"Earthmaker, show him the way.Lead him over the bridge of stars and sunbeams,Along the westward Trail of Souls.Take his soul into your heart."
"Earthmaker, show him the way.Lead him over the bridge of stars and sunbeams,Along the westward Trail of Souls.Take his soul into your heart."
After she had finished the song, Sun Woman wiped the tears from her face with her blunt fingers. She reached out and stroked his cheeks as well. He had not realized that he was crying.
But grieving for Pierre reminded him to reach into his medicine bag.
"I have a gift for you, Mother." He took out the flat silver case with its velvet neck cord, opened it and showed her the pair of spectacles Marchette had brought to him from Victoire. "Do you know these?"
"Your father wore circles of glass like these. To see the marks on the talking paper."
"Yes. These are the same ones." He closed the case and pressed it into her hand. "Now you have something that was close to Star Arrow."
She said, "He was with me for five summers only, but in spirit, ever since. Now I will feel even closer to him." She slipped the ribbon over her head and dropped the case down the front of her doeskin dress.
He saw the tracks of more tears on her smooth brown cheeks in the fading light. This time she did not wipe them away.
"Tell me all that has happened to you," she said.
As White Bear talked, he deliberately made his voice loud enough to carry, so that Redbird, in the wickiup, might hear.
When he was through telling his story, he felt weighed down by guilt.
"I fled, Mother, even though I promised my father I would care for the land. And smoked tobacco with him to seal the promise. Should I have stayed?"
She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "You kept your promise as far as you were able. That is all the calumet requires. Your father would not want you to die fighting for that land. It is better that you come back here and be a Sauk again."
White Bear looked down, unable to meet Sun Woman's eyes. Feeling an ache deep in the center of his body, remembering the great stone and log house, the blizzard of blossoms in the orchards, the fields of green corn and golden wheat, the herds that darkened the hillsides, he wanted to clutch his chest where it felt as if it had been torn open. He could not so easily forget Victoire.
When I was at Victoire I yearned to go back to my people. Now I am with my people and I miss Victoire. Will my heart never be at peace?
Nancy had wanted him so desperately before they parted; Redbird would not even let him see her.
White Bear saw that once again women had started to gather nearby, among them the round-faced Water Flows Fast. And now White Bear saw another familiar face he had not seen earlier, Redbird's mother, Wind Bends Grass. She glowered at him as she always had, her fists on her broad hips.
O Earthmaker! Why would Redbird not come out and speak to him?
A dozen cawing crows flew over the camp. Laughing at him.
He heard a movement behind him, a rustling of the buffalo-hide curtain. He dared not look around.
A voice at his back said, "Go away, White Bear!"
A cool, sweet flow poured from his heart like a mountain spring at the sound of Redbird's voice. He unfolded his legs, stiff from hours of sitting, and pushed himself to his feet. He turned.
Weakness washed over him; he thought he might fall to the ground. Redbird stood before him, her cheeks flushed, her slanting eyes sparkling with anger. Her face was thinner than he remembered, her lips fuller. She still wore a fringe of her hair over her forehead.
Standing silent and open-mouthed, he felt he must look utterly foolish.
"Go away," Redbird said again. "We do not want you here."
"To see you is a sunrise in my heart, Redbird."
"To see you is a foul day in my stomach!"
Reeling back from her anger, White Bear saw a little boy standing in the doorway behind her.
He was bare-chested, brown-skinned. He wore a loincloth of red flannel and fringed buckskin leggings. He was shifting uncomfortably from one moccasined foot to the other and clutching at himself under the loincloth.
Now White Bear understood why Redbird had finally come out. She and the boy must have been inside the wickiup all the time he was sitting out here, and the boy was about to burst.
It would have been funny, except that a much more important discovery struck White Bear.
He looked closer at the boy's urgent eyes. Blue eyes.
White Bear's own eyes were brown, but Pierre's were blue. Could eye color be passed in the blood from grandfather to grandson? Around his eyes, in the narrow shape of his head, his long chin coming to a sharp point, White Bear could see that this boy was a de Marion.
This is our son! Redbird's and mine!
Joy blazed up in his body like a fire that warms but does not hurt.
He asked, "What is his name, Redbird?"
She glanced over her shoulder at the boy. "What are you standing there for? You have to go. Go!" The boy ran off toward the woods. White Bear watched him. He ran well, even though he was very young and most uncomfortable.
White Bear wanted to reach out and take Redbird into his arms.
She turned back to him, her fists clenched at her sides, her nostrils flaring in fury.
"Nowyou want to know what his name is. Now, five winters after he was born."
He turned to Sun Woman. "Does she have a husband?"
Sun Woman raised her eyebrows. "There were many braves who wished to marry her. Wolf Paw was most insistent. He offered Owl Carver ten horses. Little Stabbing Chief of the Fox sought her. There were others, besides."
Wolf Paw had wanted to marry her. That must have been themeaning of that strange encounter outside the camp. Wolf Paw probably wanted to kill him.
"Please, Sun Woman, do not talk to this man about me," Redbird said. "You are his mother, and a mother to me. But you cannot make peace between us."
"True," said Sun Woman, picking up her basket of herbs and bark. "Only you can do that, daughter."
She turned to White Bear. "If Redbird does not welcome you into this wickiup I share with her and Eagle Feather, I cannot invite you inside."
With that Sun Woman turned abruptly and trudged off toward the river.
Eagle Feather!
Redbird threw an exasperated look after Sun Woman.
Redbird's anger made White Bear feel as if one of the long knives' cannonballs had crushed his chest. Perhaps if he could put his arms around her she would remember how she had loved him. He took a step toward her, reaching for her.
She stepped back quickly, bent down and picked up a rock. "Go away. Now!"
How graceful all her movements are.
The rock was gray and somewhat larger than her fist. It had sharp, irregular edges and looked as if it had been used to chip arrowheads.
He said, "You would not be this angry at me if you did not want me back. Why did you refuse every man who asked for you?"
Her face twisted with rage, she threw the rock.
For an instant he was blinded as it hit his cheek, stunning him, and his head snapped back.
He felt a pounding pain in the back of his skull as his vision cleared. The ache from being hit with a rifle butt had come back.
He heard gasps of dismay from some of the watching women, laughter from others.
Wind Bends Grass called out scornfully, "I am ashamed to call this fool my daughter. I cast her out of my lodge because she would accept no suitors. At last comes the one who ruined her for all the others, and she drives him away with a rock. I think we should throw rocks at her."
The crowd's laughter was louder, although White Bear saw that Wind Bends Grass did not mean to be funny.
