To Nancy, young Dr. Surrey looked like a brainless clothier's mannequin in his black frock coat and ruffled white shirt. Though Woodrow had routed him out of bed at nearly three in the morning and he had spent over an hour working on Auguste, he didn't seem tired. If he wasn't tired, what in God's name had he been doing? Now he was leaving, and Auguste was still unconscious.
A helplessness in Surrey's face, round and blank as an unbaked pie crust, turned Nancy's grief and fear into fury. She wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him until he promised that he could and would save Auguste.
"The bullet pierced his left lung," Surrey said. "But it was a shoot-through, luckily, so I didn't have to dig in there and pull it out. Many a doctor has killed a pistol-shot man that way."
Nancy took a step toward the doctor. He was her only hope, and she would not let him escape.
"Aside from not killing him, Doctor, what have you done for him?"
"I packed the wound with cotton, front and back, to stop the bleeding. I put dressings on. I told Mrs. Hopkins how to change the cotton and dressings. And now he is in the hands of the Almighty."
Earthmaker, Auguste would say.
"I hope the Almighty guided your hand, Doctor."
"Knowing your father was a man of the Lord, I'm sure your prayers for Auguste will be heard. He's got to stay where he is, in his grandfather's bed, and fight for his life. I expect he'll take a[481] fever, maybe pneumonia. The punctured lung is of no use to him. He'll draw breath with the other one. He'll be delirious, and you've got to get some food into him—soup's the best, because he'll probably be able to swallow that. His body will fight while his mind sleeps. I'll be back to see him every day."
Through tight lips she said, "Tell me the truth, Doctor. Do you think he'll get better?"
"One man in four survives such a wound, Miss Hale."
Nancy's shoulders slumped. This man could do nothing more.
"Good night, then, Dr. Surrey."
Back in the bedroom, Nancy could hear the crackling that was Auguste's breathing, as blood bubbled in his pierced lung. His face beeswax-yellow in the candlelight, he lay under the canopy of Elysée's four-poster, covered to his chest by a quilt. His arms lay stretched out on either side, his fingers slightly curled.
His breathing is so noisy, at least we'll know when he stops.
Nancy felt as if she herself were being swept away on a black tide of sorrow.
Elysée, sitting by the bed staring into his grandson's face, looked almost as near death as Auguste. Guichard stood behind him, a clawlike hand perched on his master's shoulder.
Nicole, her eyes round and dark with suffering, asked, "What can we do for him?"
Nancy said, "The doctor says it's up to Auguste and God."
Elysée grunted. "Where was God when this happened?"
If Auguste were conscious, Nancy thought, he would be asking Earthmaker for help. In the camps of the British Band Nancy had never seen Auguste give up on a sick or wounded person. He had applied his remedies, gone into his trance, danced and chanted to summon the aid of his spirit helpers, wrestled with the hurt till either the man's soul left his body or the healing was well begun. At first his practices had seemed foolish and savage to her. But Auguste had done his work with such devotion that she came, watching him, to love him all the more. And, out of love, to respect what he did.
But he's not the only one who practices that calling.
Maybe that was what he needed now. One of his own people to call on the spirits for him.
If only Auguste were awake, he could tell her what to do.[482]
Redbird had helped Auguste with his work.
She remembered the last time she had seen Redbird, small, emaciated, holding the broken body of Floating Lily in her arms. Redbird was probably more in need of help than able to give it.
And yet, Nancy had seen that she had a marvelous knowledge of healing. Besides, she had told Nancy that she wanted to be a shaman herself, like White Bear and Owl Carver.
It would be better to go to Redbird than sit here and watch Auguste die.
"I'm going to his people," Nancy said. "To find someone I think can help him."
"No Sauk will be willing to come here," said Frank. "Not after what these people did to them."
"This one will," said Nancy.
A heavy, cold rain drummed on the leather top of Nancy's buggy. Driven by a sergeant, the little carriage splashed into the Sauk camp that huddled beside the wooden walls of Fort Armstrong. A dozen peaked army tents, their grayish-white canvas sagging under the rain in a muddy field, were all Nancy could see. There were no people in sight. "I don't know how you're going to find anybody here, ma'am," said the sergeant. Nancy judged him to be a few years older than she was. His name was Benson. He had tomato-red cheeks and a blond mustache so thick that it completely hid his mouth.
Dark faces started to appear at the tent flaps. She wanted to weep as she saw the misery of the women and children who slowly came out, some of them holding blankets over their heads, to stand in the mud and stare at her.
Shouldn't I be glad to see the Sauk brought so low?
Didn't she owe it to her father, Nancy asked herself, to rejoice in the fate of the people who had murdered him? And what about the horrid things they'd done to her? So proud they'd been, the yellow-and-red-streaked faces, the feathers in their hair, the day Wolf Paw led them to burn and kill at Victor. Now they huddled, what was left of them, in the rain in a muddy field in tattered army tents.
