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 the same time he was leaming English, and from the same person. “Come, sit down.” Napoleon looked with vague interest at the White boy Alvin, but said nothing to him.
“I was there,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “So was my brother.”
“Ah. But was there an army?”
“The seed of one,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “I gave up arguing with Tenskwa-Tawa. I'll make an army out of other tribes.”
“When!” demanded Napoleon. “You come here two, three times each year, you tell me you're going to have an army. Do you know how long I've waited? Four years, four miserable years of exile.”
“I know how many years,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “You'll have your battle.”
“Before my hair turns grey? Tell me that! Do I have to be dying of old age before you'll call out a general rising of the Reds? You know how helpless I am. La Fayette and de Maurepas won't let me go more than fifty miles from here, won't give me any troops at all. There has to be an army first, they say. The Americans have to have some main force that you can fight with. Well, the only thing that will cause those miserably independent hastards to unite is you.”
“I know,” said Ta-Kumsaw.
“You promised me an army of ten thousand Reds, Ta-Kumsaw. Instead I keep hearing about a city of ten thousand Quakers!”
“Not Quakers.”
“If they renounce war it amounts to the same thing.” Suddenly Napoleon let his voice become soft, loving, persuasive. “Ta-Kumsaw, I need you, I depend on you, don't fail me.”
Ta-Kumsaw laughed. Napoleon learned long ago that his tricks worked on White men, but not half so well on Reds, and on Ta-Kumsaw not at all. “You care nothing for me, and I care nothing for you,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “You want one battle and a victory, so you can go home a hero to Paris. I want one battle and a victory, so I can strike terror into White men's hearts and bring together an even greater army of Reds under my command, to sweep the land south of here and drive the Englishmen back across the mountains. One battle, one victory– that's why we work together, and when that's done I'll never think of you again, and you'll never think of me.”
Napoleon was angry, but he laughed. “Half true,” he said. “I won't care about you, but I'll think of you. I've learned from you, Ta-Kumsaw. That love of a commander makes men fight better than love of country, and love of country better than the hope of glory, and the hope of glory better than looting, and looting better than wages. But best of all is to fight for a cause. A great and noble dream. I've always had the love of my men. They would die for me. But for a cause, they'd let their wives and children die and think it was worth the price.”
“How did you learn that from me?” said Ta-Kumsaw. “That's my brother's talk, not mine.”
“Your brother? I thought he didn't think anything was worth dying for.”
“No, he's very free with dying. It's killing he won't do.”
Napoleon laughed, and Ta-Kumsaw laughed with him. “You're right, you know. We're not friends. But I do like you. What puzzles me is this– when you've won, and all the White men are gone, you really mean to walk away and let all the tribes go back to the way they were before, separate, quarreling, weak.”
“Happy. That's how we were before. Many tribes, many languages, but one living land.”
“Weak,” said Napoleon again. “If I ever brought all of my land under my flag, Ta-Kumsaw, I'd hold them together so long and so tightly that they'd become one great people, great and strong. And if I ever do that, you can count on this. We'll be back, and take your land away from you, just like every other land on Earth. Count on it.”