Shaman Part 85

"Get down off there."

"Now listen, Colonel, this is a public meeting."

Raoul waved the knife. "You've had your say. Jump."

The man stared defiantly at Raoul. Raoul thought he might have to cut him up a little, and wondered if he was up to it. The man's eyes wavered from Raoul's down to the thirteen-inch blade. And he jumped.

But he wasn't quite done talking. "It's a free country, Colonel. Man's got a right to speak his mind."

Raoul said, "Tell that to Black Hawk."

He wasn't quite sure what he meant by that, but he heard several chuckles and was encouraged.

He scrambled up on the three-foot-high barrel. It rocked under him, and the dregs of whiskey slos.h.i.+ng around in his body made him feel dizzy. He decided, after he got his feet set near the rim of the barrel, that he would be safer if he sheathed his knife.

"You men's term of enlistment is not up. Any man who won't cross that river is a coward and a deserter, and I'll see you're dealt with."

"Go to h.e.l.l!" one man shouted.

"You talk about cowards," another man called. "Didn't your whole battalion run all the way from Old Man's Creek to Dixon's Ferry, from forty Injun bucks?"

"They don't call it Old Man's Creek no more," a raucous voice cried.

"Now it's de Marion's Run."

Raoul pulled his knife again.

"The man who said that about de Marion's Run--come up here and say it again." He shook the knife.

"Quit wavin' that pig sticker around and get down off that barrel, de Marion. We heard enough from you." Raoul saw a rifle pointed at him. The blood pumping through his body suddenly went from hot to cold.

A new voice broke in.

"Lower that rifle!"

The tone was deep, easy and confident in command. It offered no alternative. The rifle came down as quickly as if in response to a drill sergeant's order.

A short, plump officer with thick black eyebrows came up to stand beside Raoul's barrel. He wore a stained, broad-brimmed wool hat and a blue Army jacket over fringed buckskin trousers. The gold stripes on his upper arm identified him as a colonel. The saber at his side nearly dragged on the ground. He might have been comical looking, but somehow he wasn't. Raoul had seen the officer at command meetings and knew that despite his mixed dress, he was Regular Army. This morning, though, he couldn't remember his name.

Movement in the distance caught Raoul's eye. A long line of blue-uniformed troops was marching across the prairie about a hundred yards away, their shakoes bobbing. They came to a halt, turned and faced the militiamen. They came to parade rest, each man with a rifle at his side. The morning sun glittered on bayonets.

Some militiamen glanced over their shoulders at the line of Federal soldiers, and a nervous muttering of "Bluebellies!" spread through the crowd.

"You can get down from there now, Colonel de Marion," said the short officer. "I'd appreciate it if you'd let me handle this."

Raoul hated to admit it to himself, but he was relieved. Crouching slowly and carefully, so as not to make an a.s.s of himself by falling, he climbed down from the barrel.

"That's Zachary Taylor," Raoul heard someone in the crowd say as he moved, now unnoticed, to stand apart on the riverbank. Raoul felt foolish that he had forgotten Taylor's name, especially when Taylor knew his.

Instead of standing on the barrel, Taylor hitched himself up and sat on it, gesturing in a friendly way to the men to gather around him.

He spoke with an easy southern drawl, but he made his voice carry.

"Now, men, I don't set myself up as your superior, even though I am a Federal officer. We're all equal Americans here." He nodded as if thinking something over. "In fact, many of you are important men in civilian life, and I have no doubt some of you will hold public office and be giving orders to _me_ some day."

Raoul's eyes traveled over the crowd, and he noticed one figure taller than most, eyes grave as he listened intently to Taylor. That Lincoln fellow, who had been such a nuisance at Prophet's Town. Raoul wondered if the young man was for or against crossing the Rock River today.

Taylor said, "The best a.s.surance you have that I'll obey your orders when it comes your turn is that I'm obeying the orders I've got now. I will tell you in a moment what those orders are. But let me refresh your memory about what Black Hawk and his savages have done to the people you and I are sworn to defend."

He pulled a folded paper from the side pocket of his blue jacket and read from it.

"One man killed at Bureau Creek. One man at Buffalo Grove, another at the Fox River. Two on the Checagou Road. A woman and two men killed on the outskirts of Galena. Apple River Fort besieged, four dead. Seven men ma.s.sacred at Kellogg's Grove. Three whole families, fifteen people, wiped out at Indian Creek. Victor besieged, and seventeen men, women and children ma.s.sacred."

Raoul saw the shamefaced glances of men who knew him s.h.i.+ft his way. He looked down at the ground angrily. He didn't want these men pitying him.

But an image of burned and scattered flesh and bones reared up suddenly in his mind. It struck at him like a rattlesnake. He almost threw up. He clenched his fists and held himself rigid.

One man called out, "Colonel Taylor, that's why we don't want to cross the state line. The Indians are attacking all over the place, and we want to be back home to protect our people."

Taylor nodded. "That's understandable. But I've been fighting Indians for a long time. I came up against old Black Hawk nearly twenty years ago in the war against the British. I've got a score to settle with him, because he whipped me then, and I promise you he will not whip _us_ this time. Yes, that's wild country up there, no doubt about it. But we'll have a band of Potawatomi scouts led by one of their chiefs, Billy Caldwell, to guide us. And General Winfield Scott is coming across the Great Lakes with five hundred more Federal troops. With all that help, we'll finish Black Hawk.

"And we must finish him. The murders and ma.s.sacres will not stop as long as Black Hawk and his tribe are on the loose. If you go back to your farms and settlements, there'll be a dozen of you in one place and twenty in another. And one morning or night you'll find yourself facing a war party of a hundred, hundred fifty braves, like the people at Apple River and Victor did. Our strength is in our numbers, and while we are three thousand and more together, we've got to seek out the British Band of the Sauk and Fox and destroy them."

Raoul heard a murmur of a.s.sent. His heart lifted. The little colonel was winning them over, and the war would go on.

"In plain English, gentlemen and fellow citizens, my orders from Was.h.i.+ngton City are to pursue Black Hawk wherever he goes, and to take the Illinois militia with me. I mean to do both. Now, there are the flatboats drawn up on the sh.o.r.e." He paused, then slid down from his perch on the barrel and, standing very straight, pointed over their heads. "And here are Uncle Sam's men, drawn up behind you on the prairie."

Taylor was so short that only the men near him could see where he was pointing. They turned first, and then in an ever-widening ring the men in the farther reaches of the crowd turned to look at the long, blue-clad line stretched behind them like a chain.

Raoul heard resignation in the militiamen's voices.

"Boys, I'm for the flatboats."

"Me too. I signed up to fight Injuns, not Americans."

A man called out, "h.e.l.l, Colonel, we're _all_ Uncle Sam's men."

Taylor smiled, reached up to settle his mottled hat on his head, and said, "Then I will be proud to lead you."

He strode through the a.s.sembly.

At the edge of the crowd he turned and raised his voice. "Officers, a.s.semble your men. We'll take the troops over first, then the horses. I want everyone on the other side by noon."

Taylor walked over to Raoul, squinted at him and sniffed audibly.

"You look like the backside of h.e.l.l, sir. You been drinking this early in the day?"

"I haven't touched whiskey this morning," Raoul said, not adding that it was only because when he woke up all the jugs in his tent were empty.

"Well, then you were drinking d.a.m.ned late last night. Appearing in front of these unruly men looking like a sot is no way to get them to obey you."