"One good thing about getting old is that I do not want as much food."
White Bear felt immediate relief that they did not have to share their few boiled roots and their bits of meal cake, and then he hated himself for begrudging food to his own mother.
Getting old, she had said. She was not an old woman. From what she had told him, he guessed her age was less than fifty summers. But the woman before him was terribly gaunt and stooped. The privations of the moons just past had aged her beyond her years.
He felt a stone block his throat as he realized that his mother might not have much longer to live.
Iron Knife bent down and hugged Redbird, then patted Woodrow's head with a big hand while the boy looked up at him with shining eyes. It was Iron Knife, leading the war party that had captured Woodrow, who had insisted the boy be allowed to live.
Like everyone else in the band, Iron Knife was mostly brown skin stretched over a skeleton, but his was a very big skeleton, a head taller than White Bear's. Studying Iron Knife, White Bear wondered whether he could ask his help in getting Woodrow and Nancy safely away.
Iron Knife said, "There is no safety in following Black Hawk. He said the British and the Potawatomi and Winnebago would join forces with us, and they did not. Now he says the Chippewa will help us. He is sure to be wrong again. And before he gets to the Chippewa he must travel through Winnebago country for many days, and now most of the Winnebago are helping the long knives hunt us."
Sun Woman said, "Black Hawk knows that if we join the rest of the tribe in Ioway, he will no longer be leader. No doubt those who accepted He Who Moves Alertly as their chief have prospered as much as we have suffered. Black Hawk will have to take second place to He Who Moves Alertly. That sticks in his throat like a fishbone. He would rather lead us on and on until we all die."
White Bear had to force his voice from a chest tight with urgency. "You will not have time to build enough canoes and rafts before the long knives are upon you."
And the heads of the long knives would be full of names like Kellogg's Grove, Old Man's Creek, Apple River Fort, Indian Creek and Victor, and their hearts would be ravenous for revenge.