old
man's shuffle.

Redbird beckoned Nancy to follow her to the tent she'd come from.

"Where you going, ma'am?" the sergeant called.

"I'll be all right," Nancy called over her shoulder, raising her voice
over the drumming of the rain. "This is the woman I came to find."

She could see the young soldier shaking his head. Why would a young
white woman go into the filthy, disease-ridden tents of these Indians?

_May the Lord open his eyes and heart._

At first the inside of the tent seemed black as a moonless night to
Nancy, and the smell of damp, unwashed bodies made her stomach churn.
She took Redbird's hand and held it for reassurance. Not too tightly;
the bones felt delicate.

Redbird explained that they had no dry wood for a fire. The long knives
had promised to bring them some, but they hadn't yet. The air was as
chill in the tent as it was outside, and Nancy heard women and children
coughing.

They sat in silence for a time, Sauk fashion. Nancy's eyes adjusted to
the dim light filtering through the canvas till she could see Redbird's
face. She saw Eagle Feather looking at her out of the shadows with huge
blue eyes, a little skeleton whose covering of skin looked like
stretched brown leather. Hurting inside, she greeted him with a pat on
the arm. If only she could do for him what she had done for Woodrow. Now
she could see four other women and two little girls huddled together
near the rear.

Nancy broke the silence. "Redbird, White Bear needs you."

Wincing in pain, Redbird narrowed her slanting eyes. She asked what had
happened to White Bear.

Redbird, Nancy learned, had heard no news of Auguste since the day he
left Black Hawk's camp to take Woodrow and Nancy back to the whites.
Auguste had told Nancy that he had tried to get word to Redbird; now she
silently damned the soldiers for not bothering to pass the messages on.
No doubt they thought it not worth the trouble.

When Nancy told Redbird that she had left White Bear four days ago,
unconscious with a bullet wound in his chest, she saw the gleam of tears
on Redbird's cheeks.

"The pale eyes doctor says he can do no more," Nancy finished. "You are
the only one who can help him now. You know the Sauk way of healing. You
told me you wanted to be a shaman."

No, Redbird said quietly, she _was_ a shaman. The declaration startled
Nancy.

"You told me the men wouldn't let you be one."

In their private language, Redbird said that for a long tim