His left cheekbone throbbed, the cheek Raoul's knife had scarred, and he felt a trickle of blood. But he would not let himself lift his hand to wipe it away.
Redbird's hand went up to her own face, as if the rock had hit her. Her slanting eyes widened with a look of horror.
She whirled and ducked through her dark doorway.
"Go in there after her, White Bear!" one of the women called.
He would not do that. He would not go into her wickiup until she invited him. And in spite of the heaviness in his heart, in spite of the ache in his cheekbone and the pounding in his head, he believed that sooner or later invite him she would.
He turned his back on the empty doorway and sat down again.
The blue-eyed, brown-skinned boy was standing before him. A golden glow filled White Bear's chest.
"You are hurt," said the boy.
"It is nothing, Eagle Feather. A man must endure pain without complaint."
"Did my mother do that to you?"
"She wanted to punish me for staying away from you and her for so long. My name is White Bear."
"I know what your name is."
When he heard that, he was sure that he would win her back.
The boy darted around him.
Resting his hands on his knees, White Bear closed his eyes and let his mind dwell on a vast white-furred shape. Owl Carver had said that when a man wished to send his spirit on a journey in the other world, he need only think of his other self.
He saw the huge golden eyes, the massive, long-muzzled head, the towering body.
Soon he and the Bear spirit were walking together toward the sun.
Redbird did not understand herself. She hated White Bear, but when she saw blood running down his face, she had hated herself. She sat in darkness, biting her lips to keep from screaming.
She crept to the doorway and pushed the curtain open a crack. She could see him sitting again with his back to her, his shoulders broad in his green pale eyes' coat.
She drew back into the wickiup and saw the small steel knife sheused to cut up food gleaming near the embers of her fire. She picked it up and held its edge against her feverish cheek.
The last light of day fell on her as the doorway curtain rose. Startled, she almost cut herself. She whirled to see Eagle Feather staring at her. She threw the knife down on the straw-covered floor.
Eagle Feather gave her a questioning look but said nothing.
She drew him down beside her and started telling him the story of why the leaves change colors and fall to the ground in autumn.
It was dark outside when Sun Woman came back from the river, where she had been washing the plants she had gathered. Redbird was afraid Sun Woman would ask her to forgive White Bear, but the older woman said nothing.
They passed what seemed like an ordinary evening, talking and telling stories and singing. But Redbird could not forget that figure sitting like a tree stump just beyond the buffalo-hide curtain.
Much later she went out, and by the light from tonight's full Moon of Falling Leaves, looked into White Bear's face. It was motionless, as if carved from wood.
He did not seem to see her. He must be on a spirit journey. Hot with rage, she kicked at his knee. What right had he to go on a spirit journey leaving his body to haunt her wickiup?
The impact of her moccasined foot shook him slightly, but it was like kicking a bundle of pelts.
Redbird's breath came out in a cloud, lit by the full moon. She gathered up some twigs, brought them into the wickiup and added them to the fire. Sun Woman went out carrying a blanket. Redbird saw her draping it over her son's shoulders.
He does not need that, Redbird thought, remembering how White Bear had come back, seemingly frozen, from his vision quest in the Moon of Ice.
Tightly wrapped in her own blankets with Eagle Feather curled up in the shelter of her body, Redbird lay awake, thinking that she had never in her life slept with a man. That was White Bear's fault, and she ground her teeth in the dark as she thought of the wrongs he had done her.
He left me in the Moon of First Buds, and he returns in the Moon of Falling Leaves—six summers later.
One afternoon they had been lovers. And then he had gone to live with the pale eyes. For nine moons she had carried his son andthen given birth to him. He had not been here to give the baby a birth name. Owl Carver, the baby's grandfather, had to do that, embarrassed at the necessity, complaining that the people were laughing at their family. She knew Star Arrow had required that no messages pass between White Bear and the tribe. But if White Bear really loved her, could he not have broken that rule—even if he had smoked the calumet with Star Arrow—at least once? For six summers White Bear had been as silent, as absent, as if he were dead.
Even the dead sometimes send a sign.
The next day the sky was cloudy, and the air warmer than last night. All morning long women walked past Redbird's wickiup, looking curiously at the man who sat there motionless. Like Redbird herself, they had never before seen a man while his spirit had gone to walk the bridge of stars. When men went on spirit journeys they always retired to the forest or to caves.
In the afternoon He Who Sits in Grease, a Fox brave, came to Redbird as she and Sun Woman sat before their doorway plaiting baskets, a short distance from White Bear. The brave was carrying a stout bustard with feathers striped brown, black and white. He hunkered down facing her and laid the bird before her.
His thick lips worked nervously. "This is for White Bear," he said. "When he wakes up. It is the fattest of the three that I killed this morning. Tell him that He Who Sits in Grease gives him this gift. I want him to ask Earthmaker to make the animals come to me more willingly when I hunt them."
Before Redbird could protest, the brave stood up and backed away, his eyes timidly averted from the figure outside the doorway.
He thinks White Bear is holy!The thought made her more angry at White Bear than ever. She wanted to kick him again, but women were watching from a distance, and she knew they would make fun of her.
"Getup," she said softly to White Bear. "Goaway," she said, grinding her teeth.
She wished Owl Carver would come back from visiting the other camps to put a stop to White Bear's torturing her like this.
But he might force me to accept White Bear as my man.
Amazingly, she felt a lift in her heart at this thought. She herself could never forgive White Bear, but if Owl Carver, her father andthe shaman of the British Band, ordered her to, the decision would be made for her.
Then, at least, this torment would end.
Sun Woman silently picked up the bustard, sat down and began plucking the feathers, piling them in a basket to use for adornments and bedding.
To escape from being rubbed raw by White Bear's presence, Redbird went out into the woods along the Ioway River, as Sun Woman had done yesterday, to gather herbs. The medicine plants were at their most powerful now, because they had been gaining strength all summer long.
Late in the day the sky darkened rapidly. The purple-gray clouds seemed to hang so low that she could reach up and touch them. She heard the first drops pattering on the branches above her. As the rain started to fall faster, it drummed on her head and shoulders. Sighing at having to give up this comforting work, she put a lid on her basket, stood up and started back for the camp.
Her doeskin shirt and skirt kept the rain off her body, but her hair was soaked and her face was streaming by the time she got back to the wickiup. She would build up the fire and dry herself off. Its heat would feel so good. She hoped Eagle Feather and Sun Woman were already inside.
She stopped before the silent, sitting figure outside the wickiup. The brown blanket was pulled up over his head. Sun Woman must have done that. The blanket was sodden with rain, and he looked like a rock growing out of the ground.
The beating of rain filled her ears.
