Does she want me to say I won't? No, she cares for them too. We were a family.
He said, "Yes, if I can get Victoire away from Raoul, I will bring them here."
He saw her eyes close and knew that he was hurting her, and that deepened his own pain still more.
She let go his hand and twisted her fingers together in her lap. "Of course Redbird is first in your heart. But how can she live here with you? Where her baby was torn out of her arms and killed by a mob of white people."
"I've asked myself that many times. I will have to hear what Redbird says."
He remembered what Sun Woman had said when Pierre asked her to come with him to Victoire. I could not look into pale eyes faces all day long. My heart would dry up. And surely Redbird had more reason to hate the sight of white faces than Sun Woman had seven years ago.
Could he himself live here? He talked about retaking Victoire, about living as a white man, but he recalled the heaps of dead he had seen on that blood-soaked island off the Bad Axe River. Could he live among the people who had done that?
Nancy said, "Would you still want to live at Victoire if Redbird said she would not come with you?"
He saw Redbird's small face, her slanting eyes, the fringe of black hair that fell over her forehead. He felt her slender arms around him as they had held him so many nights in their wickiup. He saw the love and fear in Eagle Feather's eyes when they parted so that he could take Nancy and Woodrow to safety. The pain of being away from them almost made him want to weep.
"I don't know the answer to that. The trail I follow is dark. I must go one step at a time."