tly he had seen the room they were
standing in--its rows of windows with blue and yellow drapes, its three
glittering chandeliers and the four huge mirrors in gilded frames facing
each other across an immense blue and yellow carpet with a red border.
Under each mirror was a fireplace. Four fireplaces, to keep one room
warm in winter.

The long arrow on Owl Carver's watch had moved from XII to VI, and the
old man was uttering doubts of its power to tell him anything when a
black servant opened a door at the far end of the room and all the long
knives in the room drew themselves up stiffly, clicking their heels
together. Sharp Knife came slowly into the room.

Andrew Jackson in person looked just as he had in Auguste's vision, only
more terrifying. Whatever unknown red man had first called him Sharp
Knife had chosen aptly. With his long, narrow face and his
extraordinarily tall, thin body, he looked like a blade come to life. A
shock of white hair stood up as stiff as Wolf Paw's crest on top of his
head, and thick white eyebrows shadowed eyes as bright as splinters of
steel.

Raoul's words of over a year ago came back to Auguste: _I'd like to see
what an old Indian killer like Andy Jackson would say to you._

Auguste felt he was face to face with the power that had destroyed the
Sauk. This man, with his own hand, had slain Indians by the hundreds,
had uprooted whole nations and driven them westward. This was the leader
of those endless swarms of murderous, grasping pale eyes who, territory
by territory, were driving the red people from their homes. This was the
man who willed that white people should fill all the land from ocean to
ocean.

But Sharp Knife was also frail as an icicle. He moved one step at a
time, as if in great pain, and Auguste sensed that he was afflicted with
many ailments and troubled by many old wounds. Auguste saw in him an
immeasurably powerful spirit that kept him going in spite of so much
sickness and pain.

"Which of you is the one that can speak English?" Jackson asked. Auguste
had expected his voice to be like thunder, but it shrilled like a knife
on a grindstone.

Feeling a painful hollow in his belly Auguste said, "I am, Mr.
President." Only this morning Davis had told him that was the way
Jackson was to be addressed. "I am White Bear, also called Auguste de
Marion."

When Jackson turned his gaze on him, Auguste felt it with the force of
an icy gale.

"Colonel Taylor wrote me a l