light faded from the sky.

Raoul stood before White Bear with his thumbs hooked into the white
leather belt that cinched his blue uniform coat. His huge knife--the one
that had cut White Bear's face years ago--hung at his left side, a
pistol at his right. He grinned at White Bear.

"Well. I was hoping to meet you. I'd have liked it better on the field
of battle, but here you are, in my camp. What were you doing, spying on
us?"

White Bear sighed. Something crumbled inside him.

"Do you know this long knife?" Little Crow said in Sauk.

"Yes, he is my father's brother." A glimmer of hope appeared in Little
Crow's eyes, but vanished when White Bear added, "And he is my worst
enemy."

"Talk English around me!" Raoul shouted. "No Indian jabber."

"Black Hawk sent us," White Bear said. "He doesn't want to fight. We've
come to make peace."

"The hell with that!" one of Raoul's men yelled. "We come out to fight
Injuns."

"Well, hold on now!" cried another. "If they come peaceable, that means
we can all go home and nobody hurt."

Raoul turned on the man. "I'll be the one to decide why they're here."

White Bear realized that the men with Raoul were barely under his
control. There was no hope of talking to Raoul, but there might be
others in this crowd, like the man who had just spoken, who would
listen. He must keep trying.

Raising his voice White Bear said, "Chief Black Hawk knows you
militiamen outnumber his warriors. He doesn't want to fight you. All he
wants is to be allowed to go back down the Rock River and cross the
Mississippi. He will never come back."

"Where'd that black-faced redskin learn to speak English so good?" one
of the militiamen said.

"He's a renegade," said Raoul. "A part-white mongrel. He ought to be
hanged as a traitor. Don't believe a word he says."

"They did come with a white flag," one of the men said.

"White flag, hell!" Raoul shouted. "They're trying to put us off guard."
He swept a pointing finger across a group of men that included
brown-bearded Armand Perrault. Among them White Bear recognized Levi
Pope and Otto Wegner, the thick-mustached Prussian who worked at the
trading post. He remembered Wegner had not wanted to kill him when Raoul
offered a reward for his death, and he felt a little tremor of hope.

"Get on your horses," Raoul told his men. "Go out across the creek and
look. If you don't find Indians skulking about in those woods, I'll be
mighty surprised."

As R