Redbird sat in the damp straw looking down at her hands folded in her lap. Nancy waited anxiously for her to speak.
After a moment, her voice full of pain and uncertainty, Redbird asked, did White Bearwantto see her?
The question shocked Nancy. It had not occurred to Nancy that Redbird might ever doubt Auguste's love for her.
Recovering from her surprise, Nancy said, "Before his uncle shot him, White Bear told me he was going to come here to find you and Eagle Feather. You are first in his heart, Redbird."
And, my God, how I wish it could be me!
Redbird looked sadly at Nancy. She was not first in White Bear's heart, she said. That land that had been stolen from him was.
Shocked, Nancy started to blurt out a denial. But she realized she could not. Auguste had gone to Victor before he went anywhere else.
But he is dying!
"Do you want to save his life?" Nancy asked.
Oh, yes, Redbird did, if Earthmaker would help her. In the shadows of the tent Nancy could see the glint of tears on Redbird's cheek.
"Then you will come with me?"
Redbird lowered her pain-twisted face. Must she go back to the place where they killed her baby?
At the memory, Nancy broke into sobs and threw her arms around Redbird, as she had done that terrible day.
"I will always remember Floating Lily," Nancy said. "I fought to save her. I thought she was my baby too."
They held each other in silence for a while, and then the thought came to Nancy that even a small delay might make the difference between Auguste's living and dying. Nancy felt a chill that ran deeper than the cold, damp air in the tent.
"Redbird, he will die if you do not come. You have to come."
Redbird sighed. It was true; she would go with Yellow Hair.
Nancy's heavy heart felt a little lighter. If there was any hope at all for Auguste, it lay with Redbird.
One thing they must take with them, Redbird told her. When they were marching to this place, a soldier had taken White Bear's deerhorn-handled knife from Redbird. It was the same soldier who had come with Yellow Hair today, the one with the red face and the yellow mustache. It would be well if Yellow Hair could get it from him so they could bring it back to White Bear. It would give him strength.
"I brought money with me," Nancy said. "I will buy it back from him if I have to."
I'll get it back from him if I have to kill him.
Redbird's eyes blurred as she stared at White Bear's face, as pale as the moon. She wanted to scream, to throw herself weeping on his form. Her longing to see him open his eyes, to hear his voice, was so strong it hurt her. She remembered the night of his vision quest, when she was sure he would freeze to death. She thought of the summers they had been apart, the nights they had lain together. She thought of poor, dead Floating Lily and of blue-eyed Eagle Feather, left in Wolf Paw's keeping.
O come back to me, White Bear!
She had never tried to heal anyone this close to death. When she and Yellow Hair arrived, the grandfather said that White Bear had sometimes opened his eyes and spoken. But each day he had been awake a shorter time.
Redbird saw that White Bear was already wandering in the other world. A thread no stronger than a strand of spider's silk linked his spirit with his body.
She let the love she felt for White Bear flow through her, giving her strength. She felt the eyes of Yellow Hair, the grandfather and the old servant upon her, but she ignored them. She squatted down on the floor beside White Bear's bed and unrolled the blanket in which she carried her medicines and supplies and the possessions White Bear had left with her at the Bad Axe.
Her eye fell on the bundle of talking papers White Bear had cherished so, that he said was called something like "The Lost Land of Happiness." There was power in that bundle of words. Gently she laid it on his left side, near the wound. On his right she placed the knife that Yellow Hair had been able to retrieve for her.
Arranging the three medicine bags on the floor, she took pieces of elm bark from the largest one and gave them to Yellow Hair.
"Make a tea for him from this. It will give him strength when he awakens."
She forced herself to turn her back on White Bear and go out of the house. With her she carried the blanket and the medicine bag adorned with the beadwork owl. She crossed the little clearingaround the house and entered the woods. Here, where no one could see her, she opened the medicine bag and took out five tiny gray scraps of the magic mushroom. She put them into her mouth and chewed and swallowed slowly.
Then she got down on her hands and knees and spread her blanket. Oak, maple and elm leaves, brown, red and yellow, lay thick on the ground. She scooped leaves into the blanket. When she had gathered a big pile, she bundled them up and went back into the house.
Carefully she spread the leaves on the bed over White Bear's body. She heard the grandfather say something to Yellow Hair.
Yellow Hair spoke quietly to her, saying that the grandfather feared that the leaves were not clean and would make White Bear sicker.
How could the leaves not be clean, Redbird wondered, when they came from the woods, outside any dwelling?
But she answered, "Must do what I know. If seem wrong to him, must do anyway, or can do nothing."
She heard Yellow Hair talking quietly to the grandfather while she settled herself on the floor beside the east side of the bed. She could not understand the words, but she heard acceptance in the old man's sigh.
Grief and fear that White Bear would die trembled inside her. Breathing deeply, she let the strength of those feelings enter into her spirit, urging her on to begin the journey she must make.
She must go into the other world and find her guide. She began the medicine woman's chant Sun Woman had taught her:
"Let me walk through the dark placeTo the light of the other world.Oh my red spirit Bird, fly to me,Sing to me from the other world."Let me walk the sunwise circleInto the night that hides this man.Oh my red spirit Bird, sing to meAnd fly with me to the other world."Sing and fly,Sing and fly,In the sunwise circleTo the other world,Into the night."
"Let me walk through the dark placeTo the light of the other world.Oh my red spirit Bird, fly to me,Sing to me from the other world.
"Let me walk the sunwise circleInto the night that hides this man.Oh my red spirit Bird, sing to meAnd fly with me to the other world.
"Sing and fly,Sing and fly,In the sunwise circleTo the other world,Into the night."
She allowed the chant to settle into a simple, repetitious humming that slowly, with the help of the magic mushroom, drew her soul out of her body.
She stood up. The three people gathered at the foot of the bed did not see her standing. They were looking at her seated body. She looked down at White Bear. She saw through the leaves she had spread over him and right through his skin.
Five glowing streaks ran from his collarbone to his belly. The claw marks of his guardian.
She saw the hole in his chest, how it ran between his ribs. In the eight days he had been lying here, the wound had closed up. If he lived long enough, it would heal slowly. But there was water pooling in his chest, and the longer he lay there unconscious, the more the water would fill up his chest until he drowned.
His spirit must be coaxed back from the other world.
