After the great work of cutting the meat and stretching the hides, preparation for the spring feasting began. Dancing Horse watched the Arapaho maiden concealed among a thicket of trees.

Gathering courage, he went to his lodge, donned his porcupine-quill, embroidered moccasins and leggings, brushed his long shining hair with the porcupine tail brush, perfumed it with scented grass and leaves, arranged it in two plaits with otter fur as an ornament, and folded his best robe about him. He jumped on his best pony, War Wind, throwing a part of the robe under him to serve as a saddle, and, holding the end of a lariat tied about the animal’s neck, Dancing Horse guided his stead in rhythm to the movement of his body. Wily War Wind snorted and seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion as if it, too, wanted to capture the eyes of the maiden with its graceful movements in perfect obedience to its master's.

Dancing Horse pulled his robe over his head, leaving only a slit to look through. He saw the maiden walking toward the river with her empty vessel and took his position directly in her return path. On their first meeting, Dancing Horse did not reveal his face or introduce himself. The maid stopped. They looked at each other silently, his heart beating fast, hoping hers would, too.

In camp they both inquired about each other. She was Morning Star, daughter of Chief Black Bear, a fierce warrior admired by all the bands.

Their second meeting was by the woods where she had come to collect wood. She stopped, and they spoke for the first time, introducing each other. When she left Dancing Horse rode into the distance, exploding with delight. He loved this beautiful maiden. Their meetings continued, and soon they met in the early part of the evening, or drifted from the public dance away beyond the circle of the fire’s light in the shelter of peripheral shadows.

They loved each other, but there were some objections from her family, for it was too soon, and there had been much talk of the coming of the Wasichus into their country and of the need to retreat further west to avoid war before the winter. The Wasichus wanted the yellow gold of the Black Hills. Trouble was coming with many frightening stories of villages attacked and burned, of wagon trains with soldier escorts intruding in their land.

When the large camp broke for the last fall hunting, the Black Bear band went one way and Dull Knife the other. After three days traveling, the Black Bear band made it to the first rise, a few miles southwest of the Black Hills. One evening someone saw Dancing Horse, who had been following his sweetheart and sleeping outdoors all the way, although the nights were already frosty and cold.

The two lovers met each day in secret. Morning Star brought him food, but Dancing Horse would not come near her teepee. Soon the whole band was whispering and laughing, amused at the young man’s predicament. He was asked to accept hospitality in the lodge of High Hawk, the kind old man who knew much medicine and taught his new ward about what man must give woman. The old one gave him a “chotanka,” the magic flute that holds the soft heart of all maidens and makes them slyly turn their heads to its plaintive love serenade calling out into the night.

“Hear, oh, maiden! Listen to him who loves you! Listen, maiden. Hear him who loves you, who loves you. Turn to him who calls you. Listen, maiden, for he who loves you may be gone soon to fight your evil foe!”

One cold evening, hearing the distant call of the flute, Morning Star wanted to go out to find Dancing Horse, but she had no excuse to do this, so she stirred the embers, causing smoke in her teepee. She now had a reason to adjust the teepee's flaps. She took a long time to do this, moving the pointed ears of the teepee with the long poles first this way, than that, as if on such a quiet night the wind were unsettled. Finally, the “chotanka” ceased to be heard. In an instant Dancing Horse appeared ghost-like at her side.

“So, it is you, is it?”

“Is your grandmother in?” he inquired.

“What a brave man you are to fear an old woman! We are free. The country is wide. We can go away and come back when the storm is over.”

“Ho,” he replied. “It is not that I fear her, or the consequences of elopement. I fear nothing except that we may be separated!”

Morning Star went into the lodge, then slipped out once again.

“Now,” she exclaimed, ”to the woods or the prairie! I am yours!”

They disappeared into the darkness.

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