She squatted down and looked into his face. Water ran in rivulets down from the blanket into his half-closed eyes. He did not even blink.
She shivered. The cold rain was coming down so hard she could not see most of the camp. A lump blocked her throat.
"Come inside," she said. She had to raise her voice to hear it over the drumming of the rain.
White Bear neither spoke nor moved.
"Come in. It is raining. It is cold. You will die out here." She realized she was screaming at him.
"Oh!" she cried helplessly.
She sat on the ground, looking into the rain-slick, light-complexionedface with the strong nose and the long jaw that she had loved long ago, the face she had thought about so many times and had seen so often in dreams. A black crust of blood had dried over the place where her rock had gashed his cheek. On the same cheek a raised white line ran from just under his eye to the corner of his mouth.
To try to wake a man on a spirit journey could be dangerous for him.
But her hands seemed to have a will of their own. She had to touch him. She reached out, clutching his shoulders through the sopping blanket, heedless of the rain pouring down her own face, running under the collar of her doeskin shirt down her back and chest. She shook him.
"Get up! Come in out of the rain!"
His body felt lifeless when she shook him. But did she see a flicker in his eyes?
"Please, White Bear, please!"
He blinked.
She threw her arms around him.
"Oh, White Bear! I do want you back."
She crawled closer to him, pushing her body against his rigid form.
She felt pressure against her back, pulling her closer to him. His hand.
Then his other hand.
She felt his chest rising and falling against hers.
Strong arms were holding her.
She looked up into his face, and color had come into the pale cheeks. The brown eyes were looking down at her, warm with love. She forgot the rain and the cold, and nestled in his arms.
She saw tears spill out of his eyes, mingling with the rain on his face. She, too, was crying. She had been crying ever since she sat down with him. She held him tight.
Looking past him, she saw in the doorway of the wickiup the small form of Eagle Feather, staring at them.
Owl Carver held the watch up by its chain; his smile of approval showed he'd lost a tooth in front since White Bear left with Star Arrow.
"A handsome gift. I thank you for it. But what do you mean by saying it tells us the time? Do we notknowthe time?"
White Bear scoured his brain for a way to explain.
Sitting close to the old shaman, White Bear saw that age had bent him a bit more and carved deeper lines in his brown face. Besides the megis-shell necklace White Bear remembered, Owl Carver wore a new necklace made of tiny beads forming a red, yellow, blue and white floral design, from which hung a sunburst pendant.
They sat facing each other in front of the shaman's wickiup in the center of the British Band's winter camp. In the fenced-off corral dozens of horses stamped their hooves and blew steamy breath into the gray sky. The hunters had returned with braces of pheasant and geese, with deer slung from poles, with buffalo and elk carcasses mounted on travois dragging behind their horses. White Bear felt his nostrils expand to take in the smells of meats being roasted and stewed. In a few days all the chiefs of the Sauk and Fox, along with representatives of the Winnebago, Potawatomi and Kickapoo, would be gathering here at Black Hawk's invitation.
Even sooner, though, a ceremony would take place that meant much more to White Bear. Tomorrow night he and Redbird would at last be married. And he had come to Redbird's father today to give him the only present he had to offer.
White Bear pointed to the dial of the watch. "Father of my bride,if you want to know when the sun will rise tomorrow, you look at where these two arrows are at sunrise today. When they are in the same place again, it will be half the time till the next sunrise. When they are in the same place after that, it will be sunrise the next day." He faltered. To himself, his explanation sounded at once useless and ridiculously complicated. "... Almost. In truth, the sun does not rise at the same time every day," he finished weakly.
Owl Carver stared at him as if he had uttered nonsense. "The sun rises at sunrise."
He remembered how Frank Hopkins always reset his clock at sunset. "Yes, but in summer the days are long and in winter the days are short. But the arrows on this watch cannot keep pace with the sun."
Owl Carver shook his head. "Many things the pale eyes make are useful, but I do not understand the use of this thing."
What a struggle!
White Bear had a sudden inspiration. "It is true, this watch cannot tell you as much as the sun does, but it can tell you one thing."
"What is that?" Owl Carver frowned, weighing the watch in his hand.
"It can tell you when a pale eyes will do something."
Owl Carver grunted. "Well, it is pretty to look at. And it moves and makes sounds."
White Bear snapped open the back of the case, where the key was kept, and showed Owl Carver how to wind the watch, impressing on him the need to handle it very gently. Then the shaman went into his wickiup to put the watch in his medicine bundle.
White Bear sighed. He missed talking with Elysée, missed the library at Victoire, from which he'd managed to take only one book.
Well, this world of sky and trees and rivers and animals is a library too. Owl Carver knows how to read in it, and he has taught me.
The old shaman came out with a long-stemmed pipe. He filled and lit it with a twig from the fire in his wickiup and smoked thoughtfully for a while before speaking. White Bear, sensing that Owl Carver had something important to say to him, waited quietly.
"We need to know more about the pale eyes than we can learn from that time-teller," Owl Carver said. "We need to know what they will do if we cross the Great River to Saukenuk next spring."
White Bear felt his heartbeat quicken.
"Is that what Black Hawk plans?"
"If he can get enough Sauk and Fox warriors and their families to follow him. At the council all the chiefs will hear Black Hawk. The Winnebago Prophet, Flying Cloud, is coming to the council from his town up the Rock River. He will add his voice to Black Hawk's. But the chiefs will also hear the snake's voice of He Who Moves Alertly." He spat contemptuously.
White Bear knew well why Owl Carver despised He Who Moves Alertly. During what the pale eyes called the War of 1812, while Black Hawk and his warriors were away fighting on the British side, the civil chiefs had appointed He Who Moves Alertly a war chief in case the Americans should attack the Sauk towns on the Great River. Not only had the new war chief never fought, he spoke much of the need to make peace with the Americans. He had about as many followers among the Sauk and Fox as Black Hawk did, people who believed that the tribes would fare best if they did whatever the pale eyes demanded. After the war He Who Moves Alertly was quick to make himself known to the Americans as a friend. In turn the long knives' chiefs showered him with gifts and honors, even taking him and his wives to Washington City to visit the Great Father, James Monroe. He had, in fact, been in the East when Star Arrow had come to Saukenuk to take White Bear to Victoire.
"Why does He Who Moves Alertly say we should not go back to Saukenuk?" White Bear asked cautiously. He did not want to anger Owl Carver by saying so, but he himself was sure that crossing the Great River could only lead to calamity.
Owl Carver said, "He Who Moves Alertly has always been a friend to the long knives, and they treat him as if he was a great chief and give presents to him. Last summer, when we went to plant corn at Saukenuk, he went among Black Hawk's followers and persuaded many of them to flee back across the river." The old shaman smiled at White Bear. "But now we have you, who have also been East and know the ways of the pale eyes. You will be able to answer him."
