was something else Raoul had taken from him--his moment of
vindication.

Pain throbbed in Auguste's chest with the jouncing of the horse under
him. He remembered his mother's body, like a castaway doll, her eyes
pathetically wide, the gash in her throat, the splash of blood on her
doeskin dress. She must be avenged. How could he let the man who
murdered her walk free? Silently he called on the Bear spirit to avenge
Sun Woman.

Again he remembered it was wrong to ask a spirit to harm any person.
Even so, if he could not hurt Raoul himself, he wanted him hurt,
whatever price he himself might pay.

And once again he was fleeing from people he loved. Elysee. Nicole and
Frank.

Nancy.

"Soon I must go back," he said.

Davis turned his head to stare at him. "Go back? In the name of the
great Jehovah, what for?"

It was Auguste's turn to be surprised. It seemed so obvious that he had
to return to Victor and face Raoul.

"I belong in Victor as much as I belong with the Sauk."

He could not, he decided, turn his back on Victor a second time.

"Why are we going east?" he asked.

"You've have been found not guilty in Victor, but you're still a
prisoner of war, Auguste. Your future is in the hands of the President
of the United States."

Auguste remembered now. General Winfield Scott at the hearing at Fort
Crawford had said, _If the people of Smith County don't hang you, I
think President Jackson would find a meeting with you most interesting_.

A chill spread across his back at the thought of meeting Andrew Jackson
himself. What would he and Sharp Knife have to say to each other?

* * * * *

Auguste leaned into a small window cut in the thick stone wall of Fort
Monroe. He stared through iron grillwork at a blue-gray expanse of
rippling water. Eastward on the horizon lay low land, the other side of
Chesapeake Bay. Pressing his forehead against the bars he could see the
bay opening to the south into that vast open ocean the pale eyes had
crossed in their relentless search for new land.

A faint breeze cooled Auguste's sweat-beaded brow. This was the Moon of
Falling Leaves, but it was still hot as summer.

Black Hawk had said little since their arrival. No doubt, Auguste
thought, the old war leader was comparing this huge stone fortress with
the log forts of the long knives he had besieged in his own country. He
must be absorbing the lesson it taught of the true magnitude of the l