She understood why Wolf Paw had forced her to give up the knife, but she was angry with him.
"That was White Bear's knife from his father," she said.
"The long knife would have killed you," Wolf Paw said. "We cannot fight them." She saw the hopelessness in his eyes, and she put her hand reassuringly on his arm. When the long knives ordered them to get up and start walking, he walked beside her.
She was hungry all day long. A food wagon followed the party. Three times a day the soldiers got meat and bread from it, but the Sauk got only corn mash on tin plates, which they washed out in the river and returned to the food wagon. Several times a day they were allowed to stop and drink from the river. Redbird prayed that her milk would hold out for Floating Lily.
She sang a walking song, to try to forget her pain and to help her put one aching foot in front of the other.
"We walk this trail, following the deer.
Sing as you walk, oh, braves and squaws!
Last night I dreamed my moccasins
Struck fire as they touched the ground."
When she raised her voice others joined in. After a while even Wolf Paw began to sing in a deep voice.
Five blue-coated long knives rode before the Sauk and another five behind them. Redbird looked around at her people, a hundred or so, mostly women and children. The men numbered about twenty. Tired, hungry, sick, broken in spirit. All of them on foot now, the last of their horses having been taken away at Fort Crawford.
She remembered Owl Carver's parting words to her. You must be the spirit walker for the British Band. And Wolf Paw had said that she had the courage and wisdom to face death on the trail.
Whatever this remnant of her people might have to meet now, she promised herself that she would use all her strength to help them through it.