eyes.

When he opened them again, his father was lying beside him, still
holding his hand. But Pierre's grip was without strength. He lay with
his head sunk in the pillow, his mouth fallen open, the whites of his
eyes showing between half-closed lids. He was not breathing.

White Bear's tears came hot. He heard a voice--his own voice--rising in
his chest.

"Hu-hu-huuuu ... Whu-whu-whuuuu ..." It was the sound mourners made at
Sauk funerals.

He wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth, sobbing
and keening in the way of his people. Soon he would have to get up and
go into the chateau and tell people Pierre de Marion was dead. He must
be the first to bring the news to poor Grandpapa. But for a while he
would sit alone with his father and wail for him.

Sitting on the ground under the maple tree, he looked down and was not
surprised to see marks in the bare, damp earth. The prints of wide pads
twice the size of a man's feet. At the end of each print, deep holes
left by five claws.

* * * * *

Raoul did not think he could put up with much more of this funeral. He
had to wait till it was all over before he could make himself master of
Victoire, and he wanted desperately to act now. He tried to calm himself
by remembering the Indians he'd stalked and killed at Saukenuk last May
and June.

Raoul and the fifty men he'd recruited to represent Smith County in the
state militia had arrived at the Rock River in style, carried up the
Mississippi from Victor to Fort Armstrong, at the mouth of the Rock
River, on Raoul's new steamer _Victory_. Paid for with the profits of
the lead mine, the _Victory_ was propelled by two side paddle wheels,
and it could make the St. Louis-Galena round trip in exactly a week.

They'd come to hunt Indians and Raoul had made sure they did, camping in
the woods on the south side of the Rock River opposite the Indian
village and shooting at redskins whenever they had a chance. It pleased
Raoul to think they'd gotten half a dozen, maybe more.

Finally fed up with talking, General Gaines had ordered a general
assault on Black Hawk's town at the end of June. The militia were eager
to slaughter every Indian in Saukenuk, and they'd swept in.

And the damned, sneaking redskins were gone. Seeing themselves
outnumbered, they'd slipped out of the village, down the Rock River and
across the Mississippi the night before. The Smith County boys, along
with