her rich dress, as she waited with folded arms for her lover to address
her. Her okendokenda of bright colors was slightly open at the neck, and
revealed brooches of brass and silver that covered her bosom; a heavy
necklace of crimson beads hung around her throat; bracelets of brass
clasped her wrists, and her long plaited hair was ornamented at the end
of the braids with trinkets of silver.

Her cloth petticoat was richly decorated with ribbons, and her leggins
and mocassins proved that she had spent much time and labor on the
adorning of a person naturally well formed, and graceful.

"Why have you wished to meet me, Harpstenah?" said the young man,
gloomily. "Have you come to tell me of the presents Cloudy Sky has made
you, or do you wish to say that you are ashamed to break the promise you
made me to be my wife?"

"I have come to say again that I will be your wife," she replied: "and
for the presents Cloudy Sky left for me, I have trampled them under my
feet. See, I wear near my heart the brooches you have given me."

"Women are ever dogs and liars," said Red Deer, "but why do you speak
such words to me, when you know you have agreed to marry Cloudy Sky?
Your cousin told me your father had chosen him to carry you into the
teepee of the old man. Your father beat you, and you agreed to marry
him. You are a coward to mind a little pain. Go, marry the old medicine
man; he will beat you as he has his other wives; he may strike you with
his tomahawk and kill you, as he did his first wife; or he will sell you
to the traders, as he did the other; he will tell you to steal pork and
whiskey for him, and then when it is found out, he will take you and say
you are a thief, and that he has beaten you for it. Go, the young should
ever mate with the young, but you will soon lie on the scaffold, and by
his hand too."

"The proud eagle seeks to frighten the timid bird that follows it," said
the maiden; "but Red Deer should not speak such angry words to the woman
that will venture her life for him. Cloudy Sky boasts that he is the
friend of the thunder bird; in my dreams, I have seen the fairy of the
waters, and he told me that Cloudy Sky should die by my hand. My words
are true. Cloudy Sky was once with the sons of the thunder birds when
they fought against Unktahe. He killed a son of the water god, and the
spirits of the water have determined on his death.

"Red Deer, my heart is strong. I do not fear the medicine man, for the