"I would tell you if I had done that. I did want to, and she wanted to, but I would not. Does it make you hate her to know she wanted that of me?" Redbird's head was bowed so that he could not see her face. "You are a man many women would want. I cannot hate them all." "When I asked you to untie Nancy today and take her to our wickiup, you could have refused me, as Running Deer did to Wolf Paw. Then the women would have cut her to pieces. I could not have stopped them. I thank you for honoring my wishes." Redbird said, "You would have tried to stop them, and you would have been hurt. I did not want that to happen." She looked up at him suddenly, smiling. "And I knew that people would say, 'See, White Bear's wife does as he asks, but Wolf Paw's wife makes him look foolish.' It felt good to make Wolf Paw look foolish, after what he did to us." It warmed him to hear her say "us." "Now I want to do something more for her," he said. "But I can only do it if you will say yes to it." He held his breath. Redbird said, "If you made her your wife, then no one in the band would dare to hurt her." White Bear let out a deep sigh. He should have known her thoughts would move as swiftly as his own. He had wondered how to say it to her, and she had said it for him. "Only to protect her. Not to be truly my wife. Will you consent?" She stroked the back of his hand. "I think it would be a good thing if we keep her safe. You and I did not want our people to fight and kill the pale eyes." She pressed her warm hand against his. "At least we can keep them from killing this one." The ripples on the lake reflected fragments of moonlight. White Bear felt he could see his love for Redbird, and it looked like what lay before him--a lake of silver. He leaned against her, and her back rested against his arm. "I promise you I will not bed with her." She smiled at him again. "Why promise that?" The question surprised him. "You are my true wife and the only wife I want." He recalled Black Hawk's loyalty to Singing Bird. That was the right way to live. Redbird said, "If you do go to her in the night, I will understand. Especially now when I am so big and we cannot get together easily. I believe you when you say you love me more than her. But she is tall and has hair like gold and very white skin, and I am small and have brown skin. Perhaps the pale eyes in you would prefer her." "I think the pale eyes in me and the Sauk in me are one. And that one prefers you." She took his hand and moved it down her body till he felt the warm, soft place whence, in little more than a moon, their baby would emerge. "I want to do this with you now," she whispered. "I think we can, if you go into me only a little way." When Redbird and White Bear returned to their wickiup, the crescent moon had reached the high point of its trail across the sky. Within the simple shelter he and Redbird had built, it was too dark to see anyone.