She began to walk the sunwise circle around White Bear's bed, from the east to the south, White Bear on her right. She passed Yellow Hair, White Bear's grandfather and the old servant. They stood like carved statues, unseeing. She walked around the west side of the bed. The head of the bed was against the north wall of the room, but she simply walked through the wall on one side of the bed, took a few steps along the north side of the cottage, then entered the wall again and continued her circle.
When she had completed her ninth circuit of the bed, she saw a cave mouth in the eastern wall of the bedroom. Unhesitatingly she walked into the black, circular opening.
She could not see where the light in the cave was coming from, but its curving walls were clearly visible to her. Here and there she passed paintings. She had seen them when she made her first journey to the other world, after she buried Floating Lily. She saw the Wolf, the Coyote, the Elk and the Buffalo. Near the floor of the cave she passed paintings of the Trout, the Pike, the Salmon and other fish. She looked up and saw the Owl, her father's guardian spirit.
The passage slanted downward and grew narrower until her headbrushed the cave roof and her shoulders touched the walls. Then she rounded a bend and bright blue light greeted her.
The cave opened out high on a hillside. She was looking down at tall yellow grass rolling in waves to distant hills.
A black cloud of crows flapped up out of the grass and flew over her head, laughing raucously.
Then she heard a marvelous singing.
She recognized it at once, the song of her guardian spirit, the Redbird. She saw a blood-colored flash, and then the Bird perched on a branch of blue spruce on the hillside. He had one bright eye cocked at her, ringed in black. His red crest stood up on his head as Wolf Paw's had in better days.
"White Bear is out there on the prairie," the Redbird spirit sang. "He is hunting his uncle."
"Can I heal him?" Redbird asked.
The dazzling Bird chirped a yes. "He is lost. He is wandering with his other self, the Bear spirit. He will not leave the spirit world until the Bear finds his uncle."
Redbird shivered. "What will White Bear's guardian do to his uncle?" She remembered both Owl Carver and Sun Woman saying that a shaman's power must never be used to harm any person.
"What must happen, must happen," the Bird sang. "If White Bear is to be free to go back to his body."
Redbird still felt uneasy. A shadow, like a sudden prairie storm, seemed to fall upon the landscape.
The streak of scarlet sailed out over the endless grass, and Redbird ran down the hill until the tassels were waving high over her head. She could see nothing on all sides of her but yellow spears of straw. Overhead was a patch of bright blue framed by tassels. In the center of the blue the Bird spirit hovered, wings a blur of red. She pushed her way through the stalks as the Bird led her.
On and on flew her spirit guide. Redbird did not tire either, as she would have in the ordinary world, trudging through the grass. She could not see the sun, but the light seemed never to change. And no matter how long she walked, the same bit of cloudless sky remained overhead.
Then White Bear stood before her.
He was wearing only a deerskin loincloth and moccasins. His long hair was bound with a beaded band. The scar on his cheek stood out white against his tan skin. She looked at his naked chestand saw the five shining claw marks, and the small navel-like opening of the bullet wound.
She looked deep into his dark eyes. His love flowed out to her, and she bathed in it, as in a warm river. She knew his thoughts, how happy and surprised he was to see her.
I was lost out here. You have come for me.
He held out his arms, and she rushed into them. She felt his arms around her even though he was a spirit and she was a spirit. She laid her head against his scarred chest and listened to his beating heart. Would she ever again, back in the world of flesh, hold him like this?
A huge white-furred head crashed through the wall of grass around them, and enormous golden eyes looked at her. White Bear had described his guardian spirit to her, but she had never realized the Bear was so big. She looked at black lips that bared yellow teeth longer than her fingers, she stared down at claws that crushed the grass and sank into the prairie sod. She shivered at the thought of what might happen to White Bear's uncle if this spirit found him.
Perched on the head of the Bear was the tiny red spirit Bird.
We are looking for my father's brother, came White Bear's thought.He killed my mother and many brothers and sisters of yours and mine. He shot me.
The Bird sang to Redbird, "I know where the uncle is, but I can only lead the Bear to him if you say I must do it."
"I say you must, then," she said, just above a whisper. Whatever was needed to save White Bear's life, she had to do it. Whatever she must give up in return.
The Bird leaped into the air, his crest a bloody spearpoint. The Bear lifted a black nose the size of Redbird's fist, and the white body turned to follow, passing before her like a mountain of snow.
Hand in hand White Bear and Redbird followed. The Bird flew far ahead, and they could not see him, but the Bear trampled down the grass and left a path that was easy to follow.
Loving thoughts passed between White Bear and Redbird. If they always met like this, Redbird thought, they could know what was in each other's heart and their love would be deeper.
Then she remembered Wolf Paw and the new life that she alone knew was growing in her belly. The life that fulfilled Wolf Paw's wish to have a child with her.
She felt like a statue carved in ice. And at that very momentWhite Bear let go of her hand. Somehow she knew that he was withdrawing from her, not because he had sensed her thought about Wolf Paw, but because he was troubled by some thought of his own. But instantly there was a space between them, and she no longer knew his mind.
He was still walking beside her. He walked straight ahead, not looking at her. She turned her head to the front and did the same.
She felt as if she had been pushed away, hard, and it hurt.
It seemed to her that they walked for days through the unchanging grass, but the sun remained fixed somewhere beyond the tasseled curtain.
Yellow and blue, yellow and blue, the whole world had been reduced to those colors. And to one sound, whispering grass.
The Bear stopped walking. Redbird and White Bear went around the huge animal, Redbird to the right and White Bear to the left.
She found herself on the edge of a great crack in the ground, so deep that its bottom lay in shadow. It zigzagged from somewhere, appearing out of grass, and continued toward somewhere, vanishing back into the prairie. A stream of bright blue water wound through the dark bottom of the ravine; water had cut this wound in the prairie. The Bird spirit swooped and darted in the crack like a living fire arrow.
"White Bear's uncle hides there," the Bird trilled.
She heard a growl beside her deep as distant thunder, and the ground seemed to tremble.
The Bird flew up, swooped to hover over the Bear's head, then dove down into the canyon. Down to an entrance into the earth framed by two upright wooden posts and a beam laid across them.
Beside the square of darkness were abandoned wooden carts and a hill of gray gravel that partly blocked the stream. This was a mine, Redbird understood, where the pale eyes dug metal out of the ground.
The Bear spirit put one paw in front of the other and, with grace and balance astonishing in a creature so huge, walked down a narrow path Redbird had not noticed before to the shadowy bottom of the ravine. Then it lumbered up to the mine mouth.
