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

"No, today they only want to be rid of us."

Eagle Feather said, "One day Earthmaker will give us a medicine so strong that the long knives' guns will not hurt us."

Redbird smiled at her son. "May it be you who finds that medicine."

We can hope for that. Now that we have lost so much, the spirits might grant us new powers that will help us to resist the pale eyes.

Of one thing she was sure, White Bear's way was not a trail that the people should travel. For a Sauk to become a pale eyes was a kind of death.

We are Sauk, or we are nothing. White Bear is no longer a Sauk. My husband is dead.

She turned back to Wolf Paw and Eagle Feather. She did not like to see Wolf Paw's hair hanging loose around his head, his slumped shoulders. He had always stood so straight. Before the people at Victor killed Floating Lily.

She put her hand on his back and stroked it with a circular motion, and he straightened his shoulders. As he looked at her a light dawned in his eyes.

She must get him to shave his head again, to put the red crest back in place. The people needed a new leader, a true leader. Black Hawk had been wrong too many times, and He Who Moves Alertly would do whatever the pale eyes told him to do. Wolf Paw would help her heal the people.

How I hated him the night he mocked White Bear, putting a woman's dress on him. But he has suffered much since then, and he is a wiser man now.

Eagle Feather was standing at the rail looking across the purple river at the winter-gray hills on the Ioway shore. Redbird moved to[512] stand behind him and put her hands on his small, square shoulders. He held himself very straight.

Eagle Feather said suddenly, "I wish I could have seen my father one last time." She could barely hear him above the noise of the smoke boat and the rushing water.

She closed her eyes against the pain of that and bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

When she was able to speak she said, "I think that one day you will see him again."

But for now Eagle Feather and White Bear must be parted. Because Eagle Feather must grow up as a Sauk. The people would need him, too, in summers and winters to come.

But until Eagle Feather was grown, the people would turn to her. The men, like Wolf Paw, had lost heart. She would give them heart again.

In spite of the pale eyes, the Sauk would find a good trail.

The walk from Grandpapa's house to the ruins of Victoire seemed to Auguste to take all morning. By the time he stood facing the blackened chimney that towered over him like some ancient idol, his legs hurt. He was panting, but the crisp winter air infused vigor into his nostrils and lungs. He sat down to rest on a broken beam that had once held up the ceiling of the great hall.

He was still weak from having been so badly wounded and from lying in bed recovering. And even now his left lung was still not able to fill itself full with air, and probably never would be.

This was the farthest he had ever walked. Too far, really. But the bright December day invited him out of doors, and he wanted to see his land.

My land.

It was his now, without question. Now that Raoul's body had been found.

He was glad there had been no marks on the body. Glad that the Fleming children, who had found it day before yesterday while playing down in the gorge, hadn't had to see a human body torn to pieces, as he feared Raoul might be found.

Ginnie, the middle Fleming girl, had followed a cardinal into the[513] mine entrance; once the child had seen the body, the little redbird had flown out again and disappeared.

Raoul's rifle and his pistol, both of which he apparently had fired just before he died, lay beside him. His Bowie knife had fallen a short distance away, as if he had thrown it.

When Auguste and Grandpapa had gone to see the body laid out in Dr. Surrey's examining room, Auguste had been shocked to see the grimace of terror frozen on Raoul's face—jaws wide apart, lips drawn back from his teeth, eyes bulging. A good thing the light in the mine had been dim and the Fleming girl hadn't gotten a good look at that face.

Auguste and Dr. Surrey had both carefully examined the body and could find no cause of death. Surrey opined that Raoul had gone mad hiding in the mine and had been frightened to death by his own hallucinations.

Auguste knew what had killed Raoul. He vividly remembered his wanderings in the other world, in that endless prairie, with Redbird.

