get Yellow Hair and Woodrow away from the tribe
before there is another battle."

There had been one great battle with the long knives halfway through
their trek, on the south shore of the Ouisconsin River. Many had died on
both sides, but Black Hawk had managed to get most of his people away
after nightfall. Right now White Bear could almost hear the huge army of
long knives crashing through the forests behind them.

But Nancy shook her head violently. "I feel safer with you." Her eyes
glistened with tears.

Ever since Redbird had encouraged Nancy to seek his bed, White Bear had
feared that when the time came for their parting, it would hurt her
badly.

And him as well. In the moon just past he and Nancy had joined bodies
and hearts many times. Now it seared his throat to speak aloud his
decision that Nancy must leave the British Band.

He sat down on a fallen tree trunk and reached out to her. Nancy came
over and took his hands and sat beside him.

"With the band going in two different directions, this is your best
chance to get away. You and I have loved each other, but you are still a
white woman, and my people murdered your father. Why should you share
our fate? And what about Woodrow? If you and he go together, you have a
better chance of reaching safety."

She bent over, her shoulders shaking with sobs. "If you're going to die,
I want to die with you."

A moon ago, he thought, she had desperately wanted to escape from the
British Band. Now her own heart was holding her captive.

Eve's words to Adam as they left Paradise rose unbidden in his mind:
_With thee to go, is to stay here; without thee here to stay, is to go
hence unwilling._

"But no one wants to die," he said gently. "For you to stay now when you
can escape would be madness."

It was a madness he felt himself. There was a part of him that wanted to
keep her with him, to let her stay, however all this might end. He had
to force himself to keep to his plan to help her get away.

Eagle Feather and Woodrow came from the woods along the south bank of
the Bad Axe River, arms loaded with boughs for the wickiup that now they
would not bother to build.

White Bear squatted down before Woodrow and grasped his shoulders.

"Tonight I am going to help you and Miss Nancy to get away from our band
and back to the white people." He would be sorry to lose the boy.

Eagle Feather, standing nearby, said nothing. But his face, full of woe,
told White Bea