She opened her mouth to cry out in fear, but the Bear was gone.
There is a man in there.
And her spirit helper, the Redbird, had led that giant Bear to him. She had commanded it. She had not wanted to use her shaman'spowers to hurt anyone, not even one she hated as much as this uncle of White Bear's. White Bear had saved many lives and never killed anyone.
Even though she was a spirit and this great grassland was sunny, she felt cold, and her stomach knotted.
I will lose something because I did this. I only did it to bring White Bear back to his body. But I will suffer for it, even so.
And so will White Bear.
Only let White Bear live, she prayed to the powers that brought life into the world.
White Bear turned to her.It is done, said his spirit voice.My other self has found Raoul de Marion.
Now you can come with me, she answered him.Back to your body.
Back to my home, came his whisper, and she shuddered even as she turned, following the Bird spirit as he fluttered over her head. When he thought of his home, he meant the great lodge the pale eyes called Victoire.
Redbird opened her eyes in the room where White Bear lay, to find herself once again sitting on the floor beside the bed. The three people were looking at her, Yellow Hair with tears running down her cheeks, the grandfather's withered face paler than the fur of White Bear's guardian spirit, the old servant's bloodshot eyes wide.
She remembered that the sun had been low in the west when she came to this house. Sunlight still slanted through the paper-covered west window and fell on the layer of leaves that covered White Bear's bed.
But when she tried to move, pain struck her like knives driven into her knees and elbows, as if she had been sitting in the same position for days.
"His eyes!" Yellow Hair cried, pointing at White Bear. From the floor Redbird could not see what Yellow Hair was seeing. She forced her aching legs to lift her.
White Bear looked at Redbird, then at Yellow Hair. He smiled faintly.
She had done it. He was back in his body.
A spring of pure, sweet joy burst up inside her. A sob welled from her lips. She stumbled toward Yellow Hair and felt that she was going to fall. Yellow Hair's arms held her up.
She saw his mouth open, heard him whisper to her, "You brought me back. I will always love you."
"And I will always love you," Redbird said. Her voice was a croak, as if she had not spoken in days.
She turned to Yellow Hair. "Now he will live."
Laughing and crying at once, Yellow Hair thanked Redbird again and again in their common language, calling on her God to bless Redbird.
Bless me? But what of that man in the mine?
"Give White Bear the tea of elm bark now. Later, little food, only little," Redbird said. "Easy-eat food. Hominy good. Later, soup with meat."
Yellow Hair eagerly agreed.
"Must sleep," said Redbird. She slurred her words, too worn out to speak clearly.
She could lie down in another room, Yellow Hair said, leading her away from the canopied bed where the weeping grandfather bent over White Bear, holding him by his shoulders.
"I gone many days?" Redbird asked.
Yellow Hair's deep blue eyes widened. She shook her head at the word "days." She assured Redbird that she had been silent only for an instant. She had been singing, then she closed her eyes, and a moment later when she opened them again, White Bear had opened his. Yellow Hair hugged her so hard it hurt her.
Just an instant?Every time Redbird went on a shaman's journey she learned something new.
Yellow Hair, her arm around Redbird's shoulders, led her to a bed in another room. Redbird had never lain on a pale eyes' bed, but she sat down on the edge and fell back. If she was not so tired she would not have been able to sleep in this bed. It was too soft. Yellow Hair lifted her legs onto the bed for her.
That was the last thing Redbird remembered.
After a day and a night of sleep, Redbird woke refreshed. And hungry. A cure for that was quickly produced for her; and now she was sitting on a pale eyes' chair at a pale eyes' table, devouring slices of fried pig meat and fluffy cakes brought to her by the old servant.
Seated across from her was a fat, smiling woman she had metonce before. This woman had tried to comfort her the day Floating Lily was killed. This, she knew, was White Bear's aunt.
Yellow Hair, tears streaming from her turquoise eyes, appeared in the doorway of the room where White Bear lay.
White Bear, she said, wanted Redbird to come to him.
Redbird's hunger vanished. She went rigid.
Yellow Hair weeps now, but I will weep forever after.
She heard the suffering in Yellow Hair's voice and knew that her heart was hurting because she believed Redbird was going to take White Bear away from her.
Redbird knew better. She had defiled her powers by using them to destroy White Bear's uncle, and now she must pay for it.
The lance twisted in her heart as she stood up at the table.
The fat woman stood up when Redbird did, came around the table and hugged her. She smelled of fresh-baked bread.
Redbird walked past Yellow Hair to enter the bedroom. White Bear was reclining with pillows behind his head in the bed where he had lain for so many days. His chest was bare except for the white bindings that protected his wound. The wrappings made his olive skin look darker, and above the cloth Redbird could see the start of the five shining scars that ran down his chest.
The leaves had been cleared away from the quilt that covered him. His bundle of talking papers telling the story of the first man and woman and how they lost their land of happiness was on the table beside his bed. Next to it lay the knife Star Arrow had given him when he was a small boy.
When he saw her his face glowed and he held out his arms to her. She rushed to him, and heard a cry of pain behind her. The door of the bedroom shut softly.
She threw herself across the bed, longing to hold White Bear. His arms around her were not as strong as she remembered them, but his embrace was firm.
"You came to me while my spirit wandered on the prairie," he said.
"The Redbird guided me to you."
"Before you came I saw many things."
"What things?"
He said, "The pale eyes will spread across the Great River andeven into the Great Desert. There will be no place left for our people."
"If we go far enough west—" she began.
"No," he said. "They will go as far as the western ocean. The Turtle warned me about this." He stroked her hair lightly, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
She had a heart-crushing feeling that she would never lie like this with him again.
"You are so much better today," she said.
"You, too, know the way of the shaman now. You healed me."
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. This was the moment when they must decide.
"I am the only shaman our people have now," she forced herself to say. "The few who are left need me. I must go back to them."
His eyes shut tight suddenly, as if his wound was paining him.
"Stay here with me," he said.
His words struck her and tore through her, as his uncle's bullet had torn through him.
"I could never stay here. When you are well enough, will you not come back to your people?"
He shook his head. "We cannot fight the pale eyes and we cannot run from them. They will destroy us. Unless we learn to live as the pale eyes do."
"That destroys us too."
