me.”
Already Scratch had a hard lump in his throat. The words came with difficulty as he croaked, “Why do you bring this holy man, this physician, this great healer with you today, Don’t Mix?”
“I bring the holy man here this day so that he can perform a wedding.”
“A wedding for who, Don’t Mix?”
He stood tall, a few inches above the old white man, as he proclaimed, “A wedding of your daughter—Magpie … and the man who loves her more than any other man ever could.”
“Who … who is this man who dares say he loves my daughter more than any other man ever could?” Scratch demanded. “Who dares to say that he loves my Magpie more than her father?”
“I would tell you his name,” Don’t Mix declared in a clear voice as he took a step aside, leaving Real Bird there before Waits-by-the-Water and Titus Bass, “but he will proudly tell you himself.”
“Who is this man?” the trapper demanded again, hurling his voice over the silent crowd. “I want him to show his face and tell me how much he loves my daughter before he hopes to take her hand in life’s hazardous journey.”
“It is me!” Turns Back announced at that dramatic moment, standing far to the side of the throng.
Expectantly, the crowd parted for his spotted pony. Behind him, Turns Back led a dozen of the finest horses in all of Absaroka. On two of them he had packed everything he owned, what few clothes and weapons were his alone, along with his shield and totems and the small shelter he and his new bride would erect at the edge of camp for their wedding night.
“Who speaks up, brave enough to say he is prepared to take my daughter from her father?” Titus roared, the lump hard in his throat, his eyes smarting as he looked upon this young man who came to a halt before the lodge.
“Turns Back is my name,” he said as the crowd fell breathless and he slid from the back of that spotted pony. Then he handed Titus Bass the reins to his warhorse. “I have come here to ask that you let me marry your daughter.”
Scratch turned to glance at his wife, finding that she too was crying, tears streaming down her bright copper cheeks, her eyes glistening in the midday light. He turned back to the young man, stared down at the reins in his hand, then held out those reins to the suitor. “I could never take a man’s war pony, Turns Back.”
An anxious murmur shot through the crowd.
“I will give away everything I own,” the warrior vowed, turning slightly to indicate his poor possessions and those twelve horses. “Give you all that I have if you will only say I can marry your daughter,
“Take back your war pony,” he declared, lifting the warrior’s hand and placing the reins into his palm. “I can’t accept such a gift from a courageous warrior of the people.”
Turns Back stared at his hand and those reins, fear and surprise in his eyes—for this was not the way things were supposed to happen at this very moment in the ceremony.
So Titus did his very best to reassure the young man who had despair written across his face. “You are a warrior of our people,” Scratch told him as his voice slowly grew stronger. “And a warrior must have a war pony to fight our enemies.”
“Then take the rest of these horses,” Turns Back pleaded before that hushed crowd of onlookers, murmuring about the father’s refusal of gifts. “Take everything that I own—”
“You do not own very much, so it seems,” Scratch chided him, looking over what little was loaded on those two ponies.
Turns Back hung his head. “I know it is not enough to pay you for the hand of someone so wonderful as your daughter, Magpie. In fact, I realize I will never own anything near enough to pay in return for a woman like Magpie.”
“Look at me, Turns Back,” he commanded. The warrior raised his eyes, unflinchingly steady at the white man. “I think a good man is one who gives away much of what he owns. He returns from a raid—and he gives away the horses he has stolen. He brings back blankets and weapons—he gives them away as well. Is this what you have done, Turns Back? After every raid against the Blackfoot, the Assiniboine, the Lakota, and others?”
“Yes,” he answered in a clear voice. “I would have kept it all in trade for Magpie if I had known that you would want it in return for your daughter.”
“No, Turns Back,” he said with a stone face. “I don’t want your horses. I don’t want all that you own. None of it is worth anything to me.”
The crowd gasped. This had never been done before. No father had ever turned down the offer of gifts for his daughter when a marriage ceremony was announced and the whole village brought together in this way. People all around them were whispering, many of them leaning in to get themselves a look at the face of Turns Back as he stood there in abject shock. This white man had just broken the long-standing tradition of the Apsaluuke.
Turns Back started to stammer, “I-I have n-nothing more to offer—”
“I want only one thing from you, Turns Back,” Titus said as he reached out and took hold of his wife’s hand with his left. Then he raised his right hand and held it out between himself and the young warrior, palm up. “These ponies, these weapons and totems—they are not worth anywhere near as much as what it is that I want my daughter to have from you.”
“Wh-what can I give you to make you let me marry her?”
“It’s not what I want from you, Turns Back,” he said, seizing the warrior’s wrist firmly. “It’s what I want to know that you will give my daughter.”
“Anything!”
“Your heart,” he said to the youngster in a whisper. “Tell me she will forever have all of your heart.”
Relief washed over the young man’s face, and his eyes began to pool with emotion. “Yes! Yes, this I promise you!”
“Promise her … promise her this now,” Titus said as he released his hold on the warrior’s wrist and took a step back to the lodge, pulling aside the door flap.
Out of the darkness stepped a radiant white light as Turns Back gasped in surprise. Magpie had never looked more beautiful.
Her hair gleamed, shiny with bear grease, both braids intertwined with red silk ribbon, each wrapped with white ermine skins, the black tips of their tails spilling across the tops of her breasts. The fringes on the sleeves were so long on that snowy white dress they nearly brushed the ground, where she stood in a pair of matching white moccasins tied around her ankles. The entire yoke of the dress, both front and back, was covered with the milk teeth of the elk, the umber crowns which tarnished those teeth stark against the blinding whiteness of the gown. Down both shoulders ran a four-inch-wide strip of porcupine quills of brilliant colors: oxblood red, greasy yellow, robin’s-egg blue, and a hint of moss green. It was truly the most beautiful dress Waits-by-the-Water and her eldest daughter could have created for this most special day.
Down the center part of her hair, Magpie had rubbed a dark strip of purple vermilion dye, and a smear of it to high-light each cheek, in addition to one wide strip of the reddish paint extending down the center of her chin. This would be the last day she could ever wear paint as a woman of the Crow. From this day on, she would no longer be a virgin. Now she would be a wife—
“Tell my daughter, Turns Back,” Titus spoke in the hush of that crowd admiring the beauty of this bride who stood in their midst. “Tell Magpie what you wish to give her.”
Turns Back took a step forward so that he stood right before the young woman. At last she raised her eyes to his. They never once left his face as he took the wide eagle-feather fan from her hands and passed it on to Magpie’s mother.
“Magpie,” he said, his voice cracking with nervousness, this time in the way of a young lover declaring himself, “I give you everything I own.”
“Turns Back, I was standing inside my parents’ lodge when you spoke of this to my father.”
“I don’t have much to give you … but I give it all to you.” He wrapped his hands around both of hers and held them midway between their breasts.
“Do I have your heart?” she asked. “This day, and for all days?”
“Yes, oh, yes,” he answered fervently.
“That is all I could ever ask of you, Turns Back,” she said in the stillness of that moment. “There are others
