Rides Far did not translate at once. She looked at her father, and something passed between them that Wes could not read, and when she turned back to him her face had gone carefully blank, the way a card player's face goes blank.
"My father says," she said, "that you will marry his daughter."
Wes stared at her.
For a moment he honestly thought he had misheard, that his ears were still full of wind. He looked at the chief, who looked back at him with no change of expression whatsoever. He looked at the men along the wall, none of whom were laughing now. He looked at Rides Far.
"Which—" His voice cracked. He tried again. "Which daughter?"
"He has one," said Rides Far. "Me."
The shaking had him now in earnest. He could not stop it; it came up from his knees and rattled his shoulders and made the fire jump in front of his eyes. Every bunkhouse from Miles City to Bozeman had its stories about Crow lodges, told by men who had never been within fifty miles of one. None of them started like this.
"Ma'am," he said, "sir, I don't— With all respect, I've known you for about three hours. I don't speak a word of your language. I don't have anything. I've got one lame horse and a saddle and a rifle and forty-one dollars Pike owes me." He swallowed. "Why?"
Rides Far translated that, all of it, and he thought he saw the chief's eyes warm a little at the forty-one dollars.
The old man answered at length. When he was done, Rides Far said, "My father says that is the right question, and he will answer it. But not here, and not yet. First, he says, there is something you must see. He says you will not believe his reasons until you have seen it, and once you have seen it you will not need him to give them." She rose to her feet in one smooth motion. "Come with me."
* * *