"Will you bring our white flag?" he called desperately to a clean-shaven man wearing spectacles, who looked a little calmer than the others.
The man"s face twisted into a snarl, and White Bear"s heart fell.
"You"ll get your white flag up your a.s.s, redskin!"
"You sound just like a white man," said another militiaman. "You sure you ain"t a white man in paint?"
"Listen to me," White Bear said hopelessly. He wanted to say, _If we don"t fight it will save your lives as well as ours._ But how could he talk to these men, maddened by whiskey and war? His eyes met those of Little Crow and Three Horses. Again the red-bearded man jerked his hair, so hard White Bear thought he would pull it out of his scalp. He had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. Worse than the pain was the indignity.
Horses splashing water, mud and pebbles on them, long knives shouting curses and threats, the three Sauk stumbled out of the creek and through shoulder-high prairie gra.s.s into the militia camp.
The sun"s last rays fell on flushed, sweating white faces, on glistening rifle barrels. To White Bear, most of the men looked younger than he.
"Somebody get the colonel," said the man with the red beard. "Tell him they claim they want to surrender. Might be we could catch old Black Hawk himself."
The three Sauks" only hope, White Bear thought, was that the commanding officer might be more willing to listen to them than his men were.
The Sauk and their captors stood in a circle where the gra.s.s had been trampled flat. A short distance away stood supply wagons and tents. The prairie surrounded them.
Some militiamen went to one wagon on which five kegs with spouts stood, filled tin cups from the kegs and drank from them. Whiskey, White Bear thought, seemed to be as important to these men as food.
The sun was down now, and the three stood in twilight, in the midst of the shouting mob.
"Look alive, you men! It"s the colonel!"
The crowd opened up, and two men came through.
One of them, short, skinny, wearing a c.o.o.nskin cap and a blue officer"s coat, came up to White Bear and peered at him.
"I know you!"
Half his teeth were rotten and the rest were missing. White Bear knew him too. Eli Greenglove.
"By G.o.d, Raoul! I"ll be a son of a b.i.t.c.h if it ain"t that half-breed nephew of yours."
And there stood Raoul de Marion, gold epaulets glittering on his broad shoulders.
At the sight of that broad face with the black mustache, last seen looking at him over a pistol barrel, White Bear knew his life was about to end.
_Could my luck be any worse?_
All hope vanished as light faded from the sky.
Raoul stood before White Bear with his thumbs hooked into the white leather belt that cinched his blue uniform coat. His huge knife--the one that had cut White Bear"s face years ago--hung at his left side, a pistol at his right. He grinned at White Bear.
"Well. I was hoping to meet you. I"d have liked it better on the field of battle, but here you are, in my camp. What were you doing, spying on us?"
White Bear sighed. Something crumbled inside him.
"Do you know this long knife?" Little Crow said in Sauk.
"Yes, he is my father"s brother." A glimmer of hope appeared in Little Crow"s eyes, but vanished when White Bear added, "And he is my worst enemy."
"Talk English around me!" Raoul shouted. "No Indian jabber."
"Black Hawk sent us," White Bear said. "He doesn"t want to fight. We"ve come to make peace."
"The h.e.l.l with that!" one of Raoul"s men yelled. "We come out to fight Injuns."
"Well, hold on now!" cried another. "If they come peaceable, that means we can all go home and n.o.body hurt."
Raoul turned on the man. "I"ll be the one to decide why they"re here."
White Bear realized that the men with Raoul were barely under his control. There was no hope of talking to Raoul, but there might be others in this crowd, like the man who had just spoken, who would listen. He must keep trying.
Raising his voice White Bear said, "Chief Black Hawk knows you militiamen outnumber his warriors. He doesn"t want to fight you. All he wants is to be allowed to go back down the Rock River and cross the Mississippi. He will never come back."
"Where"d that black-faced redskin learn to speak English so good?" one of the militiamen said.
"He"s a renegade," said Raoul. "A part-white mongrel. He ought to be hanged as a traitor. Don"t believe a word he says."
"They did come with a white flag," one of the men said.
"White flag, h.e.l.l!" Raoul shouted. "They"re trying to put us off guard."
He swept a pointing finger across a group of men that included brown-bearded Armand Perrault. Among them White Bear recognized Levi Pope and Otto Wegner, the thick-mustached Prussian who worked at the trading post. He remembered Wegner had not wanted to kill him when Raoul offered a reward for his death, and he felt a little tremor of hope.
"Get on your horses," Raoul told his men. "Go out across the creek and look. If you don"t find Indians skulking about in those woods, I"ll be mighty surprised."
As Raoul"s men rode off, White Bear was torn by indecision. Should he tell Raoul that other braves had followed them here, to see how they were treated? Or would that just endanger the lives of Iron Knife and the others?
_He"ll use everything I tell him against me._
Raoul"s eyes stared death at White Bear. "Black Hawk"s a d.a.m.n liar. He"s broken every treaty we ever made with you people. There"s only one way to deal with your kind. If you can"t be trusted to keep treaties, you have to be exterminated." He drew his pistol.
"Starting here."
_Bear spirit, walk with me on the Trail of Souls._
Little Crow said, "What do they say, White Bear? Are they going to kill us?"
"It is our fate to have fallen into the hands of a bad man," said White Bear. Having to tell them hurt him all the more. It grieved him that these two good men must die along with him, their lives thrown away because of a bit of bad luck.
"We were fools to come here," said Three Horses.
"Not fools--braves," White Bear rea.s.sured him. "A man who gives his life to protect his people is never a fool. Whether or not he succeeds."
"You _are_ a prophet, White Bear," said Little Crow.
Raoul was staring at White Bear"s chest. White Bear wondered if his heart was beating so hard that Raoul could see it hammering.