But she felt no pleasure seeing the Sauk in final defeat. Through Auguste, they had become her people.[483]
She felt suddenly uncomfortable sitting in the shelter of the buggy's top, staring down at the sodden figures in the rain. If they could stand in the rain, she decided, she could too. She jumped down.
"Ma'am!" the sergeant called, sounding alarmed. But he made no move to follow.
In an instant her bonnet, her shawl, her dress, were all sopping. But she didn't care, because the people she was looking at were soaked too. She looked for familiar faces. The people standing before her seemed made of mud. From head to foot they were a dull brown color.
"It is Yellow Hair!" She understood the Sauk words and looked around to see who had spoken, but all she saw were black eyes wide with sudden fear. Of course they all remembered her as the pale eyes woman who had been kidnapped and nearly killed, and who had escaped. They must think she had come to accuse and punish.
Yes, now that they knew her, they were backing away, ducking into their tents.
"No—wait—" Nancy cried. She wanted to tell them not to be afraid, but didn't know how. Redbird was the only one she could talk to. And fear was not a word Redbird had taught her.
A man was standing in front of her. His eyes were empty, his face thin and dirty. He seemed familiar. He held out his hands. He seemed to be saying, "Here I am. Take me."
All at once Nancy recognized Wolf Paw.
His hair had grown out, hanging down in short black strands all around his head. But at last she recognized that noble face that—much though she'd hated him at first—had always reminded her of the engravings she'd seen of Roman statues.
She understood what he was trying to tell her. If she'd come to find the murderer of her father, the man who had kidnapped her, here he was. He was at her mercy.
He seemed to have lost everything else, she thought, but not his courage.
"Is that Injun threatening you, ma'am?" called the sergeant from the shelter of the buggy.
"Not at all," she said, and smiled at Wolf Paw. She felt heartsick to see how the splendid warrior had declined into a shabby spectre.
She tried to tell Wolf Paw, in the mixture of Sauk, English and gesture that she had used with Redbird, that she had not come here to avenge herself on him, that all she wanted was to find Redbird.[484]
But then Redbird was standing before her.
Like Wolf Paw, she had changed so much that for a moment Nancy wasn't sure this was Redbird. She was as thin as a fence rail, and those colorful things Nancy remembered her wearing, the feathers and beads, the dyed quills, the painted figures on her dress, all were gone. She clutched a coarse brown blanket around her shoulders. Her head was bare. Water dripped from the fringe of hair across her forehead and poured from her braids. She wore, not the doeskin clothing Nancy remembered, but a torn gray cotton dress that was too big for her and dirty around the bottom edge. Looking down, Nancy saw that Redbird's feet were bare, her toes sinking into the mud.
Nancy felt warm tears mingling with the cold rain on her face as she saw Redbird smiling at her.
"Redbird, I am glad to see my sister," Nancy said in their special language. "Where is your wickiup?"
Redbird spoke to Wolf Paw in Sauk words too low and rapid for Nancy to follow. He grunted assent and trudged through the mud toward a distant tent. Watching him, Nancy felt pity at his rounded shoulders and old man's shuffle.
Redbird beckoned Nancy to follow her to the tent she'd come from.
"Where you going, ma'am?" the sergeant called.
"I'll be all right," Nancy called over her shoulder, raising her voice over the drumming of the rain. "This is the woman I came to find."
She could see the young soldier shaking his head. Why would a young white woman go into the filthy, disease-ridden tents of these Indians?
May the Lord open his eyes and heart.
At first the inside of the tent seemed black as a moonless night to Nancy, and the smell of damp, unwashed bodies made her stomach churn. She took Redbird's hand and held it for reassurance. Not too tightly; the bones felt delicate.
Redbird explained that they had no dry wood for a fire. The long knives had promised to bring them some, but they hadn't yet. The air was as chill in the tent as it was outside, and Nancy heard women and children coughing.
They sat in silence for a time, Sauk fashion. Nancy's eyes adjusted[485] to the dim light filtering through the canvas till she could see Redbird's face. She saw Eagle Feather looking at her out of the shadows with huge blue eyes, a little skeleton whose covering of skin looked like stretched brown leather. Hurting inside, she greeted him with a pat on the arm. If only she could do for him what she had done for Woodrow. Now she could see four other women and two little girls huddled together near the rear.
Nancy broke the silence. "Redbird, White Bear needs you."
Wincing in pain, Redbird narrowed her slanting eyes. She asked what had happened to White Bear.
Redbird, Nancy learned, had heard no news of Auguste since the day he left Black Hawk's camp to take Woodrow and Nancy back to the whites. Auguste had told Nancy that he had tried to get word to Redbird; now she silently damned the soldiers for not bothering to pass the messages on. No doubt they thought it not worth the trouble.
When Nancy told Redbird that she had left White Bear four days ago, unconscious with a bullet wound in his chest, she saw the gleam of tears on Redbird's cheeks.
