t the sky.

Nancy would share this land with him. She would love him, and they would
raise Woodrow together and have children of their own. He loved Nancy,
though there were places in him that only Redbird could touch. Those
places would be sealed off now. Hand in hand Nancy and he would walk
their path together.

The World was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

But he would never stop missing Redbird and Eagle Feather.

And he would never stop wishing he could live out his life as a Sauk.
Inwardly he would always be a Sauk. The Bear spirit would always be with
him to guide him.

_I failed the Sauk when they needed me. I warned them not to go to war,
but I could not make them listen. They need a shaman who will make them
listen._

He thought of the many, more than a thousand, who had died following
Black Hawk, and a sudden, crushing grief struck him to his knees.

"Hu-hu-hu-u-u-u-u," he wailed, stretching his arms wide and lifting his
face up to look at long, faint streaks of cloud that stretched across
the sky. "Whu-whu-whu-u-u-u-u."

He tore open his coat and his shirt. Kneeling, he could see only a patch
of blue directly overhead, framed by the tassels of the prairie grass
that rose up all around him. Staring up into the blue he wailed for the
dead for a long time.

He felt something wet running down his chest. He felt the cold grip of
fear on his heart. When he had struck his breast before, had he reopened
the hole Raoul's bullet made?

He looked down. Beads of dark red were pushing their way through the
five claw scars. Further down his chest they ran together as rivulets.
Five streams of blood trickled down his stomach.

The sight of flowing blood lifted his heart. It was a sign that the Bear
spirit was still with him. He bent forward and put out his hands to grip
the land at the roots of the prairie grass. His fingers dug into the
ashes of corn stalks and the roots of grass. A bright red spot appeared
on the ground between his hands and knees, and then another.

_My blood drips into the soil. I give myself to this land._

"I hold this land for the Sauk nation," he said. First he said it in
Sauk, then he repeated it again in English.

He pushed himself to his feet and drew from its sheath at his waist the
knife Star Arrow had left him long ago.