"Please, Levi, my wife and my children, tell how I died."
That was who the other man was—Levi Pope, another of Raoul's men.
"I'll tell them you was brave. Make sure they don't catch you alive, Otto. You know what Injuns do to white people. Use your last bullet on yourself."
White Bear felt his cheeks burn with shame. For himself, the idea of torturing a prisoner was unthinkable, and he did not believe Black Hawk would allow it. But he could not be sure. Many men and women of the British Band, he supposed, would enjoy making one of the dreaded long knives suffer.
White Bear heard Pope scurry off through the brush while Wegner, gasping with pain, settled himself in position at the base of the tree.
The boom of Wegner's rifle below him so startled White Bear that he almost fell from his perch. He heard an agonized cry from out on the prairie, saw a brave fall from a horse.
He killed one of my brothers. I can't let this happen.
He heard quick, metallic sounds of clicking and scraping below him, the sounds of a man loading his rifle.
In a moment another Sauk warrior will fall.
The racking grief White Bear had felt since the deaths of Little Crow and Three Horses changed all at once into a whirlwind of rage. He remembered Little Crow, bound and helpless, his head blown apart. He pictured Three Horses' body, torn by bullets. In his whole life up to now he had never killed a man, but surely now, after what he had suffered and seen, he had to kill.