"The pale eyes doctor says he can do no more," Nancy finished. "You are the only one who can help him now. You know the Sauk way of healing. You told me you wanted to be a shaman."
No, Redbird said quietly, she was a shaman. The declaration startled Nancy.
"You told me the men wouldn't let you be one."
In their private language, Redbird said that for a long time she had not understood what it meant to be a shaman. She had thought that a shaman must be made by another shaman. But now she knew that if people came to a person for help, that person was a shaman. And people were coming to her.
"I have come to you," Nancy said. "You can help White Bear."
Redbird gave a helpless grunt that said she could not. The soldiers would not let her leave.
Nancy reached into her handbag and drew out a folded paper. "I have spoken with General Winfield Scott. This says that you may come with me."
Redbird sat in the damp straw looking down at her hands folded in her lap. Nancy waited anxiously for her to speak.[486]
After a moment, her voice full of pain and uncertainty, Redbird asked, did White Bear want to see her?
The question shocked Nancy. It had not occurred to Nancy that Redbird might ever doubt Auguste's love for her.
Recovering from her surprise, Nancy said, "Before his uncle shot him, White Bear told me he was going to come here to find you and Eagle Feather. You are first in his heart, Redbird."
And, my God, how I wish it could be me!
Redbird looked sadly at Nancy. She was not first in White Bear's heart, she said. That land that had been stolen from him was.
Shocked, Nancy started to blurt out a denial. But she realized she could not. Auguste had gone to Victor before he went anywhere else.
But he is dying!
"Do you want to save his life?" Nancy asked.
Oh, yes, Redbird did, if Earthmaker would help her. In the shadows of the tent Nancy could see the glint of tears on Redbird's cheek.
"Then you will come with me?"
Redbird lowered her pain-twisted face. Must she go back to the place where they killed her baby?
At the memory, Nancy broke into sobs and threw her arms around Redbird, as she had done that terrible day.
"I will always remember Floating Lily," Nancy said. "I fought to save her. I thought she was my baby too."
They held each other in silence for a while, and then the thought came to Nancy that even a small delay might make the difference between Auguste's living and dying. Nancy felt a chill that ran deeper than the cold, damp air in the tent.
"Redbird, he will die if you do not come. You have to come."
Redbird sighed. It was true; she would go with Yellow Hair.
Nancy's heavy heart felt a little lighter. If there was any hope at all for Auguste, it lay with Redbird.
One thing they must take with them, Redbird told her. When they were marching to this place, a soldier had taken White Bear's deerhorn-handled knife from Redbird. It was the same soldier who had come with Yellow Hair today, the one with the red face and the yellow mustache. It would be well if Yellow Hair could get it from him so they could bring it back to White Bear. It would give him strength.[487]
"I brought money with me," Nancy said. "I will buy it back from him if I have to."
I'll get it back from him if I have to kill him.
Redbird's eyes blurred as she stared at White Bear's face, as pale as the moon. She wanted to scream, to throw herself weeping on his form. Her longing to see him open his eyes, to hear his voice, was so strong it hurt her. She remembered the night of his vision quest, when she was sure he would freeze to death. She thought of the summers they had been apart, the nights they had lain together. She thought of poor, dead Floating Lily and of blue-eyed Eagle Feather, left in Wolf Paw's keeping.
O come back to me, White Bear!
She had never tried to heal anyone this close to death. When she and Yellow Hair arrived, the grandfather said that White Bear had sometimes opened his eyes and spoken. But each day he had been awake a shorter time.
Redbird saw that White Bear was already wandering in the other world. A thread no stronger than a strand of spider's silk linked his spirit with his body.
She let the love she felt for White Bear flow through her, giving her strength. She felt the eyes of Yellow Hair, the grandfather and the old servant upon her, but she ignored them. She squatted down on the floor beside White Bear's bed and unrolled the blanket in which she carried her medicines and supplies and the possessions White Bear had left with her at the Bad Axe.
Her eye fell on the bundle of talking papers White Bear had cherished so, that he said was called something like "The Lost Land of Happiness." There was power in that bundle of words. Gently she laid it on his left side, near the wound. On his right she placed the knife that Yellow Hair had been able to retrieve for her.
Arranging the three medicine bags on the floor, she took pieces of elm bark from the largest one and gave them to Yellow Hair.
"Make a tea for him from this. It will give him strength when he awakens."
She forced herself to turn her back on White Bear and go out of the house. With her she carried the blanket and the medicine bag adorned with the beadwork owl. She crossed the little clearing[488] around the house and entered the woods. Here, where no one could see her, she opened the medicine bag and took out five tiny gray scraps of the magic mushroom. She put them into her mouth and chewed and swallowed slowly.
Then she got down on her hands and knees and spread her blanket. Oak, maple and elm leaves, brown, red and yellow, lay thick on the ground. She scooped leaves into the blanket. When she had gathered a big pile, she bundled them up and went back into the house.
