Shaman Part 107

Raoul clenched his jaw and his breath steamed out of his nostrils. He wished he could give Nancy Hale the back of his hand across her stuck-up face. The redskins had murdered her father. They'd kidnapped her.

Probably they'd raped her, though she'd never admit it. How in h.e.l.l could she defend this mongrel?

Scott said, "It seems to me we have no evidence that this man did any harm to the United States or to any of our citizens. However, there are serious accusations against him, such as the charge that he instigated the Sauk raid on Victor. If he is not legally an Indian, which this board of inquiry is not competent to determine, then any acts of war he partic.i.p.ated in were crimes against the people of Illinois. His guilt or innocence must then be a matter for a civilian court to decide. And the appropriate place would be the county where he lived with his father, where there would be records and witnesses."

Raoul could hardly hold himself back from jumping up and shouting in triumph. He forced himself to look anywhere but at Auguste, knowing that what he felt would be all too easy for the others to read.

"You may as well hang me yourself, General," Auguste said quietly, pointing at Raoul. "_He_ runs that whole county. No witnesses will dare to come forward for me, and he's had all my records destroyed."

"Without records, nothing can be proved _against_ you," said Scott.

Raoul felt a hollow open in his stomach. What the h.e.l.l had Burke Russell done with Auguste's adoption records and Pierre's will? The d.a.m.ned Indians had killed Russell. And that pretty wife of his just refused to speak to Raoul.

Auguste said, "But, sir, I don't believe there's even a court in Smith County to try me."

Zachary Taylor shuffled some papers. "Yes, there is. Smith County had a special election a month after that bad Indian raid. Elected county commissioners, and a man named Cooper is judge of the circuit court. I think we can guarantee White Bear, or Auguste de Marion, a proper trial."

Raoul clenched his fists. Things had gone sour in Smith County while he was off fighting the Sauk.

General Atkinson said, "I don't know about that. Seventeen men, women and children were killed in that raid. Sending this man to stand trial there could be simply condemning him to death by Lynch's law."

_I wish it could be that simple._ Remembering the cool reception he'd gotten in Victor when he went there to outfit the _Victory_ for the war, Raoul began to have second thoughts about whether things would go his way.

_I'll have to get my Smith County boys together and make sure Cooper runs that trial right._

Raoul stole a glance at Auguste and saw that his face was set in that hard, expressionless mold Indians took on when they didn't want to show what they were feeling.

Scott said, "Send a good officer and a couple of men to Victor to escort this man and insure a fair trial."

"Right, sir," said Zachary Taylor, making a note. "Lieutenant Jefferson Davis and two enlisted men will go along with him."

_d.a.m.n!_ Taylor had jumped at the chance to send Lieutenant Davis away from the fort, Raoul thought with annoyance. The gossip around Fort Crawford was that Davis was courting Taylor's pretty daughter, and Taylor didn't approve.

Scott turned his gaze on Raoul. "And you, Colonel de Marion. By all accounts you're a very prominent citizen in that community. It's obvious there's bad blood between you and your nephew. I'll hold you responsible if there's any violence against him."

"Understood, sir," said Raoul, calmly enough, but hating to hear the mongrel called his nephew. Scott's threat was empty; once the general was back East he wouldn't care about the fate of one half-breed out on the frontier.

Scott turned to Auguste with a small smile. "While you are on trial, I'll be negotiating a treaty with the Sauk. And after that, if they don't hang you, I think President Jackson would be most interested in meeting you."

A treaty? A meeting with Jackson? Raoul quivered with anger and could barely keep himself from letting out a shout. Did that mean Scott wasn't going to hang Black Hawk and the rest of them? Was he taking the Sauk leaders to meet the President?

_Well, if he does, the mongrel won't be with them_, Raoul thought, comforting himself with the picture of a hempen rope around Auguste's neck.

_My baby!_

Auguste felt as heavy as if he had turned to stone. He sat hunched over on the plank bed covered with a corn-husk mattress, in his cell in Victor's village hall, clutching his stomach as tears ran from his eyes.

