eisure. He gritted his teeth and kept
rowing, his shoulder muscles feeling as if they were about to tear loose
from his bones.

He heard a ball whiz past his head. They must have stopped riding to
reload and take better aim.

Another ball smashed into the boat just ahead of the wooden oarlock.

His body was coated with the cold sweat of fear. There was nothing he
could do but sit here, a target in the moonlight, and pull on the oars
with all his strength. If he missed one stroke it might be his death.

_Earthmaker, do not let Raoul take revenge on Frank._

Pistol balls splashed water into the boat.

11

Redbird's Wickiup

White Bear rowed upstream on the Ioway River past stands of weeping
willow whose yellowing fronds drooped into the dark green water. Even
though the current was at its weakest now, his arms and shoulders felt
as if they'd been beaten with clubs. If only Frank had been able to find
a canoe for him instead of this heavy bateau that he'd had to push
across the Great River and now up the Ioway.

His heart fluttered in his chest like a trapped bird as he sensed
himself coming closer to the British Band's winter hunting camp. He had
thought he would be happy at this homecoming, but he was terrified.

How would they receive him? After six years they must think he had
forgotten all about them. Would they despise him? Maybe they would just
make fun of him.

And in what state would he find the British Band? They'd had to get
through the summer without the crops they always raised. Had any friends
been shot by white snipers during the siege of Saukenuk? How many,
weakened by hunger, might be ill or dead? Would his mother be alive?

And what of Redbird?

He had already met, just by chance, one member of the band, Three
Horses, who had been fishing in the shallows on the Ioway shore of the
Great River. And Three Horses had certainly been happy to see him. He'd
jumped on his pony and had said he would ride back to the camp with the
news that White Bear was back. He was so excited that he did not wait
for White Bear to ask any questions about how his people had fared.

So they would all be waiting for him by the time he got there. The
thought frightened him all the more.

Ahead, a row of bark and dugout canoes lay bottoms up on a dirt
embankment.

He saw a flash of red in the trees near the canoes. For a moment he
thought, with a joyous leap of his heart, that it might be Redbird. Then
a