lf Paw, his teeth bared, wrenched the medicine stick from
White Bear's hand.

"Do not harm the medicine stick!" shouted Owl Carver.

Without looking at the old shaman, Wolf Paw handed him White Bear's
medicine stick. Two big warriors held White Bear as Wolf Paw approached
him, stretching his lips in a grin.

"A woman speaks for peace with the pale eyes," Wolf Paw said, "because
peace is women's way. I once saw Redbird going to White Bear when he was
on his vision quest. Maybe he gets his visions from her."

More and more men were on their feet, and they roared with laughter at
Wolf Paw's gibe.

Sun Woman had made her way into the inner ring around the fire and now
held Redbird.

"Come away, daughter," she said in a strong but soothing voice. "This
does not help White Bear."

"Look!" shouted Wolf Paw. "Now he has both his wife and his mother at
the council fire."

He shook out the red and blue cloth. It was a woman's dress.

"He speaks like a woman," Wolf Paw said. "He says what women tell him to
say. Women speak for him. Let him dress like a woman. A pale eyes
woman."

Wolf Paw flung the dress over White Bear's head, and the two men who
held him pulled it down around him. White Bear felt wrapped in
hopelessness as the cloth covered his head.

And he had wanted to be a prophet for the Sauk.

_The truer his words, the less they hear him._

He struggled halfheartedly. He no longer cared what they did to him. His
own failure and the sure destruction of his people chained him so that
he could barely move. The warriors pulled the dress straight down over
his arms, pinioning them to his sides. As his head emerged through the
collar, laughter battered at him. Teeth gleamed in the firelight.

He saw Sun Woman holding Redbird. Tears squeezed through his wife's
tightly shut eyelids. The face of his mother was heavy with woe.

Too despairing to resist, he let Wolf Paw and his men push and drag him
away from the council fire and run him through the camp. He was blind to
the laughing faces around him, deaf to the mocking cries.

But he saw one sight that all but killed him--looking up at him from
somewhere in the crowd, the hurt, bewildered eyes of his son, Eagle
Feather.

13

The Volunteers

Nicole and Frank had walked halfway across the main room of the trading
post blockhouse when Nicole heard Raoul's voice thundering from the
stone-walled counting office in the far corner.

"You and the boys wil