Gray Falcon was not left long to find out.
"Ya dirty Injun," began McIntosh. "Yer the one's been sniffin' 'round my youngest daughter's skirts, ain't cha? Well, no more. She's gone back ta her home far away, do ya hear? Now, get out of here. Don't ever come back. Next time I see yer face, I'll kill ya. Ya got it? Ya understand?" McIntosh waited barely a second before again spitting out, "Ya filthy Injun. The likes of ya ain't welcome here. I'll kill ya next time I see ya. And, this ain't a simple threat. I promise ya. I'll kill ya. Now, get!"
No translation was needed; Gray Falcon understood. This concerned this man's daughter, A'sitápi. The long-anticipated trouble had, at last, arrived.
Gray Falcon could feel his lips swelling, was aware blood was gushing from his nose, and, though he could taste his own blood, he forced himself to stand up straight and scan in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle around him without taking his eyes off his opponent. Good. No one stood behind him.
Gradually, with bow and arrow still trained on the Trader, Gray Falcon backed out of the gate, stepping onto the grassy terrain of the plains. He didn't say a word.
Several of his Blackfoot friends immediately surrounded him, their own bows and arrows drawn. Likewise, five of the fort's engagées formed a line against them, their pistols trained on the Indians. McIntosh spit forcefully at Gray Falcon, although the moisture fell short of its target.
"Don't ever come back here!" shouted the Trader. "None of ya." And, this said, he pushed the gate closed.
That's when it happened.
"Gray Falcon!?"
At once, Gray Falcon recognized the "talk" so common to his tribe's medicine men—the silent spirit-to-spirit speak. Had he not been in a life-and-death situation, he might have rejoiced; such was its importance.
For most of his life, he had thought he might never acquire the ancient skill of communication commonly used by many scouts and by all medicine men. But, try though he might, he had not yet accomplished it—even though he came from a bloodline of medicine men.
Yet, he had "heard" the thought clearly.
It came again. "What is wrong?" He now recognized the speaker. It was A'sitápireaching out to him.
A'sitápi?The pesky white girl? The same girl and favored daughter of the Trader who had this very moment beaten him up?
Though it was puzzling how a white girl was able to speak to him in the mind talk, he answered her in the same manner, saying in thought, "I have been looking for you at the fort. Where are you?"
"St. Louis. My father sent my mother and me away."
"Your father hates me."
"I know," she responded in the thought speech. "He has forbidden me to see you again."
"Did you tell him about our friendship?"
"No. I promise I didn't, although it has been out there in the open for anyone to see. Still, someone else must have whispered it to him. After Father came back from his trip out west, he was like a man possessed. He might not have been able to keep my sister from marrying Eagle Heart, but he was determined I would never marry an Indian."
"We are not involved in that way!"
"But, I'd like to be and he knows it."
"Did you tell your father this?"
"No. He was too angry at me…and at you."
"You are too young for me, and, even if I were inclined to like you in the way you suggest—which I am not—you would have to grow up first. You are only fourteen winters old."
"I am soon to be fifteen. I know some girls who have married at this age."
"Do not say this to me. You know you are too young for marriage, as I am, too. And, even if we were both older, you are too bold. It is a man's task to ask the woman for marriage, not the opposite. And, it is doubtful I would seek you to be my wife since you are white and I am not. We have become united in a cause: your sister and my friend. That is all."
"Yes, I know. But, I can't help what's in my heart."
He didn't answer for a long while. At last, however, he said, using thought alone, "I am now forbidden from ever entering your father's trading post, and your father has threatened to kill me if he ever sees me again."
"I'm sorry," she said in the mind-to-mind talk. "Before I left, he told me he would kill you if he could, and I didn't know what to do to prevent you from coming back to Fort Union. But, I've had no way to contact you except through the means of the thought-to-thought speak. I've been trying to do it, really I have. But, I have not accomplished it until now. I'm sorry my father has treated you this way."
