I am sorry to say that I am not sure I even thanked Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing for all he did to help me.
I walked back to the village with the women as I had come. Ahead of us walked a young woman named Pink Blossom, with her chin in the air as if she were angry. The older women, coming after her, were laughing and slyly jesting with one another. I asked my mothers what it was all about.
It seems there was an old man in our party named Old Bear, whose wife had died. He wanted to marry again and smiled at Pink Blossom whenever she passed him; but she did not like Old Bear, and she turned her eyes away whenever he came near.
When she came to the June berry woods, Pink Blossom set her sack under a tree, while she picked berries. Old Bear saw the sack. He folded his robe under his arm into a kind of pocket, picked it full of berries, and emptied them into Pink Blossom’s sack.
This vexed Pink Blossom. She went to her sack and poured Old Bear’s berries out on the ground. “I do not want that old man to smile at me,” she told the other women.
It was because the women were laughing at her and Old Bear, that Pink Blossom walked ahead with her chin in the air. The others were having a good deal of fun with one another at her expense.
“I think Pink Blossom did wrong to waste the berries,” said one, a clan cousin. “If she did not want them herself, she should have given them back to Old Bear, for him to eat.”
“Old Bear’s is a sad case,” said Elk Woman. “But I knew a man in a worse case.”
“Tell us of it,” said Red Blossom.
“Years ago,” said Elk Woman, “I went berrying with some others on the other side of the Missouri. In the party was a young man named Weasel Arm. He was a good singer, and he liked to sing so that his sweetheart could hear his voice. His sweetheart was also in the party. Weasel Arm helped her fill her sack; and when she went back with the other women and they were waiting for some that had not yet come in, Weasel Arm lay down on the grass a little way off and sang, beating time on the stock of his gun.