He turned to see whether Little Crow and Three Horses were all right. The militiamen had bound them too. Both braves' black-painted faces were expressionless, but White Bear read fear in their eyes and in the set of their mouths--the same fear he felt, and tried not to show. The red-bearded man leaned down from his saddle and grabbed a handful of White Bear's long hair. He jerked on it, dragging White Bear toward the bank. White Bear stumbled on the stony creekbed, bruising his feet through his moccasins. "You wanna see our officers? Then step along!" What had happened to the white flag? Without it, what did they have to show that they had come in peace? "Will you bring our white flag?" he called desperately to a clean-shaven man wearing spectacles, who looked a little calmer than the others. The man's face twisted into a snarl, and White Bear's heart fell. "You'll get your white flag up your ass, redskin!" "You sound just like a white man," said another militiaman. "You sure you ain't a white man in paint?" "Listen to me," White Bear said hopelessly. He wanted to say, _If we don't fight it will save your lives as well as ours._ But how could he talk to these men, maddened by whiskey and war? His eyes met those of Little Crow and Three Horses. Again the red-bearded man jerked his hair, so hard White Bear thought he would pull it out of his scalp. He had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. Worse than the pain was the indignity. Horses splashing water, mud and pebbles on them, long knives shouting curses and threats, the three Sauk stumbled out of the creek and through shoulder-high prairie grass into the militia camp. The sun's last rays fell on flushed, sweating white faces, on glistening rifle barrels. To White Bear, most of the men looked younger than he. "Somebody get the colonel," said the man with the red beard. "Tell him they claim they want to surrender. Might be we could catch old Black Hawk himself." The three Sauks' only hope, White Bear thought, was that the commanding officer might be more willing to listen to them than his men were. The Sauk and their captors stood in a circle where the grass had been trampled flat. A short distance away stood supply wagons and tents. The prairie surrounded them. Some militiamen went to one wagon on which five kegs with spouts stood, filled tin cups from the kegs and drank from them. Whiskey, White Bear thought, seemed to be as important to these men as food. The sun was down now, and the three stood in twilight, in the midst of the shouting mob. "Look alive, you men! It's the colonel!" The crowd opened up, and two men came through. One of them, short, skinny, wearing a coonskin cap and a blue officer's coat, came up to White Bear and peered at him. "I know you!" Half his teeth were rotten and the rest were missing. White Bear knew him too. Eli Greenglove. "By God, Raoul! I'll be a son of a bitch if it ain't that half-breed nephew of yours."