Over the coals was hanging a pot of cooked meat; beside the fire were the pipe and the pouch of red-willow smoking tobacco, just as left by Wongatap.
Amidst the dusk Mahtotohpa ate well of the cooked meat; and filling the pipe, smoked calmly, half lying down, on one elbow.
"Who is that man, who enters our lodge and eats of our food and smokes of our tobacco?" he heard Wongatap's wife ask.
"It is no matter," Wongatap replied. "If he is hungry, let him eat."
That was right. By Indian law a person in need may enter any lodge, and eat, and no questions shall be asked until he has finished.
Mahtotohpa's heart almost failed him. Had that not been the killer of his brother, he would only have left a challenge, and gone away. But he thought of his brother, and his vows, and his heart closed again.
When his pipe was smoked out, he laid it aside, and gently stirred the fire with the toe of his moccasin, for more light. He dared to wait no longer. On a sudden he grasped his lance with both hands, sprang up and drove it through the body of Wongatap, in the bunk.
With his knife he instantly snatched off the scalp. Then he uttered the Mandan scalp-halloo, and dived for the door. There he paused, for just a second, to look back, that the squaw might see his face—and in the glimmer of fire-light he noted a feather from the lance sticking in the hole in Wongatap's side.
So back he darted, plucked the feather, and carrying it in his left hand, that the Great Spirit might help him, he ran hard. Wongatap's wife was shrieking; all the village heard and answered, and the warriors streamed out of the lodges.
The whole night Mahtotohpa ran, while the Arikarees vainly searched for his trail. This day he hid, in the brush along the Missouri River. The next night he ran again; and on the sixth morning he panted into the Mandan town, with the dried blood of Wongatap on his lance's blade and the stiffened scalp of Wongatap hanging to its handle.