She sobbed till she thought her ribs would crack. Her throat burned; her voice rasped. She pressed her forehead against his chest. She heard him groan in pain, but he was hurting her more than she could ever hurt him.
"How can you ask me to stay where they killed Floating Lily? How can you stay here?"
"What would you have me do?"
A sudden thought occurred to her. "The pale eyes give gold for land. Take pale eyes gold for this land, and you can take the gold with you to the Ioway country and share it with our people."
"No, Redbird," he said sadly. "What could we do with gold, out there in Ioway? Sometimes the long knives have given our chiefs gold in return for land, yes. In no time the gold melted away. Gold by itself is like seed corn. Without the right ground to plant it in, it is soon used up and gone. The only way I can use the wealth my father Star Arrow left to me is to stay here and work with it."
She had stopped crying. This hurt too much for tears. Only when Floating Lily was killed had she felt more pain than this.
For a moment she could not bring herself to say the words she had to say.
From somewhere she summoned the strength to speak.
"Then I must leave you."
Each word, she felt, was an arrow fired into him.