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whispering to him, all urgent. She was angry, and so was Pa. "Women and children, that's what they are in that town. Even if the Prophet and Ta-Kumsaw killed our boys, them women and children there didn't do it. You'll be no better than them if you raise a hand against them. I won't see you come back into this house, I'll never see you again if you kill one soul of them. I swear it, Alvin Miller."

Pa just kept on polishing, except once when he said, "They killed my boys."

Alvin tried to answer, opened his mouth to say, "But I ain't dead, Pa!

It didn't work. He couldn't say a word. He wasn't brought up here to give a vision to his parents, neither. It was Measure he had to find, or Pa's own musket ball would kill the Shining Man.

It wasn't far, not even a step. Alvin just inched his feet forward, and Ma and Pa disappeared. He caught a glimpse of Calm and David, shooting their guns - probably at targets. And Wastenot and Wantnot, ramming something - ramming shot down the barrel of a cannon. Glimpses of other folks, though because he didn't know or care about them he didn't see them clear. Finally he saw Measure.

He had to be dead. His neck was broke, judging from the angle of his head, and his arms and legs were all broke, too. Alvin didn't dare move, or he'd travel a mile in an instant, and Measure would disappear just like the others. Alvin just stood there, and sent his spark out into the body of his brother, lying before him on the ground.

Alvin never felt such pain in all his life. It wasn't Measure's pain, it was his own. It was Alvin's sense of how things ought to be, of the right shape of things; inside Measure's body, nothing was going right. Parts of him were dying, the blood was packed into his belly and crushing his own life out, his brain wasn't connected to his body no more, it was the most terrible mess Alvin ever saw, everything wrong, so wrong that it hurt him to see it, a pain so sharp he cried out. But Measure didn't hear him. Measure was beyond hearing. If Measure wasn't dead he was half an inch from being dead, and that was sure.

Alvin went to his heart first. It was still pumping, but there wasn't much blood left in the veins; it was all lost in Measure's chest and belly. That was the first thing Alvin had to mend, heal up the blood vessels and get the blood back where it belonged, flowing in its channels.

Time, it all took time. All the broken ribs, the cut-up organs. All the bones, joining them without so much as a hand to help move something into the right place - some of the bones were so out of line that he couldn't heal them at all. He'd have to wait until Measure woke up enough to help him.

So Alvin got inside Measure's brain, the nerves running down his spine, and healed it all, put it back the way it had to be.

Measure woke with one long, terrible scream of agony. He was alive and the pain was back, sharper and clearer than it ever was before. I'm sorry, Measure. I can't heal you up without letting the pain come back. And I got to heal you, or too many innocent folks are dead.

Alvin didn't even notice that it was already night, and half his work still lay ahead of him.

Chapter 14 - Tippy Canoe

In Prophetstown, no one but the children slept that night. The adults all felt the circling White army; the bidings and hexes cast by the White troops were like trumpets and banners to the land-sense of the Reds.

Not all of them found they had the courage to keep their oath, now that iron-and-fire death was hours away. But they kept the oath this far: They gathered their families and slipped out of Prophetstown, passing silently between companies of White soldiers, who neither heard nor saw them. Knowing they could not die without defending themselves, they left, so that not one Red would mar the perfection of the Prophet's refusal to fight.

Tenskwa-Tawa was not surprised that some left; he was surprised that so many stayed. Almost all. So many who believed in him, so many who would prove that trust in blood. He dreaded the