woman with a round, cheerful face and shrewd eyes.

Water Flows Fast said, "You are the daughter of Owl Carver. You should
go up and sit close to him." Redbird sliced her hand flat across her
body to say no. She knew Water Flows Fast to be a keen observer and a
gossip, always looking for signs of trouble in other people's families.
The less Redbird said to her, the better.

Redbird looked over her shoulder and saw that now there were many more
people packed in behind her. Everyone was talking at once, and the
hundreds of voices beating upon her ears made her head hurt. About five
hundred people were here, everyone in this camp, which was one of four
that made up the British Band of the Sauk and Fox tribes that would come
together in Saukenuk after the winter snow and ice melted.

The medicine wickiup was built on a low hill in the center of the camp,
and when Owl Carver appeared, everyone who was standing sat down.
Redbird's eyes devoured Owl Carver's face, trying to read in it whether
Gray Cloud was alive or dead.

Another man emerged from the medicine wickiup to stand beside Owl
Carver. His head was bare even on this terribly cold day, and he wore
his hair in the manner of a brave, his dark brown scalp shaved except
for a long black scalplock that coiled down the side of his face. His
eyes were shadowed and sad-looking, and there were heavy blue-black
pouches under them. His cheekbones jutted out and his mouth was wide,
curving down at the corners where it met deep furrows that ran from nose
to chin.

Redbird's heart beat faster as she saw that to honor this moment he had
attached a string of eagle feathers to his scalplock and wore strings of
small white beads around the rim of each ear. He stood with his arms
folded under a buffalo robe, skin side out, painted with a red hand
proclaiming that he had killed and scalped his first enemy while still a
boy.

His sombre gaze fell upon Redbird like a stone striking her from a great
height. She felt as if the war chief of the British Band knew every one
of her secrets. She ducked her head and looked down at her mittened
hands in her lap.

Owl Carver raised his arms, and the people fell silent.

"I have called on Black Hawk, our war chief, to see Gray Cloud, and he
has heard great prophecies from Gray Cloud's lips," the shaman cried in
a high, chanting voice.

Then Gray Cloud had lived through the night!

Owl Carver blurred in Redbird's sight, and if she had not