it White Bear square in the head? His eyes
were better than that.

White Bear heard distant shots.

_Earthmaker, let Three Horses live!_

If Three Horses had not run when he did, White Bear would not be alive
now. But White Bear remembered with anguish that he had seen Little Crow
die.

_Oh, my brother!_ Even though half dead with pain and terror himself, he
mourned the brave who had died before his eyes.

Blood pounded in White Bear's head. Night was growing steadily deeper.
By not moving and by taking only the tiniest breaths he might appear to
be dead. He lay with his mutilated right ear uppermost. He felt streams
of blood running like lines of ants over his scalp and his cheek. They
tickled his neck. To lie perfectly still was agony.

White Bear heard Raoul's voice say, "Make sure of him, Eli."

"Damn hellfire nation!" Eli came back. "Don't I know when I've put a man
under?"

"It's dark and you've had a lot of whiskey. Make sure of him."

"Pure waste of time," said Greenglove.

White Bear heard footsteps rustling through the grass toward him. The
effort of keeping himself from moving threatened to tear his muscles
from his bones. His heart beat harder as the steps came closer. Surely
Greenglove could hear its thudding. But he froze himself and held his
breath as the feet stopped beside him. In stillness was his only hope.
The pain throbbed in his ear.

_He'll see that he just hit my ear, and that will be the end._

Should he jump up and run for it? No, Greenglove would not miss a second
time. Let the Bear spirit dim Greenglove's sharp eyes. Let him be
deceived into thinking White Bear dead. There was no other way he could
escape.

He waited for the shot that would smash into his brain.

"Right through the skull," Greenglove called out. "Ain't even enough
left to scalp him."

Amazement flooded through White Bear. That couldn't be what Greenglove
saw. Unless he was blind drunk. Or blinded by the Bear.

_Or he doesn't want to kill me._

Hadn't he tried to talk Raoul out of shooting the three of them?

White Bear remembered Greenglove swinging the rifle at him the day of
his father's funeral. If Greenglove hadn't knocked him out, Raoul would
have shot him.

He was too frightened to try to understand it. He was alive, that was
all he could be sure of. Alive for a little while longer.

"He's in the happy hunting ground." Greenglove's voice faded a little as
he walked away. "Want us to dig a hole