From time to time those who were already in camp shouted to guide the later comers who gave answering shouts and came one after another staggering into camp exhausted by the buffeting of the storm. At last only one was missing. The herd scout, who had found and reported the herd the day before; he and his faithful dog had not yet come in. The fury of the storm throughout the night and the next day prevented the possibility of going to look for the missing man.
Toward morning following the second night of the storm its fury abated. As is usual, at the end of a blizzard, it was followed by an extraordinary calm. The drifted plain lay as still and white as marble. The stars glistened coldly like ice crystals in the sky. The air was so clear that the least sound made by any moving creature was magnified in the stillness.
The hunting camp awoke. Suddenly the game call of the great gray wolf was heard. And soon the hunters saw a great number of these gaunt gray creatures out upon the ice of the lake and on the plain, digging out the white mounds which were the snowdrifts about the carcasses of the buffaloes which the hunters had been obliged to leave when the storm came upon them.
And now among the wolf cries another sound was heard,—the defiant barking of a dog! It was the scout’s dog. The men hurried toward the slaughter field to kill or drive away the wolves. Some wolves were dragging away a buffalo carcass, and from among the snarling howling pack about this carcass the hunters could distinctly hear the hoarse barking of their missing friend’s dog, and occasionally they could hear a strangely muffled shout of a man sounding as though it came from under the ice.
The hunters finally reached the place to which the carcass had been dragged by the wolves. As the men came near the wolves ran away and the men saw the dog standing by the carcass for a moment before he fell dead as they reached the place. The men with their knives cut open the abdominal cavity of the carcass and found the missing scout inside wrapped in his robe in a bed of grass and buffalo hair.
When the storm had come upon him at his work he had seen that he could not reach the camp so he had opened two of the carcasses and removed the internal organs. In one he had made a bed for his dog, and in the other for himself for protection from the fury of the storm. The dog had kept an opening to his shelter, but the man had closed the entrance of his own after he was in, and the hide had frozen solid, making him a prisoner. When the wolves came the dog was able to free himself and tried to defend his imprisoned master, regardless of his own safety. He had been mortally wounded before the hunters could save him.
As soon as the scout was released he inquired for the dog, his friend and defender. When he saw that his loyal friend was dead, having given up his life in defense of his master, the scout was deeply moved with grief. He knelt down and stroked the head of the dead dog, and said, “Ah, my friend; you were courageous and faithful unto death. And you died like a brave warrior. You shall have the funeral of a dead warrior.”
So with all due ceremony the scout carried the body of the dog to the top of a hill overlooking the lake where he had given up his life in doing his duty. There the scout laid the body. Over it he built up a tomb of boulders which he gathered from the hills. Then he laid upon it offerings of red paint and of food according to the funeral custom of his people, and they sang the farewell song for the dead.
Ever since that time this hill has been known to the Dakotas as the Grave of the Dog.