eld her hands wide apart. "And Sun
Woman called down the wrath of Earthmaker upon him, and with the same
knife he cut her throat."

Redbird fell to her knees sobbing. "Oh, no more! No more!" Water Flows
Fast and Wild Grape knelt with her and held her, and they wept together.

Redbird cried until Floating Lily began to wail. Redbird gave her
daughter the breast and a warmth spread from her baby's sucking lips,
blunting the edge of grief and calming her a little.

Wild Grape said, "I have seen White Bear."

Redbird's body went rigid. Floating Lily pulled her mouth away from
Redbird's breast and started to cry again.

"White Bear? Alive?"

Wild Grape nodded. "When the long knives were killing us at the Bad Axe,
he came. He was the long knife war chief's prisoner. He spoke for the
long knife chief, told us not to be afraid. But then he saw Sun Woman
lying on the ground with her throat cut. He fell down beside her and
screamed and tore at his face. The long knives had to hold him. I
thought they might kill him, or he might kill himself. They dragged him
away. I think he is a prisoner right there in that fort."

_Or perhaps he is dead_, Redbird thought bitterly. _Like everyone else._

In miserable silence she made a little tent out of her blanket in the
field by the fort, using sticks Eagle Feather found for her. She and her
children huddled under the blanket, the sorrow in her belly like a wolf
inside her trying to gnaw and claw its way out.

The thought that White Bear might be on the other side of those walls of
white-painted limestone was more than she could stand. She could not
move or speak. Long knives stood around the edges of the field, watching
the remnant of the British Band with their cold pale eyes. Redbird
almost wished one of them would shoot her and end her pain. But then
what would her children do? She did not want Eagle Feather and Floating
Lily to die.

Later that day Owl Carver hobbled over to her, followed by a thin-lipped
long knife with a rifle.

"Good-bye, my daughter." He looked very old and tired. It was a miracle
that he had lived through this war. She noticed that he held in his hand
the owl-decorated medicine bag.

"Where are you going, Father?"

"The Winnebago Prophet, Black Hawk and I must go into the fort to meet
the pale eyes war chiefs. I guess they will shoot us or hang us. I
cannot see the future anymore. Wave tells me that the rest of you are
to walk south to the Rock River