These were his thoughts.

  He stood there until it was fully dark. The other Red men had returned to their lodges or their cabins to sleep—or to lie drunken and as good as dead until morning. Ta-Kumsaw came out of his redbird trance and heard laughter from the Red village, laughter and singing from the White soldiers inside the fort.

  The thought came to him: If I had Hooch’s knack for fire, I could bum down this place and kill all the people in it. But to think such a thing made him sick inside. White men could do such things because they were already broken off from the land. But the Red man had to keep harmony, or who would he be afterward? The White man could manipulate, twisting things in his unnatural way, sparking fires, calling water, forcing the land against its will; but the Red man could only take the land as far as it was willing to go. No great fires, unless they were caused by lightning from the sky. No great uprooting, unless the twisting wind from the southwest fell to earth and broke all things before it. No great digging on the face of the earth, unless the river rose up and swept the soil away. No great knocking down, unless the earth itself shrugged. What would the Red man do with a knack like Hooch’s? He would become White, that’s what he would do; and to wish for it, even for a moment, was to become that much whiter, that much less connected to the land. Was that a thought for the man the land had chosen to be chief of all Reds? More than ever he must remain in perfect peace.

  Ashamed, he walked away from the place where he had stood so many hours. His legs were stiff, but he did not stagger; he forced his legs to move smoothly, and the ground yielded gently under his feet. The White man had to wear rough heavy boots to walk far in this land, because the dirt scuffed and tore at his feet; the Red man could wear the same moccasins for years, because the land was gentle and welcomed his step. And now, moving, Ta-Kumsaw felt soil, wind, river, and lightning all within him once again; the land within him, all things living, and he the hands and feet and face of the land. I must hold on to this, he told himself sternly. I must never let this go, or I’ll have no worth at all.

  There was a shout inside the fort. And more shouts:

  “Thief! Thief!”

  “Stop him!”

  “He’s got a keg!”

  Curses, howls. Then the worst sound: a gunshot. Ta-Kumsaw waited for the sting of death. It didn’t come.

  What came instead was a shadowy form mounting the top of the parapet. Whatever man it was, he balanced a keg on his shoulders. For a moment he teetered on the very peak of the stockade poles, then jumped down. Ta-Kumsaw knew it was a Red man because he could jump from three man-heights, holding a heavy keg, and make almost no sound upon landing.

  Deliberately or not, the fleeing thief ran straight to Ta-Kumsaw and stopped before him. Ta-Kumsaw looked down, and by starlight recognized the man.

  “Lolla-Wossiky,” he said.

  “Got a keg,” said Lolla-Wossiky.

  “I should break that keg,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

  Lolla-Wossiky only cocked his head and regarded his brother. “Then I’d have to take another.”

  The White men chasing Lolla-Wossiky were at the gate, clamoring for the guard to open it. I have to remember this, thought Ta-Kumsaw. This is a way to get them to open the gate for me. Even as he thought that, however, he also took his brother under his arm, keg and all. Ta-Kumsaw felt the land still strong within him, and as he held his brother, the same sense of the land flowed into Lolla-Wossiky. Ta-Kumsaw heard him gasp.

  The Whites ran out of the fort. Even though Ta-Kumsaw and Lolla-Wossiky stood in the open, in plain sight, the White soldiers did not see them. Or no, they saw; they simply did not notice the two Shaw-Nee. They ran past, shouting and firing randomly into the woods. They gathered near the brothers, so close they could have lifted an arm and touched them. But they did not lift their arms; they did not touch the Reds.

  After a while the Whites gave up the search and returned to the fort, cursing and muttering.

  “It was that one-eyed Red.”

  “The Shaw-Nee drunk.”

  “Lolla-Wossiky.”

  “If I find him, I’ll kill him.”

  “Hang the thieving devil.”

  They said these things, and there was Lolla-Wossiky, not a stone’s throw from them, holding the keg on his shoulder.

