A heavy, cold rain drummed on the leather top of Nancy's buggy. Driven by a sergeant, the little carriage splashed into the Sauk camp that huddled beside the wooden walls of Fort Armstrong. A dozen peaked army tents, their grayish-white canvas sagging under the rain in a muddy field, were all Nancy could see. There were no people in sight. "I don't know how you're going to find anybody here, ma'am," said the sergeant. Nancy judged him to be a few years older than she was. His name was Benson. He had tomato-red cheeks and a blond mustache so thick that it completely hid his mouth.
Dark faces started to appear at the tent flaps. She wanted to weep as she saw the misery of the women and children who slowly came out, some of them holding blankets over their heads, to stand in the mud and stare at her.
Shouldn't I be glad to see the Sauk brought so low?
Didn't she owe it to her father, Nancy asked herself, to rejoice in the fate of the people who had murdered him? And what about the horrid things they'd done to her? So proud they'd been, the yellow-and-red-streaked faces, the feathers in their hair, the day Wolf Paw led them to burn and kill at Victor. Now they huddled, what was left of them, in the rain in a muddy field in tattered army tents.
But she felt no pleasure seeing the Sauk in final defeat. Through Auguste, they had become her people.
She felt suddenly uncomfortable sitting in the shelter of the buggy's top, staring down at the sodden figures in the rain. If they could stand in the rain, she decided, she could too. She jumped down.
"Ma'am!" the sergeant called, sounding alarmed. But he made no move to follow.
In an instant her bonnet, her shawl, her dress, were all sopping. But she didn't care, because the people she was looking at were soaked too. She looked for familiar faces. The people standing before her seemed made of mud. From head to foot they were a dull brown color.
"It is Yellow Hair!" She understood the Sauk words and looked around to see who had spoken, but all she saw were black eyes wide with sudden fear. Of course they all remembered her as the pale eyes woman who had been kidnapped and nearly killed, and who had escaped. They must think she had come to accuse and punish.
Yes, now that they knew her, they were backing away, ducking into their tents.