"When I saw the women killed by the Crows, I was so angry that I wanted to help you fight until all the Crows were dead, but I do not feel so now," I told them. "You have done great wrongs to the Crows; back there on Arrow River they did only what you have done to them. Here is a great, rich country, large enough for all. I would like to see you make peace with the Crows, they agreeing to remain on their side of Elk River, and you on your side of it."
"Ha! Your white son has a gentle heart!" a Kai-na chief told Lone Walker.
"If you mean that he has an afraid heart, you are mistaken. In the fight the other day, he killed an enemy who was about to kill my son, Red Crow," Lone Walker answered, and at that the chief clapped a hand to his mouth in surprise and approval, and his manner quickly changed to one of great friendliness to me.
Said Lone Walker to me then: "My son, what you propose cannot be done. We have twice made peace with the Crows, the last time right here on this river, and both times they broke it within a moon. It was five summers back that we made the last peace with them. It was agreed that we should remain on the north side of Elk River, they on the south side, and neither tribe should raid the other's horse herds. The two tribes of us camped here side by side for many days, making friends with one another. We gave feasts for the Crows, they gave feasts for us. Every day there was a big dance in their camp, or in ours. A young Crow and one of our girls fell in love with one another, and we let him have her. Well, at last we parted from the Crows and started north, and had gone no farther than Yellow River when one of their war parties, following us, fell upon some of our hunters and killed four, one escaping wounded. So you see how it is: the Crows will not keep their word; it is useless to make peace with them."
On the next evening a mixed party of our and Kai-na warriors, about a hundred men, set out on foot to raid the Crow horse herds. They were going to take no chances; their plan was to travel nights, to find the Crows and watch for an opportunity to run off a large number of their stock.
The two tribes of us were too many people to camp together, so many hunters scattering the game, so that after a few days we were obliged to go a long way from camp to get meat. Another council was held and the chiefs decided that we, the Pi-kun-i, should winter in the upper Yellow River country, and the Kai-na on the Missouri, between the mouth of Yellow River and the mouth of the stream upon which we were then camping. Two days later we broke camp and went our way.
We struck Yellow River higher up than where we had crossed it coming out, and went into camp in a big, timbered bottom through which flowed a small stream named Hot Spring Water. On the following day Red Crow took me to the head of it, only a few miles from its junction with Yellow River, and there I saw my first hot spring. It was very large, and deep, and the water so hot that I could not put my hand in it.
Our camp here was at the foot, and east end of the Yellow Mountains. In the gap between them and the Moccasin Mountains, rose the hot spring in a beautiful, well grassed valley. Never in all my wanderings have I seen quite so good a game country as that was, and for that matter continued to be for no less than sixty years from that time.