a few Indians, would he? Being willing to stay and fight
while his comrade got away, though--that was worthy of respect.

"Damn! I don't like leaving you, Otto."

"You have a wife and children."

"So do you."

"But you have a chance to get away. I don't. What good is it, two of us
dead? Go!"

White Bear heard a sigh. "All right. Here's all my powder and shot. I
ain't planning to stop to use them. Remember, keep your head low so you
can see them above the horizon. If they ain't wearing hats, you can
figger they're Injuns."

"Please, Levi, my wife and my children, tell how I died."

That was who the other man was--Levi Pope, another of Raoul's men.

"I'll tell them you was brave. Make sure they don't catch you alive,
Otto. You know what Injuns do to white people. Use your last bullet on
yourself."

White Bear felt his cheeks burn with shame. For himself, the idea of
torturing a prisoner was unthinkable, and he did not believe Black Hawk
would allow it. But he could not be sure. Many men and women of the
British Band, he supposed, would enjoy making one of the dreaded long
knives suffer.

White Bear heard Pope scurry off through the brush while Wegner, gasping
with pain, settled himself in position at the base of the tree.

The boom of Wegner's rifle below him so startled White Bear that he
almost fell from his perch. He heard an agonized cry from out on the
prairie, saw a brave fall from a horse.

_He killed one of my brothers. I can't let this happen._

He heard quick, metallic sounds of clicking and scraping below him, the
sounds of a man loading his rifle.

_In a moment another Sauk warrior will fall._

The racking grief White Bear had felt since the deaths of Little Crow
and Three Horses changed all at once into a whirlwind of rage. He
remembered Little Crow, bound and helpless, his head blown apart. He
pictured Three Horses' body, torn by bullets. In his whole life up to
now he had never killed a man, but surely now, after what he had
suffered and seen, he had to kill.

_Kill him how? He is armed and I am not._

But Wegner was in dire pain. White Bear could jump out of the tree on
the Prussian's back and bring his foot down hard on the knee with the
arrow in it. That should hurt Wegner enough to loosen his grip on his
rifle, so that White Bear could get it away from him and shoot him with
it or smash his skull.

More Sauk braves were riding closer, and Wegner must be taking aim in
the darkness