s and boards pushed the boat through the
water. Standing on the floor of wood planks at the front end of the
boat, Redbird tried to understand how fire in the boat's belly could
make wheels turn. She felt the monstrous thing tremble under her as it
swam across the river.

About a hundred women and children with a few men were crowded at the
front of the boat, watching the Ioway shore of the Great River come
closer. By unspoken agreement they kept their backs turned to the land
that had once been so good to them, the land they had forever lost.

_The happy land that was lost_, Redbird thought.

At the memory of White Bear, grief stabbed her, and she had to rest
against the railing of the boat. She felt an aching hollow as if she had
been gutted like a butchered deer.

In their midst rose a little mountain of boxes, barrels, sacks and
bales, the supplies they had bought with White Bear's grandfather's
gold. But they had no horses, and when they got to the Ioway shore they
would have to carry these goods on their backs, a journey of probably
four days across the strip of land by the river that He Who Moves
Alertly had surrendered to the long knives. Somewhere beyond that land
they would find the Sauk and Fox who had been wise enough not to follow
Black Hawk. She hoped it would not start to snow before they reached the
camps of their people.

Wolf Paw said, "I have heard that this is the very boat that killed so
many of our people at the Bad Axe."

This boat had killed his wives and his children, then, thought Redbird.
She rested her hand on his arm.

"See there," he said, pointing to holes and black marks on the wood at
the very front end. "A thunder gun was set there. It fired at our people
and tore them to pieces. Like the one that killed so many of our
warriors at the pale eyes town." Through his worn buckskin shirt he
touched the silver coin that still hung around his neck on a leather
thong. Redbird remembered the day White Bear had dug the coin out of
Wolf Paw's body, claiming he had changed a lead ball into a coin.

She put her hand on her aching heart. Would things ever stop reminding
her of White Bear?

She stared down at the gray-green water rushing by the side of the boat,
and it made her dizzy. A canoe could never travel this fast, even a big
one paddled by many men. And a canoe could never go straight across the
river, without being pushed downstream by the current, as this
smoke-belching boat was d