Carefully she spread the leaves on the bed over White Bear's body. She heard the grandfather say something to Yellow Hair.
Yellow Hair spoke quietly to her, saying that the grandfather feared that the leaves were not clean and would make White Bear sicker.
How could the leaves not be clean, Redbird wondered, when they came from the woods, outside any dwelling?
But she answered, "Must do what I know. If seem wrong to him, must do anyway, or can do nothing."
She heard Yellow Hair talking quietly to the grandfather while she settled herself on the floor beside the east side of the bed. She could not understand the words, but she heard acceptance in the old man's sigh.
Grief and fear that White Bear would die trembled inside her. Breathing deeply, she let the strength of those feelings enter into her spirit, urging her on to begin the journey she must make.
She must go into the other world and find her guide. She began the medicine woman's chant Sun Woman had taught her:
"Let me walk through the dark placeTo the light of the other world.
Oh my red spirit Bird, fly to me,
Sing to me from the other world.
"Let me walk the sunwise circle
Into the night that hides this man.
Oh my red spirit Bird, sing to me
And fly with me to the other world.
"Sing and fly,
Sing and fly,
[489] In the sunwise circle
To the other world,
Into the night."
She allowed the chant to settle into a simple, repetitious humming that slowly, with the help of the magic mushroom, drew her soul out of her body.
She stood up. The three people gathered at the foot of the bed did not see her standing. They were looking at her seated body. She looked down at White Bear. She saw through the leaves she had spread over him and right through his skin.
Five glowing streaks ran from his collarbone to his belly. The claw marks of his guardian.
She saw the hole in his chest, how it ran between his ribs. In the eight days he had been lying here, the wound had closed up. If he lived long enough, it would heal slowly. But there was water pooling in his chest, and the longer he lay there unconscious, the more the water would fill up his chest until he drowned.
His spirit must be coaxed back from the other world.
She began to walk the sunwise circle around White Bear's bed, from the east to the south, White Bear on her right. She passed Yellow Hair, White Bear's grandfather and the old servant. They stood like carved statues, unseeing. She walked around the west side of the bed. The head of the bed was against the north wall of the room, but she simply walked through the wall on one side of the bed, took a few steps along the north side of the cottage, then entered the wall again and continued her circle.
When she had completed her ninth circuit of the bed, she saw a cave mouth in the eastern wall of the bedroom. Unhesitatingly she walked into the black, circular opening.
She could not see where the light in the cave was coming from, but its curving walls were clearly visible to her. Here and there she passed paintings. She had seen them when she made her first journey to the other world, after she buried Floating Lily. She saw the Wolf, the Coyote, the Elk and the Buffalo. Near the floor of the cave she passed paintings of the Trout, the Pike, the Salmon and other fish. She looked up and saw the Owl, her father's guardian spirit.
The passage slanted downward and grew narrower until her head[490] brushed the cave roof and her shoulders touched the walls. Then she rounded a bend and bright blue light greeted her.
The cave opened out high on a hillside. She was looking down at tall yellow grass rolling in waves to distant hills.
A black cloud of crows flapped up out of the grass and flew over her head, laughing raucously.
Then she heard a marvelous singing.
She recognized it at once, the song of her guardian spirit, the Redbird. She saw a blood-colored flash, and then the Bird perched on a branch of blue spruce on the hillside. He had one bright eye cocked at her, ringed in black. His red crest stood up on his head as Wolf Paw's had in better days.
"White Bear is out there on the prairie," the Redbird spirit sang. "He is hunting his uncle."
"Can I heal him?" Redbird asked.
The dazzling Bird chirped a yes. "He is lost. He is wandering with his other self, the Bear spirit. He will not leave the spirit world until the Bear finds his uncle."
Redbird shivered. "What will White Bear's guardian do to his uncle?" She remembered both Owl Carver and Sun Woman saying that a shaman's power must never be used to harm any person.
"What must happen, must happen," the Bird sang. "If White Bear is to be free to go back to his body."
Redbird still felt uneasy. A shadow, like a sudden prairie storm, seemed to fall upon the landscape.
The streak of scarlet sailed out over the endless grass, and Redbird ran down the hill until the tassels were waving high over her head. She could see nothing on all sides of her but yellow spears of straw. Overhead was a patch of bright blue framed by tassels. In the center of the blue the Bird spirit hovered, wings a blur of red. She pushed her way through the stalks as the Bird led her.
On and on flew her spirit guide. Redbird did not tire either, as she would have in the ordinary world, trudging through the grass. She could not see the sun, but the light seemed never to change. And no matter how long she walked, the same bit of cloudless sky remained overhead.
Then White Bear stood before her.
He was wearing only a deerskin loincloth and moccasins. His long hair was bound with a beaded band. The scar on his cheek stood out white against his tan skin. She looked at his naked chest[491] and saw the five shining claw marks, and the small navel-like opening of the bullet wound.
