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“When I was six winters of age and he was eight, we stole many kisses from one another,” Dancing Butterfly murmured, a sudden sweet light appearing in her eyes. “Those stolen moments continued until I was ten and he was twelve. It was then that we realized the danger of such kisses.”
She lowered her eyes. Her face grew flushed. “Those kisses started creating other feelings that felt too wonderful . . . that . . . we knew were wrong,” Dancing Butterfly murmured.
She lifted her eyes and gazed again into Mary Beth’s. “We knew we were in love,” she said. “We grew up only tepees apart. We both knew that our hearts were bound to each other.” She laughed softly, then gave Mary Beth a shy smile. “When we grew older, Night Horse told me how he had watched my shadow through the walls of my family’s tepee.”
Mary Beth was saddened to think that two people could love as Dancing Butterfly and Night Horse had obviously loved and yet be parted. She found it incredible that Night Horse could walk away from such a love.
She hoped that Brave Wolf was different from his brother in that respect. She would die if he ever turned his back on their love, a love that had come so quickly and wonderfully.
“We vowed to wait for one another until we were of marrying age,” Dancing Butterfly continued. “But he seemed to forget. He . . . he . . . left one day and never returned.”
“When he left to join Custer and the others as a scout?” Mary Beth asked softly.
Dancing Butterfly only nodded, then wiped tears from her eyes and sat up straighter.
Just then several warriors walked into the circle of people. They were beautifully dressed in ceremonial clothes decorated with ornaments of feathers and seeds and brightly dyed porcupine quills.
Some carried drums while others carried tomahawks adorned with eagle feathers; others carried nothing at all.
They sat on one side of the cleared area and began singing the bear’s song as they beat their drums in a rhythmic fashion.
Dancing Butterfly’s confession was temporarily forgotten as Mary Beth gazed at those warriors a moment longer, then looked over her shoulder. She strained her neck as she watched for Brave Wolf, but instead of seeing him she spotted another warrior dancing through the seated crowd.
“That is Many Wings,” Dancing Butterfly whispered to Mary Beth. “He is the dance leader. Follow my lead, Mary Beth—when I stand, you stand. When I clap my hand to my mouth, you do the same. In that way you will prove that you are a willing participant in our customs, and someone who is worthy of our chief.”
Mary Beth’s eyes widened. What Dancing Butterfly had just said about her being worthy surely meant that he had confided in his people about his plans to marry her.
She blushed and smiled and nodded at Dancing Butterfly. “I shall do my best,” she whispered back.
Then her eyes followed Many Wings. His forehead was painted red and two red stripes were drawn from the corners of his eyes down his cheeks. He wore a buffalo robe with the fur side out.
Four warriors and a boy followed him, all painted and dressed in the same manner. They began dancing in the east, came around the pole to the west, and then turned back to the east. They imitated a bear’s movements, holding their hands in front of them with their fingertips pressed against their palms, shaking their heads, and stepping like bears on their hind legs.
Dancing Butterfly leaned closer to Mary Beth. “Now is the time to stand,” she said, gently taking Mary Beth by the hand and urging her to her feet. “Remember to do as I do.”
Flushed with excitement, Mary Beth nodded, but realized she couldn’t do everything that was asked of her. The people were shouting things in their Crow language. And she knew not one word of it.
She didn’t want to disappoint Dancing Butterfly, and especially Brave Wolf, yet how could she fully participate if she didn’t know their language?
She saw the way Dancing Butterfly and the others clapped a hand over their mouths; that at least, was something she could imitate.
She was watching Dancing Butterfly and the others so closely, she did not see a young woman dance slowly up to the center pole. Mary Beth’s attention was drawn there when everyone stopped shouting and clapping their mouths and gazed silently toward the center pole.
Mary Beth looked quickly toward it. She gasped when she saw the woman, who was dressed in a long, white fur robe with red paint in her hair, start rubbing her face against the bea
rskin on the pole. Then she began dancing rhythmically around it.
Soon she left and the male dancers moved around the pole, their bare feet pounding the earth in time with the beating of the drums.
Then everything stopped. All faces turned toward their chief’s tepee.
Mary Beth’s eyes followed. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw Brave Wolf come from his lodge wearing only a breechcloth and an otterskin headband, with a broad red stripe across his face.
As he sang the Bear Dance Song, he danced toward the pole. When he arrived there, he stopped and rubbed his face against the skin, then turned as a dish of prepared pemmican meatballs and a cup of water were taken to him. After he had consumed them, a young brave went to Brave Wolf with a bearskin robe.
Brave Wolf leaned down.
The lad placed the bearskin over Brave Wolf’s head, then led him through the crowd toward a pole corral that had been only this morning erected at the far right of the central fire.
