Standing motionless at attention to refill glasses wanted during the ceremony, Stone Girl waited, her face unreadable, listening to the curious words and incantations of the white people. She hoped those who stood with her understood them better than she did, but she knew why they needed brandy at the start. It was to support them through the interminable wedding sermon that followed the prayer and reading from the black book. Now Indian people, she reflected, could stand all day patient, never moving a muscle, listening to the spoken word. But white men were restless, inattentive, and unmanageable like children. The enigmatic words of the lesser incantations and the shouting of the sermon she let roll from her ears like water from the back of Kaak, the wild goose. Not till the exhortations were done and the sorceries of the ceremony itself begun did she pay fast attention, and now through the solemn challenges, responses, and declarations her dark eyes kept fastened on the pale face, white skin, and panther hair of the bride. At the end when the black art of the small black book was finished, and the bride kissed and felicitated, Stone Girl attended again, as directed by Mrs. Karricher, to the liquid refreshment of the guests.

Up to now all had seemed fair and auspicious. It was as if Getanitowit had forgotten her and Otter Boy, washed his hands of them both. Perhaps he had been defeated by the god of the black book of the white people, chased westward like his red subjects. Then suddenly during the wedding dinner two men in deerskin shirts and haggard faces came into the midst of the gaiety, asking to see the Captain. At a word from them he took them into his private business room and shut the door. When they came out, he ordered them to be fed. They ate ravenously in the kitchen but would say nothing. The Captain, they said, had sworn them to silence till the wedding night was over. But Stone Girl noticed that certain men guests were taken into the private room and that when they came out they turned strange hard looks on her as they passed while the women to whose sides they returned looked at her with a kind of horror. What had she done now? she wondered.

“The Indian needn’t do anything,” she answered herself. “He need only be Indian to be wrong.”

At the wedding frolic that followed the dinner, a roan-headed settler played a lively fiddle and the black-garbed preacher joined in the dancing. But all through the revelry Stone Girl thought she caught the high shrill note of strain, and when she came among the dancers to serve them they seemed to look at her with mingled hatred and fear. Whatever it was, it had infected the kitchen now, and all evening the help gave her a wider berth than usual, moving noticeably away from her when she was in the room.

Snatches of guarded talk rose to her ears as she passed but not till late in the night when Mrs. Karricher finally dismissed her for the day did she know for certain what had occurred. As she went back to Otter Boy in the darkness, Billy the hostler heard her and came out of his room with his lantern.