But all I can say is that he speaks the truth.
The words trembled on his lips:The long knives are more powerful than you can imagine. We cannot stand against them.
And yet he did not want to speak. He feared that Owl Carver would think him a traitor, as he did He Who Moves Alertly. And, in a way, he felt as Owl Carver and Black Hawk did. He becameangry every time he thought about how the tribe had been driven from its homeland.
Owl Carver puffed on his pipe. "You will answer He Who Moves Alertly not just as one who has been among the pale eyes. The day after tomorrow, you must go to the cave of the ancestors and seek another vision."
White Bear's heart sank. "But I am to marry Redbird tomorrow night. Would you have me leave her the next day to seek a vision?"
Owl Carver spread his hands. "The council starts in three days." He grinned, showing the space where the tooth had been. "And it is not as if you and Redbird have never known the joy of the marriage bed."
White Bear felt his face grow hot, and he lowered his eyes. Since his return they had tried to crowd into a few nights all the pleasures they had missed over the last six years.
"You will not be gone from her for long," Owl Carver said.
"But why do you not prophesy?" White Bear asked. "You have been the shaman since long before I was born."
Owl Carver nodded sadly. "I have tried. It seems the spirits have nothing to say to me."
Maybe because you do not want to hear what they say.
As he thought about seeking a vision, White Bear began to feel more hopeful. He might not have to displease Owl Carver and Black Hawk by speaking of the strength of the long knives and sounding like He Who Moves Alertly. Instead, the Turtle, in that sacred cave looking over the river, would tell him what he should say. It was sure to be wiser counsel than anything he could think of himself.
He remembered his boyhood dream of being a prophet for the Sauk. Now he would be able to tell them where their future lay.
But then he remembered words Owl Carver himself had once spoken to him. They had stayed in his memory because they had made him so uneasy.
Many times the people do not want to listen to the shaman. The truer his words, the less they hear him.
The next night White Bear and Redbird sat facing each other on opposite sides of the wedding fire before Owl Carver's wickiup. White Bear's fringed shirt and trousers of soft doeskin, worked until it was nearly white, were a gift from a brave whose wife Sun Woman had helped with a difficult childbirth.
Redbird's dress was of white doeskin as well. Around her neckhung the necklace of the small, striped megis shells that had belonged to Sun Woman.
White Bear looked beyond the fire. Hundreds of men and women were standing in the shadows watching the ceremony, those of Redbird's Eagle Clan on her side of the fire, the Thunder Clan, kin of Sun Woman and himself, on this side. The daughter of the shaman was marrying the son of a pale eyes father and a medicine woman, and White Bear had returned from a long journey among the pale eyes and was a shaman himself. It was a wedding that people wanted to see.
Wind Bends Grass, standing behind Redbird, spoke of her daughter's character. Even though she had spent all of her life scolding her, tonight she extolled her to the skies. She was beautiful, loving, skilled, obedient. Then Wind Bends Grass instructed Redbird in her wifely duties, making one small change from the usual speech. Instead of telling her to give White Bear sons, she told her to give White Bearmoresons.
Strangely, at this moment, White Bear found himself thinking of Nancy Hale. Was she still longing for him somewhere across the Great River?
If Raoul had not driven him out of Victoire, his promise to Pierre might have kept him there. He might never have come back here, not found out till much later that he had a son, never have been united with Redbird as he was tonight. Truly this was coming home. He felt so at peace, he could almost be grateful to Raoul.
White Bear was especially honored to have as his wedding sponsor the Thunder Clan's most prominent member—Black Hawk himself.
Black Hawk addressed Redbird and her relatives in his harsh, sombre voice. "I have known this young man since he was born. His father, Star Arrow, was a pale eyes, but he was a French pale eyes, and the French were always the best friends of the Sauk and Fox, even better than the British. White Bear has been trained in the way of the shaman, and he has lived among the pale eyes and learned their secrets as well."
What have I learned that my people can really use?White Bear wondered ruefully.All I can tell them is that they cannot win a war with the long knives.
"You must cherish Redbird and protect her," Black Hawk saidto White Bear. "You must give her the benefit of your wisdom. Because you yourself are a shaman, your responsibility to her is all the greater."
Then Owl Carver stood before the fire, between the bride and the groom, and raised his arms. "O Earthmaker, bless this man and this woman. May they walk with honor on the path they follow as one."
Redbird sang a wedding song to White Bear. Her voice rose clear and pure into the night air, and it seemed to White Bear that even the crackling fire quieted itself to listen.
"I will build a lodge for you,I will grind the corn for you.I have no home but where you are;The trail you walk is also mine."
"I will build a lodge for you,I will grind the corn for you.I have no home but where you are;The trail you walk is also mine."
Then White Bear got up and went around the fire to Redbird. He handed Redbird a bouquet of pink roses that Sun Woman had carefully collected, dried and preserved. The orange glow of the fire danced in her black eyes, and White Bear felt an answering love blaze up within himself.
He was so much taller than Redbird that he had to bend his knees deeply so that Redbird could throw her braids over his shoulders, and he heard some chuckles and giggles from the watching people. But as her braids fell lightly on him he thought that he had never in his life been happier than at this moment.
Together they walked sunwise around the marriage fire, keeping it on their right: and on the east, south, west and north sides White Bear said loudly, "Redbird is now my wife!"
Eyes gleamed at him out of the darkness when he came back to the east side. Standing to the side and just a little behind Black Hawk was Wolf Paw. White Bear could not resist feeling a little thrill of triumph at the realization that he had won Redbird despite the best efforts of this mighty warrior, this chief's son, this man who owned many horses.
Not because I deserve it, he reminded himself.Only because Redbird would have it so.
And now, because she would have it so, we will be together forever.
Owl Carver bade them depart with the good wishes of the tribe,and White Bear and Redbird walked to the new wickiup they had built on the edge of the camp. Eagle Feather would live there with them, but tonight Eagle Feather would stay with his grandmother, Sun Woman.
Tonight they would have it to themselves.
Next day, in mid-afternoon, White Bear stood again in the center of the camp wearing the same black bearskin he had worn six years ago. Owl Carver did a shuffling sunwise dance around him, shaking a gourd rattle and chanting:
"Go forth and dance with the spirits,Become a spirit yourself.Bring back a gift for the people,Bring back the words of the spirits."
"Go forth and dance with the spirits,Become a spirit yourself.Bring back a gift for the people,Bring back the words of the spirits."
