"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. He said, "I am a medicine man, a shaman." Taylor looked at him gravely. "Educated as a white man and educated in the way of the spirits, too, eh? And with all that learning you couldn't warn Black Hawk away from this disaster?" White Bear shook his head. "He listened to other voices." Taylor's eyes narrowed. "Well, whatever advice you gave him, it's all over for your chief now. God pity your people." White Bear said, "All they want now is to go back across the Mississippi and live in peace. Those who are left." Taylor fixed him with an angry stare. "It's too late for that. Things have gone too far. You people are going to have to suffer for what you've done." White Bear felt his limbs go cold as he heard the steel in Taylor's voice. This was not a bad man, White Bear sensed, not a man like Raoul. But whatever mercy was in him had no doubt long since been washed away by the blood shed by Black Hawk's war parties. _No doubt while he talks about making my people suffer he thinks of himself as quite a civilized man._ "Revenge, Colonel?" White Bear said. "I thought you were professional soldiers." The sergeant balled his fists. "Please, sir, let me teach him some respect." Taylor cocked his head, listening to a distant sound, then turned to look downriver. "He's got a much more bitter lesson to learn, Sergeant. As do all his people."