Red Prophet Page 0,93

him, felt with him.

Now, though, they were as puzzled by the White boy as Ta-Kumsaw was. Had Ta-Kumsaw sustained the boy by his own power? Or had the land, unbelievably, reached out and supported a White child for his own sake?

"Is the White like his skin, or Red in his heart?" asked one. He spoke Shaw-Nee, and not in the quick way, but rather in the slow and holy language of the shamans.

To Ta-Kumsaw's surprise, Alvin responded to his words, looking at the man who spoke instead of staring straight ahead. "White," murmured Alvin. He spoke English.

"Does he speak our language?" asked a man.

Alvin appeared confused by the question. "Ta-Kumsaw," he said. He looked up to see the angle of the sun. "It's morning. Was I asleep?"

"Not asleep," said Ta-Kumsaw in Shaw-Nee. Now the boy appeared not to understand at all. "Not asleep," Ta-Kumsaw repeated in English.

"I feel like I was asleep," he said. "Only I'm standing up."

"You don't feel fired? You don't want to rest?"

"Tired? Why would I be tired?"

Ta-Kumsaw didn't want to explain. If the boy didn't know what he had done, then it was a gift of the land. Or perhaps there was something to what the Prophet had said about him. That Ta-Kumsaw should teach him to be Red. If he could match grown Shaw-Nee, step for step, in such a run as that, perhaps this boy of all Whites could learn to feel the land.

Ta-Kumsaw stood and spoke to the others. "I'm going into the city, with only four others."

"And the boy," said one. Others repeated his words. They all knew the Prophet's promise to Ta-Kumsaw, that as long as the boy was with him he wouldn't die. Even if he were tempted to leave the boy behind, they'd never let him do it.

"And the boy," Ta-Kumsaw agreed.

Detroit was not a fort like the pathetic wooden stockades of the Americans. It was made of stone, like the cathedral, with huge cannon pointing outward toward the river that connected Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair with Lake Canada, and smaller cannon aimed inland, ready to fend off attackers on land.

But it was the city, not the fort, that impressed them. A dozen streets of houses, wooden ones, with shops and stores, and in the center of all, a cathedral so massive that it made a mockery of Reverend Thrower's church. Black-robed priests went about their business like crows in the streets. The swarthy Frenchmen didn't show the same hostility toward Reds that Americans often seemed to have. Ta-Kurnsaw understood that this was because the French in Detroit weren't there to settle. They didn't think of Reds as rivals for possession of the land. The French here were all biding their time till they went back to Europe, or at least back to the White-settled lands of Quebec and Ontario across the river; except the trappers, of course, and for them the Reds were not enemies, either. Trappers held Reds in awe, trying to learn how Reds found game so easily, when the trappers had such a devilish time knowing where to lay their snares. They thought, as White men always do, that it was some kind of trick the Reds performed, and if they only studied Red men long enough, these White trappers would learn how to do it. They would never learn. How could the land accept the kind of man who would kill every beaver in a pond, just for the pelts, leaving the meat to rot, and no beaver left to bear young?

No wonder the bears killed these trappers whenever they could. The land rejected them.

When I have driven the Americans from the land west of the mountains, thought Ta-Kumsaw, then I will drive out the Yankees from New England, and the Cavaliers from the Crown Colonies. And when they're all gone, I'll turn to the Spanish of Florida and the French of Canada. Today I'll make use of you for my own purpose, but tomorrow I'll drive you out, too. Every White face that stays in this land will stay here because it's dead. And in that day, beavers will die only when the land tells them it's the time and place to die.

The French commander in Detroit was officially de Maurepas, but Ta-Kumsaw avoided him whenever he could. It was only the second man, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was worth talking to.

"I heard you were at Lake Mizogan," said Napoleon. He spoke in French, of course, but Ta-Kumsaw had learned French at