Black Hawk, standing in the circle that had gathered to watch, stared at him with an intensity that frightened him. Sun Woman and Redbird stood with smiles of quiet pride. This time Redbird need not fear that he would freeze to death on his spirit journey.
It would be painful to be away from Redbird, he thought, as he looked into her eyes, saying a silent good-bye. Now, after a brief feast of love, they must go hungry again. But only for a night or two.
White Bear turned his back on the declining sun. The ceremonial bearskin swung heavily on his head and shoulders as he trotted out of the camp toward the trail that ran along the river's edge. As he entered the woods, another pair of eyes, hostile, suspicious, caught his. Wolf Paw again, standing with folded arms.
Wolf Paw still loves Redbird. And hates me.
He felt much stronger than he had when he arrived at the camp. Alternately walking and running, he moved quickly and surely down the Ioway River, and he remembered the way to the bluff of the sacred cave. Several times along the way he met Sauk and Fox warriors. They recognized the sacred bearskin, with the bear's skull covering his own as a partial mask, and stepped aside with eyes averted as he passed them.
The sun had sunk behind him by the time he had come to the end of the almost-imperceptible trail to the top of the bluff. Hestood there a moment, looking out across the clear blue sheet of water that was the Great River. He stared at the Illinois shore, the rich, flat bottomland at the river's edge, the wooded bluffs, much like the one he was standing on, forming a wall, beyond which rolled the autumn-tan, endless prairie.
A beautiful and fertile land, from which his people—and he himself—had been exiled. Would his vision show them a way back?
He scrambled down the face of the bluff to the cave and swung into the entrance.
In the shadows he could barely make out Owl Carver's wooden owl standing over the row of skulls with their stone necklaces; or the white bear statue guarding the unknown depths of the cave.
He settled himself facing the entrance and chewed some scraps of sacred mushroom Owl Carver had given him. Nothing to do now but sit and wait. Surely no watch made by pale eyes could measure the passage of this kind of time.
He heard a scraping and a grumbling from deep in the cave. He felt no fear now, only a warmth, as at the approach of an old friend. The White Bear, he now understood, was himself in a spirit form.
The huge snuffling Bear was at his side, and confidently he rose to step out of the cave, the Bear accompanying him with its rolling walk. He stepped on clouds, violet and gold and white and soft as snow under his feet.
The pathway through the sky turned northward. Through breaks in the clouds he looked down and caught glimpses of the river, a glistening blue snake. Ahead he could see clouds piling up on clouds, shot through with pale, blended rainbow colors, like the ornaments carved from shells gathered along the eastern sea.
Then he was inside the cloud tower, peering beyond the Tree of Life at the Turtle on his crystal perch. Drop by drop from the Turtle's heart flowed the waters of the Great River.
"What would you ask me, White Bear?" said the ancient voice like distant thunder.
"Is my father with you?"
"Your father walks the Trail of Souls far in the West," said the Turtle. "He will come back to earth soon, and he will be a great teacher of the people."
"Owl Carver and Black Hawk have sent me to ask, should the British Band go back to Saukenuk?"
The wrinkled voice said, "Behold."
The clouds changed to the walls of a room big enough to hold a Sauk camp, where curtained windows alternated with mirrors in gilded frames. Under each mirror was a fireplace. Three glittering chandeliers hung from the high ceiling. In the center of a vast flower-patterned carpet stood Black Hawk.
To White Bear's astonishment, Black Hawk was wearing the blue uniform of a long knife, with ropes of gold on his arms and fringes of gold on his sleeves and shoulders. But he carried no weapons. His face as usual was gloomy.
There were other men in the room, but White Bear could only clearly see one. A pale eyes.
He was exceedingly tall and thin; his hair was white, and his bright blue eyes stared piercingly at Black Hawk. He wore a black cutaway jacket and tight black trousers with shiny black leather shoes; and a white stock, a strip of silk, wound around his throat.
White Bear had seen this man before and recognized him at once.
He was known to red men as Sharp Knife—Andrew Jackson, President of the United States.
The man Raoul had called "a good old Indian killer."
Black Hawk was talking, and Sharp Knife was listening. But White Bear could not hear what Black Hawk was saying.
The room seemed to change. Black Hawk and Sharp Knife disappeared, and where Sharp Knife had been standing there was now another tall, thin man. He also wore black, but he had a black ribbon at his neck. A black beard covered his chin, and the expression on his sun-browned face was one of inconsolable grief. His sadness reminded White Bear of Black Hawk's.
All at once White Bear was on a broad field covered with short grass, divided by stone walls and wooden fences, with clumps of trees growing here and there. Terror clutched his belly as he saw coming at him thousands of long knives in blue uniforms with rifles and bayonets. He looked about frantically for a place to hide, but there was none. He was caught in the open.
But before the men could reach him they began to die.
Blood spurted from their blue tunics. They stopped running, staggered and fell to the ground, dropping their rifles. Faces vanished in bursts of red vapor. Arms and legs and heads flew through the air. Flashes of flame and smoke and flying shards of iron tore bodies to bits.
But no matter how many of them died, more and more of the white men in their blue jackets and trousers came marching over the horizon holding their bayonets before them. There was no end to them.
White Bear felt as if his heart might stop. He put his hands over his eyes.
And when he looked again he was back in the cloudy hall of the Turtle.
"What have you shown me?" he asked.
"I have shown you the future of both the red people and the white people on this island between two oceans," the Turtle rumbled. "It is given to you to know two futures because two streams of blood flow in you. You belong to both, and to neither."
It was painful to hear this. The Turtle was uttering thoughts that had occurred to White Bear many times; he had always tried to put them out of his mind. Could he not forget his years among the pale eyes and become entirely a Sauk?
Wisps of cloud drifted around the Turtle's scaly body. White Bear heard the drip-drip of water from the Turtle's heart into the blue-black, fish-crowded pool that fed the Great River. The sound was like the ringing of a hammer on an anvil, reverberating through the vast space in which they stood.
The Turtle spoke again. "Earthmaker has willed that the pale eyes shall fill this world of ours from the eastern sea to the western sea."
"Why?" cried White Bear in anguish.
"Earthmaker bestows evil as well as good on his children. Sickness and hunger and death come from Earthmaker, just as strong bodies, and good things to eat, and love."
"Will all Earthmaker's red children die?"
"Great numbers will die, and those who remain will be driven to unkind lands."
"What of the Sauk?" White Bear asked, trembling.
"The many who follow Black Hawk across the Great River will be few when they cross back."
Oh, no!
This was what he had come here to learn, but hearing it was like being cast down from this lodge in the clouds to crash to the earth.
"Then the British Band should not go back to Saukenuk?"
