"Don't try to get us to feel sorry for you," Bennett rasped. "This courtroom is full of people who've seen loved ones stabbed, shot, scalped, cut to pieces, burnt to ashes. At the hands of your Indians." He raised his voice to a shout. "And while that was happening, you were behind the red fiends! Urging them on to kill and kill some more!" He turned away, face twisted in disgust. "I have no more questions for you." Cooper said, "Does the defense have any more witnesses?" "No, Your Honor," said Ford, and Auguste's heart sank as he walked back to his seat. Bennett, he felt, had finished him with those few sentences reminding people what the Sauk had done to them. Auguste turned to Ford, whose round face was blank, unreadable. No hope there. Ford had done his best, Auguste was sure. But he had no more chance against the hatred here in Victor than Black Hawk's band had against the armies of the United States. _I am going to be hanged._ "Hold it there!" called a voice from the doorway of the courtroom. "He _has_ got two more witnesses." Auguste saw a tall, mustached man thumping up from the back of the court with the aid of a crutch and a peg leg. Beside him a skinny man with a small head and a gap-toothed grin shuffled over the plank floor. A rifle hung from one long arm. It took him a moment to recognize Otto Wegner and Eli Greenglove. Alert, wary, he watched them come up the aisle between the spectators' chairs. Cooper raised a hand in warning, said, "Mr. Greenglove, you'll have to put that rifle down before you come any farther." "So be it," said Greenglove, handing the rifle to one of Jefferson Davis's corporals who had risen to bar his way. "I just needed it to make sure I got this far alive." Ford came over to Auguste and said in a low voice, "I take it these men are offering to testify in your defense. Do you want them?" "I think Wegner must be here to help me," said Auguste. "But I don't know why Greenglove is here." He remembered his conviction that Greenglove had missed him on purpose, and shrugged. "I haven't got much to lose." Ford began with Wegner, asking him how he came to be in Victor when word was he had emigrated to Texas. "My family and I only got as far as New Orleans, where we are buying provisions to join the colony at San Felipe de Austin. Then this gentleman comes to me." Wegner pointed to Greenglove, now sitting in the front row of spectators. "He tells me Herr Auguste is to be tried at Victor. At once we take the steamboat. I pay for both his passage and mine, using money my family needs. I tell you this not to praise myself but to show how much that man means to me." Now Wegner pointed to Auguste, who looked down at the floor, his face hot and his throat choked. Ford nodded gravely. "I understand you were at Old Man's Creek, Mr. Wegner. What happened to you?"