"That saves us!" His nostrils flared and his dark eyes glowed. "I can use the power this wealth and this land gives me to fight for our people. And you can do it with me. And Eagle Feather. I will show the people how to make use of pale eyes' ways. I will share my land with them."
Her heart felt as if it were being ground between stones. This, she understood, was what she must suffer because she had used her shaman's powers to hurt another. She was going to lose White Bear. She had saved him from death. He was going to live, but not with her.
The claws of that giant Bear that was his other self seemed to stab into her chest and tear her in two. She could not live with this pain. She must surrender to White Bear.
Yes, I must stay with him. I cannot leave him. Eagle Feather needs him. We will be safe here, and comfortable, and at peace.
She would send for Eagle Feather. The fat aunt and the grandfather would love them and care for them.
She tried to see herself living here with White Bear. For a moment the picture was clear in her mind. Then it dissolved in blackness as she realized that taking herself out of the Sauk tribe would be like pulling a medicine plant up by its roots without its consent.
She would die. It would be a slow death that would be worse than the pain she was suffering now.
And then another thought struck her.
Children!
Her heart felt heavy as a mountain.
She remembered how Owl Carver had said, after Eagle Feather smoked the peace pipe with the Winnebago, that he could be a greater shaman than any of them. But that would happen only if he was raised as a Sauk.
Floating Lily was dead. Redbird could not live with the people who had murdered her.
And—she touched her belly—this was not White Bear's child.
She began to cry aloud.
She sobbed till she thought her ribs would crack. Her throat burned; her voice rasped. She pressed her forehead against his chest. She heard him groan in pain, but he was hurting her more than she could ever hurt him.
"How can you ask me to stay where they killed Floating Lily? How canyoustay here?"
"What would you have me do?"
A sudden thought occurred to her. "The pale eyes give gold for land. Take pale eyes gold for this land, and you can take the gold with you to the Ioway country and share it with our people."
"No, Redbird," he said sadly. "What could we do with gold, out there in Ioway? Sometimes the long knives have given our chiefs gold in return for land, yes. In no time the gold melted away. Gold by itself is like seed corn. Without the right ground to plant it in, it is soon used up and gone. The only way I can use the wealth my father Star Arrow left to me is to stay here and work with it."
She had stopped crying. This hurt too much for tears. Only when Floating Lily was killed had she felt more pain than this.
For a moment she could not bring herself to say the words she had to say.
From somewhere she summoned the strength to speak.
"Then I must leave you."
Each word, she felt, was an arrow fired into him.
His arms tightened around her. "I beg you to stay."
Spirit of the Redbird, help me to do what I must.
It would hurt less if she acted at once. She pushed herself away from him. She stood up and crossed the room to the closed door.
"May you walk always in honor, White Bear."
"No, Redbird, no!"Hewas crying bitterly now, and he rolled over and buried his head in his pillows, beating the bed with his clenched fists.
She could not bear to leave him weeping like this, like a child she was abandoning. She would rather see him angry.
Then the spirit Bird, whom she had called on for help, sent her a message. She saw Wolf Paw, as he had looked when he was proud and undefeated, with the red crest on his head, a red blanket wrapped around him and black paint around his eyes.
Why did I never see it before?
Wolf Paw wore the markings of the Bird she was named after, the Bird that was her spirit guide. Neither she nor he had been aware of it. But it must mean that they were destined for each other, and that what had already happened between herself and Wolf Pawhadto happen.
To live out her life with Wolf Paw and never to see White Bear again was like being told she would never again see a day with sunlight.
But it was as the spirit Bird had sung to her—What must happen, must happen.
She breathed deeply. She hated having to tell White Bear about Wolf Paw. If he had been willing to come with her, she would not have had to say anything. Wolf Paw would not have tried to hold her. And if she gave birth a moon or two too soon, White Bear would have forgiven her. But now she had to use Wolf Paw to hurt White Bear.
To hurt him so as to heal him.
But when I am gone from here, who will heal me? Must the shaman suffer wounds that can never be healed?
Yes, if she has dealt such wounds.
"You would not want me anymore, White Bear," she said. "These past moons since you left us I have been Wolf Paw's woman."
He raised his tear-streaked face from the pillow and stared at her. "What are you saying?"
"Wolf Paw lost his wives and his children at the Bad Axe. He was like a dead man. I wanted to heal him, and I will heal him, by living with him."
His eyes widened. She could see anger darkening his cheeks.
He said, "After my father took me to live here, you waited six summers for me while Wolf Paw courted you. Could you not keep him off for a few moons?"
She held out her hands imploringly. "Before, when he was an honored warrior and had his family, he had no need of me. He wanted me as he wanted another feather to hang in his hair. But now he needs me. Without me he would be as good as dead. And he is the last brave in our band."
"I need you."
She put her hands over her belly. It was still flat, but she knew what was there.
"I am carrying Wolf Paw's child."
He pushed against the bed till he was sitting bolt upright, and he pounded his fist on his knee. He was still badly wounded. He could hurt himself. What if he tried to get out of bed, and tore the wound open?
But when he looked up at her his eyes were large and dark with sadness.
"I still love you, whatever you did with Wolf Paw. And I will loveanybaby you bear."
She felt his hands seize her heart, tearing it out of her chest, crushing it. She cried out with the pain and staggered backward.
She cried, "You offer me everything but the one thing I want—for you to come back to our people."
"What I do, I do for our people." His voice was so low that she could barely hear him. "One Sauk, at least, will take back land the pale eyes stole from us."
The world grew darker and darker for her. With every word he spoke she was losing him a little more.
She made the flat-handed "no" gesture. "The pale eyes here in thisland are too strong for the red people. And in you there is both pale eyes and red man, and the pale eyes is stronger than the red."
His shoulders slumped. She saw a dullness in his eyes that made her think of Wolf Paw as he had looked after the people of Victor had killed Floating Lily.
Have I hurt White Bear so badly that he will get sick again?Sudden fear rippled through her.
But then he lifted his head and looked at her, and there was strength in his gaunt face.
"I will always love you. And as long as this place is mine, there will be a home here for you, for Eagle Feather, for any child of yours. For any Sauk. When you go back, tell them that."
Grief crushed her as she gazed at the man she loved, knowing that they were parting forever.
He reached out to her, and she went back to lie beside him on the bed. It felt so good to be held by him, and it hurt so much to know that this was the last time they would ever lie heart against heart, she thought she would scream at the agony of it.