"You cannot stop them. For you as for all of my people, this is to be a time of testing and pain. I charge you to see that those who hurt my children do not gain from it. You will be the guardian of the land that has been placed in your keeping."
"But I have already lost that land," White Bear cried.
As if he had not heard White Bear, the Turtle said, "Know that long after all who live now have walked the Trail of Souls, my children will be many again, and let the knowing lift up your heart." The Turtle touched his own claws to the deep crevice in his under-shell from which the water perpetually dripped.
White Bear knew it was time to go.
When he awoke in his body he would grieve. He saw nothing but heavy, unending sorrow ahead for him and for those he loved.
Black Hawk slowly stood up. A mantle of buffalo fur draped over his shoulders and a crown of red and black feathers woven into his scalplock made him look even bigger and taller than he was.
White Bear sat close to the fire for its heat. The day was cold and overcast, and the damp air around him and the chill ground under him made him shiver in the white doeskin shirt he had worn for his wedding. Because Owl Carver had asked him, on the band's behalf, to seek a vision, he could now consider himself fully a shaman. He had costumed himself accordingly—three red streaks painted across his forehead, three more on each cheekbone, silver disks hanging from his ears, a three-strand necklace of megis shells around his neck. Silver clasps on his arms and silver bracelets around his wrists. All these things had been supplied by Owl Carver or traded for by Sun Woman. If he had to speak he might at least hope his words would be greeted with respect.
Redbird pressed against him, and her nearness warmed him. Flames danced over the pile of blackened logs in the center of the British Band's winter camp. Light gray smoke rose from the fire, the same color as the blanket of cloud that hid the afternoon sun.
Fear twisted its knife in White Bear's stomach. He did not want to tell this assembly what he knew. Most of them would hate him. The chiefs and braves and warriors of the British Band, Black Hawk and all the rest, would never forgive him. Owl Carver would feel betrayed.
Let them settle this without me.
But he knew it was a forlorn hope. When Owl Carver had asked him what he learned in his vision, he had answered evasively. And now Owl Carver was counting on him.
Around the fire sat the council of seven chiefs who governed the Sauk and Fox tribes, including Jumping Fish, Broth and Little Stabbing Chief. Beside them sat He Who Moves Alertly, the friend of the long knives, the war chief who had never made war. Prominent braves like Wolf Paw sat with them. The older and the younger shamans of the British Band sat there, Owl Carver and White Bear.
And there was another shaman at the fire as well, Flying Cloud, better known as the Winnebago Prophet. He was a broad man with a wolfskin thrown over his shoulders. Unlike nearly all the men of the tribes that lived along the Great River, he had a thick black mustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth. A silver nose ring rested on the mustache. He was head man of a Winnebago village called Prophet's Town, a day's journey up the Rock River from Saukenuk.
In the quiet that greeted Black Hawk, White Bear heard, over the crackle of the fire, the rattle of the war chief's bone bracelets as he held out his hand.
"I only want to go back to the land that belongs to me and dwell there and raise corn there. I will not be cheated. I will not be driven out."
Black Hawk did not have a pleasing speaking voice; it was hoarse and grating. But the assembly listened intently, because for over twenty summers there had been no greater warrior among the Sauk and Fox.
"With this hand I have killed seventy and three of the long knives. Every Sauk and Fox brave, every Winnebago and Potawatomi and Kickapoo, can do as much. Yes, we know the long knives outnumber us. But we can show them that if they want to steal Saukenuk from us, they will have to trade too many of their young men's lives for it.
"Last summer the long knives surrounded us and drove us out of Saukenuk. But that was because we were not ready to fight, and some of us were notwillingto fight."
Black Hawk looked pointedly at He Who Moves Alertly, who sat expressionless, as if unaware of Black Hawk's disapproving gaze. His face was round and ruddy, like the full moon when it first appearsabove the horizon. He wore his glossy black hair long under an impressive buffalo headdress with gleaming horns, and had wrapped himself in a buffalo-hide robe painted with sunbursts.
Black Hawk said, "Next summer, it will be different. I have had messages from the Winnebago and the Potawatomi promising to help us if the long knives attack us. The Chippewa, up in the north, say they want to help us."
A burning log split in two with a noise like a gunshot, and the halves fell deeper into the fire with a shower of sparks.
Looking over the heads of those seated near him, White Bear saw columns of smoke from a dozen or more other campfires rising into the late afternoon sky. Around those campfires, feasting and gossiping, sat most of the people of the British Band and their guests from other Sauk and Fox bands, as well as some Winnebago, Potawatomi and Kickapoo braves. What was being decided here now would mean life or death to all who chose to follow these leaders.
Black Hawk said, "The pale eyes say we sold our land. I say that land cannot be sold. Earthmaker gives land to those who need it to live on, to grow food on, to hunt on, as he gives us air and water.
"The land has been good to us. It has given us game and fish, fruit and berries. It has let us grow our squash, beans, pumpkins and corn on it, and bury our mothers and fathers in it. The pale eyes are destroying the land, cutting down the trees, fencing off the prairie and plowing it up. The land is the mother of us all. When a man's mother is dishonored, he must fight. Earthmaker will give us this victory, because he is our father and he loves us."
With a chill that did not come from the air, White Bear remembered the words of the Turtle:Earthmaker bestows evil as well as good on his children.
White Bear prayed his own prayer to Earthmaker: that he not be asked to speak to this gathering.
Black Hawk lifted his rasping voice in a shout. "I, Black Hawk, raise the war whoop!"
He threw out his chest, lifted his head, and let loose an ululating cry that seemed to pierce the very clouds that hung over the camp. Wolf Paw, Iron Knife, Little Crow, Three Horses and a dozen other Sauk and Fox braves leaped up, waving rifles, tomahawks, bows and arrows, scalping knives, screaming their battle cries. Owl Carver beat furiously on a drum painted with a picture of the Hawk spirit.
The Winnebago Prophet lunged to his feet and joined the outcry, his gestures so wild and his shouts so loud that he almost seemed to be competing with Black Hawk.
Redbird spoke softly, close by White Bear's ear. "They are drunk on war."
The outcry died down. Black Hawk crossed his arms over his chest to show that he had finished speaking. The Winnebago Prophet remained standing and raised his arms.
"I have come to promise Black Hawk and his braves that if he goes to Saukenuk and the long knives attack him, the warriors of Prophet's Town will help them to fight back."
The chiefs and braves seated around the fire greeted this with much stamping and clapping. White Bear glanced at He Who Moves Alertly, who sat a quarter of the way around the circle from him. The face under the buffalo headdress was as still as if carved from wood.
