The girl I courted was named Elk-woman. She and I were nearing twenty and it was time for her to marry, past time in fact. So her relatives arranged to give her to a man of the They-don’t-laugh-band. The relatives of both parties had feasted and talked over the affair and were about ready to exchange the first presents, when Elk-woman’s relatives first suggested the marriage to her. She asked for time to think it over. That evening when I met her as usual in a secret place, she told me the story and cried. Such a marriage was repugnant to her. I knew the man and had already come to dislike him. So that night we ran away. I took my horse, gun, and bow. We rode double. We went far up into the foothills of the mountains and made a secret camp.