"It was I who brought them to you."
Taylor snorted. "You expect me to believe that?"
"Miss Hale will tell you it is true."
"Well, we already sent her and the boy back to Fort Crawford with an escort, so that will have to wait. But you do have her name right. Where are the rest of the Sauk? Trying to cross the Mississippi?"
"I cannot help you, Colonel. Any more than you would give information to the Sauk, if we captured you."
Taylor's sergeant said, "Sir, let me and a couple of my men take this half-breed for a stroll in the woods. We'll find out what you want to know."
"No, Benson, no." Taylor brushed the suggestion aside with an irritated wave of his hand. "Showing how they can resist torture is a regular game with Indians. He'll just sing Indian songs till he dies, and listening to that would be worse agony for you than anything you could do to him."
"Well, then let's shoot the bastard, sir, and be done with him. The militia don't take no prisoners. Why should we?"
Taylor threw back his head, and even though he was shorter than the sergeant, managed to look down his nose at him. "We're professional soldiers, Sergeant. I trust we know how to conduct ourselves better than the state militia. No, we'll just take him along with us. An Indian who speaks both Sauk and English could be of use to us, alive. I see you have a full head of hair and you wear no feathers, White Bear. That mean you haven't killed anybody? Or just that you don't want the fact known?"
"I haven't killed anybody." White Bear thought of adding that he had saved more than one white life. But he couldn't expect them to believe that. He would not expose himself to their scorn.