  When the last White was inside the fort, Lolla-Wossiky giggled.

  “You laugh with the White man’s poison on your shoulders,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

  “I laugh with my brother’s arm across my back,” answered Lolla-Wossiky.

  “Leave that whisky, Brother, and come with me,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “The redbird heard my story, and remembers me in her song.”

  “Then I will listen to that song and be glad all the days of my life,” said Lolla-Wossiky.

  “The land is with me, Brother. I’m the face of the land, the land is my breath and blood.”

  “Then I will hear your heartbeat in the pulse of the wind,” said Lolla-Wossiky.

  “I will drive the White man back into the sea,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

  In answer, Lolla-Wossiky began to weep; not drunken weeping, but the dry, heavy sobs of a man burdened down with grief. Ta-Kumsaw tried to tighten his embrace, but his brother pushed him away. “Talk talk talk!” cried Lolla-Wossiky. “Strong man, great chief, where were you when White Murderer Harrison killed our father!”

  Ta-Kumsaw was patient with his brother. “I don’t hate that one man. He can’t help being a White man, no more than a bear can help being a bear.”

  “Who is wise?” asked Lolla-Wossiky. “You hate all White men because some are evil; this one very bad man, you forgive him. I hate this one White man because he is evil, and I forgive all the others.”

  “He’ll pay,” said Ta-Kumsaw, “when I defeat him in battle, when a Red man beats him in war.”

  “He’ll pay,” said Lolla-Wossiky, “when he loses what he loves, the way I lost my father.”

  Then Lolla-Wossiky staggered off, still carrying the keg, into the darkness and the trees.

  Everybody knows what happened to Lolla-Wossiky then, how he searched for his dream beast, and found it on the top of Eight-Face Mound. It was a one-eyed bear, and Lolla-Wossiky could only see him when he closed his good eye. The bear led him to the golden tree, where Lolla-Wossiky took one bite of the white fruit and never thirsted for likker again.

  When he came down from Eight-Face Mound, he didn’t call himself Lolla-Wossiky no more. Now he was Tenskwa-Tawa, “the door,” and he began to teach Reds in every tribe to turn away from White man’s ways, especially White man’s likker. He told them about the visions he saw on Eight-Face Mound. Some of those visions were about the future, and folks took to calling him the Prophet.

  When word started spreading about a one-eyed Red man who was called the Prophet, Governor Bill Harrison laughed and said, “Why, that ain’t nobody but my old friend Lolla-Wossiky. When he runs out of that likker keg he stole from me, he’ll quit seeing visions.”

  After a little while, though, Governor Harrison took note of how much store was set by the Prophet’s words, and how the Reds spoke his name as reverent as a true Christian says the name of Jesus, and it got him somewhat alarmed. So he called together all the Reds around Carthage City—it was nigh onto a whisky day, so there wasn’t no shortage of audience for him—and he gave them a speech. And in that speech he said one particular thing:

  “If old Lolla-Wossiky is really a prophet, then he ought to do us a miracle, to show he’s got more to him than just talk. You ought to make him cut off a hand or a foot and then restore it—that’d prove he was a prophet now, wouldn’t it? Or better still, make him put out an eye and then heal it back. What’s that you say? You mean he already had his eye put out? Well then he’s ripe for a miracle, wouldn’t you say? I say that as long as he’s only got one eye, he ain’t no prophet!”

  Word of that came to the Prophet while he was teaching in a meadow that sloped gently down to the banks of the Tippy-Canoe, not a mile above where it poured into the waters of the Wobbish. It was some whisky-Reds brought that challenge, and they wasn’t above mocking the Prophet and saying, “We came to see you make your eye whole.”