She looked deep into his dark eyes. His love flowed out to her, and she bathed in it, as in a warm river. She knew his thoughts, how happy and surprised he was to see her.
I was lost out here. You have come for me.
He held out his arms, and she rushed into them. She felt his arms around her even though he was a spirit and she was a spirit. She laid her head against his scarred chest and listened to his beating heart. Would she ever again, back in the world of flesh, hold him like this?
A huge white-furred head crashed through the wall of grass around them, and enormous golden eyes looked at her. White Bear had described his guardian spirit to her, but she had never realized the Bear was so big. She looked at black lips that bared yellow teeth longer than her fingers, she stared down at claws that crushed the grass and sank into the prairie sod. She shivered at the thought of what might happen to White Bear's uncle if this spirit found him.
Perched on the head of the Bear was the tiny red spirit Bird.
We are looking for my father's brother, came White Bear's thought. He killed my mother and many brothers and sisters of yours and mine. He shot me.
The Bird sang to Redbird, "I know where the uncle is, but I can only lead the Bear to him if you say I must do it."
"I say you must, then," she said, just above a whisper. Whatever was needed to save White Bear's life, she had to do it. Whatever she must give up in return.
The Bird leaped into the air, his crest a bloody spearpoint. The Bear lifted a black nose the size of Redbird's fist, and the white body turned to follow, passing before her like a mountain of snow.
Hand in hand White Bear and Redbird followed. The Bird flew far ahead, and they could not see him, but the Bear trampled down the grass and left a path that was easy to follow.
Loving thoughts passed between White Bear and Redbird. If they always met like this, Redbird thought, they could know what was in each other's heart and their love would be deeper.
Then she remembered Wolf Paw and the new life that she alone knew was growing in her belly. The life that fulfilled Wolf Paw's wish to have a child with her.
She felt like a statue carved in ice. And at that very moment[492] White Bear let go of her hand. Somehow she knew that he was withdrawing from her, not because he had sensed her thought about Wolf Paw, but because he was troubled by some thought of his own. But instantly there was a space between them, and she no longer knew his mind.
He was still walking beside her. He walked straight ahead, not looking at her. She turned her head to the front and did the same.
She felt as if she had been pushed away, hard, and it hurt.
It seemed to her that they walked for days through the unchanging grass, but the sun remained fixed somewhere beyond the tasseled curtain.
Yellow and blue, yellow and blue, the whole world had been reduced to those colors. And to one sound, whispering grass.
The Bear stopped walking. Redbird and White Bear went around the huge animal, Redbird to the right and White Bear to the left.
She found herself on the edge of a great crack in the ground, so deep that its bottom lay in shadow. It zigzagged from somewhere, appearing out of grass, and continued toward somewhere, vanishing back into the prairie. A stream of bright blue water wound through the dark bottom of the ravine; water had cut this wound in the prairie. The Bird spirit swooped and darted in the crack like a living fire arrow.
"White Bear's uncle hides there," the Bird trilled.
She heard a growl beside her deep as distant thunder, and the ground seemed to tremble.
The Bird flew up, swooped to hover over the Bear's head, then dove down into the canyon. Down to an entrance into the earth framed by two upright wooden posts and a beam laid across them.
Beside the square of darkness were abandoned wooden carts and a hill of gray gravel that partly blocked the stream. This was a mine, Redbird understood, where the pale eyes dug metal out of the ground.
The Bear spirit put one paw in front of the other and, with grace and balance astonishing in a creature so huge, walked down a narrow path Redbird had not noticed before to the shadowy bottom of the ravine. Then it lumbered up to the mine mouth.
She opened her mouth to cry out in fear, but the Bear was gone.
There is a man in there.
And her spirit helper, the Redbird, had led that giant Bear to him. She had commanded it. She had not wanted to use her shaman's[493] powers to hurt anyone, not even one she hated as much as this uncle of White Bear's. White Bear had saved many lives and never killed anyone.
Even though she was a spirit and this great grassland was sunny, she felt cold, and her stomach knotted.
I will lose something because I did this. I only did it to bring White Bear back to his body. But I will suffer for it, even so.
And so will White Bear.
Only let White Bear live, she prayed to the powers that brought life into the world.
White Bear turned to her. It is done, said his spirit voice. My other self has found Raoul de Marion.
Now you can come with me, she answered him. Back to your body.
Back to my home, came his whisper, and she shuddered even as she turned, following the Bird spirit as he fluttered over her head. When he thought of his home, he meant the great lodge the pale eyes called Victoire.
Redbird opened her eyes in the room where White Bear lay, to find herself once again sitting on the floor beside the bed. The three people were looking at her, Yellow Hair with tears running down her cheeks, the grandfather's withered face paler than the fur of White Bear's guardian spirit, the old servant's bloodshot eyes wide.
She remembered that the sun had been low in the west when she came to this house. Sunlight still slanted through the paper-covered west window and fell on the layer of leaves that covered White Bear's bed.
