Scooping Floating Lily up in her arms, Redbird leaped up to give the alarm. The brave held out a restraining hand.
"Wait! We are two only, and we come to talk peace." The man spoke Sauk.
He faced her, smiling tentatively, and held up a beautiful calumet, its red pipestone bowl gleaming in the sunset, its polished hickory stem as long as a man's arm.
Owl Carver drew himself up in all his white-haired shaman's majesty. "Who are you?"
"I am called Wave," said the man holding the calumet. "This is He Who Lights the Water. He does not speak Sauk."
Redbird glanced down into the lean-to, to make sure Eagle Feather was all right.
"Who is in the lean-to?" Wave asked a little suspiciously as He Who Lights the Water stepped forward to look in.
"My grandson," said Owl Carver. "He is sick."
"Many of you must be sick. And hungry," said Wave. "Time your leaders took pity on the women and children and ended this war."
More Sauk men and women were coming over now to see the newcomers. The two Winnebago were men of courage, Redbird thought, coming alone as they had into a camp of fifty or more desperate people.