A shrill woman"s voice broke in on his triumph.
He turned to see a witchlike woman wrapped in a blanket. Her finger was pointing at him. Her voice went on and on, screeching at him.
She was tall, but starvation had stripped the flesh from her bones. Her sunken eyes seemed to glow in her skull-like face. He felt as if he was facing some horrid spectre.
He threw the warrior"s head down. Curse him, would she? He snarled like an angry wolf as he reached for the woman. She didn"t even try to get away. He seized the scrawny neck and pulled her to him, bringing the Bowie knife"s point up against her throat.
She started singing, a weird, high-pitched caterwauling. He"d heard something like it before. Where?
When he"d been about to shoot Auguste and those two other Indians at Old Man"s Creek. They"d sung like that right at the end.
Her dark eyes held him. They were not clouded over with anger or terror, but clear with full understanding that he was going to kill her. She was not afraid. He wished he could frighten her, force her to grovel, but someone might try to stop him from doing it. Her voice went on and on, chanting, up and down.
He"d silence her now. Redskin b.i.t.c.h.
He drove the knife into her throat and jerked it sideways. Her song ended in a sickening rasp.
Still the brown eyes were fixed on him. Her blood spurted out of the gash he had cut open, splashed over his knife blade, poured hot on his hand. It spread down over her dress and over the gold lace on his sleeve. He looked down at his red hand and felt some force within him stretch his lips and bare his teeth.
He thrust the woman away from him. Her eyes were still open, but she looked at no one and nothing. She fell to the ground like a bundle of sticks. She lay on her back, the deep wound in her throat spread wide, her eyes staring up.
He stood over her and saw that something shiny had fallen out of the front of her dress and lay beside her head. Tied around her neck with a purple ribbon was an oval metal case splashed with blood.
He had seen the case, or one like it. He reached down with the knife and slashed the ribbon. He wiped his knife on his jacket and slammed it into its sheath, then picked up the slippery case and opened it.
A pair of spectacles. Round, gold frames, thick gla.s.s lenses.
They looked exactly like Pierre"s old spectacles. Was that possible? How could this Indian woman have gotten them? Stolen from Victoire, when the Sauk burned it?
Or had the mongrel somehow gotten his father"s spectacles, taken them with him when he fled from Victor? Pierre"s watch had disappeared then; Raoul was sure Auguste had stolen it. And if this woman had Pierre"s gla.s.ses now, could she be the Sauk woman Pierre had lived with, the mother of his b.a.s.t.a.r.d son?
Despite the August heat beating down on the clearing, the air around Raoul suddenly felt winter cold. All day long while he fought the Indians he"d struggled with his fear of being killed. Now a worse fear had him in its grip, a fear of something worse than death, of having called down upon himself a vengeance that would follow him beyond the grave.
_My G.o.d! I"ve just killed Pierre"s squaw._
The spectacles stared up at him like accusing eyes. The flesh of his back p.r.i.c.kled.
He shut the case and dropped it into his pocket. If it was Pierre"s he couldn"t just throw it away.
The few remaining Indians, a flock of women and children, huddled weeping with their backs to a big tree, arms around one another. Some were already wounded and screaming in pain.
Tiredly Raoul told himself he must reload rifle and pistol and get on with the killing. But his anger was spent. He felt empty, worn out.
From somewhere behind him came a shout of, "Cease fire!"
It was welcome. He"d done enough.
"Yonder come the bluebellies," said Levi.
"Ah, merde," muttered Armand, standing with red-dripping bayonet above a pile of bodies.
Raoul looked around. The order to stop the shooting had come from their rear, from a short, stout officer who, as Dodge had, was advancing with drawn saber. Colonel Zachary Taylor.
Taylor looked around the smoking glade at the dead, big bodies and little ones, brown flesh and tan deerskin splashed with bright red, eyes staring, limbs helter-skelter.
"Jesus Christ." He turned to Raoul, pain in his bright blue eyes.
Raoul felt his face grow hot. "Colonel," he said, "you understand why we had to--"
Taylor"s expression changed from sadness to weariness. "I"ve been out on the frontier for over twenty years. I don"t see anything here that I haven"t seen before." He turned away before Raoul could answer and called, "Lieutenant Davis!"
A tall young officer with a handsome, angular face came up to him and saluted.
Taylor said, "Jeff, run ahead and make sure any Indians left on this island get a chance to surrender." He turned to Raoul again, shaking his head.
"Why let them surrender?" Raoul said.
"There"s only a few left alive," said Taylor. "And we"re not going to kill them. And if you need a reason, it"s because I wouldn"t feel right about it, and I know a lot of the men wouldn"t feel right about it."
Taylor turned to one of his men, a red-faced trooper with a thick blond mustache. "Sergeant Benson, get me that Sauk man we captured. We"ll be needing to talk to the Indians. We want to find out what"s happened to Black Hawk."
Raoul was painfully aware that Taylor"s eyes had shifted to his right hand, covered with blood. He wanted to hide it behind his back.
He looked Raoul up and down. "Good G.o.d, man. Do you know you"ve got blood all over you?"
"Enemy blood," said Raoul.
"I see you"ve got a scalp tied to your belt," Taylor said. "General Atkinson issued an order against mutilating enemy dead."
Raoul felt himself shaking again, not with fear, but with anger. "I saw one of my best friends shot dead with an arrow through the throat today."
"And this?" Taylor asked, pointing to the severed head of the big brave lying a few feet from Raoul"s red-spotted boots. "Was this to avenge your friend too? You"d better get back to your steamship, Mr. de Marion.
I don"t think we have any more need of your services here."
It was not so much Taylor"s words, but the mingled contempt and pity in his voice that enraged Raoul. His fist clenched on the handle of his knife.
Taylor wore a pistol and carried a saber, but he was a far smaller man than Raoul, and his stout body, dressed today in a blue jacket and knee-high fringed buckskin boots, seemed to invite attack.
Taylor"s calm blue eyes went to Raoul"s hand, then back to his face. He stood motionless, waiting.
_G.o.d! What am I thinking? The regulars would shoot me down the minute I drew this knife._
Raoul silently beckoned to his men and started back through the broken trees the way they had come.
After walking a short distance, Raoul saw the sergeant Taylor had sent behind the lines coming toward him with an Indian walking beside him.
Raoul glanced at the Indian and stopped dead.
He felt as if the arrow he"d been expecting and fearing all day had finally struck him.