But when she tried to move, pain struck her like knives driven into her knees and elbows, as if she had been sitting in the same position for days.
"His eyes!" Yellow Hair cried, pointing at White Bear. From the floor Redbird could not see what Yellow Hair was seeing. She forced her aching legs to lift her.
White Bear looked at Redbird, then at Yellow Hair. He smiled faintly.
She had done it. He was back in his body.
A spring of pure, sweet joy burst up inside her. A sob welled from her lips. She stumbled toward Yellow Hair and felt that she was going to fall. Yellow Hair's arms held her up.[494]
She saw his mouth open, heard him whisper to her, "You brought me back. I will always love you."
"And I will always love you," Redbird said. Her voice was a croak, as if she had not spoken in days.
She turned to Yellow Hair. "Now he will live."
Laughing and crying at once, Yellow Hair thanked Redbird again and again in their common language, calling on her God to bless Redbird.
Bless me? But what of that man in the mine?
"Give White Bear the tea of elm bark now. Later, little food, only little," Redbird said. "Easy-eat food. Hominy good. Later, soup with meat."
Yellow Hair eagerly agreed.
"Must sleep," said Redbird. She slurred her words, too worn out to speak clearly.
She could lie down in another room, Yellow Hair said, leading her away from the canopied bed where the weeping grandfather bent over White Bear, holding him by his shoulders.
"I gone many days?" Redbird asked.
Yellow Hair's deep blue eyes widened. She shook her head at the word "days." She assured Redbird that she had been silent only for an instant. She had been singing, then she closed her eyes, and a moment later when she opened them again, White Bear had opened his. Yellow Hair hugged her so hard it hurt her.
Just an instant? Every time Redbird went on a shaman's journey she learned something new.
Yellow Hair, her arm around Redbird's shoulders, led her to a bed in another room. Redbird had never lain on a pale eyes' bed, but she sat down on the edge and fell back. If she was not so tired she would not have been able to sleep in this bed. It was too soft. Yellow Hair lifted her legs onto the bed for her.
That was the last thing Redbird remembered.
After a day and a night of sleep, Redbird woke refreshed. And hungry. A cure for that was quickly produced for her; and now she was sitting on a pale eyes' chair at a pale eyes' table, devouring slices of fried pig meat and fluffy cakes brought to her by the old servant.
Seated across from her was a fat, smiling woman she had met[495] once before. This woman had tried to comfort her the day Floating Lily was killed. This, she knew, was White Bear's aunt.
Yellow Hair, tears streaming from her turquoise eyes, appeared in the doorway of the room where White Bear lay.
White Bear, she said, wanted Redbird to come to him.
Redbird's hunger vanished. She went rigid.
Yellow Hair weeps now, but I will weep forever after.
She heard the suffering in Yellow Hair's voice and knew that her heart was hurting because she believed Redbird was going to take White Bear away from her.
Redbird knew better. She had defiled her powers by using them to destroy White Bear's uncle, and now she must pay for it.
The lance twisted in her heart as she stood up at the table.
The fat woman stood up when Redbird did, came around the table and hugged her. She smelled of fresh-baked bread.
Redbird walked past Yellow Hair to enter the bedroom. White Bear was reclining with pillows behind his head in the bed where he had lain for so many days. His chest was bare except for the white bindings that protected his wound. The wrappings made his olive skin look darker, and above the cloth Redbird could see the start of the five shining scars that ran down his chest.
The leaves had been cleared away from the quilt that covered him. His bundle of talking papers telling the story of the first man and woman and how they lost their land of happiness was on the table beside his bed. Next to it lay the knife Star Arrow had given him when he was a small boy.
When he saw her his face glowed and he held out his arms to her. She rushed to him, and heard a cry of pain behind her. The door of the bedroom shut softly.
She threw herself across the bed, longing to hold White Bear. His arms around her were not as strong as she remembered them, but his embrace was firm.
"You came to me while my spirit wandered on the prairie," he said.
"The Redbird guided me to you."
"Before you came I saw many things."
"What things?"
He said, "The pale eyes will spread across the Great River and[496] even into the Great Desert. There will be no place left for our people."
"If we go far enough west—" she began.
"No," he said. "They will go as far as the western ocean. The Turtle warned me about this." He stroked her hair lightly, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
She had a heart-crushing feeling that she would never lie like this with him again.
"You are so much better today," she said.
"You, too, know the way of the shaman now. You healed me."
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. This was the moment when they must decide.
"I am the only shaman our people have now," she forced herself to say. "The few who are left need me. I must go back to them."
His eyes shut tight suddenly, as if his wound was paining him.
"Stay here with me," he said.
His words struck her and tore through her, as his uncle's bullet had torn through him.
"I could never stay here. When you are well enough, will you not come back to your people?"
He shook his head. "We cannot fight the pale eyes and we cannot run from them. They will destroy us. Unless we learn to live as the pale eyes do."
"That destroys us too."
