_But I am also the daughter of a shaman. I can teach her what we
believe._

"Jesus not here," Redbird pointed out. "We children of Earthmaker."

But also, Yellow Hair explained, by pale eyes custom a woman who slept
with another woman's husband was a bad woman.

"White Bear _is_ your husband," Redbird said. "My father shaman. He
marry you and White Bear." Surely that was more important than what a
lot of pale eyes who were not even here to see might think. Among the
Sauk, many would call Yellow Hair a bad woman for _not_ sleeping with
White Bear.

"We Sauk people. What you do with my Sauk man is good."

Yellow Hair sighed and wiped her tears with her fingers. Maybe she would
go to White Bear in the night, and maybe not. She spread her hands
helplessly. She did not know what to do.

Redbird saw that she could tell Yellow Hair no more. The pale eyes would
have to make up her own mind.

Yellow Hair gave Redbird a sad smile and thanked her for her kindness.
And after Redbird had put on her dress and her moccasins, Yellow Hair
gave her a little kiss on the cheek.

With a wooden comb Redbird had given her, Yellow Hair combed out her
long blond locks and began to braid them again.

They rejoined Eagle Feather and Woodrow and spent the rest of the
afternoon searching for food, returning to camp when the clouds overhead
turned purple and the sun made a brief appearance, blazing like a
prairie fire on the flat horizon of the marshland.

Redbird bit her lip anxiously as they walked back to the camp. If Yellow
Hair decided not to go to bed with White Bear, she might think,
according to her pale eyes custom, that Redbird was a bad woman for
saying she should. But what if Yellow Hair went to bed with White Bear
and he came to love Yellow Hair more than he did Redbird? She had
thought that could not happen, but now that she had spoken out, she was
not so sure.

That night Redbird curled up on her solitary pallet of blankets laid
over a mat of reeds on one side of the wickiup. Yellow Hair lay in her
sleeping place, and the boys were in the one they shared. White Bear was
still visiting and treating ill people. Many people, especially the very
old and the very young, were falling ill in the Trembling Lands. There
had been many deaths since they crossed the Great River. Bit by bit the
band was losing the wisdom of the old and the promise of the young.

White Bear came in long after the two women and the boys had settled