Good-bye, Floating Lily, my daughter. I may never be able to come back here again. I hope you have begun your journey West. But if your spirit lingers here, know that your father is close by.
Redbird stood a moment looking down at the mound of earth, now covered with leaves, the strip of red blanket tied to the willow wand now faded. She rocked back and forth in the pale eyes shoes made of heavy leather that Yellow Hair had given her. She wailed softly in her sorrow for Floating Lily.
Then she turned to Yellow Hair, who stood under a nearby maple.
"You take White Bear here and show him."
Yellow Hair nodded.
They went back to Yellow Hair's carriage. The buggy was laden with food and blankets, and Redbird carried with her a heavy bag of gold coins given her by White Bear's grandfather. Used wisely, the gold would buy blankets and food, rifles and ammunition from the traders to help the Sauk get through the winter. Now they would not have to winter over at Fort Armstrong, but could cross over at once to join the rest of the tribe in Ioway.
The wound in Redbird's heart ached constantly, and she sat bentforward on the buggy seat, her hands gripping her knees. As they rattled down the road to Fort Armstrong she felt some small relief at leaving the place where she had lost so much. She tried to tell herself that she was on the way to a new life.
Yellow Hair said she didn't understand why White Bear was not with them. She wanted to know if he would follow Redbird when he got better.
She understands, but she does not dare believe he is going to stay with her. She thinks it is too much to hope for.
Redbird said, "He still your husband, Yellow Hair. You want him?"
Yellow Hair's lips quivered as she asked, would Redbird not come back to be with White Bear?
Redbird gritted her teeth. It hurt to have to explain to Yellow Hair.
Redbird made the flat-hand motion. "He not follow me. I never come back here."
Now Yellow Hair's eyes were glowing like turquoise set in silver. But she put a comforting hand on Redbird's arm.
She wanted to know why. How could Redbird part from White Bear and he from her? Did it not hurt too much?
"Yes, hurt much," said Redbird softly, watching the rutted dirt road pass under the wheels of the buggy.
But Yellow Hair pressed her. How could White Bear tear himself away from the Sauk?
"Pale eyes family now his people."
But his son—how could he give up his son?
Redbird struggled to find words and gestures to explain this. "Maybe some day White Bear come for Eagle Feather, like Star Arrow once come for White Bear." She remembered how White Bear had wept when Sun Woman told him he must go to live with the pale eyes. "That day, I not say Eagle Feather must go or must not go. Eagle Feather do what he want."
Yellow Hair shook her head, her braids lashing. She repeated over and over again an English word Redbird understood, but it asked a question she could never answer.
"Why?"
Again Redbird wrestled with the English words. "Land of his father and grandfather holds him. He not want to leave."
But what about the uncle who nearly killed him?
"That uncle no more trouble," said Redbird.
And because of that, I must lose him.
Then when would Redbird see White Bear again? Yellow Hair's question buried itself in Redbird's heart like a steel arrowhead.
"Never!" she screamed.
Yellow Hair shrank back, her eyes wide with shock. Redbird sighed and let her body droop.
They drove on in silence. Redbird heard small sounds beside her that told her Yellow Hair was weeping.
Redbird reached over and took Yellow Hair's hand.
"Make him happy."
Yellow Hair uttered a sob and turned her head away.
But Redbird was no longer crying. Dry-eyed, she stared ahead at the road south. Her sorrow was too deep for tears.
Raoul François Philippe Charles de Marion woke trembling in damp blackness, wondering whether it was day or night outside. His heart was beating so hard that it ached. For a moment he couldn't think what had scared him so badly. Then he remembered the dream.
He struggled out of the old blanket he'd wrapped around himself and sat up, panting.
A white bear coming at him down here in the mine. Why in hell would he dream about a creature like that? There were white bears up in Canada, he'd heard, but he'd never even seen one.
White Bear—that was Auguste's Indian name. Was he dreaming about Auguste coming after him?
Well, Auguste is rotting in the ground now. I killed him.
He still hated Auguste even after his death. Because of Auguste he had to stay holed up here, blackness pressing on his eyeballs. His eyes were wide open and he stared till they hurt, but he could see nothing, nothing at all. It was like being blind.
He wished he had told just one of his men where to find him. He badly wanted news of what was going on back at Victor. But if he'd told anyone it would have been Armand, and he couldn't trust the bastard. Armand might stupidly let himself be followed here. Or give way to threats, or even sell him out, if Papa offered a big enough reward.
Armand would. Sure he would. I could see in his eyes how he resented me. He hated Pierre and he hated me too.
Raoul only had two candles left. Should he light one now? He could spare it, because he was going to get out of this mine today—or tonight. He'd waited long enough.
He wasn't sure anymore how long he'd been hiding down here in the dark. When he slept, he had no idea how long he slept. A watch was one of the many things he had forgotten to bring with him, leaving in such a hurry. And yet he'd stupidly brought the silver case with Pierre's spectacles in it. Stuck it in his pocket when he left the trading post to get the mongrel. He felt it now, a hard oval in his coat pocket.
How long?
The men pursuing him had searched the mine, as he figured they would. Days had passed, he was sure, since he'd heard their voices in the mine, footsteps echoing. He was certain he was the only man in Victor who knew about the tunnel he was hiding in, its entrance, just big enough to crawl through, covered by a pile of gravel that appeared to have nothing but wall behind it. He'd tried to disturb the gravel as little as possible while crawling in, and had carefully replaced what he'd pushed aside.
But he might have left some trace on the other side. He'd sat in the blackness, waiting to hear the sounds of digging, his back pressed against the damp rock wall, knees drawn up to his chin. His hands, cold as if they'd been plunged into a snowdrift, had rested on his loaded rifle and his pistol. And he'd drawn his Bowie knife and laid it beside him. They'd pay dearly to take him. If there were no more than four or five of them, he might manage to kill them all and get away.
But the sounds of the search party had faded away. He'd welcomed the black cotton silence that had followed. He would stay down here as long as he could. He'd found a place in his tunnel where underground water had seeped in, and was able to keep refilling his canteen from that. He found another small branch tunnel some distance from where he slept, where he could piss and shit. But he'd come into the mine with only six candles, and he was afraid to use them up, so he spent most of the time sitting in the dark feeling as if he was going mad with alternating worry and boredom.
He had brought his canteen of whiskey down here with him, and it had made time pass easier for a while. But now it was all gone. Seemed like a hell of a long time since he'd had a drink.