"That saves us!" His nostrils flared and his dark eyes glowed. "I can use the power this wealth and this land gives me to fight for our people. And you can do it with me. And Eagle Feather. I will show the people how to make use of pale eyes' ways. I will share my land with them."
Her heart felt as if it were being ground between stones. This, she understood, was what she must suffer because she had used her shaman's powers to hurt another. She was going to lose White Bear. She had saved him from death. He was going to live, but not with her.
The claws of that giant Bear that was his other self seemed to stab into her chest and tear her in two. She could not live with this pain. She must surrender to White Bear.
Yes, I must stay with him. I cannot leave him. Eagle Feather needs him. We will be safe here, and comfortable, and at peace.[497]
She would send for Eagle Feather. The fat aunt and the grandfather would love them and care for them.
She tried to see herself living here with White Bear. For a moment the picture was clear in her mind. Then it dissolved in blackness as she realized that taking herself out of the Sauk tribe would be like pulling a medicine plant up by its roots without its consent.
She would die. It would be a slow death that would be worse than the pain she was suffering now.
And then another thought struck her.
Children!
Her heart felt heavy as a mountain.
She remembered how Owl Carver had said, after Eagle Feather smoked the peace pipe with the Winnebago, that he could be a greater shaman than any of them. But that would happen only if he was raised as a Sauk.
Floating Lily was dead. Redbird could not live with the people who had murdered her.
And—she touched her belly—this was not White Bear's child.
She began to cry aloud.
She sobbed till she thought her ribs would crack. Her throat burned; her voice rasped. She pressed her forehead against his chest. She heard him groan in pain, but he was hurting her more than she could ever hurt him.
"How can you ask me to stay where they killed Floating Lily? How can you stay here?"
"What would you have me do?"
A sudden thought occurred to her. "The pale eyes give gold for land. Take pale eyes gold for this land, and you can take the gold with you to the Ioway country and share it with our people."
"No, Redbird," he said sadly. "What could we do with gold, out there in Ioway? Sometimes the long knives have given our chiefs gold in return for land, yes. In no time the gold melted away. Gold by itself is like seed corn. Without the right ground to plant it in, it is soon used up and gone. The only way I can use the wealth my father Star Arrow left to me is to stay here and work with it."
She had stopped crying. This hurt too much for tears. Only when Floating Lily was killed had she felt more pain than this.[498]
For a moment she could not bring herself to say the words she had to say.
From somewhere she summoned the strength to speak.
"Then I must leave you."
Each word, she felt, was an arrow fired into him.
His arms tightened around her. "I beg you to stay."
Spirit of the Redbird, help me to do what I must.
It would hurt less if she acted at once. She pushed herself away from him. She stood up and crossed the room to the closed door.
"May you walk always in honor, White Bear."
"No, Redbird, no!" He was crying bitterly now, and he rolled over and buried his head in his pillows, beating the bed with his clenched fists.
She could not bear to leave him weeping like this, like a child she was abandoning. She would rather see him angry.
Then the spirit Bird, whom she had called on for help, sent her a message. She saw Wolf Paw, as he had looked when he was proud and undefeated, with the red crest on his head, a red blanket wrapped around him and black paint around his eyes.
Why did I never see it before?
Wolf Paw wore the markings of the Bird she was named after, the Bird that was her spirit guide. Neither she nor he had been aware of it. But it must mean that they were destined for each other, and that what had already happened between herself and Wolf Paw had to happen.
To live out her life with Wolf Paw and never to see White Bear again was like being told she would never again see a day with sunlight.
But it was as the spirit Bird had sung to her— What must happen, must happen.
She breathed deeply. She hated having to tell White Bear about Wolf Paw. If he had been willing to come with her, she would not have had to say anything. Wolf Paw would not have tried to hold her. And if she gave birth a moon or two too soon, White Bear would have forgiven her. But now she had to use Wolf Paw to hurt White Bear.
To hurt him so as to heal him.
But when I am gone from here, who will heal me? Must the shaman suffer wounds that can never be healed?[499]
Yes, if she has dealt such wounds.
"You would not want me anymore, White Bear," she said. "These past moons since you left us I have been Wolf Paw's woman."
He raised his tear-streaked face from the pillow and stared at her. "What are you saying?"
"Wolf Paw lost his wives and his children at the Bad Axe. He was like a dead man. I wanted to heal him, and I will heal him, by living with him."
His eyes widened. She could see anger darkening his cheeks.
He said, "After my father took me to live here, you waited six summers for me while Wolf Paw courted you. Could you not keep him off for a few moons?"
She held out her hands imploringly. "Before, when he was an honored warrior and had his family, he had no need of me. He wanted me as he wanted another feather to hang in his hair. But now he needs me. Without me he would be as good as dead. And he is the last brave in our band."
"I need you."
She put her hands over her belly. It was still flat, but she knew what was there.
"I am carrying Wolf Paw's child."
