“He head man of Lizard Creek Camp.”
“Why isn’t he on the rolls?”
“He don’t get it—no rations.”
“Why not?”
“He is angry.”
“Angry? What about?”
Out of a good deal of talk the agent secured this story. Seven years before, a brother of Howling Wolf, a peaceful old man, was sitting on a hilltop (near the road) wrapped in evening meditation. His back was toward a white man’s cabin not far away and he was looking at the sunset. His robe was drawn closely round him, and his heart was at peace with all the world, for he was thinking that the way is short between him and the Shadow Land.
A couple of cowboys came out of the door of the cabin and one pointed at the meditating man with derisive gestures. The other drew his revolver and said, “See me knock the hat off the old fool.”
As he fired the old man sprang to his feet with a convulsive leap, the blood streaming over his face. Numbed by the shock and blinded with his own blood, he ran frenziedly and without design toward the miscreant who shot him, and so on over the hill toward Howling Wolf’s camp.
Springing to their horses the two ruffians galloped away with desperate haste.