He made a flame with flint, steel and cotton wool, lit his next to last candle and set it in a pool of its own wax. The light hurt his eyes for a moment, and the sight of his own shadow moving on the dark gray rock walls frightened him.
His hollow belly kept squealing and grumbling, and visions of beef and turkey and duck and pork tormented him. Out of one of his saddlebags he took the bundle of corn biscuits and dried beef he'd thrown together at the trading post in his flight. He bit into a biscuit as hard and dry as a lump of wood and rolled it around in his mouth until his saliva softened it enough to chew and swallow.
Now he'd go up to the mine entrance, and if it was nighttime he'd leave. The Flemings had their cabin about a mile from here. Their men had joined the Regulators, so they deserved to have him take a horse from them. Then he'd ride north to Galena.
He hefted the other saddlebag, loaded with gold and silver coins and Bank of Illinois paper. He'd had to leave a lot behind in his office safe, and they'd probably steal it from him. But he'd get it all back.
Because this was enough to buy him an army.
Galena would be crowded with the roughest men in the Northwest Territory right now. Surely more men than could make a living in the mines around there, boom or no boom. Rough and hungry, just what he needed.
I'll yet see that high-and-mighty Cooper swinging from a tree. And I'll piss on Auguste's grave.
He bit into a slice of dried beef. It was tough as rawhide, but he forced it down.
When I'm running things in Smith County again, Nicole and Frank and that pack of squalling brats are leaving. I've put up with Frank and his damned newspaper long enough, just because he's married to my sister.
If Frank gave any trouble, his new press, the one Papa helped him buy, would end up at the bottom of the Mississippi. Or maybe he'd even be Cooper's dancing partner on that tree.
I've knocked my father down. I've killed my brother's squaw and his mongrel bastard son. Why put up with my sister and her husband? What have they ever done, except hate me?
And the old man would have to go, too, if he was still alive, and that brandy-pickled bag of bones, Guichard. Time to be rid ofthem all. De Marion would still be the foremost name in Smith County, but it would be a new de Marion family, not this old Injun-loving bunch that understood nothing.
Nancy. What about her?
The teacher needed to be taught a lesson or two. If she hadn't let Auguste service her when she was captured by the Injuns, then she'd probably never had a man's cock up inside her. Once she found out what pleasure he could give her, she'd forget about Auguste. She was still young enough for children, good-looking children, and smart.
That brat Woodrow that she had living with her. Imagine him saying in court that the redskins treated him better than his parents did. Send him packing, just like the Hopkinses.
With Smith County and with Nancy all his, it would be time to rebuild Victoire.
He'd put that off because he wanted to do it right. And he'd left the ruin till now to remind himself and everyone in Victor why the Sauk had to be driven out of Illinois.
No, that was a damned lie.
Alone here in the dark he could not keep the truth from pecking at his brain like a buzzard's beak: Every time he went near the ruin of the château, he thought of Clarissa and the boys, and guilt stabbed him without mercy. He'd looked down on Clarissa, and he had not felt for the boys as a father should.
He'd left them unprotected, let them die horribly, just as Helene had died.
I did to Andy and Phil just what Papa and Pierre did to me. When my boys needed me most, I wasn't there.
And the Sauk never would have attacked Victor if I hadn't shot Auguste and the other two redskins at Old Man's Creek.
He forced himself to stop thinking about the family he'd made without wanting to and then had lost. Their blood was spilled, and nothing would bring them back. He'd shed plenty of Indian blood to avenge them.
He remembered the Indian witch woman, Auguste's mother, the Bowie knife slicing open her throat, her blood warm on his hand. What curse had she laid on him before he killed her?
He put her out of his mind and thought of Victoire. When he rebuilt Victoire it would not be just another blockhouse, but a stone mansion that could be seen from the river. It would be the centerof Raoul de Marion's new empire—steamships, railroads, cattle, farmlands, mines. Now that the Indians were gone for good, now that Pierre's bastard was dead, there was no limit to what Raoul could make of the family's wealth.
The dreams heartened him. Time to move. He stuffed the little bundle of beef and biscuit into one saddlebag. He slung the saddlebags over his shoulder, the light one with food hanging down his front, the heavy one with the money in it on his back. He loosened the Bowie knife in its sheath on his left hip. He checked the loads in his pistol and his rifle again.
As he pushed back his coat to holster his pistol, he felt Pierre's spectacle case in his pocket.
What the hell am I carrying that around for?
At times he'd suspected that he kept Pierre's spectacles because he really did love his older brother, in spite of everything Pierre had done to him.
The silver case, he told himself, was valuable. But the spectacles were worthless. The eyes that had needed them had stopped seeing a year ago.
Had they?
He opened the case. The lenses glinted in the candlelight as if there were eyes behind them.
"Goddamn it!" he shouted, and turned the case over, dropping the spectacles to the stone floor. They shattered with a crack that sounded loud as a pistol shot. He stamped on them for good measure, crushing the glass to glittering splinters and twisting the frames out of shape under the sole of his boot.
He threw the case into a pile of rock shards. Valuable or not, he didn't want the damned thing anymore.
"I hope you're in Hell, Pierre!"
He didn't love Pierre. He hated him. He'd never loved him. He'd always hated him, ever since Fort Dearborn.
Holding the bit of candle high in his left hand, his rifle in his right, he started up the sloping tunnel. It was a long climb; the sacks of coins in the saddlebag on his back weighed him down.
He stopped at the gravel pile that blocked entry to this tunnel. He listened, and heard nothing but his blood hissing in his ears. He scraped chunks of stone away from the pile until he could crawl through.
After more walking and climbing through tunnels and shafts, heno longer had any notion how long it had been since he left his hideout. He saw ahead a little square of gray, in the center of the black all around him. And then he could make out the walls and floor of the tunnel. Moonlight or starlight must be illuminating the mine entrance. Night, then. Good, he could leave at once.
About twenty feet from the entrance he saw up ahead an opening where another tunnel branched off from this one. He remembered it. This was the side tunnel where the Indian he'd killed seven years ago had hidden.
As he came close to that opening he heard a rumbling sound.
The growl of an animal.
He felt as if he'd been doused with ice-cold water.
He took a few steps back from the branch tunnel opening, curled his finger around the trigger of his rifle and raised it, one-handed. He didn't want to let go of the candle.
It hadn't just been a dream. Therewassomething in this mine.
Maybe a wolf. Or a bear would like a deserted mine like this for a den.
