"I'm not going to send you to find your way alone," White Bear said. "I'll go with you until I see you in safe hands. Prairie du Chien and Fort Crawford are south of here on the river. If we go in that direction we're bound to meet some of your people." "I got no people but you," said Woodrow. "You treated me better than my folks ever did." White Bear felt a catch in his throat. He remembered how, seven years ago, he had fought against being sent from the tribe when Star Arrow came looking for him. Eagle Feather's blue eyes rested gravely on White Bear. "What about Mother and Floating Lily and me? Are we going to cross the Great River now?" White Bear remembered again what the Turtle had said in his vision. He looked out at the river, tinged with red by the sunset, and felt a chill. Calamity, his shaman's sense told him, awaited those who tried to escape by crossing the river again. "No." White Bear looked over at Redbird, who held Floating Lily to her breast. "Day after tomorrow at the latest, the long knives will be here. I want you to go with Black Hawk. Though I think Black Hawk has led us unwisely, still, to go north is safer. Three lodges, about fifty people, are going with Black Hawk. Owl Carver, Flying Cloud, Wolf Paw--they will follow him." He shook his head sadly. "What is it?" Redbird asked. "Even Wolf Paw disagrees with Black Hawk about going north. He himself will remain at his father's side, but he is sending his two wives and his children across the river. He thinks they will be safer. I think he is wrong." He gazed out at the reddened river and shook his head again. "Wolf Paw made the right choice for his family," said a deep voice behind him. White Bear turned to see Iron Knife's huge figure, silhouetted by the setting sun. Behind him trudged a much smaller shadow whom White Bear recognized at once--Sun Woman. White Bear hurried to his mother, put his arm around her shoulders and led her to the fallen tree to sit down. He could feel her bones under her doeskin dress. "How is my mother?" She patted his hand. "Very tired. But alive." "Are you hungry?" "One good thing about getting old is that I do not want as much food." White Bear felt immediate relief that they did not have to share their few boiled roots and their bits of meal cake, and then he hated himself for begrudging food to his own mother. _Getting old_, she had said. She was not an old woman. From what she had told him, he guessed her age was less than fifty summers. But the woman before him was terribly gaunt and stooped. The privations of the moons just past had aged her beyond her years. He felt a stone block his throat as he realized that his mother might not have much longer to live. Iron Knife bent down and hugged Redbird, then patted Woodrow's head with a big hand while the boy looked up at him with shining eyes. It was Iron Knife, leading the war party that had captured Woodrow, who had insisted the boy be allowed to live.