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

follow your advice."[465]

Nicole came over to him and stroked his hair. "We'll be beside you every moment, Auguste."

The menace of rope or bullet or knife seemed driven off a bit, as Guichard put another log on the fire and they began to talk about going to Vandalia, finding a lawyer—perhaps Thomas Ford again—and filing suit against Raoul. There was still the possibility—the likelihood—of failure. But at least he might come through alive.

The clock struck two.

A sharp banging on the door startled Auguste. Everyone fell silent, dreading what might be out there.

Guichard went to the door, opened it a crack, then pulled it wide.

Auguste saw a flash of blond hair under a bonnet and eyes of deepest blue. The sudden leap of his heart lifted him out of his chair. He barely heard the little serving table beside him topple over, spilling his brandy.

He ran to Nancy, holding out his arms.

The lenses on the desk stared accusingly up at Raoul.

Why do I keep taking them out and looking at them?

It was like picking at a scab, making it bleed over and over again, so that the wound never healed.

With a gentle hand he closed the silver case. He had long since cleaned and polished it, but he still remembered it as he had first seen it, streaked with the blood of the Indian woman he had just killed. He put the case in his desk drawer.

Armand Perrault, sitting across the desk from Raoul, grunted with disgust.

Ignoring him, Raoul picked up his whiskey glass and sipped from it, running the tip of his tongue over the ends of his mustache.

"Why don't you get rid of those damned spectacles?" Armand said as he refilled his glass from Raoul's jug.

When Armand picked up his glass it left a wet ring that would stain the polished maple surface. There were already many rings on the desk, even though it had been shipped out from Philadelphia only two months ago. They looked like owl's eyes, staring as the spectacles stared.

But Raoul couldn't bring himself to care about how his desk[466] looked, just as he couldn't care enough to get started on rebuilding Victoire. He preferred to live at the trading post. He hadn't felt like doing anything, ever since Auguste's second escape from Victor. Next spring, he told himself, he'd get the work going.

And so he sat up late every night in his counting room with Armand and they drank and told each other the same stories about the war with Black Hawk's band. There were men to drink with in the trading post taproom, but he didn't care for most of them. Armand had been with him longer than anybody. Raoul might not like him much, but he was used to him.

Armand had grudgingly accepted Raoul's explanation that he hadn't read his copy of the will carefully before sticking it in the fire. He thanked Raoul for the belated two hundred dollars and dismissed Pierre's generosity as an attempted bribe from beyond the grave.

Raoul stared at his stained desk. The drawer was still open, the silver case still visible. "They were my brother's spectacles."

"I know that. Why do you keep them? You hated your brother."

Raoul brought the flat of his hand heavily down on the desk. "Shut up! You know nothing about it."

How do I feel about Pierre? Do I still love him in a way? Is that why I keep his spectacles?

Unwilling suddenly to consign the silver case to his desk, he dropped it into his jacket pocket. Armand probably wanted him to throw it away so he could retrieve the case and sell it for the silver.

Armand said, "Your brother put the horns on me. And his Injun friends killed my wife. Mon Dieu, how I wanted to see that bastard son of his hang for that!"

Raoul was tired of hearing Armand go on about dead Marchette, to whom he'd given nothing but blows and contempt when she was alive. Going to bed with Pierre was the only good thing that ever happened to that poor woman. But he said nothing; after all, he himself had cared little enough for Clarissa when she was alive.

"You'll get a chance to kill him yet," said Raoul. "He'll be back this way."

It was now nearly a week since the sergeant at Fort Crawford in Raoul's pay passed the word that Andrew Jackson had sent the mongrel back West. To think, that vermin meeting the President![467]

If Auguste traveled as fast as the news, he must be nearly here. Raoul's informant said that Auguste was supposed to be sent with a military escort to the new Sauk reservation in Ioway. Raoul was sure Auguste would come to Victor instead.

When Auguste came back to Victor, he would go at once to Nancy Hale's cabin, or send for her. Surely she had lied in court about what she and Auguste were to each other. The boys Raoul had sent to watch her cabin would let him know of Auguste's arrival.

Armand nodded vigorously. "May le Bon Dieu grant me the chance to kill him. But what makes you so sure he will come here?"

"Because he knows that he can prove Pierre left Victoire to him. Cooper has those papers, and Cooper helped him escape, so he has Cooper on his side."

Armand said, "Two pieces of paper. Easy enough to make them disappear."

"How in hell am I going to get them away from Cooper? Him and his Regulators."

Glowering at Raoul, Armand leaned back in his chair, making it creak. He folded his hands across the big belly that stretched his homespun shirt.

"Kill Cooper and there will be no more Regulators."

How I wish I could.

Pouring himself another drink, Raoul said, "Armand, you're damn near as stupid as an Indian."

Armand's eyes narrowed and for a moment Raoul saw a flash of hatred that reminded him of the way the overseer used to look at Pierre.

"Have a care how you talk to me, mon colonel," Armand said in a voice that sounded like millstones grinding together, "I am your one friend. Otto Wegner and Eli Greenglove turned on you, Hodge Hode is dead, Levi Pope has joined the Regulators."

It's true. I have no other friends but Armand. I have no family. What's happened to me?

