Shaman Part 121

"We'll take him out to the lead mine and finish him there. I know parts of that mine where n.o.body'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 Elysee'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 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 knew that he was hurting her, and that deepened his own pain still more.

She let go his hand and twisted her fingers together in her lap. "Of course Redbird is first in your heart. But how can she live here with you? Where her baby was torn out of her arms and killed by a mob of white people."

"I've asked myself that many times. I will have to hear what Redbird says."

He remembered what Sun Woman had said when Pierre asked her to come with him to Victoire. _I could not look into pale eyes faces all day long.

My heart would dry up._ And surely Redbird had more reason to hate the sight of white faces than Sun Woman had seven years ago.

Could he himself live here? He talked about retaking Victoire, about living as a white man, but he recalled the heaps of dead he had seen on that blood-soaked island off the Bad Axe River. Could he live among the people who had done that?

Nancy said, "Would you still want to live at Victoire if Redbird said she would not come with you?"

He saw Redbird's small face, her slanting eyes, the fringe of black hair that fell over her forehead. He felt her slender arms around him as they had held him so many nights in their wickiup. He saw the love and fear in Eagle Feather's eyes when they parted so that he could take Nancy and Woodrow to safety. The pain of being away from them almost made him want to weep.

"I don't know the answer to that. The trail I follow is dark. I must go one step at a time."

The chill night air carried a sound to his ears. Off in the distance, on the bluff south of this hill, a man's low voice spoke a few words, then another voice answered. He heard a boot crunch on gravel. A door slam.

The hair on the back of his neck lifted.

He raised his head, and his ears felt as if they were opening wider, to take in everything that came to him. The noises were all faint; no pale eyes would even have noticed them.

"What is it?" said Nancy.

The sounds seemed to come from the town. Who would be up so long after midnight?

"Some men talking, a long way off." He listened for the s.p.a.ce of a few breaths. "I don't hear anything now."

Victor, he decided, was making him overly fearful.

Nancy said, "If Redbird does come to live with you, what will become of you and me?" She took his hand in both of hers, stroking his fingers. "I love you, Auguste. Now more than ever. Before, my life depended on you.

Now I know that I love you of my own free will."

"And I love you, Nancy."

"But you love Redbird too. More than me."

"Not more than you. In another way. Sometimes I seem to be two people."

"Among the Sauk you could have both me and Redbird as wives. And when I was a captive, and I thought I might die at any time without ever having loved you, then I accepted your way. But if Redbird lived here, you and I would have to be together in secret. And I couldn't live my whole life that way."

He had known it would hurt like this. This was the very reason he had tried again and again to renounce Nancy's love.

"I understand," he said, and the words seared his throat.

_But now I would never give up a moment I spent with her, even to escape this pain._

He ached to put his arms around Nancy and to feel her holding him. But he made himself sit rigid, fingers digging into his thighs.

Nancy spoke, and he could hear the iron of grief in her voice. "If Redbird comes here as your wife--I'll leave here. Maybe we'll go back East. Woodrow and I."

She stopped abruptly, too choked by tears to speak. The fence rail they were sitting on shook with her sobs.

Something broke inside Auguste, and he felt his eyes burn as the wetness trickled down his cheeks. He slid from the fence and held out his arms to her.

"To see you again and hear you say you'll leave me forever," he said.

"It hurts too much."