The two carriages pulled side by side, and the drivers, Guichard and the Reverend Hale, a slab-faced man dressed in black, reined up for the customary exchange of greeting. "Reverend Hale, Miss Hale," Elysee said, "may I present my grandson, Auguste de Marion." The reverend stared at Auguste for a moment from under bushy brows before grunting an acknowledgment. Auguste suspected he had heard about his parentage and was looking for traces of Indian blood. _Indian._ Auguste had never heard that word before he went to live among white people. His people were the Sauk, the People of the Place of Fire. And their allies were the Fox. And besides these there were Winnebago, Potawatomi, Chippewa, Kickapoo, Osage, Piankeshaw, Sioux, Shawnee--each a separate people. And besides these, hundreds more, whose names he did not even know. But the whites had one name for all these peoples--Indians. And that name, Grandpapa had explained to him with gentle irony, was altogether a mistake. The explorer Columbus had thought he had landed in India. _They do not even respect us enough to call us by an honest name._ But the sight of Nancy Hale drove the bitterness from his mind. Her braids, emerging from her red and white bonnet and lying on either side of her white lace collar, were yellow as ripe corn, and her face, while too long for ideal beauty, was pink and clear. Her mouth was wide, and her teeth were white when she smiled at Nicole and Elysee. She looked straight at Auguste for an instant, then she looked down, but in that moment he saw eyes a vivid shade of blue, like the turquoise stone from the Southwest he carried in his medicine bag. "Visiting the members of your flock, are you, Reverend?" Elysee asked. Auguste noticed that he put the tiniest humorous inflection on the word "flock." Hale's thick gray brows drew together as he nodded sourly. "Trying to bring the Word to that wilderness you call a town." Here was an unhappy man, thought Auguste, whose life was dedicated to persuading those around him to be equally unhappy. "Ah, yes," said Elysee with a broad smile. "Quite a population of sheep gone astray in Victor." "In all of Smith County," said Hale. _It must scandalize him to think that my mother is an Indian woman and that my father, by the lights of this man, isn't even married to her._ Auguste suddenly wanted to defy the disapproval he felt from the reverend. He jumped out of the carriage and in an instant was standing on the road beside the minister's buggy. He swept off his high-crowned hat with the flourish he'd seen in New York and bowed deeply. "Miss Hale," he said. "Auguste de Marion. At your service." The blood rose to Nancy Hale's cheeks. "My pleasure, Mr. de Marion," she murmured. Her large blue eyes looked frightened and her flush deepened, but she did not take her eyes away, and his gaze was locked to hers. His heart beat as hard as it had the first time he saw the White Bear.