There wasn’t much in the booty that any man wanted. Some of them chose pieces of leather clothing, or a tomahawk or a headdress. The rifles, furnished by the British so that the Blackfeet could wage war on Americans, were piled on a fire, and after their wood was burned off and their barrels were hot the barrels were laid across stones and a huge stone was dropped in the center of each to bend it. It was while bending a barrel that Sam was first startled and then astounded. He was busy a hundred feet from where he had scalped the chief when, glancing that way, he saw what he would never have thought could be. Elk Horns in spite of the awful drubbing he had taken was still alive. He was conscious. In fact, he was slowly and stealthily crawling toward Sam, a knife in his hand. Sam advanced on the Indian and when fifty feet away stopped and looked at him. It was the eyes that held his attention only in the eyes of falcon, wolf, or Wolverine, or of the young man in the river, had he seen such deadly hate. "I’ll be doggone!" he cried, and other men came over to stand with him and look.

George said, "Sam, I thought ya kilt the varmint."

Charley said, "Is thissen the one we send to the Bloods?"

"He’s tied to a tree," George said.

"Hain’t no reason to send two," said Charley. "Which one do we kill?"

Bill had come over. He looked at the bloody Indian, now lying flat and staring at the men. The redman had the exact look of a wounded beast that knew all the advantages lay with the enemy yet was determined to fight for its life. He looked like a thing waiting and planning. The men saw the knife in his hand and expected him at any moment to leap up and charge. Bill said, "Wall now, anyway he knows who done it. I figger Sam intends to send this chief and jist caught the other in case the chief doan feel up to it. Sam, be that it?"

"Might be," Sam said.

George said, "Wooden it be more insultin ta send the chief?"

"Ten times more, it shorely would," Bill said.

"Then who gits the other one?"

"He’s Sam’s," Bill said.

Sam was staring at the chief. He was remembering how this varmint had degraded and humiliated him and how for days he had been close to death in winter desolation; but there was something in this situation that distressed him. Perhaps it was the eyes of all the trapped and helpless or wounded creatures that had looked at him, during his years in the West, and looked at him now, out of this man’s eyes. There was the blue heron. In target practice he had once shot a heron on the bank of a river, only breaking a wing. The bird, tall and stately, had come walking down the bank and right past him, with what he had taken to be contempt for him. He could never forget that experience. The bird, walking with superb dignity, had looked at him steadily with one eye as it approached and passed him and went on down the bank, its blue wing hanging.

And there was Kate Bowden.

Sam might have said, after trying to think his way through it, that in the eyes of all wounded or helpless things there was something that laid a hand on his heart. He was still looking at Elk Horns when Tomahawk Jack went over to the chief, and pressing the muzzle of a revolver against the bloody skull, reached down and took the knife from the hand. It was then that Sam saw with greater poignancy the look in the eyes that he did not want to see and was weary of seeing. Dan had been standing back, listening and watching. He now came over to Sam and said that if the chief was to be the messenger he ought to be skelped roperly—halfway down his foreheadand right across the middle of his ears. Dan was eager to show how it should be done, but Sam said no, the chief had been scalped and that was good enough. If Dan wanted to scalp the other one that way and turn him loose that was all right. A bald head was a better warning than a dead Indian. They could tell them to tell their people that two messengers had been sent for the reason that it was figgered that one would be killed by the Crows on the way. Fine, Bill said; that would heap insult on two bald heads.

After thinking about it Dan said it made sense. Did he get to scalp the other one?

"Shore," said Bill, "an git it over with. We want breakfast."

As Dan approached, the Indian bound to the tree began the death song. Then the song fell silent, and so far as the men watching could tell the redman did not flinch while his scalp was taken. Half of each ear clung to the topknot. The two Indians were placed side by side before Sam, with the points of knives held against their backs. Sam studied their faces. Then Bill said, "Sam, the chief’s shoulder is outta joint, it shorely is." They could all see that it was, when they looked at the position of the arm. From behind, Bill felt over the chief’s torso and said that several ribs seemed to be broken. Sam must have handled him a little rough, Bill said. Both Indians were trembling with hate and outrage; all around them they could see the dead bodies of their comrades, and the pile of useless rifles. The chief was so shaken, so horribly humiliated, and so little in control of himself, that his lips were drooling saliva and blood and he was making water. George might have said that he was enough to draw tears from the eyes of a dead wolf; but Dan, McNees, Jack and a few others were looking at him as if they would have liked to skin him alive. They were thinking of the unspeakable tortures and agonies they would be put to if they were in the power of this savage. Dan would have cut his head off and hung it from a tree.

Someone asked why the varmints were not taken to camp and tied up until after breakfast. Let the red niggers think about it awhile. Sam said all right, they would do that and then send them on their way; and he turned them over to Cy and Charley, who spoke a smattering of Indian tongues. The men then mounted Indian ponies and rode to their camp; and behind them on horses, their feet tied together with leather ropes under the horses’ bellies, and their hands bound, came the two prisoners. Hunters returned from the hills with the choicest portions of elk and buffalo; fires were built; and great roasts were hung from tripods, and thick steaks were laid on chokecherry limbs over red embers. Sam, Hank, and Bill were making hot biscuits. A dozen of the men were out in the vales nd over the hills, gathering roots and wild fruits.

After they had eaten over a hundred pounds of flesh, with biscuits and berries, and each had drunk a quart of strong coffee, they sat back, chewing tobacco or puffing pipes. Bill took the pipestem from his teeth and, like an Indian, made a sign with the pipe at the earth and the sky. It was a cardinal's wonder, he said, that Sam didden bust the chief wide open, though as it was he done him plenty bad. He doubted the varmint would ever make it to his people; some of his innards might be split open inside. Sangre de Cristo! Jack said, and turned red with anger. Did they pet the pisened wolf because they felt sorry for him? Thar warn’t no mercy in these red critters and for his own part he’d feel oneasy if this chief was turned loose. He would arouse the hull nation against them. Would the varmints figger the chief had been freed because he was a greater chief than any white chief? And Sam dotta know that if Elk Horns was turned loose he would be on his trail night and day till the last river ran dry. Why didn’t they sell him to him the Crows?

The proposal caught the fancy of a few of the men: Elk Horns captured Sam to sell him to the Crows and Sam had turned the tables on him. Waugh! That would larn them to stay on their own range.

For a full minute Sam puffed his pipe and considered the matter. He didn’t want to offend these men who had come a long way and risked their lives for him: but he didn’t want the  Crows to put a wounded man to fiendish torture and death. Whether if he turned the chief loose there would be any gratitude in him he did not know. This Indian might pursue him night and day as long as he lived but Sam was thinking of the eyes of the youngster dying in the river.