“This time I saw Little Hair. I remembered my vow. I was crazy; I feared nothing. I knew nothing would hurt me, for I had my white weasel-tail charm on.[[95]] (He wears the charm to this day.) I don’t know how many I killed trying to get at him. He knew me. I laughed at him and yelled at him. I saw his mouth move, but there was so much noise I couldn’t hear his voice. He was afraid. When I got near enough I shot him with my revolver. My gun was gone, I don’t know where. I leaped from my pony and cut out his heart and bit a piece out of it and spit it in his face. I got back on my pony and rode off shaking it. I was satisfied and sick of fighting; I didn’t scalp him.
“I didn’t go back on the field after that. The squaws came up afterward and killed the wounded, cut their boot legs off for moccasin soles, and took their money, watches, and rings. They cut their fingers off to get them quicker. They hunted for Long Yellow Hair to scalp him, but could not find him. He didn’t wear his fort clothes (uniform), his hair had been cut off, and the Indians didn’t know him. (This corroborates what Mrs. Custer says about her husband’s having his long yellow curls cut at St. Paul some weeks before he was killed.)
“That night we had a big feast and the scalp dance. Then Sitting Bull came up and made another speech. He said: ‘I told you how it would be. I made great medicine. My medicine warmed your hearts and made you brave.’
“He talked a long time. All the Indians gave him the credit of winning the fight because his medicine won it. But he wasn’t in the fight. Gall got mad at Sitting Bull that night. Gall said: ‘We did the fighting, you only made medicine.’ It would have been the same anyway. Their hearts were bad toward each other after that, always.
“After that fight we could have killed all the others on the hill (Reno’s command) but for the quarrel between Gall and Sitting Bull. Both wanted to be head chief. Some of the Indians said Gall was right and went with him. Some said Sitting Bull was. I didn’t care, I was my own chief and had my bad young men; we would not obey either of them unless we wanted to, and they feared us.
“I was sick of fighting—I had had enough. I wanted to dance. We heard more long swords were coming with wheel guns (artillery, Gatlings). We moved camp north. They followed many days till we crossed the line. I stayed over there till Sitting Bull came back, and I came back with him. That’s all there is to tell. I never told it to white men before.”
When he had finished, I said to him: “Rain, if you didn’t kill Long Yellow Hair, who did?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. It was like running in the dark.”
“Well,” asked Mac, “why was it Long Yellow Hair wasn’t scalped, when every one else was? Did you consider him too brave to be scalped?”
“No, no one is too brave to be scalped; that wouldn’t make any difference. The squaws wondered afterward why they couldn’t find him. He must have laid under some other dead bodies. I didn’t know, till I heard it long afterward from the whites, that he wasn’t scalped.”