  The Prophet looked at them with his one good eye, and he said, “With this eye I see two Red men, weak and sick, slaves of likker, the kind of men who would mock me with the words of the man who killed my father.” Then he closed his good eye, and he said, “With this eye I see two children of the land, whole and strong and beautiful, who love wives and children, and do good to all creatures.” Then he opened his eye again and said, “Which eye is sick, and which eye sees true?” And they said to him, “Tenskwa-Tawa, you are a true prophet, and both your eyes are whole.”

  “Go tell White Murderer Harrison that I have performed the sign he asked for. And tell him another sign that he didn’t ask for. Tell him that one day a fire will start in his own house. No man’s hand will set this fire. Only rain will put out this fire, and before the fire dies, it will cut off something he loves more than a hand or a foot or an eye, and he will not have the power to restore it, either.”

  Hooch was astounded. “You mean you don’t want the whole shipment?”

  “We ain’t used up what you sold us last time, Hooch,” said the quartermaster. “Four barrels, that’s all we want. More than we need, to tell the truth.”

  “I come down the river from Dekane, loaded up with likker, not stopping to sell any at the towns along the way, I make that sacrifice and you tell me—”

  “Now, Hooch, I reckon we all know what kind of sacrifice that was.” The quartermaster smirked a little. “I think you’ll still recover your costs, pretty much, and if you don’t, well, it just means you ain’t been careful with the profits you’ve made off us afore.”

  “Who else is selling to you?”

  “Nobody,” said the quartermaster.

  “I been coming to Carthage City for nigh on seven years now, and the last four years I’ve had a monopoly—”

  “And if you’ll pay heed, you’ll remember that in the old days it used to be Reds what bought most of your likker.”

  Hooch looked around, walked away from the quartermaster, stood on the moist grassy ground of the riverbank. His flatboat rocked lazily on the water. There wasn’t a Red to be seen, not a one, and that was a fact. But it wasn’t no conspiracy, Hooch knew that. Reds had been slacking off the last few times he came. Always there used to be a few drunks, though.

  He turned and shouted at the quartermaster. “You telling me there ain’t no whisky-Reds left!”

  “Sure there’s whisky-Reds. But we ain’t run out of whisky yet. So they’re all off somewhere lying around being drunk.”

  Hooch cussed a little. “I’m going to see the Gov about this.”

  “Not today you ain’t,” said the quartermaster. “He’s got himself a right busy schedule.”

  Hooch grinned nastily. “Oh, his schedule ain’t too busy for me.”

  “It sure is, Hooch. He said it real specific.”

  “I reckon he might think his schedule is too busy, boy, but I reckon it just ain’t so.”

  “Suit yourself,” said the quartermaster. “Want me to unload the four barrels I got here?”

  “No I don’t,” he said. Then he shouted at his poleboys, most specially at that Mike Fink, cause he looked to be the most likely to do murder if need be. “Anybody tries to lay a hand on that whisky, I want to see four bullet holes in their body before we chuck him in the water!”

  The poleboys laughed and waved, except Mike Fink, who just sort of screwed his face up a little tighter. That was one mean old boy. They said you could tell which men had ever tried to wrassle Mike Fink, cause they got no ears. They said, if you want to get away from Fink with one ear still on your head, you got to wait till he’s chewing on your first ear and then shoot him twice to distract him while you get away. A real good riverboy. But it made Hooch a little nervy to think what Fink might do if Hooch didn’t have a payroll for him. Bill Harrison was going to pay for this whole load of likker, or there’d be real trouble.

  Walking into the stockade, Hooch noticed a few things. The sign was the same one Harrison put up four years ago; it was getting ratty looking now, weathered up, but nobody changed it. Town wasn’t growing, either. Everything had lost that new look, and now it was plain shabby.

  Not like the way things were going back in Hio Territory. What used to be little stockade towns like this were turning into real towns, with painted houses, even a few cobbled streets. Hio was booming, at least the eastern part of it, close on to Suskwahenny, and folks speculated on how it wasn’t far from statehood.

  But there wasn’t no boom going on in Carthage City.