He heard snuffling, grunting noises. Then a growl so deep it seemed to shake the stone under his feet. He felt his stomach clench, and he nearly lost his grip on his bowels.
Claws scraped on rock. With trembling fingers he set the candle in one of the wall niches the miners had carved for their lanterns and raised his rifle to his shoulder.
The bear came out of the branch tunnel. He saw the huge, pointed white head from the side at first, with a golden eye that glared at him. A perfectly white bear.
Like his dream.
The head swung toward him, a gaping mouth lined with teeth like ivory daggers.
The whole white body emerged, bigger than a bull bison.
It roared, deafening as a cannon blast. It reared up on its hind legs, filling the tunnel like a white avalanche. After the roar, it rumbled steadily, deep in its chest. Though it was more than ten feet away, he could smell its rotten-meat breath.
He squeezed the trigger. His rifle thundered, echoes slamming the sides of his head. Smoke obscured the vast white body. His ears jangled.
He felt a sudden terror that the shot might start a cave-in.
But it didn't.
It didn't stop the bear either. It came on, padded feet scraping on the tunnel floor, swinging claws like rows of sickles.
I couldn't have missed. Oh Jesus, oh God, I couldn't have.
He threw the rifle down, snatched his pistol out of his holster and fired again.
Blinding flash, deafening blast, stinking smoke.
And the bear kept coming.
It was so close, the lead ballsmusthave gone into it. It must be just so damned big it would take more than two shots to kill it.
But there was no time to reload. The bear towered over him, white body filling the whole world, eyes, claws, teeth, all shining in the glow of that pitiful little candle that somehow had stayed lit.
He screamed and sobbed like a little boy in his terror, but he managed to get his Bowie knife out. He'd killed a big Indian with this knife.
A paw the size of his head knocked the knife from his hand.
"Oh, please don't kill me!" he wept. "For the love of Jesus!"
The other paw hit his chest like a sledgehammer. He felt his ribs cave in. He felt the claws stab into his lungs.
His breath flew from his body. His strength drained away. He couldn't scream anymore. He couldn't beg for his life. His voice was gone. Only blood came out of his throat. The last thing he saw was an enormous mouth gaping, full of yellow-white pointed teeth coming at him. He felt claws rip again through his chest and belly and knew that he was going.
The pale eyes' smoke boat was a frightening thing, shooting black clouds and sparks from two black-painted iron tubes that rose up from a big lodge in its middle. On each side of the boat was a wheel with wooden boards attached, and the wheels and boards pushed the boat through the water. Standing on the floor of wood planks at the front end of the boat, Redbird tried to understand how fire in the boat's belly could make wheels turn. She felt the monstrous thing tremble under her as it swam across the river.
About a hundred women and children with a few men were crowded at the front of the boat, watching the Ioway shore of the Great River come closer. By unspoken agreement they kept theirbacks turned to the land that had once been so good to them, the land they had forever lost.
The happy land that was lost, Redbird thought.
At the memory of White Bear, grief stabbed her, and she had to rest against the railing of the boat. She felt an aching hollow as if she had been gutted like a butchered deer.
In their midst rose a little mountain of boxes, barrels, sacks and bales, the supplies they had bought with White Bear's grandfather's gold. But they had no horses, and when they got to the Ioway shore they would have to carry these goods on their backs, a journey of probably four days across the strip of land by the river that He Who Moves Alertly had surrendered to the long knives. Somewhere beyond that land they would find the Sauk and Fox who had been wise enough not to follow Black Hawk. She hoped it would not start to snow before they reached the camps of their people.
Wolf Paw said, "I have heard that this is the very boat that killed so many of our people at the Bad Axe."
This boat had killed his wives and his children, then, thought Redbird. She rested her hand on his arm.
"See there," he said, pointing to holes and black marks on the wood at the very front end. "A thunder gun was set there. It fired at our people and tore them to pieces. Like the one that killed so many of our warriors at the pale eyes town." Through his worn buckskin shirt he touched the silver coin that still hung around his neck on a leather thong. Redbird remembered the day White Bear had dug the coin out of Wolf Paw's body, claiming he had changed a lead ball into a coin.
She put her hand on her aching heart. Would things ever stop reminding her of White Bear?
She stared down at the gray-green water rushing by the side of the boat, and it made her dizzy. A canoe could never travel this fast, even a big one paddled by many men. And a canoe could never go straight across the river, without being pushed downstream by the current, as this smoke-belching boat was doing.
Had she been wrong not to stay with White Bear, as he had begged her to? She missed him so much. Tears came to her eyes. She hoped Wolf Paw and Eagle Feather would not see her crying, and she wiped her eyes quickly.
She felt like jumping from this boat and swimming back to shore.If she drowned in the Great River, even that would be better than being carried away from White Bear.
She told herself she had made up her mind. She was determined to be a Sauk for the rest of her days. And Eagle Feather would be a Sauk.
White Bear is wrong to stay behind, even for all that land.
Eagle Feather gripped her arm. "Do not be afraid, Mother. The pale eyes will not hurt us today." His blue eyes were sad. He must have noticed her misery.
Wolf Paw smiled faintly. "No, today they only want to be rid of us."
Eagle Feather said, "One day Earthmaker will give us a medicine so strong that the long knives' guns will not hurt us."
Redbird smiled at her son. "May it be you who finds that medicine."
We can hope for that. Now that we have lost so much, the spirits might grant us new powers that will help us to resist the pale eyes.
Of one thing she was sure, White Bear's way was not a trail that the people should travel. For a Sauk to become a pale eyes was a kind of death.
We are Sauk, or we are nothing. White Bear is no longer a Sauk. My husband is dead.
She turned back to Wolf Paw and Eagle Feather. She did not like to see Wolf Paw's hair hanging loose around his head, his slumped shoulders. He had always stood so straight. Before the people at Victor killed Floating Lily.
She put her hand on his back and stroked it with a circular motion, and he straightened his shoulders. As he looked at her a light dawned in his eyes.
She must get him to shave his head again, to put the red crest back in place. The people needed a new leader, a true leader. Black Hawk had been wrong too many times, and He Who Moves Alertly would do whatever the pale eyes told him to do. Wolf Paw would help her heal the people.
How I hated him the night he mocked White Bear, putting a woman's dress on him. But he has suffered much since then, and he is a wiser man now.
