Returning the man's gaze, Gray Cloud felt a warmth in his own chest like the heat suddenly rising from a fire that has taken hold. "I have brought you to hear a warning," said the Turtle, his voice shaking Gray Cloud's very bones. "You must carry my words back to my children, the Sauk and Fox." As the Turtle spoke, another huge drop splashed into the pool, to add itself to the Great River. "Evil days are coming for my children." Gray Cloud quailed, thinking that he did not want to bring that back to his people. But perhaps there was some good word he could tell them. "How may we escape this evil, Father Turtle?" he asked. "This evil is from the pale eyes." At this, Gray Cloud turned to stare at the pale eyes man, who looked sad now, even sombre. Who was this man, and why was he here? "The pale eyes and my children cannot live on the same land," said the Turtle. "Because they do not live in the same way. Most pale eyes do not wish harm to my children, but they do harm by coming into the land where my children dwell." Gray Cloud at once grasped what the Turtle spoke of. Generations of Sauk and their allies, the Fox, had lived in towns at the joining of the Rock River and the Great River, where in summer they raised corn, beans, squash and pumpkins. Each fall they would leave their towns and fields for winter hunting camps in the West. But the pale eyes warriors, the long knives, had been telling the Sauk and Fox that they must give up all their land on the east side of the Great River, even their principal town, Saukenuk, and move forever west, into the Ioway country. And the war chief Black Hawk had defied the long knives, leading his people each spring back across the river to farm the land around Saukenuk. Gray Cloud knew that even the kindliest pale eyes were not to be trusted. Owl Carver was suspicious of the black-robed medicine man, Pere Isaac, who talked about the spirit called Jesus and who spent many afternoons with Gray Cloud, teaching him the words and signs of the American pale eyes. The Turtle's voice broke in upon these memories. "Tell my children that a great clash is to come between them and the long knives. The people will suffer, and many of them will die." Gray Cloud gasped as the horror of that sank in. He looked again at the pale eyes, and now where there had been love he saw lines of sorrow carved deep into the thin face. _Is this man, then, a danger to me?_ "Is there no escape, Father Turtle?" he asked again. "The people must walk their path with courage," said the Turtle. "Black Hawk will lead them. And he and his braves will show the greatest courage, such courage that the name of Black Hawk will never be forgotten in the land where he was born." The Turtle's golden, heavy-lidded eye seemed to fix itself on Gray Cloud.