“High Horse was a Miniconjou and Kicking Bear was a Hunkpapa. They were going to Pa Sapa [the Black Hills] with their people. But we had big plans. When the fall hunt was over, they would come back again and find our village somewhere on the Greasy Grass [Little Big Horn] or the Powder or the Tongue. Then the three of us and Charging Cat, and maybe some others, would make war against the Shoshonis or the Crows, or maybe both of them. It was harder to make war in the winter than in the summer, and if we got back with horses and scalps we would be great warriors and everybody would be talking about us again. Maybe we would all be chiefs sometime. We had been together most of the time after the sun dance and thanking the food, and we talked and talked about our plan. We would ride out into the hills alone and talk about how we would do. So we were not thinking about girls. Even High Horse had not been sick, since getting all those horses cured him. “I was out helping to catch horses, and I was riding back leading three of them. At the creek I stopped to let them drink, and there was some brush there. I was leaning on my horse’s neck, and I heard something moving in the brush. When I looked, it was Tashina. Maybe she saw me going after horses, and came down there to see me before she went away. She was just standing there outside the brush with a pretty trader’s shawl over her shoulders and up over her head. She was holding it close about her face, and when I looked at her, she pulled it closer and looked down at the ground. I was glad to see her, and I spoke to her the same as to a boy. I joked and said, ‘If you are out looking for a horse again, here are three real ones.’ I was thinking of when she caught me for a horse and made me pull her drag. She just kept on looking at the ground with the shawl tight about her face. And when I stopped joking, I could hear her saying, ‘_Shonka ’kan, Shonka ’kan_, you made me proud.’ She said it so low that I could just hear her. Maybe I would have jumped off my horse then; but the three horses were full of grass and water and felt good, so when they saw some other horses coming, they neighed and reared. Two of them broke away, dragging their lariats, bucking and kicking and breaking wind. So I said, ‘Hold this horse for me while I catch the others.’ It was an old horse and it did not feel so good as the others. Then I rode off on the run. The horses were hard to catch again; and when I came back, the other horse was tied by his lariat to the brush, and Tashina was not there.”