Auguste could only imagine what the encounter between Raoul and the White Bear had been like. It had taken place in the other world. The White Bear spirit must have attacked and destroyed Raoul's soul—if a soul could be destroyed. Like the men on spirit journeys who died because their souls never returned to their bodies, Raoul's body had been deprived of life. The White Bear could leave its mark in this world when it chose, but usually it left tangible signs as a mark of favor. This time the only mark it had left was that look of terror on Raoul's dead face.

And Auguste had paid the price for having sent the White Bear against Raoul: he had lost Redbird.

For the rest of my life I will never see a cardinal without my heart breaking all over again.

They would bury Raoul, with a mass, in the little cemetery overlooking the river, just like any other member of the de Marion family. There would be no revenge after death. Père Isaac was coming up from Kaskaskia to officiate.

And I'm afraid it will not be long before Grandpapa lies down to rest not far from Raoul.

Even as Auguste had begun to get out of bed and walk about, Elysée seemed to be spending more and more time sleeping. One[514] day, Auguste expected, he would simply not wake up at all. Though he mourned in expectation of the old man's passing, it was with a warm feeling that Elysée had done much, had walked a long trail with honor. It was now right that his spirit move on and his body return to the earth.

I am thinking like a Sauk.

And then it all swept over him in a wave of anguish. He saw the happiness he had lost. He saw the gardens and long houses of Saukenuk, cool and pleasant in the summer, the snow-covered, warm winter wickiups in Ioway. The hunting and fishing, the feasts, the dances. The beloved faces drew close before his eyes—Sun Woman, Floating Lily, Eagle Feather, Owl Carver, Black Hawk.

Redbird.

He gave an agonized shout that reverberated in the stone chimney that towered over him. He beat his chest with his fist again and again, until a bolt of pain shot through him where Raoul's bullet had pierced him. He did not want to stop hurting himself, but he could not hit his chest anymore. His head hung down and he sobbed brokenly.

He had sacrificed too much. He had given up everything he really loved to become a prisoner of this place. He was trapped on this land. The ancient wealth of the de Marions held him in golden chains.

I could ride away from all this, even now. I could take a horse and swim it across the Mississippi—the Great River—and I could find the Sauk and live with them again. I could be free.

Redbird had said she had become Wolf Paw's woman. Anger boiled him at the thought of that. But he knew it was the healer in her who had chosen that path. As she had said, Wolf Paw was one of the last braves of the British Band, and by healing him she healed the people.

And was he not lying to himself to think he could do anything for the Sauk here? How could he resist the immense power of men like Sharp Knife, who, he was sure, were bent on exterminating the Sauk, on exterminating all the red people on this continent?

To make the de Marion estate prosper he would have to learn to perform a thousand tasks about which he knew almost nothing. He must give all his heart and mind and strength to this domain if it was to flourish. That was the burden Star Arrow, Pierre de Marion,[515] had laid on him. In taking up that burden, might he not forget his other tie, to the Sauk, so far away?

But it was his being a Sauk that chained him so irrevocably to Victoire—the afternoon he smoked the calumet with Star Arrow—the Turtle calling on him to be guardian of this land.

Somehow he must try both to be master of Victoire and to fulfill his destiny as a Sauk.

This land, right here, once belonged to my people. If I leave it, it will never belong to them again.

I will dedicate my possessions to them. I will send them what they need. I will use the influence my wealth gives me with the lawyers and politicians to protect them, so they will never be driven from their land again, never be massacred again.

He stood up and walked away from the charred wreckage of Victoire into the fields that surrounded it. The farmhands had planted corn last spring, but the Sauk raiders had burned it, and some prairie grass had come back. It had only had time to grow chest high before the frost killed it, and as he pushed his way through it he could see fields beyond, where the yellow horizon met the sky.

Nancy would share this land with him. She would love him, and they would raise Woodrow together and have children of their own. He loved Nancy, though there were places in him that only Redbird could touch. Those places would be sealed off now. Hand in hand Nancy and he would walk their path together.