After what Frank Hopkins had just told him, he no longer cared what happened to him here in Victor. These people had killed Floating Lily.

Let them kill him too. He did not want to live in a world that had killed his baby daughter.

He felt a comforting hand on his shoulder. He glanced at it and saw Frank's ink-blackened fingers pressing into the blue calico shirt his captors at Fort Crawford had given him.

He looked up to see lawyer Thomas Ford's sad eyes on him, but kindly gestures and looks meant nothing to him now. How could people tear a baby girl from her mother's arms and beat her to death?

_But the Sauk war parties killed children too. All people are cruel, white and red._

"I would be better off on the Trail of Souls," he said in a low voice.

_My mother and my daughter, Sun Woman and Floating Lily, both dead._

"Nancy and Nicole and I tried to stop them," Frank said, his eyes moist, "but the crowd was too big. We couldn't get through until it was too late. Nancy told us the baby was your daughter. Nicole and Nancy tried as best they could to comfort your wife."

For all he knew, Redbird might think him dead. He had asked his guards at Fort Crawford to pa.s.s word to her that he was alive, but he had no idea whether any of his messages had reached her.

Ford, the lawyer from Vandalia Frank had hired to defend Auguste, said, "What happened shows how angry the people of Victor still are against the Sauk. I still think we have to ask for a change of venue." Ford was a short, slender man with a round face and bright, intelligent eyes.

Leaning against the rough-hewn log wall of Auguste's cell, he wore a dark brown frock coat with a high collar that came up to his ears.

Frank said, "Many people here feel terribly sorry for Auguste. And a lot of us decided, after we survived the siege, that we wouldn't put up anymore with the lawlessness that Raoul and his crew represent."

_But Raoul is back now_, Auguste thought. _He'll start to take control again._

Ford said, "Well, Auguste ought to tell us what he thinks. It's his neck."

Auguste took a deep breath. The clean smell of fresh-cut wood filled his nostrils. A good smell, but it reminded him that this village hall was only recently rebuilt, that last June Wolf Paw's raiding party had burned down everything in Victor except Raoul's trading post. How could he possibly get a fair trial here?

Auguste said, "At least here I have some people who know me and care about me."

Ford sighed. "So be it. Frank, I want a list of every man who was in the mob that attacked the Sauk prisoners. We don't want any of them sitting on the jury."

As Frank and Ford discussed trial tactics, Auguste gazed around at this dark little chamber on the second floor of the village hall. It might be his last home on earth. The only window was a square barred hole high up on the south wall, too small to let much light in--or for a man to climb out through. This morning a light rain falling outside spattered through the window, and the cell felt damp and cool.

_When Frank built this cell, he could never have thought his own nephew would be a prisoner in it._

"We have a power of work to do, Auguste," Ford interrupted his thoughts.

"So far I can't find anyone who confirms your story of what happened at Old Man's Creek. This Otto Wegner fellow whose life you saved, he and his family have moved down to the Texas country in Mexico."

Frank said, "We do have two people who'll testify that you protected them and never went on any war parties while they were prisoners of the British Band--Miss Hale and the boy Woodrow."

At the mention of Nancy's name Auguste felt a wrench in his heart. He knew that she had stayed in Victor, teaching in a new schoolhouse Frank had built for her on the site of her father's church. Her absence in the week he had been here had hurt him deeply.

"Frank," he said, "why hasn't Nancy come to see me?"

Thomas Ford said, "Miss Hale is a very bright young lady, and instead of rushing down here to visit you when you arrived, she waited till I got here and then she asked me what she should do. I told her that there must not be even a breath of a suggestion that there was anything between you two. If people believed she had, ah, been intimate with you, they'd consider her a loose woman--doubly so because you're an Indian--and they wouldn't listen to a word she said."

"I understand," Auguste said, feeling bitter, but also feeling that the load of grief he'd borne since arriving at Victor had lightened a little. Nancy had not forgotten him, as he'd feared she might after she got back among whites. He felt shame that he had even imagined she might turn against him. And when the trial started, at least he would see her again.