He pushed against the bed till he was sitting bolt upright, and he pounded his fist on his knee. He was still badly wounded. He could hurt himself. What if he tried to get out of bed, and tore the wound open?
But when he looked up at her his eyes were large and dark with sadness.
"I still love you, whatever you did with Wolf Paw. And I will love any baby you bear."
She felt his hands seize her heart, tearing it out of her chest, crushing it. She cried out with the pain and staggered backward.
She cried, "You offer me everything but the one thing I want—for you to come back to our people."
"What I do, I do for our people." His voice was so low that she could barely hear him. "One Sauk, at least, will take back land the pale eyes stole from us."
The world grew darker and darker for her. With every word he spoke she was losing him a little more.
She made the flat-handed "no" gesture. "The pale eyes here in this[500] land are too strong for the red people. And in you there is both pale eyes and red man, and the pale eyes is stronger than the red."
His shoulders slumped. She saw a dullness in his eyes that made her think of Wolf Paw as he had looked after the people of Victor had killed Floating Lily.
Have I hurt White Bear so badly that he will get sick again? Sudden fear rippled through her.
But then he lifted his head and looked at her, and there was strength in his gaunt face.
"I will always love you. And as long as this place is mine, there will be a home here for you, for Eagle Feather, for any child of yours. For any Sauk. When you go back, tell them that."
Grief crushed her as she gazed at the man she loved, knowing that they were parting forever.
He reached out to her, and she went back to lie beside him on the bed. It felt so good to be held by him, and it hurt so much to know that this was the last time they would ever lie heart against heart, she thought she would scream at the agony of it.
Good-bye, Floating Lily, my daughter. I may never be able to come back here again. I hope you have begun your journey West. But if your spirit lingers here, know that your father is close by.
Redbird stood a moment looking down at the mound of earth, now covered with leaves, the strip of red blanket tied to the willow wand now faded. She rocked back and forth in the pale eyes shoes made of heavy leather that Yellow Hair had given her. She wailed softly in her sorrow for Floating Lily.
Then she turned to Yellow Hair, who stood under a nearby maple.
"You take White Bear here and show him."
Yellow Hair nodded.
They went back to Yellow Hair's carriage. The buggy was laden with food and blankets, and Redbird carried with her a heavy bag of gold coins given her by White Bear's grandfather. Used wisely, the gold would buy blankets and food, rifles and ammunition from the traders to help the Sauk get through the winter. Now they would not have to winter over at Fort Armstrong, but could cross over at once to join the rest of the tribe in Ioway.
The wound in Redbird's heart ached constantly, and she sat bent[501] forward on the buggy seat, her hands gripping her knees. As they rattled down the road to Fort Armstrong she felt some small relief at leaving the place where she had lost so much. She tried to tell herself that she was on the way to a new life.
Yellow Hair said she didn't understand why White Bear was not with them. She wanted to know if he would follow Redbird when he got better.
She understands, but she does not dare believe he is going to stay with her. She thinks it is too much to hope for.
Redbird said, "He still your husband, Yellow Hair. You want him?"
Yellow Hair's lips quivered as she asked, would Redbird not come back to be with White Bear?
Redbird gritted her teeth. It hurt to have to explain to Yellow Hair.
Redbird made the flat-hand motion. "He not follow me. I never come back here."
Now Yellow Hair's eyes were glowing like turquoise set in silver. But she put a comforting hand on Redbird's arm.
She wanted to know why. How could Redbird part from White Bear and he from her? Did it not hurt too much?
"Yes, hurt much," said Redbird softly, watching the rutted dirt road pass under the wheels of the buggy.
But Yellow Hair pressed her. How could White Bear tear himself away from the Sauk?
"Pale eyes family now his people."
But his son—how could he give up his son?
Redbird struggled to find words and gestures to explain this. "Maybe some day White Bear come for Eagle Feather, like Star Arrow once come for White Bear." She remembered how White Bear had wept when Sun Woman told him he must go to live with the pale eyes. "That day, I not say Eagle Feather must go or must not go. Eagle Feather do what he want."
Yellow Hair shook her head, her braids lashing. She repeated over and over again an English word Redbird understood, but it asked a question she could never answer.
"Why?"
Again Redbird wrestled with the English words. "Land of his father and grandfather holds him. He not want to leave."
But what about the uncle who nearly killed him?[502]
"That uncle no more trouble," said Redbird.
And because of that, I must lose him.
Then when would Redbird see White Bear again? Yellow Hair's question buried itself in Redbird's heart like a steel arrowhead.
"Never!" she screamed.
Yellow Hair shrank back, her eyes wide with shock. Redbird sighed and let her body droop.
They drove on in silence. Redbird heard small sounds beside her that told her Yellow Hair was weeping.
Redbird reached over and took Yellow Hair's hand.
"Make him happy."
Yellow Hair uttered a sob and turned her head away.
But Redbird was no longer crying. Dry-eyed, she stared ahead at the road south. Her sorrow was too deep for tears.
[503]