Redbird's body went rigid. Floating Lily pulled her mouth away from Redbird's breast and started to cry again.
"White Bear? Alive?"
Wild Grape nodded. "When the long knives were killing us at the Bad Axe, he came. He was the long knife war chief's prisoner. He spoke for the long knife chief, told us not to be afraid. But then he saw Sun Woman lying on the ground with her throat cut. He fell down beside her and screamed and tore at his face. The long knives had to hold him. I thought they might kill him, or he might kill himself. They dragged him away. I think he is a prisoner right there in that fort."
Or perhaps he is dead, Redbird thought bitterly. Like everyone else.
In miserable silence she made a little tent out of her blanket in the field by the fort, using sticks Eagle Feather found for her. She and her children huddled under the blanket, the sorrow in her belly like a wolf inside her trying to gnaw and claw its way out.
The thought that White Bear might be on the other side of those walls of white-painted limestone was more than she could stand. She could not move or speak. Long knives stood around the edges of the field, watching the remnant of the British Band with their cold pale eyes. Redbird almost wished one of them would shoot her and end her pain. But then what would her children do? She did not want Eagle Feather and Floating Lily to die.
Later that day Owl Carver hobbled over to her, followed by a thin-lipped long knife with a rifle.
"Good-bye, my daughter." He looked very old and tired. It was a miracle that he had lived through this war. She noticed that he held in his hand the owl-decorated medicine bag.
"Where are you going, Father?"
"The Winnebago Prophet, Black Hawk and I must go into the fort to meet the pale eyes war chiefs. I guess they will shoot us or hang us. I cannot see the future anymore. Wave tells me that the rest of you are to walk south to the Rock River. The long knives will keep you at their fort there till next spring. Then they will let you cross the river to join He Who Moves Alertly in Ioway country. Take care of your mother and your sister. You are the strongest and wisest of my children."