I am thinking like a Sauk.
And then it all swept over him in a wave of anguish. He saw the happiness he had lost. He saw the gardens and long houses of Saukenuk, cool and pleasant in the summer, the snow-covered, warm winter wickiups in Ioway. The hunting and fishing, the feasts, the dances. The beloved faces drew close before his eyes—Sun Woman, Floating Lily, Eagle Feather, Owl Carver, Black Hawk.
Redbird.
He gave an agonized shout that reverberated in the stone chimney that towered over him. He beat his chest with his fist again and again, until a bolt of pain shot through him where Raoul's bullet had pierced him. He did not want to stop hurting himself, but he could not hit his chest anymore. His head hung down and he sobbed brokenly.
He had sacrificed too much. He had given up everything he really loved to become a prisoner of this place. He was trapped on this land. The ancient wealth of the de Marions held him in golden chains.
I could ride away from all this, even now. I could take a horse and swim it across the Mississippi—the Great River—and I could find the Sauk and live with them again. I could be free.
Redbird had said she had become Wolf Paw's woman. Anger boiled him at the thought of that. But he knew it was the healer in her who had chosen that path. As she had said, Wolf Paw was one of the last braves of the British Band, and by healing him she healed the people.
And was he not lying to himself to think he could do anything for the Sauk here? How could he resist the immense power of men like Sharp Knife, who, he was sure, were bent on exterminating the Sauk, on exterminating all the red people on this continent?
To make the de Marion estate prosper he would have to learn to perform a thousand tasks about which he knew almost nothing. He must give all his heart and mind and strength to this domain if it was to flourish. That was the burden Star Arrow, Pierre de Marion, had laid on him. In taking up that burden, might he not forget his other tie, to the Sauk, so far away?
But it was his being a Sauk that chained him so irrevocably to Victoire—the afternoon he smoked the calumet with Star Arrow—the Turtle calling on him to be guardian of this land.