Eagle Feather was standing at the rail looking across the purple river at the winter-gray hills on the Ioway shore. Redbird moved tostand behind him and put her hands on his small, square shoulders. He held himself very straight.
Eagle Feather said suddenly, "I wish I could have seen my father one last time." She could barely hear him above the noise of the smoke boat and the rushing water.
She closed her eyes against the pain of that and bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
When she was able to speak she said, "I think that one day you will see him again."
But for now Eagle Feather and White Bear must be parted. Because Eagle Feather must grow up as a Sauk. The people would need him, too, in summers and winters to come.
But until Eagle Feather was grown, the people would turn to her. The men, like Wolf Paw, had lost heart. She would give them heart again.
In spite of the pale eyes, the Sauk would find a good trail.
The walk from Grandpapa's house to the ruins of Victoire seemed to Auguste to take all morning. By the time he stood facing the blackened chimney that towered over him like some ancient idol, his legs hurt. He was panting, but the crisp winter air infused vigor into his nostrils and lungs. He sat down to rest on a broken beam that had once held up the ceiling of the great hall.
He was still weak from having been so badly wounded and from lying in bed recovering. And even now his left lung was still not able to fill itself full with air, and probably never would be.
This was the farthest he had ever walked. Too far, really. But the bright December day invited him out of doors, and he wanted to see his land.
My land.
It was his now, without question. Now that Raoul's body had been found.
He was glad there had been no marks on the body. Glad that the Fleming children, who had found it day before yesterday while playing down in the gorge, hadn't had to see a human body torn to pieces, as he feared Raoul might be found.
Ginnie, the middle Fleming girl, had followed a cardinal into themine entrance; once the child had seen the body, the little redbird had flown out again and disappeared.
Raoul's rifle and his pistol, both of which he apparently had fired just before he died, lay beside him. His Bowie knife had fallen a short distance away, as if he had thrown it.
When Auguste and Grandpapa had gone to see the body laid out in Dr. Surrey's examining room, Auguste had been shocked to see the grimace of terror frozen on Raoul's face—jaws wide apart, lips drawn back from his teeth, eyes bulging. A good thing the light in the mine had been dim and the Fleming girl hadn't gotten a good look at that face.
Auguste and Dr. Surrey had both carefully examined the body and could find no cause of death. Surrey opined that Raoul had gone mad hiding in the mine and had been frightened to death by his own hallucinations.
Auguste knew what had killed Raoul. He vividly remembered his wanderings in the other world, in that endless prairie, with Redbird.
Auguste could only imagine what the encounter between Raoul and the White Bear had been like. It had taken place in the other world. The White Bear spirit must have attacked and destroyed Raoul's soul—if a soul could be destroyed. Like the men on spirit journeys who died because their souls never returned to their bodies, Raoul's body had been deprived of life. The White Bear could leave its mark in this world when it chose, but usually it left tangible signs as a mark of favor. This time the only mark it had left was that look of terror on Raoul's dead face.
And Auguste had paid the price for having sent the White Bear against Raoul: he had lost Redbird.
For the rest of my life I will never see a cardinal without my heart breaking all over again.
They would bury Raoul, with a mass, in the little cemetery overlooking the river, just like any other member of the de Marion family. There would be no revenge after death. Père Isaac was coming up from Kaskaskia to officiate.
And I'm afraid it will not be long before Grandpapa lies down to rest not far from Raoul.
Even as Auguste had begun to get out of bed and walk about, Elysée seemed to be spending more and more time sleeping. Oneday, Auguste expected, he would simply not wake up at all. Though he mourned in expectation of the old man's passing, it was with a warm feeling that Elysée had done much, had walked a long trail with honor. It was now right that his spirit move on and his body return to the earth.
I am thinking like a Sauk.
And then it all swept over him in a wave of anguish. He saw the happiness he had lost. He saw the gardens and long houses of Saukenuk, cool and pleasant in the summer, the snow-covered, warm winter wickiups in Ioway. The hunting and fishing, the feasts, the dances. The beloved faces drew close before his eyes—Sun Woman, Floating Lily, Eagle Feather, Owl Carver, Black Hawk.
Redbird.
He gave an agonized shout that reverberated in the stone chimney that towered over him. He beat his chest with his fist again and again, until a bolt of pain shot through him where Raoul's bullet had pierced him. He did not want to stop hurting himself, but he could not hit his chest anymore. His head hung down and he sobbed brokenly.
He had sacrificed too much. He had given up everything he really loved to become a prisoner of this place. He was trapped on this land. The ancient wealth of the de Marions held him in golden chains.
I could ride away from all this, even now. I could take a horse and swim it across the Mississippi—the Great River—and I could find the Sauk and live with them again. I could be free.
Redbird had said she had become Wolf Paw's woman. Anger boiled him at the thought of that. But he knew it was the healer in her who had chosen that path. As she had said, Wolf Paw was one of the last braves of the British Band, and by healing him she healed the people.
And was he not lying to himself to think he could do anything for the Sauk here? How could he resist the immense power of men like Sharp Knife, who, he was sure, were bent on exterminating the Sauk, on exterminating all the red people on this continent?
To make the de Marion estate prosper he would have to learn to perform a thousand tasks about which he knew almost nothing. He must give all his heart and mind and strength to this domain if it was to flourish. That was the burden Star Arrow, Pierre de Marion,had laid on him. In taking up that burden, might he not forget his other tie, to the Sauk, so far away?
But it was his being a Sauk that chained him so irrevocably to Victoire—the afternoon he smoked the calumet with Star Arrow—the Turtle calling on him to be guardian of this land.
Somehow he must try both to be master of Victoire and to fulfill his destiny as a Sauk.
This land, right here, once belonged to my people. If I leave it, it will never belong to them again.
I will dedicate my possessions to them. I will send them what they need. I will use the influence my wealth gives me with the lawyers and politicians to protect them, so they will never be driven from their land again, never be massacred again.
He stood up and walked away from the charred wreckage of Victoire into the fields that surrounded it. The farmhands had planted corn last spring, but the Sauk raiders had burned it, and some prairie grass had come back. It had only had time to grow chest high before the frost killed it, and as he pushed his way through it he could see fields beyond, where the yellow horizon met the sky.
Nancy would share this land with him. She would love him, and they would raise Woodrow together and have children of their own. He loved Nancy, though there were places in him that only Redbird could touch. Those places would be sealed off now. Hand in hand Nancy and he would walk their path together.