ck from visiting the other camps to
put a stop to White Bear's torturing her like this.

_But he might force me to accept White Bear as my man._

Amazingly, she felt a lift in her heart at this thought. She herself
could never forgive White Bear, but if Owl Carver, her father and the
shaman of the British Band, ordered her to, the decision would be made
for her.

Then, at least, this torment would end.

Sun Woman silently picked up the bustard, sat down and began plucking
the feathers, piling them in a basket to use for adornments and bedding.

To escape from being rubbed raw by White Bear's presence, Redbird went
out into the woods along the Ioway River, as Sun Woman had done
yesterday, to gather herbs. The medicine plants were at their most
powerful now, because they had been gaining strength all summer long.

Late in the day the sky darkened rapidly. The purple-gray clouds seemed
to hang so low that she could reach up and touch them. She heard the
first drops pattering on the branches above her. As the rain started to
fall faster, it drummed on her head and shoulders. Sighing at having to
give up this comforting work, she put a lid on her basket, stood up and
started back for the camp.

Her doeskin shirt and skirt kept the rain off her body, but her hair was
soaked and her face was streaming by the time she got back to the
wickiup. She would build up the fire and dry herself off. Its heat would
feel so good. She hoped Eagle Feather and Sun Woman were already inside.

She stopped before the silent, sitting figure outside the wickiup. The
brown blanket was pulled up over his head. Sun Woman must have done
that. The blanket was sodden with rain, and he looked like a rock
growing out of the ground.

The beating of rain filled her ears.

She squatted down and looked into his face. Water ran in rivulets down
from the blanket into his half-closed eyes. He did not even blink.

She shivered. The cold rain was coming down so hard she could not see
most of the camp. A lump blocked her throat.

"Come inside," she said. She had to raise her voice to hear it over the
drumming of the rain.

White Bear neither spoke nor moved.

"Come in. It is raining. It is cold. You will die out here." She
realized she was screaming at him.

"Oh!" she cried helplessly.

She sat on the ground, looking into the rain-slick, light-complexioned
face with the strong nose and the long jaw that she had loved long ago,
the face she had