Flying Cloud said, "I have sent messages to all the tribes that live near the Great River—Winnebago, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Piankeshaw, Chippewa. When Black Hawk raises the tomahawk, they will raise the tomahawk too. And I have had a message from our allies of old, the British in Canada, who say the Americans have done us a great wrong, and we should not give up any more land to them. If American long knives attack us, the British long knives will come to our aid. With ships, with big guns, with rifles, powder and shot and food for us, with hundreds of red-coat soldiers. Now is the best of times to tell the long knives they cannot push us any further. Let all who are truly men take to the trail of war with Black Hawk!"
White Bear sensed deadly falsehood in the words of the Winnebago Prophet. When White Bear was in New York City he had heard many times that the enmity between Americans and British was a thing of the past. White Bear did not believe that the British up there in Canada had any intention of getting into a war between whites and Indians in Illinois. But how could he prove that what Flying Cloud said was untrue?
With a cry of "Ei! Ei!" Wolf Paw shook his rifle over his head. He snapped it to his shoulder and fired it with a deafening boom and a red flash and a big cloud of white smoke.
Someday he may wish he had not wasted that powder.
As White Bear and Redbird sat silently, braves all around themwere up and shrieking, waving rifles and tomahawks, thrusting out arms and legs in the movements of a war dance. Owl Carver and some of the chiefs slapped the palms of their hands against the taut, painted deerskin of their drumheads.
A few other men did not join the shouts of approval, among them the round-faced He Who Moves Alertly.
White Bear sat with his fists clenched in his lap, wondering whether anyone would notice that the youngest of the three shamans among them was not shouting for war. He felt Redbird's hand grip his arm tightly, helping him to feel stronger.
Only to Redbird had White Bear told all of his vision. She shared his fear that if the British Band followed Black Hawk to war they would be destroyed, and she had insisted on sitting with him at the council fire. White Bear knew it was not the custom for a wife to sit with her husband at a council, but she had argued and pleaded until he had given in and brought her with him.
Her presence beside him both comforted him and made him uneasy. Owl Carver, when he came to the fire, had stared at his daughter, frowned and looked away. Wolf Paw had eyed them and smiled scornfully.
As the tumult inspired by the Winnebago Prophet quieted down, He Who Moves Alertly looked around the circle of chiefs and braves, his eyes pausing at anyone who had not joined the outcry for war. His gaze met White Bear's for an instant, and he nodded almost imperceptibly. White Bear had an eerie feeling that He Who Moves Alertly knew what was in his mind.
The chief who favored the long knives stood up.
A sullen muttering spread through the men around the council fire. Most of those who agreed with He Who Moves Alertly had stayed away from this council. White Bear felt admiration for anyone who could look so confident, standing before a crowd in which so many were against him.
"War is loud, and peace is quiet," He Who Moves Alertly began. "But peace keeps us alive. The real way to defeat the long knives is to stay alive."
His voice was deep and pleasant, and he smiled as if every man there were his friend.
"When is it right for a brave to go to war? When he must avenge himself on those who have done wrong to him. Black Hawk sayswe should fight the pale eyes because they have stolen land from us. But I have seen the papers with the marks of our chiefs on them. Seven different times Sauk and Fox chiefs have made their marks on papers agreeing to give up all claim to the land east of the Great River. The long knives say our chiefs were paid in gold for the land."
As his benign gaze swept the assembly, he said, "It is right for a brave to go to war when he is strong enough to make war. He does not go because he wants to be killed, because he wants to leave his women and children unprotected. He knows he may die, but he does not look for death."
He Who Moves Alertly was no longer smiling. He touched his fingertips to his eyes, then raised his arms to the sky. "May Earthmaker strike me blind if I do not speak the truth.
"We are not strong enough to make war on the long knives. I have traveled in the lands of the Americans, all the way to the eastern sea. I have seen so many long knives that I could not count them all."
White Bear felt more and more uneasy as he listened. Black Hawk and all the other braves of the British Band looked on He Who Moves Alertly as an enemy. But White Bear knew that the chief in the buffalo headdress was speaking the truth. Perhaps not about the treaties, but surely about the vast numbers of long knives.
White Bear saw again the thousands of blue-uniformed soldiers he had seen marching in New York on the Fourth of July a year ago, and the other thousands he had seen in his vision, fighting and dying but still advancing on some strange battlefield.
He Who Moves Alertly said, "Owl Carver and Black Hawk say the Potawatomi and Winnebago will aid the British Band, and other tribes from farther away. I say none of them will help. This quarrel over Saukenuk is not their quarrel, and they have made their own peace with the long knives.
"The Winnebago Prophet says the British will send us guns and ammunition, even men. I say this is foolish talk. You call yourselves the British Band, and think the British are your great friends. Many summers ago, yes, the British were at war with the Americans and got Sauk and Fox and many other tribes to help them. But when that war was over, our people gained nothing and lost much. Many tribes had to give up land to pay for fighting on the British side.Now the British do not care about us. The British pale eyes and the American pale eyes are at peace.
"I say to those who will listen to me—come with me. I will lead you deep into this Ioway country, where there will be no pale eyes farmers to bother us. Their Great Father will show his gratitude to those who do not fight them. He will give us money and food and help us find good land. We will live!
"For those who follow Black Hawk, I grieve. They will not live."
He Who Moves Alertly's closing words rang. He crossed his hands over his chest and sat down amidst a silence touched by the crackling of the fire.
White Bear heard in his mind the rumbling voice:The many who follow Black Hawk across the Great River will be few when they cross back.He trembled inwardly.
The clouds overhead had broken up, and the rays of the sun, about to set, fell upon many faces full of anger and contempt. But White Bear also saw lips pursed in thought, eyes lowered.
White Bear could find little wrong with what He Who Moves Alertly said, but he did not like the way it pointed. To admit that the long knives could do whatever they wanted to the Sauk, to hope like little children that if they obeyed the Great Father in Washington City he would be kind to the Sauk and give gifts of food, clothing and shelter—was that not merely a slower kind of death?
He Who Moves Alertly did not seem to see that if the Sauk let the whites push them westward, there would be no end to it. Eventually the pale eyes would take all the land there was.
To drive a people from their home is to make them prey to hunger, disease, enemy tribes. It is to destroy them, even if not a single shot is fired.
If we must die, would it not be better to avenge ourselves on the pale eyes for their cruelty to us? Is it not better to die with pride than to just give up our good hunting and farming lands and go meekly into the desert?
He felt Redbird press against him. He had a sudden, strong feeling that they should follow He Who Moves Alertly farther into the Ioway country. That way they would surely live. How could he, White Bear, demand or permit that his wife and son endure the sufferings and the danger those who followed Black Hawk would face?
