to west to north and back to east again, keeping
Pierre on his right, singing softly, almost to himself:

"Earthmaker, you made this man,
Now we ask your help for him.
He is a chief whose people need him.
He still has far to walk.
Lift him up, Earthmaker.
Give him back his life."

When White Bear had danced the circle nine times, he put down the gourd.
He had brought out from the chateau a kettle of freshly brewed
willow-bark tea and a porcelain cup. It would ease the pain in Pierre's
stomach and give him strength. Whenever Pierre ate solid food, blood
would come trickling out of every opening in his body and he would grow
weaker and paler. He was slowly bleeding and starving to death.

Smelling the tea as he poured it into the cup, White Bear remembered how
he'd met Nancy Hale when he was collecting the bark yesterday along the
bank of Red Creek. She'd been blueberrying. It was the fourth or fifth
time he'd encountered her over the summer on the prairie near Victoire.
The meetings weren't accidents; not for either of them. But he felt so
uncertain about what he would do when Pierre died that he could only
talk with Nancy about things of no importance.

He looked up to see his father's eyes open. They had sunk so far back in
the skull-like face that they seemed like embers glowing in caves.

White Bear blew on the steaming cup and held it to Pierre's lips. He
drank the tea down in small sips.

Pierre smiled faintly as his eyes traveled over his land. The nearby
ground, covered with grass cropped short by sheep and goats, sloped down
to the split-rail fence that surrounded the chateau's inner yard. To the
west White Bear could see the two flags flying over Raoul's trading post
on the bluff overlooking the river, and beyond that part of the river
and the dark west bank, the Ioway country. In the other directions were
orchards, farmlands, pastures, and the prairie, yellowing with fall,
rolling on to the edge of the sky.

When Pierre had drunk most of the tea, White Bear put down the cup. He
gathered up his sacred stones and put them back in his medicine bag.

Pierre said, "You did a Sauk ritual for me just now, did you not?"

"Yes," said White Bear. "It was meant to heal you. Or, if not, to give
you strength to bear the pain."

"I do feel better today," Pierre said. "But I must also have a certain
rite of the Church if I am to pass over into God's love. I sent a week
ago to Kaskaskia f