It occurred to him that he should have spoken in the Crow tongue. He was about to do that, but he heard the rustle of bushes behind him, so he stopped and waited. A young Indian woman emerged, still trying to free herself from the chokecherry branches that held on to her. Her dress was wet. When she looked up to see him watching her efforts, she stopped as if she thought she might have made the wrong decision to come out of her hiding place. “Come on,” he said, “and you can help me cook some of this meat.” Then he turned his back on her again and continued toward his fire. Still undecided, she paused a few moments more, then decided to follow the strange white man. He was tall, with broad shoulders, and wearing a buckskin shirt and a flat-crowned hat with a feather stuck in the band. She wondered if he might be the white man her tribesmen called Hawk. If he was, he was a friend to the Crow. Even if he was not that man, he seemed to have no evil intent toward her, so she decided to follow him.

She walked up to within ten feet of the fire, where he busied himself situating his coffeepot in the flames. She stopped then to ask a question. “Are you the white man they call Hawk?”

“Yes, I’m Hawk,” he answered. “What is your name?”

“My name is Winter Flower,” she replied.

“Crow?” Hawk asked, and she nodded vigorously. “Well, Winter Flower, why are you here in this place? Are you alone?” She said that she was alone and that she was trying to get back to her family on the Crow Reservation. “On the Stillwater River?” Hawk asked.