But at the thought of deserting the British Band he felt an unbearableanguish. One winter long ago he had found a trap that had been sprung. In the trap was the rear paw and part of the leg of a raccoon, ending in a bloody mass. The animal had chewed its own leg off to escape. He had seen a trail of blood leading into the woods. The raccoon had limped off to die, but to die free.
What He Who Moves Alertly offered was a trap. What Black Hawk offered was freedom, but with it the prospect of death.
He and Redbird could pack their belongings and leave after this council was over. White Bear was sure other families would be doing that.
But could he turn his back on Black Hawk, who had just spoken for him at his marriage, on Owl Carver, the father of his wife? On Sun Woman, who he was sure would stay with the British Band? On the people who had been part of his life as far back as he could remember?
Staying meant facing the long knives' guns. It meant starvation. It meant pain. Those who whooped for Black Hawk tonight did not see that. Or maybe they did see it but still embraced it. To see it clearly and accept it, not only for himself but for Redbird and Eagle Feather, hurt like biting off one of his own limbs. But he would not abandon his people. He had run away from his last fight over land. He would not run away from this one.
Owl Carver, holding up his owl-headed medicine stick with its red feathers, stood before the council fire. "He Who Moves Alertly thinks he is the only one who knows the Americans. But one of our own British Band has been to the big towns in the East. And he is a shaman to whom the Turtle has given special visions. I ask White Bear to tell us what he has seen."
At the sound of his name, White Bear felt a coldness spread upward from the base of his spine. He saw the look of earnest invitation on Owl Carver's face, he saw Black Hawk's expectancy. He would as soon spit at these two men he respected so much as disappoint them deeply. But now he must.
Redbird's fingers dug into his arm. Her slanting eyes were wide.
"Speak truly," she whispered.
Slowly he stood up. It hurt to pull his arm from Redbird's grip, as if he was stripping his own skin from his arm. His eyes momentarily met those of He Who Moves Alertly, who stared at him intently.
As Owl Carver had, he raised the medicine stick he had cut forhimself after his first vision, decorated with a single string of red and white beads. He held it up uncertainly. He hoped his shaman's adornments, the paint, the earrings, necklaces and bracelets, would impress them.
He was prepared in another way, as well. He had never spoken before the leaders of his band; but at St. George's School each boy was required to give a short speech to the members of his class once a week and a longer one before the whole school twice a year. Those speeches had to be written and memorized, and now White Bear must speak as the spirit moved him. But he knew how to stand, how to project his voice, how to measure his words. In his heart he thanked Mr. Winans for teaching him all that.
"The big American towns in the East are bigger than the biggest towns ever built by any red men," he began. "In those villages the pale eyes swarm like bees in a honey tree.
"Every summer the Americans have a great feast to celebrate the day they told the Great Father of the British that they would no longer be his children. One summer in a big town called New York I saw long knives walk in long lines to honor this big day. Each man had a new rifle. Eight at a time walked side by side, and it would take half a day to go from one end of their line to the other. Then came more long knives on horseback, as many as a herd of buffalo. And after them horses pulled big thunder guns on wheels that shoot iron balls the size of a man's head.
"The long knives were led by their Great Father, Sharp Knife, who was visiting New York. He is very thin, with a cruel face and white hair. He sits straight on his horse and wears a long knife at his belt.
"After all those long knives had walked through the town they came to an open field, where they fired off all their thunder guns. The noise made the earth tremble."
Allowing his legs and hands to shake also, as they demanded to do, White Bear paused and let his gaze travel over the faces in the big circle around the fire.
The red glow of the setting sun fell on the faintly smiling He Who Moves Alertly. Black Hawk's back was to the sun, his face in shadow. Redbird looked up at White Bear, eyes bright and full of love. Others might hate what he said, but he was glad that Redbird heard how well and truly he spoke.
Angry words hissed and sputtered like the burning logs. White Bear saw Wolf Paw poke Little Crow, one of the leading braves, who was seated beside him, and speak to him with muted voice but urgent gestures. The brave got up and left the fire.
Owl Carver, seated beside Black Hawk, lifted his head. White Bear saw bewilderment on his teacher's face, and shrank within himself at the sight.
Owl Carver said, "White Bear is both pale eyes and Sauk. So far he speaks to us only with the pale eyes half of his head. Let White Bear tell us what vision the Turtle has given him."
White Bear felt a small surge of hope. What he had seen as a traveler among the pale eyes might not discourage the British Band from making war, but his vision might move them more.
"The Turtle showed me Black Hawk talking to Sharp Knife," he said, pointing to the war chief, who lifted his feather-crowned head at the sound of his name. "They were in the house of the Great Father of the Americans in the village called Washington City."
He heard amazed murmurings all around him. Encouraged, he went on.
"Then I saw great numbers of long knives running toward me over a field. They were shooting and being shot at. I saw many of them hit, and they fell and died, but they kept coming on. I saw a tall, thin man with a beard, a sad man whom I have never seen before, mourning over the fallen long knives."
The sun had gone down. Now he could see the dark listening faces only by the yellow glow of the fire.
Owl Carver said, "White Bear's vision brings us hope. He sees our own Black Hawk meeting with Sharp Knife in Sharp Knife's house. Black Hawk will go to Sharp Knife's very house to lay down peace terms to the Americans."
That is not what it means!White Bear thought, shocked.
Owl Carver went on. "White Bear saw long knives dying. White Bear's vision foretells victory for the British Band."
From all around the campfire he heard grunts of approval at Owl Carver's words. White Bear's heart felt lost and sinking, like a stone thrown into the Great River.
"Listen!" he cried. "Owl Carver is my father in spirit, but he did not see this vision or feel its sadness. I did. I stood there before the Turtle, and I know that what he showed me was a warning. If theBritish Band takes to the path of war, Black Hawk will be Sharp Knife's prisoner."
Shouts of protest erupted around him. He saw Little Crow come back to the fire with a bundle of bright red and blue cloth in his hands.
White Bear spoke on over the outcry. "Listen! When I saw the long knives dying, more and more of them came forward, and their numbers were endless. They were not fighting our warriors. They were fighting other long knives. The vision said that there would be many, many long knives in summers and winters to come, so many that they would fight each other."
Owl Carver said in a voice just loud enough for White Bear to hear, "Say no more. You do great harm."
"I must say more. You have asked me to speak. Now I must tell what I know. You must listen. The Turtle also spoke to me. He said, 'The many who follow Black Hawk across the Great River will be few when they cross back.'"
After a moment's hesitation Owl Carver lifted his hands. "They will be few because we will win back our land on the other side and stay there."