Yet in one camp at least the dying fires flickered up at my coming. Old Medicine Robe called his priests and sacred women to the sweet and solemn ritual, with which I was formally adopted as a Blackfoot, as a chief and as his son. The young men roused themselves for a hunting and killed deer, so that the women might dress the skins, and make clothes for Rain and for me. The poles were cut, the cover sewn for my lodge, in which I had to sit in lonely state while Rain attended me with meals, which she brought from her hearth. The lodge was furnished for me with robes, blankets, panther skins, back-rests and parfleche trunks.
Then I must take my ponies and tie them at the lodge door of my brother, Many Horses. But Many Horses, not to be outdone, tethered every pony he had left at the door of my new teepee. That was Rain's dowry.
And lastly, the wedding moccasins were made, beautifully embroidered with porcupine quills, dyed in wild herbs. These, with a fine dinner, were brought to my lodge by Rain and Owl. But Owl stayed outside, while Rain came in, and by that happy action became my woman.
I kneel at my table here, to pay my reverent tribute to this adorable woman, and her commanding loveliness. Rain was a lady to her finger-tips, and in any society would have had the men at her feet. Shy, dainty, with a quaint delicate humor all her own, she mothered and owned me with perfect tact and rare intelligence, for the woman who obeys her husband rules him. If my lady had faults, I loved her for them. And where every dog, baby and kitten saw her excellence, how could I be blind?
It was my right and privilege to serve my lady, but her heart was like a sanctuary too holy for me to enter. To her came men in trouble, confessing their sins; and all their secrets, with many of her own, she kept to herself. She told me only what it was good for me to know, and if she told me secrets, I can keep them. I have nothing else to keep.
For seven years I was not the Blackguard at all, but something quite different, so the chronicle of that time hardly belongs to this writing. And yet writing is a sixth sense for the absent, a consolation for those who are alone, for those who are lonely.
By all the codes, the sanctions of conduct and standards of judgment which make the world's opinion, I was the husband of a prostitute and kept a squaw for mistress.
But by the pity of Christ, I had tried to save a falling soul from ruin before I married an honorable woman.
Our codes, our sanction, standards, opinions, views, like our bilious attacks, our selfishness and our debts, are matters demanding attention without adding to our welfare. Will you accept my opinions as a gift? Shall I adopt your views?
These are infirmities of the mind or body which we can not sell or give away or thrust upon our neighbors. Our bodies are fouled by the world, our minds are fogged until the blazing truth of God burns our impurities. It is conceivable that from such a world as ours only as pariahs can we advance in manhood, in moral worth, in spiritual growth. I have climbed mountains from whose summits all the ways of the world looked small as spider-threads, leading to nowhere in particular; and if we descried from the heavens these beaten paths of men, they would not seem, I think, to be the only trails through the star-fields.