e Suckers!" Dodge called, and the men laughed at the
nickname for Illinoisians. Holding up a long cavalry saber, Dodge led
the militia line, bayonets leveled, into the broken trees.

Raoul looked downriver for the _Victory_. She had dropped a wooden ramp
to the riverbank, and blue-uniformed regulars were boarding. When they
got here there would be enough soldiers on the island to wipe out the
Indians ten times over.

That would be Zachary Taylor's outfit, from Fort Crawford. Raoul had
heard that the five hundred Federal troops sent from the East had been
decimated by cholera, though their commander, Winfield Scott, was still
on the way here.

Raoul turned and pushed forward, stumbling over tree trunks, shoving
branches out of the way with his rifle, muscles rigid against the arrow
he feared would come whistling out of the gloomy shadows ahead. He saw
no living Indians, but many mangled corpses. He tripped over a bare,
brown severed leg. A moccasin, flaps decorated with undulating red,
white and black beadwork, was still on the foot.

Three Indians, swinging tomahawks and war clubs, sprang out from behind
a pile of grape-blasted birch trees. Raoul and the men flanking him
started shooting. The Indians were riddled before they got within ten
feet.

Raoul was sure he'd killed one of the warriors. He went to the body,
drew his Bowie knife and gripped the long black scalplock. He carved a
circle with the sharp point in the shaved skin around the scalplock.
White bone showed through when he pulled the patch of skin loose, the
round spot quickly filling with blood.

The scalplock was long enough to let him tie it around his belt. The
hair felt coarser than a white man's.

They pressed on into the forest, again and again meeting desperate
little bands of red men, who rushed them only to be felled by a hail of
lead balls. Raoul heard the constant banging of many rifles going off in
other parts of the forest.

And sometimes he heard the high screams of women and children. After the
screams, silence.

Raoul smiled to himself. This was how he wanted it. No prisoners.

Killing no longer seemed dangerous. It no longer felt like sport. It
became simply work through the day's heat. It was tiring work, but good.
With some surprise Raoul realized that the line of troops had swept most
of the island and were now approaching the north end. He could see
Indians up ahead through the trees. This might well be the last of them.
Ea