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

would end up at the bottom of the Mississippi. Or maybe he'd even be Cooper's dancing partner on that tree.

I've knocked my father down. I've killed my brother's squaw and his mongrel bastard son. Why put up with my sister and her husband? What have they ever done, except hate me?

And the old man would have to go, too, if he was still alive, and that brandy-pickled bag of bones, Guichard. Time to be rid of[506] them all. De Marion would still be the foremost name in Smith County, but it would be a new de Marion family, not this old Injun-loving bunch that understood nothing.

Nancy. What about her?

The teacher needed to be taught a lesson or two. If she hadn't let Auguste service her when she was captured by the Injuns, then she'd probably never had a man's cock up inside her. Once she found out what pleasure he could give her, she'd forget about Auguste. She was still young enough for children, good-looking children, and smart.

That brat Woodrow that she had living with her. Imagine him saying in court that the redskins treated him better than his parents did. Send him packing, just like the Hopkinses.

With Smith County and with Nancy all his, it would be time to rebuild Victoire.

He'd put that off because he wanted to do it right. And he'd left the ruin till now to remind himself and everyone in Victor why the Sauk had to be driven out of Illinois.

No, that was a damned lie.

Alone here in the dark he could not keep the truth from pecking at his brain like a buzzard's beak: Every time he went near the ruin of the château, he thought of Clarissa and the boys, and guilt stabbed him without mercy. He'd looked down on Clarissa, and he had not felt for the boys as a father should.

He'd left them unprotected, let them die horribly, just as Helene had died.

I did to Andy and Phil just what Papa and Pierre did to me. When my boys needed me most, I wasn't there.

And the Sauk never would have attacked Victor if I hadn't shot Auguste and the other two redskins at Old Man's Creek.

He forced himself to stop thinking about the family he'd made without wanting to and then had lost. Their blood was spilled, and nothing would bring them back. He'd shed plenty of Indian blood to avenge them.

He remembered the Indian witch woman, Auguste's mother, the Bowie knife slicing open her throat, her blood warm on his hand. What curse had she laid on him before he killed her?

He put her out of his mind and thought of Victoire. When he rebuilt Victoire it would not be just another blockhouse, but a stone mansion that could be seen from the river. It would be the center[507] of Raoul de Marion's new empire—steamships, railroads, cattle, farmlands, mines. Now that the Indians were gone for good, now that Pierre's bastard was dead, there was no limit to what Raoul could make of the family's wealth.

The dreams heartened him. Time to move. He stuffed the little bundle of beef and biscuit into one saddlebag. He slung the saddlebags over his shoulder, the light one with food hanging down his front, the heavy one with the money in it on his back. He loosened the Bowie knife in its sheath on his left hip. He checked the loads in his pistol and his rifle again.

As he pushed back his coat to holster his pistol, he felt Pierre's spectacle case in his pocket.

What the hell am I carrying that around for?

At times he'd suspected that he kept Pierre's spectacles because he really did love his older brother, in spite of everything Pierre had done to him.

The silver case, he told himself, was valuable. But the spectacles were worthless. The eyes that had needed them had stopped seeing a year ago.

Had they?

He opened the case. The lenses glinted in the candlelight as if there were eyes behind them.

"Goddamn it!" he shouted, and turned the case over, dropping the spectacles to the stone floor. They shattered with a crack that sounded loud as a pistol shot. He stamped on them for good measure, crushing the glass to glittering splinters and twisting the frames out of shape under the sole of his boot.

He threw the case into a pile of rock shards. Valuable or not, he didn't want the damned thing anymore.

"I hope you're in Hell, Pierre!"

He didn't love Pierre. He hated him. He'd never loved him. He'd always hated him, ever since Fort Dearborn.

Holding the bit of candle high in his left hand, his rifle in his right, he started up the sloping tunnel. It was a long climb; the sacks of coins in the saddlebag on his back weighed him down.

He stopped at the gravel pile that blocked entry to this tunnel. He listened, and heard nothing but his blood hissing in his ears. He scraped chunks of stone away from the pile until he could crawl through.

After more walking and climbing through tunnels and shafts, he[508] no longer had any notion how long it had been since he left his hideout. He saw ahead a little square of gray, in the center of the black all around him. And then he could make out the walls and floor of the tunnel. Moonlight or starlight must be illuminating the mine entrance. Night, then. Good, he could leave at once.

About twenty feet from the entrance he saw up ahead an opening where another tunnel branched off from this one. He remembered it. This was the side tunnel where the Indian he'd killed seven years ago had hidden.

As he came close to that opening he heard a rumbling sound.

The growl of an animal.

He felt as if he'd been doused with ice-cold water.

He took a few steps back from the branch tunnel opening, curled his finger around the trigger of his rifle and raised it, one-handed. He didn't want to let go of the candle.

It hadn't just been a dream. There was something in this mine.

Maybe a wolf. Or a bear would like a deserted mine like this for a den.

He heard snuffling, grunting noises. Then a growl so deep it seemed to shake the stone under his feet. He felt his stomach clench, and he nearly lost his grip on his bowels.

