“I was often at the Miniconjou village with my brother-friend, and sometimes I would see Tashina Wanblee over there. She was getting to be a big girl, and she was very pretty. I could see that she still liked me and that she wanted me to talk to her; but High Horse and I were going to be great warriors and we did not want to be bothered with girls. Once I came upon her down by the creek when she was getting water for her mother. She looked up at me quickly, and I can see her eyes yet; but I was older before I knew what I saw there. It was not the way it used to be when I was her horse. I thought I had scared her because she did not know I was there. When she had looked that way at me, she would not look any more. She just stood still with her hands clasped in front of her and her head bent. I talked to her, but she did not answer. Only once she said, hardly louder than a whisper: ‘_Shonka ’kan, Shonka ’kan_.’ “I knew she was pretty, with her long hair combed smooth and shining like a blackbird, and I think she was waiting for me to throw my blanket over us and whisper to her in the dark. But my head was full of horse-stealing and war and the great deeds High Horse and I were going to do before very long; and it was such things that I told her, bragging like the boy I was, for I think I wanted her to be proud of me. “There was a band of Shyelas [Cheyennes] camped up the creek that time. High Horse and I would go up there to play throwing-them-off-their-horses or maybe hoop-and-spear with the boys our age; for the Shyelas were friends and almost like our own people come to visit us. “One day when we were up there having a good time, I noticed that High Horse was not with us any more, and I wondered if he had gone home. So afterwhile I rode off down the creek towards the Miniconjou village. There was some brush around a spring, and High Horse was in there. He was talking to a Shyela girl, and he did not see me. First I thought I would yell at him; but I did not, for all at once I felt sad and ashamed. So I turned back and rode home another way. “The next time I saw him, I thought he was sick because he was queer with me, but he said he was not sick. Afterwhile he began talking without looking at me, and he said that maybe when we were great warriors we would have women too just like other men. Crazy Horse had a woman, didn’t he? And all the other great warriors had too, didn’t they? And so maybe it would be the same way with us. And I said we were not great warriors yet, and we did not have to think about that now. And he said, ‘I know you talk to Tashina, because I have seen you doing it. Maybe you will have her for your woman sometime; and maybe I will see a girl I want too.’