Auguste was awed by the size of the President's House, three or four times bigger than Victoire. It stood behind an iron fence at the western end of Pennsylvania Avenue. All this for the Great Father, thought Auguste. It seemed all the more impressive because the entire building was painted white.
Among the Sauk, colors always meant something. Auguste asked Jefferson Davis, who had ridden with their mounted escort, what the white of the President's House meant.
Davis smiled wryly. "Why, that's to hide the scorch marks from where the redcoats burned it in 1814."
But how fitting it seemed that the Great Father of the white people should live in a white palace. Auguste felt a tingle of excitement as the blue-coated officers ushered his party up the front steps.
Owl Carver stuck his hand into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out the gold watch that had once been Pierre de Marion's. He smiled, toothless, at Auguste.
"You told me I could use this to tell when the pale eyes will do things. See now. One of the long knife chiefs told me this." He pointed to the face of the watch. "When the long arrow is here and the short arrow is here, we will meet with Sharp Knife." He had pointed to the numerals XII and XI—eleven o'clock in the morning.
They awaited Sharp Knife in the East Room of the President's House. An officer told the four Sauk to stand abreast, with Black Hawk at the right end of their line and Auguste on the left. The arrangement told Auguste that the long knives considered him the least important member of the Sauk delegation, an estimate with which he agreed. A dozen long knife colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants, all in blue jackets and gold braid, stood in two groups flanking the Sauk.
Even though he had never had any reason to doubt his shaman's vision, Auguste was surprised at how exactly 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.