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 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 we