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unaffected by the songs of sorrow floating on the currents of night.
    â€œMany Walks Woman will keep her vigil throughout the night,” Sparrow said.
    â€œIt is night for her.” Lost Eyes held his emotions in check, no easy task, for he trembled at the very nearness of the young woman walking at his side. He tensed, expecting her to blame him for the death of Waiting Horse. He said, “Some say it was my doing.”
    â€œWhat do you say?”
    â€œThat I loved Waiting Horse like a brother. But he rode too close to Iniskim and his arrows did not find their mark. Iniskim killed him. Not I.”
    There was an urgency in his voice, as if he were trying to convince himself more than Sparrow. No matter, she believed him.
    He held a branch for her, then ducked as the two of them emerged from a willow grove lining the creek bank. They made no effort to conceal their progress and crunched noisily through the underbrush only to startle a woman kneeling on the creek bank. Owl Bead, the rotund wife of Tall Bull, clambered to her feet, clutched a water bag to her bosom, and beat a hasty retreat, leaving in her wake a trail of water from the unstoppered bag. The formless shadow stalking toward her out of the brush could have been anything. She wasn’t taking any chances. Lost Eyes and Sparrow laughed and walked along the creek in the moonlight.
    â€œPoor Owl Bead, now she will alert the camp, crying that a bear has entered the village,” Sparrow said.
    â€œPerhaps the men will come for us with spears and arrows.”
    â€œAnd hang our hides upon the tanning racks when they are done.” Sparrow stopped and stared down at a patch of ice that had yet to succumb to the spring sun.
    Something a couple of yards upcreek had caught her attention, a patch of darkness beneath the translucent barrier of ice, just off the creek bank in the silvery light. Lost Eyes saw it too and drew close to the silhouette. He knelt, as did Sparrow, both of them anxious to discover what was trapped beneath the ice. She found a fist-sized chunk of granite, worn smooth by water, and handed the stone to her suitor.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked, leaning forward to peer over his shoulder.
    â€œWe will see,” Lost Eyes told her and struck the surface a mighty blow that sent slivers of ice exploding up into his face. The river splintered and icy water swelled upward through the wintry wreckage, and up from the silvery shallows a doll floated to the surface, like a corpse rising from its grave. Lost Eyes drew back despite himself, for the doll was no child’s toy. It was a medicine doll, the figure of a man carved out of a ten-inch-long chunk of pine. The doll bore a series of markings, Blackfoot by design, but it was the doll’s face that caused Lost Eyes to shudder. Some knife had rendered an all too familiar countenance in the wood and placed two white beads like sightless orbs in the carving’s haunted facade.
    Clouds scudded across the moon, obliterating the light as the now black waters recaptured the doll and bore it into the center of the creek and away.
    â€œWhat did you see?” Sparrow whispered in a tight, nervous voice.
    â€œMyself,” Lost Eyes said.

    The medicine fire is nothing but embers. I could breathe them into life once more. But what is the use? The night is ended. And all I have seen is what has been … a death and Iniskim, a woman and a medicine doll. My spirit too is imprisoned. Who will set me free? Even if my vision is black water and mystery, I will bear it. I am weak; my limbs shudder like stalks of buffalo grass before an approaching storm. The sweat has ended and there is nothing to do but live. Sparrow waits without, Wolf Lance too. What shall I tell them? Shall I lie and claim that which I have not seen and earn the wrath of the All-Father? Surely, the Above Ones would curse my deeds and all whom I touched, and the prophecy of the medicine doll would come true .
    No.