The medicine wickiup was built on a low hill in the center of the camp, and when Owl Carver appeared, everyone who was standing sat down. Redbird's eyes devoured Owl Carver's face, trying to read in it whether Gray Cloud was alive or dead.
Another man emerged from the medicine wickiup to stand beside Owl Carver. His head was bare even on this terribly cold day, and he wore his hair in the manner of a brave, his dark brown scalp shaved except for a long black scalplock that coiled down the side of his face. His eyes were shadowed and sad-looking, and there were heavy blue-black pouches under them. His cheekbones jutted out and his mouth was wide, curving down at the corners where it met deep furrows that ran from nose to chin.
Redbird's heart beat faster as she saw that to honor this moment he had attached a string of eagle feathers to his scalplock and wore strings of small white beads around the rim of each ear. He stood with his arms folded under a buffalo robe, skin side out, painted with a red hand proclaiming that he had killed and scalped his first enemy while still a boy.
His sombre gaze fell upon Redbird like a stone striking her from a great height. She felt as if the war chief of the British Band knew every one of her secrets. She ducked her head and looked down at her mittened hands in her lap.
Owl Carver raised his arms, and the people fell silent.
"I have called on Black Hawk, our war chief, to see Gray Cloud, and he has heard great prophecies from Gray Cloud's lips," the shaman cried in a high, chanting voice.
Then Gray Cloud had lived through the night!
Owl Carver blurred in Redbird's sight, and if she had not already been seated, she might have collapsed. Relief made her heart swell up in her chest, feeling as if it might burst.
The people around her murmured in surprise, pleasure and curiosity.
The shaman stretched out his hand. "Sun Woman, stand before the people."