Sam now doubled back a mile and scouted the area east and north of the camp. He thought it unlikely that there were other Indians within miles of this spot but the men who had accepted the unlikely as fact were all dead. He went two miles east by north, striding swiftly but softly along the crests of aspen-covered hills. Time and again he stopped to listen and sniff. After two hours of reconnoitering he knew the direction from which these warriors had come and the direction in which they were headed. He knew they had no horses, no dog, no fresh scalps, and that they were the kind of party that had killed his wife. If only the one who struck Lotus down were there!

He came back down the hills and took a position south of the camp. His revolvers he had hidden near his horses; his rifle he now set by a tree; and he adjusted the Bowie’s sheath on the left side of his belt, two inches forward from his hip-bone, so that he could seize it instantly. Then he went forward. For two hundred and fifty yards he followed a buffalo path along a stream. A strong breeze was blowing against him; the odor of the campfire and of the four men around it was in his nostrils. How well he knew that Crow odor! A hundred yards from the men he stopped, and stood a few moments, sensing. One of them seemed to be lying on his robe. The other three still sat and smoked, with dying firelight playing over the face of the one on the north side. Sam wished that he was the one lying down. The warrior facing him seemed to have no sense of danger; he did not peer into the dark or listen or glance round him. Sam knew he could advance no farther as long as the man sat there. He would have to wait.

While waiting he again went over his plan. At the instant when he was ready to strike the first blow he would give the dreadful Crow battle cry; with all the power of his lungs he would explode it in their ears. A sliver of moon had come up. It cast a little light but not much. There was a little light from the fire but he could no longer see the Indian’s face. An hour later the last of the four had lain down. Again Sam went over his plan: when six feet from the man lying on the south side he would give the cry, with enough rage in it to arouse the dead. At the same moment he would paralyze the man with his right heel. The next instant he would smite with his clenched fist the man on the east side; and swing and bury his knife in the man on the west side. The man on the north side might by that time be on his feet. Sam’s plan was to seize him by the throat and with one powerful wrench snap his spine. He figured the whole thing would take no more than seven seconds. He began to move forward. Against the moist earth his moccasins made no sound but he had to move with extreme care when thrusting a foot forward through the dead grass. He supposed that the four of them were now asleep. They were dreaming dreams of murder and bloody scalps and young women wildly acclaiming them. When thirty feet from them Sam paused to study their positions. Then he crept forward until he stood almost above the man on the south side. He took a few moments to settle his big tensed body into quiet. Then he soundlessly inhaled air until his lungs were filled and in the next moment exploded it:

"Hooo-kii-hiiii!"

The sound shattered the night. The man next to him had no time to move before a tremendous blow paralyzed him. The man on the east was struggling to sit up when Sam drove his fist against his windpipe. A moment later the twelve-inch blade went all the way through the chest of the man on the west side, who at that moment was on his knees, reaching around him. The man on the north was on his feet, as Sam had expected him to be, and was making a move to flee when Sam’s huge hands closed round his throat. Sam heard the neck snap and released it, and at the same moment with a thrust of his foot struck the man in his belly and sent him plunging for fifteen feet.

His next move was to draw the knife from the man and plunge it through the heart of each of the two he had knocked unconscious. With the skill of one who had studied the work of professionals he took the four scalps and cut off the right ears. He looked at the dead men but none of them seemed to have Lotus’s Bowie. Then he hastened to his rifle. There he waited. If there were other warriors in the area who had heard his cry they would come slinking and skulking, their black eyes like jewels in the moonlight. But no warriors came.

Settling the scalps and ears in the forks of a tree, Sam took his rifle and went to the bodies, to see if on them or in their trappings there was any sign of his wife—her scalp or a utensil or a weapon. He could find none. Taking each by an ankle, he dragged the corpses into position, side by side, and flung their weapons across them. If other warriors found these bodies before the wolves got to them they would see that the right ears had been sliced off close to the skulls. They would know that Sam Minard had left his mark.

Returning to his horses, he rolled into a robe for three or four hours of sleep. His last thoughts before the night closed over him were of his wife, whose bones, in the blanket behind the saddle, were within reach of his hand.

14

THE NEXT MORNING after eating a hard dry breakfast he patted the blanket over the bones and said, "Don’t you worry, Lotus-Lilah, I’ll get the son of a bitch." He felt such contempt for his enemy that he shot a deer in the heart of their country and roasted the loins and both hams. Three days later he met Wind River Bill close by the Yellowstone. Bill said he had been up to see how the woman was. He guessed she was all right. All winter he had felt powerful oneasy about her, for he had figgered she would be dead hump-ribs before spring; but doggone it, there she was, lugging water up the hill to her plants and sitting by the graves long after dark. Were the four skulls still on the stakes? Doggone if they warn’t. Jist looking round up there had made Bill feel as the Indians felt when ole Belzy Dodd yanked his skelp off. Had Sam heard that one? Dick Wooton told it. Belzy had a head as bald as a buffalo skull after thirty winters in the blizzards. He covered it with a wig. One day at Bent’s Fort when a lot of sneaky Rapahoes were snooping around Belzy rushed among the Injuns making loud and blood-curdling whoops and waving in all directions with his weapons. At the top of his war tantrum he yanked his wig off and shook it at them. Every last redskin fled in terror because he thought that with one stroke Belzy had scalped himself.

When Bill asked Sam what in the doggone creation he was doing with four new scalps Sam told him the story. After staring at Sam as a few days earlier he had stared at Kate, Bill reached for pipe and tobacco. Tamping tobacco into his pipe, he said, "Ya kallate to terminate the hull doggone nation?"

Sam said dryly, "Only as many as I have time for."

"Doggone it, Sam, you shorely ought to reconsider. Thar muss be two thousan them Crows and thar ain’t a devil as hisses won’t be after yore skelp."

"That’s how I figger it," Sam said.

"Godamighty!" Bill said. He now was staring at four ears hanging on a leather string. "Cuttin their ears off, Sam? Why, doggone it, ya might as well cut their balls off. Ever see a wasp nest laid open?"

"Many times," Sam said.

"That’s the way the hull Crow nation will be, I shorely think so. How many have ye kilt?"

"Only four but I’m not through."

Bill puffed his pipe and looked at Sam for half a minute.

"Why for ya cut their ears off?"

"I want them to know you didn’t do it. That’s my mark."

"Wall now, that’s mighty nice of ye, Sam. I shorely wooden want them two thousan devils after me. Tell the truth now, how long ye figger to live?"