f Victoire and for the people who had died there.
It sounded as if many of the people of Victor, perhaps Nicole and her
family, perhaps Grandpapa, might have come through unharmed.

But another fear took a grip on him. "On the way here, did Wolf Paw ...
hurt you, Nancy?"

"No. I think he was too tired and too badly hurt to want to do anything
like that. We rode hard, and he kept me tied on his horse all the time.
We stopped to sleep long after dark and started riding again before
sunup. There was always at least one man awake to guard me."

All the while she had been talking, Nancy had kept a tight grasp on his
arm. Now he gently pulled away from her and stood up.

"Nancy, I must leave you for a while."

"No!" Her voice was shrill with fear.

"I must. There are many wounded who need me."

Fearful of how she would react to what he was going to say next, he
hesitated. Then he spoke quickly to get it over with, as he did when he
had to hurt a patient. "This is my wife, Redbird. She will care for
you."

"Your wife?" Even in the semidarkness of the wickiup White Bear could
see pain in her eyes.

"Yes." He had no time now to ease her suffering on that score.

He turned to Redbird and said in Sauk, "Do what you can for her. She saw
her father and many others of her people killed."

"I must know who she is," said Redbird, fixing him with her slanting
eyes.

He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Have no fear. I will tell
you everything, tonight. See that she eats. Give her maple sugar. Help
her to rest."

White Bear spent the rest of the day moving through the wickiups under
the trees with his Sauk medicine bag and his bag of pale eyes surgical
instruments. Wolf Paw had brought back many wounded braves. Together
with Sun Woman and Owl Carver, White Bear treated those he could and
made the dying more comfortable. He went to the families of the braves
and warriors who had been killed and tried to comfort them, performing
rituals that helped them let their loved ones go, to walk west on the
Trail of Souls.

By late afternoon White Bear was sick with disgust at the suffering and
death this war had brought, and wanted nothing more than to go off by
himself and weep for his people. Wolf Paw's raid had brought back cattle
and horses, but nearly two dozen men had died and an equal number were
badly hurt.

_And all for what? To make the long knives hate us more._

At sunset another war party thundered in, this