooting good!

He heard voices behind him and looked around.

At the same moment Levi Pope said, "Well, here be a sight to welcome."

Ten feet or so behind him a line of men in coonskin caps and gray shirts were methodically firing over his head. He'd been so lost in panic and despair he hadn't heard them coming.

He looked back at the Indians. Brown bodies lay tumbled on the ground, some only a few feet from his barricade. Those on their feet were backing up. They melted into the tattered forest.[380]

For a moment Raoul could not move. He lay clutching his rifle with a grip so hard it hurt his hands, panting heavily.

"It's safe now," Levi Pope said quietly, standing up.

Raoul pushed himself to his feet. His legs were shaking so hard he could barely stand. He looked around and saw militiamen wading across to the island from the east bank of the Mississippi.

The men who had been skirmishing in the forest north of the Bad Axe must have seen the fighting on the island.

Too dazed even to feel happy, Raoul stood taking long breaths and watched the militiamen come.

He had never in his life needed a drink more than he did now, and he had forgotten to bring any whiskey with him.

The southern tip of the island was soon crowded with riflemen. Raoul's three dead were stretched out under blankets, and a burly horse doctor from the mining country was bandaging the leg of the man with the tomahawk wound.

"Colonel Henry Dodge," said a tall, whip-lean officer wearing a bicorn hat. He shook hands with Raoul. "We're almost neighbors. I'm from Dodgeville settlement, just a little ways north of Galena."

"I'm damned glad you came over, Colonel," said Raoul, feeling like a fool to have gotten himself trapped. "The Sauk still seem to have a power of fighting men left."

"Glad you saved a few for us. There were only about two dozen redskins on the north side of the Bad Axe. They let us see them to draw us away, I guess, from the main body hiding out here. But the way you were blasting this island with grape, I was afraid we'd have nothing to do but bury Indians. Or pieces of them."

Dodge ordered his men to spread out in two lines, one behind the other, across the width of the island. Raoul positioned his little party in the center of the foremost line.

"Advance, my brave Suckers!" Dodge called, and the men laughed at the nickname for Illinoisians. Holding up a long cavalry saber, Dodge led the militia line, bayonets leveled, into the broken trees.

Raoul looked downriver for the Victory. She had dropped a wooden ramp to the riverbank, and blue-uniformed regulars were[381] boarding. When they got here there would be enough soldiers on the island to wipe out the Indians ten times over.

That would be Zachary Taylor's outfit, from Fort Crawford. Raoul had heard that the five hundred Federal troops sent from the East had been decimated by cholera, though their commander, Winfield Scott, was still on the way here.

Raoul turned and pushed forward, stumbling over tree trunks, shoving branches out of the way with his rifle, muscles rigid against the arrow he feared would come whistling out of the gloomy shadows ahead. He saw no living Indians, but many mangled corpses. He tripped over a bare, brown severed leg. A moccasin, flaps decorated with undulating red, white and black beadwork, was still on the foot.

Three Indians, swinging tomahawks and war clubs, sprang out from behind a pile of grape-blasted birch trees. Raoul and the men flanking him started shooting. The Indians were riddled before they got within ten feet.

Raoul was sure he'd killed one of the warriors. He went to the body, drew his Bowie knife and gripped the long black scalplock. He carved a circle with the sharp point in the shaved skin around the scalplock. White bone showed through when he pulled the patch of skin loose, the round spot quickly filling with blood.

The scalplock was long enough to let him tie it around his belt. The hair felt coarser than a white man's.

They pressed on into the forest, again and again meeting desperate little bands of red men, who rushed them only to be felled by a hail of lead balls. Raoul heard the constant banging of many rifles going off in other parts of the forest.

And sometimes he heard the high screams of women and children. After the screams, silence.

Raoul smiled to himself. This was how he wanted it. No prisoners.

Killing no longer seemed dangerous. It no longer felt like sport. It became simply work through the day's heat. It was tiring work, but good. With some surprise Raoul realized that the line of troops had swept most of the island and were now approaching the north end. He could see Indians up ahead through the trees. This might well be the last of them. Eagerly, rifle ready, he rushed forward.

He burst into a clearing and found himself facing a half circle of[382] nearly a dozen bucks, their shaved scalps and bare chests gleaming with sweat. Behind them cowered a pack of squaws and children.

The warriors shouted at Raoul and his men and beckoned to them. Right in the center was one man much taller than the rest, with the red and white feathers of a brave tied into his scalplock. Whatever insults or challenges he was uttering, he looked Raoul right in the eye and shouted directly at him.

Raoul felt a chill of fear. The Indian's flesh was wasted, but his skeleton was huge. He looked like he'd be as hard to stop as a tornado. And he was holding a rifle in arms and hands so big that they made it look small.

The other warriors didn't have rifles or even bows. They must have run out of powder and shot and arrows. They held clubs and knives and tomahawks.

They want us to fight hand to hand. That's what Indians do to show their courage.

The hell with that.

With a movement that seemed almost contemptuous, the big Indian dropped the rifle to the ground. He reached down and picked up a war club painted red and black, with a huge spike at its end.

"Let's pay 'em back, boys!" Raoul shouted. "For all of our people they killed."

"Oui! For Marchette," said Armand, raising his rifle. His first shot caught a warrior in the chest and knocked him down.

At that the Indians rushed Raoul and his men.

Raoul felt himself trembling uncontrollably as the bony giant in the center came straight at him. The big Indian held his war club in front of him, as if to deflect bullets.

Forcing his arms to hold steady, Raoul aimed his rifle at the Indian's head and fired.

And missed.

I should have aimed at his chest.

Raoul cursed his shaking hand as he dropped his rifle and pulled his pistol.

The brown giant gave a long, full-throated war cry.

Raoul pulled the trigger. He saw a spark, heard the bang of the percussion cap, but there was nothing more. He cried out in a fury. His sweat must have dampened the powder.

The club came down on the pistol, and Raoul to his horror felt[383] it knocked out of his hand. Again the big Indian screamed out his blood-freezing war whoop and raised the club high.

Raoul's empty hand fumbled for his Bowie knife. He had it out, a death grip on the hilt. He lunged at his enemy. A jolt ran through Raoul's arm to his shoulder as the point of the knife sank deep between two thick ribs.

The Indian gave a deep groan and staggered back. He swung his club, but too late. Raoul felt a numbing blow just where his neck met his shoulder, and fell to his knees.

He was looking right into the dark brown eyes of the Indian, who had also fallen. The eyes were unblinking, dead. The massive body collapsed against him.

Raoul shouted, a wordless cry of rage, and a red curtain swept over his eyes. He jerked the knife out, releasing a cataract of blood. With an effort that wrenched his arms he hurled the brown giant away from him.

Taking