  Hooch walked along the main street inside the stockade. Still plenty of soldiers, and they still looked to have pretty good discipline, had to give Governor Bill credit for that. But where there used to be whisky-Reds sprawled all over the place, now there was river-rat types, uglier-looking than Mike Fink, unshaved, with a whisky stink as bad as any likkered-up Red ever had. Four old buildings had been turned into saloons, too, and they were doing good business in the middle of the afternoon.

  That’s why, thought Hooch. That’s the trouble. Carthage City’s gone and turned into a river town, a saloon town. Nobody wants to live around here, with all these river-rats. It’s a whisky town.

  But if it’s a whisky town, Governor Bill ought to be buying whisky from me instead of this business about only wanting four barrels.

  “You can wait if you want, Mr. Palmer, but the Governor won’t see you today.”

  Hooch sat on the bench outside Harrison’s office. He noticed that Harrison had switched offices with his adjutant. Gave up his nice big office in exchange for what? Smaller space, but—all interior walls. No windows. Now, that meant something. That meant Harrison didn’t like having people look in on him. Maybe he was even afraid of getting himself killed.

  Hooch sat there for two hours, watching soldiers come in and out. He tried not to get mad. Harrison did this now and then, making somebody sit around and wait so by the time they got in they was so upset they couldn’t think straight. And sometimes he did it so a body’d get in a huff and go away. Or start to feeling small and unimportant, so Harrison could do some bullying. Hooch knew all this, so he tried to stay calm. But when it got on to evening, and the soldiers started changing shifts and going off duty, it was more than he could stand.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded of the corporal who sat at the front desk.

  “Going off duty,” said the corporal.

  “But I’m still here,” said Hooch.

  “You can go off duty too, if you like,” said the corporal.

  That smart-mouthed answer was like a slap in the face. Time was these boys all tried to suck up to Hooch Palmer. Times were changing too fast. Hooch didn’t like it at all. “I could buy your old mother and sell her at a profit,” said Hooch.

  That got to him. That corporal didn’t look bored no more. But he didn’t let himself haul off and take a swing, neither. Just stood there, more or less at attention, and said, “Mr. Palmer, you can wait here all night and wait here all day tomorrow, and you ain’t going to get in to see His Excellency the Governor. And you just sitting here waiting all day is proof you’re just too plain dumb to catch on to how things are.”

  So it was Hooch lost his temper and took a swing. Well, not a swing exactly. More like a kick, cause Hooch never did learn no rules about fighting like a gentleman. His idea of a duel was to wait behind a rock for his enemy to pass by, shoot him in the back, and run like hell. So that corporal got Hooch’s big old boot in his knee, which bent his leg backward in a way it wasn’t meant to go. That corporal screamed bloody murder, which he had a right to, and not just from the pain—after a kick like that, his leg would never be any good again. Hooch probably shouldn’ve kicked him there, he knew, but that boy was so snooty. Practically begged for it.

  Trouble was, the corporal wasn’t exactly alone. First yelp he made, all of a sudden there was a sergeant and four soldiers, bayonets at the ready, popping right out of the governor’s office and looking mad as hornets. The sergeant ordered two of his boys to carry the corporal to the infirmary. The others put Hooch under arrest. But it wasn’t gentlemanly like that last time, four years before. This time the butts of their muskets got bumped into Hooch’s body in a few places, sort of accidentally, and Hooch had him some boot prints in various places on his clothes, can’t say how they got there. He ended up locked in a jail cell—no storage room this time. They left him with his clothes and a lot of pain.

  No doubt about it. Things had changed around here.

  That night six other men were put in lock-up, three of them drunks, three for brawling. Not one was Red. Hooch listened to them talking. It’s not like any of them was particularly bright, but Hooch couldn’t believe that they didn’t talk about beating up no Reds, or making fun with some of them or something. It was like Reds had practically disappeared from the vicinity.