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them.”
    His friends clapped hand to mouth and looked from side to side in fright. “Aiii!”
    Just then Pretty Rock’s moccasin slipped on green moss, and the wide lips below grabbed his foot. Scared, he scrambled to jerk free. But the Two Maidens had heard him and they caused the Boulder With Wide Lips to keep a tight hold.
    His friends ran crying to his mother Star. “Aiii!” they cried, “the Two Maidens have grabbed Pretty Rock.”
    Star came quickly. She saw that her son had been caught around the ankle. Trembling, for she was very much afraid of the medicine of the Two Maidens, she ran to get a travois pole. Standing on her toes, she tried to push him off.
    Finally, poking desperately, she managed to pry him out of the grip of the Two Maidens, and he rolled to the ground. Still shaking all over, Star picked him up in loving tender arms and carried him home to bed.
    He became very sick. All night he saw balls of fire come streaking across from the Two Maidens to his brain. And at dawn he died.
    His mother wept, and gashed her breasts and legs. His father covered his head with ashes, and chopped off a finger. Next his father and mother gave away all their possessions. And they placed the body of Pretty Rock on a tree scaffold beside the six strange boulders under which the Two Maidens lived. “Because,” they said, “he had made a promise to marry the Two Maidens and belonged to them.” Later, when his bones fell out of the scaffold, they buried his remains under the Boulder With Big Lips.
    Recalling it all, No Name stirred restlessly under his sleeping robe. Sometimes he dreamed about his brother. In these dreams Pretty Rock always managed to beat him to his mother’sbreast. Sometimes No Name fought like a wildcat with him for her breast. Yet always he lost.
    No Name groaned. He knew his father expected him to take the place of Pretty Rock. At the time of Pretty Rock’s death Redbird and Star had given up all hope of having another child. There had been only one in fourteen years and it looked as though that was all they were destined to have. Twice Redbird married likely maidens with Star’s consent, in the hope that another wife might bring him a son. When no son was born, he sent the maidens back to their parents. It was when he took Loves Roots as his fourth wife, because she was so lively, that at last Wakantanka looked down upon them in favor. But it was Star who conceived, miraculously, not Loves Roots, and so No Name was born.
    No Name’s place awaited him. He needed but the proper vision.
    Otherwise, failing, his cousin Circling Hawk would become the tribal chief. Circling Hawk had not only had his vision, but already had placed his coup stick on sleeping Omaha braves on three different occasions without waking them, had conducted two successful horse raids, had slain four Pawnees. Because of these exploits Circling Hawk had the right to wear nine eagle feathers in his hair. Worse yet, when he became chief, Circling Hawk would have the power to compel Owl Above to accept ponies for Leaf.
    The Yanktons were eager to have No Name become a valiant one. They liked him. Circling Hawk they respected, and were glad he was on their side, but they were worried that he would someday lead them into doing something rash.
    The Yanktons were proud of their name among the Dakotah Sioux. They were known as the peaceful keepers of the sacred Place of the Pipestone, a Shining People. They were also proud to be known as They-who-live-in-the-center-of-the-world, in proof of which they had only to point to a place just a day’s journeyto the north where all the rivers began: the River of the Double Bend, the River With Red Blood, the River of Milky Water.
    The moonlight became dim in the smokehole. Gradually the lodge darkened. And at last No Name fell asleep.
    And, sleeping, he dreamed. In his dream he too had been caught by the Boulder With Wide Lips. The Two Maidens would not let him go. The one named Loves Boys