"Damn it, it is plain stupid to talk about fighting the Regulators, Armand. Kill Cooper and we'd have a countywide war on our hands."

"I believe we could frighten the Regulators into backing down, mon colonel—if we showed some courage."[468]

That's a jab at me.

Whiskey and anger almost made Raoul lash out again at Armand, but he felt a sudden fear that Armand would turn on him and he would be all alone.

Raoul brooded for a time, then finally spoke.

"Wait till I get the lead mine opened up next spring. We'll go up to Galena, you and I, and we'll recruit the roughest, meanest miners we can find. And we'll make it plain to them that they'll have two jobs—to dig for lead and to fight Regulators. When we've got enough of them down here, we'll take on Cooper and his crowd in the next election. I'll spread whiskey and money around and our boys will beat up anybody who says he won't vote our way. Smith County will belong to us again, Armand."

He heard hurried footsteps echoing on the split-log floor of the fort's main room. Someone rapped on his office door. Like a swimmer coming up from the bottom of a lake after a dive, Raoul rose up out of his comfortable whiskey haze.

"Who's there?" he growled.

Josiah Hode, a skinny, red-haired youth in dark calico shirt and workman's trousers, a big hunting knife at his waist, pushed the door open. Hodge's orphaned son.

This is what my Andy and Phil would have grown to look like. The thought hurt Raoul because Andy and Phil were dead and because he had never really loved them.

"What is it, Josiah?"

"Someone rode up to Miz Hale's door and banged on it. I snuck right up to the fence. When they came out I saw it was that Woodrow kid that lives with her. And she got out her own horse and rode toward town with him."

"Did you follow them?"

"Long enough to see that they went up to old Mr. de Marion's place."

"He's there!" Raoul said. He felt as if he were out hunting on a frosty morning and had just sighted a buck with spreading antlers. He clenched his fist and brought it down on his desk, hard. He opened the drawer again, took out a small bag of coins and slammed the drawer shut.

He counted out nine Spanish dollars. "Josiah, you divide these between the three of you for keeping good watch." He dropped a[469] tenth piece of eight into the boy's cupped hands. "That's for you, for bringing me the good news."

Josiah grinned, all teeth. "Thanks a heap, Mr. de Marion."

"Armand, I want about twenty men. Go round them up. Have them meet me at the trading post gate."

"Très bon, mon colonel."

Raoul thought a moment. He had planned to hang Auguste, but they couldn't leave a body around for the Regulators to find.

"We'll take him out to the lead mine and finish him there. I know parts of that mine where nobody'll ever find anything."

"Can I come, Mr. de Marion?" Josiah asked. The glow of admiration in his eyes warmed Raoul.

Raoul gave the boy a grin. "Sure, Josiah. Bring your dad's rifle. I'll show you how Smith County takes care of its Indian problem."

"Do Nicole and Grandpapa know about us?" Auguste asked Nancy as they sat side by side on the split-rail fence Guichard had built around Elysée's garden.

"I told Nicole," she said. "I was afraid she'd condemn me, but I had to confide in someone. She was very sweet to me about it, not a hint of reproach."

"Nicole understands." His voice sounded choked. He didn't know how he knew Nicole that well—from glances, from hints in her voice perhaps—but he was sure that her own desires were as large as she was. And her generosity larger still. She would feel nothing but goodwill toward another woman's longing for a man.

Nancy put her hand on Auguste's, and his breath quickened. Her face seemed to pull his eyes, and he saw, in the light of the waxing moon, that she was more beautiful tonight than he had ever seen her. Her cheeks were rounder now: he hadn't fully realized how haggard she had been as a captive of the Sauk.

We all looked like buzzards' meals. But even then I loved to look at her.

Right now he felt the blood throbbing in his body. He wanted to pick her up and carry her into the woods beyond the house and be upon her. As any healthy Sauk husband and wife would greet each other after a long time apart. He was so aware of his hunger for Nancy and hers for him that he could hardly think of anything[470] else. Their need lit up the little garden with a glow brighter than the moon's.

But what of Redbird? Even though she accepted Nancy as truly his wife, as much as herself, somehow it did not seem right for him to love Nancy now. It had been right when they were living with the British Band; here in Victor it was not right.

"I knew you would come back," Nancy said, sensing his desire but not his hesitancy, bringing her lips so close to his he could almost taste them.

He inched away from her, so as not to be utterly overcome by her nearness.

He decided to talk of other things. He told her of the plan he had come here with, to challenge Raoul. He told her how Frank had persuaded him to try to retake Victoire with the law's help.

"The Turtle has said that I must be guardian of the land and see to it that no pale eyes prospers by stealing from the Sauk," he said. "If I can take Victoire back from Raoul, my people will have a place to come to in the land that was once theirs."

"You mean for the tribe to come back and live on the estate?"

"No, they could never come back to Illinois as a tribe. But families could come and live here for a while—they could send their children here—they could learn our ways. And the wealth of the estate could help them, wherever they might be."

"Will you bring Redbird and Eagle Feather here?" she asked, squeezing his hand.

Does she want me to say I won't? No, she cares for them too. We were a family.

He said, "Yes, if I can get Victoire away from Raoul, I will bring them here."

He saw her eyes close and