Pierre went to stand by Auguste, seated in a chair with Nicole wiping his slashed face. Pierre said, "In the will I wrote years ago I named you as my heir. I never thought to change that will. Until today." Raoul, still wiping his knife, snorted. "No court in Illinois would let a man disinherit a legitimate white brother in favor of a half-Indian bastard." Pierre let his hand rest on Auguste's shoulder. The boy's eyes burned up at him. Pierre looked down at the blood-soaked napkin that Nicole pressed to Auguste's cheek. Auguste, speaking in the Sauk tongue, broke the silence that had followed Raoul's words. "Even if he is your brother and my uncle, this man is our enemy, Father. I will stand side by side with you against him." Auguste put his hand over the hand that lay on his shoulder. Raoul slammed his knife into its sheath. "You've driven me out of my home, Pierre. I'm not living under the same roof with an Indian. I won't be back till I can come back as master of this house." He strode to the door and turned again. "And then I'll bring my own family with me." "What do you mean--your own family?" Elysee called across the long hall. "I'm marrying Eli Greenglove's daughter," Raoul said with a grin. "And that mongrel had better not try to touch my children's birth-right." He was gone, leaving the door hanging open behind him, sunlight pouring in. Pierre looked miserably down at Auguste and thought, _I hope your shaman's skills make you better at predicting the future than I have been, my son_. BOOK 2 1831 Moon of Ripe Cherries _July_ 8 Homecoming Rejoicing at the sight of Victor, Auguste stepped up to the gangplank of the paddle wheeler _Virginia_ and paused there a moment to look around. He couldn't help himself: he smiled broadly. The settlement hugging the bluff was not home, but it was closer to home than he had been in a long time. And this summer, he had decided, he would go back to his true home. He would end the sorrow of being cut off from his people. This was the sixth spring since Pierre de Marion had come and taken him to Victoire, and, as with every spring before it, he missed Saukenuk terribly. He longed for his mother, for the teachings of Owl Carver, for the arms of Redbird, whom he had lost almost as soon as he made her his. For six years--he had learned to count years as white people did--he had obeyed his father and the promise made with the calumet and had not tried even to send a message to the British Band. He even felt it was a wise rule. To communicate with his loved ones would have torn him in two. But more than a month ago in New York City, strolling in the warm evening air on the busy cobblestone streets, past dooryards where lilacs were blooming, he made up his mind that when he returned to Illinois he would visit Victoire only briefly and then would go back to Saukenuk. He was twenty-one years old now, and among white people that meant he was master of his own life.