Somehow he must try both to be master of Victoire and to fulfill his destiny as a Sauk.
This land, right here, once belonged to my people. If I leave it, it will never belong to them again.
I will dedicate my possessions to them. I will send them what they need. I will use the influence my wealth gives me with the lawyers and politicians to protect them, so they will never be driven from their land again, never be massacred again.
He stood up and walked away from the charred wreckage of Victoire into the fields that surrounded it. The farmhands had planted corn last spring, but the Sauk raiders had burned it, and some prairie grass had come back. It had only had time to grow chest high before the frost killed it, and as he pushed his way through it he could see fields beyond, where the yellow horizon met the sky.
Nancy would share this land with him. She would love him, and they would raise Woodrow together and have children of their own. He loved Nancy, though there were places in him that only Redbird could touch. Those places would be sealed off now. Hand in hand Nancy and he would walk their path together.
The World was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
But he would never stop missing Redbird and Eagle Feather.
And he would never stop wishing he could live out his life as a Sauk. Inwardly he would always be a Sauk. The Bear spirit would always be with him to guide him.
I failed the Sauk when they needed me. I warned them not to go to war, but I could not make them listen. They need a shaman who will make them listen.
He thought of the many, more than a thousand, who had died following Black Hawk, and a sudden, crushing grief struck him to his knees.