Claws scraped on rock. With trembling fingers he set the candle in one of the wall niches the miners had carved for their lanterns and raised his rifle to his shoulder.

The bear came out of the branch tunnel. He saw the huge, pointed white head from the side at first, with a golden eye that glared at him. A perfectly white bear.

Like his dream.

The head swung toward him, a gaping mouth lined with teeth like ivory daggers.

The whole white body emerged, bigger than a bull bison.

It roared, deafening as a cannon blast. It reared up on its hind legs, filling the tunnel like a white avalanche. After the roar, it rumbled steadily, deep in its chest. Though it was more than ten feet away, he could smell its rotten-meat breath.

He squeezed the trigger. His rifle thundered, echoes slamming the sides of his head. Smoke obscured the vast white body. His ears jangled.

He felt a sudden terror that the shot might start a cave-in.[509]

But it didn't.

It didn't stop the bear either. It came on, padded feet scraping on the tunnel floor, swinging claws like rows of sickles.

I couldn't have missed. Oh Jesus, oh God, I couldn't have.

He threw the rifle down, snatched his pistol out of his holster and fired again.

Blinding flash, deafening blast, stinking smoke.

And the bear kept coming.

It was so close, the lead balls must have gone into it. It must be just so damned big it would take more than two shots to kill it.

But there was no time to reload. The bear towered over him, white body filling the whole world, eyes, claws, teeth, all shining in the glow of that pitiful little candle that somehow had stayed lit.

He screamed and sobbed like a little boy in his terror, but he managed to get his Bowie knife out. He'd killed a big Indian with this knife.

A paw the size of his head knocked the knife from his hand.

"Oh, please don't kill me!" he wept. "For the love of Jesus!"

The other paw hit his chest like a sledgehammer. He felt his ribs cave in. He felt the claws stab into his lungs.

His breath flew from his body. His strength drained away. He couldn't scream anymore. He couldn't beg for his life. His voice was gone. Only blood came out of his throat. The last thing he saw was an enormous mouth gaping, full of yellow-white pointed teeth coming at him. He felt claws rip again through his chest and belly and knew that he was going.

The pale eyes' smoke boat was a frightening thing, shooting black clouds and sparks from two black-painted iron tubes that rose up from a big lodge in its middle. On each side of the boat was a wheel with wooden boards attached, and the wheels and boards pushed the boat through the water. Standing on the floor of wood planks at the front end of the boat, Redbird tried to understand how fire in the boat's belly could make wheels turn. She felt the monstrous thing tremble under her as it swam across the river.

About a hundred women and children with a few men were crowded at the front of the boat, watching the Ioway shore of the Great River come closer. By unspoken agreement they kept their[510] backs turned to the land that had once been so good to them, the land they had forever lost.

The happy land that was lost, Redbird thought.

At the memory of White Bear, grief stabbed her, and she had to rest against the railing of the boat. She felt an aching hollow as if she had been gutted like a butchered deer.

In their midst rose a little mountain of boxes, barrels, sacks and bales, the supplies they had bought with White Bear's grandfather's gold. But they had no horses, and when they got to the Ioway shore they would have to carry these goods on their backs, a journey of probably four days across the strip of land by the river that He Who Moves Alertly had surrendered to the long knives. Somewhere beyond that land they would find the Sauk and Fox who had been wise enough not to follow Black Hawk. She hoped it would not start to snow before they reached the camps of their people.

Wolf Paw said, "I have heard that this is the very boat that killed so many of our people at the Bad Axe."

This boat had killed his wives and his children, then, thought Redbird. She rested her hand on his arm.

"See there," he said, pointing to holes and black marks on the wood at the very front end. "A thunder gun was set there. It fired at our people and tore them to pieces. Like the one that killed so many of our warriors at the pale eyes town." Through his worn buckskin shirt he touched the silver coin that still hung around his neck on a leather thong. Redbird remembered the day White Bear had dug the coin out of Wolf Paw's body, claiming he had changed a lead ball into a coin.

She put her hand on her aching heart. Would things ever stop reminding her of White Bear?

She stared down at the gray-green water rushing by the side of the boat, and it made her dizzy. A canoe could never travel this fast, even a big one paddled by many men. And a canoe could never go straight across the river, without being pushed downstream by the current, as this smoke-belching boat was doing.

Had she been wrong not to stay with White Bear, as he had begged her to? She missed him so much. Tears came to her eyes. She hoped Wolf Paw and Eagle Feather would not see her crying, and she wiped her eyes quickly.

She felt like jumping from this boat and swimming back to shore.[511] If she drowned in the Great River, even that would be better than being carried away from White Bear.

She told herself she had made up her mind. She was determined to be a Sauk for the rest of her days. And Eagle Feather would be a Sauk.

White Bear is wrong to stay behind, even for all that land.

Eagle Feather gripped her arm. "Do not be afraid, Mother. The pale eyes will not hurt us today." His blue eyes were sad. He must have noticed her misery.

Wolf Paw smiled faintly.