"He said the agent's letter went out yesterday morning," she said. "A white rider. On the road to Fort Custer. He said he is sorry he did not know sooner." She turned to Wes. "He has a day's start."
* * *
They left before dawn. Eli argued, from his robes, that he should come too, and was told by three people at once, in two languages, to lie down. Strikes Twice sent Plays With His Horse and two other young men to ride with them, on the best horses in the camp, each leading a spare. Rides Far rode the blue roan mare and led a tall gray gelding for Wes.
The chief came out in the dark to see them go. He put a hand on Wes's knee and said something short.
"He says," Rides Far translated, "that you are not to come back without his daughter. He says if you do, you should keep riding."
"Tell him I wasn't planning to."
She did not translate that. She did not need to. The old man's teeth showed in the starlight, and he slapped the gray on the rump, and they were away.
They rode east across the Pryor Creek benches and down into the long valley that ran toward the Bighorn, and Wes learned in that first day what it meant to travel with people who had been born on horseback. They rode coulee and ridge, changing horses every few hours without dismounting, swinging from one saddle to the other at a lope while Wes, who had thought himself a good rider, clung to the gray. When they stopped to water, Rides Far walked among the animals checking each hoof, and the young men watched her with the respect they would have given a war leader.
"You are tired," she said to him at the first night's camp, a fireless hollow in the lee of a sandstone rim.
"I'm all right."
"You are lying. That is good. It means you are still proud enough to keep going." She handed him a strip of pemmican. "The white rider will take the road. The road goes round by the Bighorn crossing. We are going straight. If the horses hold, we reach the fort tomorrow evening. So will he." She chewed, considering. "So it will depend on which of us they listen to."