As for Redbird herself, she felt an emptiness in her belly from the time she woke till the time she went to sleep, and she found herself wanting to sleep longer and longer as her strength ebbed away. She worried constantly that the baby inside her was not getting enough nourishment and would die or be stunted. The people around her were starting to look like walking skeletons.
They came to a point of land covered with pale green shrubs thrusting out into the lake. Redbird called Eagle Feather.
"Go for a swim around the other side of this point and take the pale eyes boy with you."
Eagle Feather's blue eyes glowed. "Maybe I can shoot a frog."
Once the boys were gone, she said to Yellow Hair, "We take bath." Yellow Hair smiled gratefully.
As they waded naked into the greenish, murky water, Redbird eyed Yellow Hair's body, so different from a Sauk woman's. She remembered how hungrily the braves had stared at Yellow Hair when Wolf Paw's wife stripped her before the tribe.
Yet it was easy to imagine that such pale skin was a sign of sickness. Yellow Hair's face and hands were somewhat tan, but every other part of her was white as milk. Her ribs were showing, a sign of the hunger they were all suffering. Still, her breasts were round, with pretty pink nipples. Her legs were long, and her buttocks curved out sharply; those of Sauk women were flatter. Even though the hair under her arms and between her legs was light in color, she had an abundance of it, much more than the fine tufts of black hair Redbird had in those places. She had undone her braids, and her hair fell like a golden curtain down her back halfway to her waist.
What a beautiful creature she is!
What an evil, stupid thing it would have been if Running Deer and the others had been allowed to cut her to bits and burn her.
A man might find Yellow Hair's differences from Sauk women attractive. A man such as White Bear.